On Being a Father: A is for BABA

[wei yau]

Well, actually, A is for ABBA, but I suppose BABA is close enough. And yes, I am referring to the Swedish quartet from the 70s.

Those of you who are familiar with children's music will know that most of it sucks. Sucks worse than Britney, Justin or any other currently-popular popstars that I'm not at all familiar with due to being an old fogie. Those who of you who are hipper than I can feel free to replace Britney and Justin with whomever is the flavor of the month (probably some name intentionally misspelled in a misguided effort to seem cooler...like "Kharyn" or "Jeiyn").

But, my point is that children's music sucks hard. Sure, I'm not the target audience, but I've often been characterized as being "childish", so I imagine that I'm not too far off the target demographic. I feel that this makes me qualified to pass judgement on children's music. Besides, if I'm forced to listen to it, you can be damn sure that I'll have an opinion.

It's bad enough that I have to listen to this stuff when I am having the television babysit my daughter (I was raised by the television and I came out just fine). But, when we are in the car, I see no reason why I should subject myself to songs about fruit salad, terminally cute animals, silly dances or going potty. I have a horribly long daily commute and am certain that I'll aim the car at the nearest embankment if I have to listen to that tripe.

So, we play music that we enjoy when we're in the car. We're training our daughter to develop a whitebread, soulless, suburbanite and utterly vanilla taste in music. It's not all we like, but it's a good starting point.

And this leads to our groovy friends from Sweden. We have one of their greatest hits album in the car's CD changer. Our daughter has become such a fan of ABBA, that she cannot even tolerate the few seconds delay in between tracks. When one song ends, she applauds and cheers. This is quickly followed by shouts for "BABA!" until the next track begins.

The music is just light and pop-y enough to satisfy our daughter. And it's just tolerable enough for us.

The first time.

Kids like repetition, they thrive on it. I'm just glad that the album is long enough to avoid ever having to repeat the album. Although, we've not yet taken a really long road trip with this album. I'm worried that if I play the album too often, we'll emerge from the vehicles wearing bright white pantsuits with flared legs and sporting platinum blonde wigs.

It could happen. I'll be sure to take pics when it does.

[Roland98]

That's too funny.

The closest things my kids ever listened to that could be classified as "kid" music were the CDs of Disney movie songs--which, admittedly, are mine and I had them prior to having kids. :) Aurora loves Eminem and probably understands some Nirvana songs better than I do. For awhile I was doing the daily commute in my car with the kiddos and only had a radio, no CD player, so Aurora got hooked on that on Nickelback song--not sure the name of it, but some of the lyrics are "I've been up, I've been down/to the bottom of every bottle" or something like that. This was maybe 2 years ago? Anyway, it was on the radio yesterday and I went to turn it (not so much of a Nickelback fan myself) and Aurora freaked out--we had to listen the the whole song.

My current car has no CD player either, and out here in the sticks we mostly get country stations. There's a Brad Paisley song called "Mud on the Tires," which both kids love as well (since their uncles frequently took them out mudding in their 4WD trucks). I suppose at least for awhile they'll have my varied taste in music, until they start rebelling and listening to the Osmonds or something. :)

[Ab_Normal]

Jeez, yeah, we didn't buy one kid's CD when the Spawn was younger, we just used the edited highlights of our collection. The kiddo has a pretty good appreciation of The Beatles and the Monkees (blame her father, I was listening to Oingo Boingo and Devo). She's 11 now, and she doesn't listen to much of the crap that currently passes for pop music, but she does get exposed to a lot of Juno Reactor, Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers... Mr. Ab calls her "the littlest raver".

[Ex-zombie]

When my oldest daughter was four years old I had to listen to "Walk like an Egyptian" by the Bangles only about a million times. No, I am not exaggerating. :glare:
My spouse thought it was so cute that our daughter liked that song so much that she went out and bought our daughter the tape. At that point I should have committed my spouse. :fuming:

Seventeen years later I still know every single word in that damn song.

[viscousmemories]

I like that song. :blush:

More importantly, Susanna Hoff's eyes in that video are one of the sexiest things in TV history.

[lisarea]

I didn't know any kiddie songs, really, when the Little Muffin was little, and I wasn't interested in getting to know them, either, so I used Ramones songs and things like that, mostly. He LOVED I Wanna Be Sedated, although I'm pretty sure he didn't really understand it. If you're worried about the words, you could use the more benign ones like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend or something. The Ramones did great kiddie songs, you know, apart from the glue-sniffing, prostitution, violence, and such.

Then, as a toddler, he got a huge Ray Charles obsession. Once, when he was maybe two, I found my Ray Charles tapes under his bed with his little Playskool boombox. He'd actually swiped them. He must have picked them out by the pictures or something, because he couldn't read yet. He did impressions, too, after he saw a Sesame Street with Ray on it at my parents' house. He had a little toy piano, and he'd put on some sunglasses and sing This Little Girl of Mine, all swaying and grinning Ray-style. It was actually a pretty good impression.

One huge bonus is that, by the time he was an adolescent, the LM was many steps ahead of his peers. He was familiar with a lot of things the other kids weren't, and he got some pretty serious street cred for that. Music is a huge deal for teenagers, so you really get a lot of points for knowing things like that.

The downside is that he still steals my CDs, so I have lots and lots of bigassed gaps in my collection as his tastes mature and expand. I always thought my country stuff was safe until I found out that my Johnny Cash box set had been pillaged a few years ago. And he was just asking me a bunch of questions about GENE AUTRY. What's next? Slim Whitman? Al Jolson? Oh, man, please don't let it be Lotte Lenya!

Kid stuff is crap. I mean, I know I'm a bad mom and all, but as the LM pointed out once when someone gave him a bunch of those Little Golden books, "Just because kids can't draw or write very good doesn't mean we can't tell when stuff is bad."

[Dingfod]

I like ABBA. Don't make too much fun of me.

[Ex-zombie]

Wow. I had no idea you were a Dancing Queen, worn.


:roflmao:

[SharonDee]

I raised my kid on Queen. We made frequent trips to my parents' home two hours away so she was exposed to them for many miles. She was heartbroken when she became old enough to learn that Freddy Mercury was dead.

Even now when she calls me on the phone she opens with, "Mama... ooo-ooo-ooo..." (From "Bohemian Rhapsody", for the Queen-less among you.)

[Dingfod]

Wow. I had no idea you were a Dancing Queen, worn.


:roflmao:I can hear the drums, so just call me Fernando.

[Blake]

In fairness, I don't think all kids' music/recordings is crap. I mean, Raffi is crap, but I did enjoy him for a while at the right age. Sharon, Lois and Bram sometimes sucked, but oftentimes were pretty good too. Nana Mouskouri ages reasonably well, and as far as I'm concerned, Free To Be ... You And Me is all good. So very seventies, but all good.

[Shake]

"You can dance, you can jive
having the time of your life
see that girl, watch that scene
dig in the Dancing Queen"