Archive for February, 2009

CD Review: “MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids”

MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids (2008, MeeWee Entertainment)
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To those of us who grew up during hip-hop’s mid-to-late ’80s golden era, the idea of a hip-hop album for kids may seem silly and unnecessary; after all, you can play a lot of those old hits without worrying about objectionable content. (My daughter, for instance, developed an intense appreciation for Heavy D at a very early age.) And then there’s this project’s name: MeeWee? Seriously? When I first heard about this album, I didn’t even want to say the title, let alone listen to the music.

Here’s the good news, then: MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids is much better than its title. It isn’t as much fun as the hip-hop hits you remember from your younger days, but for the most part, it avoids using the music to do any truly obnoxious pandering to kids, and the majority of the songs do a fine job of holding up to repeated listens. (A notable exception is the horrible “Keyvo,” which makes me want to give whoever recorded it a few solid punches to his MeeWee.) Some of them are really pretty catchy, actually; for instance, I’ve found myself randomly getting “I Can Be Anything” stuck in my head, and songs like “So Much Love to Give” deftly combine positive messages with solid pop arrangements.

MeeWee was developed by a former teacher and one of the producers of MTV’s Lyricist Lounge, and MeeWee Entertainment has been doing a great job of outreaching the album to childcare professionals (teachers, camp counselors, dance instructors), offering them free downloads as well as lesson plans and other materials. It’s a smart way of getting the word out, and for the K-3 set, MeeWee might work as a spoonful of sugar to help the educational message go down. Older kids are a lot savvier about music, though — hip-hop in particular — and for future installments, the company could, and should, do a better job of connecting the dots between real hip-hop and age-appropriate messages. This stuff is cute, but it’s canned, and the world is still waiting for an album of kids’ songs from rappers with household names. (Biz Markie and the Roots have contributed to Yo Gabba Gabba!, after all.) In the meantime, there’s no arguing with results like these:

DVD Review: “Madagascar 2:Escape to Aftrica”

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa picks up where the first Madagascar left off: with the main characters, Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) trying to get home to New York after their adventure on the island of Madagascar. In the sequel, the four friends, along with those ingenious penguins, the two monkeys, Mason and Phil, that wacky lemur, King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his sidekick, Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer), wind up in the African outback, their original destination from the first film.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is just as good as the first one and even surpasses it in the emotions department. On the whole, it’s a suitable family film all around, nothing too scary and nothing too gross or adult in its humor. The movie opens with a brief prologue explaining Alex’s beginnings and how he wound up in New York City. As a cub, he was Alekey, son of Zuba (Bernie Mac), the alpha lion in their pride. We find Zuba trying to teach his young son how to be a fighter, but the little one just wants to dance and chance butterflies, like most young human children.

In this opening, we also meet Makunga (Alec Baldwin), Zuba’s nemesis. Zuba is a burr in Zuba’s side and this early confrontation between the two of them sets up Alex’s story arc for the rest of the film. While Zuba and Makunga wrestle, Alekey is stolen by poachers and tossed and a wooden crate. A dramatic, heart wrenching chase sequence ensues in which the lion father tries to rescue his son, but to no avail. However, Alekey does not wind up with the poachers. His crate tumbles into the river and drifts into the ocean, eventually ending up in New York City. The cub is placed in the zoo, where young Marty, Gloria and Melman are already residing. We watch as Alekey becomes Alex the lion and then we quickly get a refreshed of most of the first movie’s events. Read the rest of this entry

CD Review: The Baby Grands, “The Baby Grands”

The Baby Grands – The Baby Grands (2008, Backspace)

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As has been discussed many times here at Dadnabbit, we no longer live in the dark old days of children’s music, when parents had slim choices for audio entertainment, and most of them involved sitting through untold hours of synth-laden arrangements and cutesy-poo lyrics. We’ve entered a more enlightened era, one in which artists who cater to kids often try to target adult tastes too — but even now, there’s a pretty stark split in kids’ music; some artists try to infuse their music with an approximation of the manic energy of youth, while others take a more thoughtful, laid back approach.

Atlanta’s Baby Grands fit the latter description, and even if their press materials overplay their hand a bit — whoever came up with the phrase “manna from kid music heaven” may wish to consider trying decaf — the trio’s self-titled debut still manages to blend a kid’s-eye view with smart pop songwriting with admirable, uncommon skill. Singer Donny Todd, multi-instrumentalist Ben Rowell, and lyricist Marc Castelo (whose presence makes the Baby Grands the kidscene equivalent of Procol Harum or the Dead, I guess) set out to create what they call “Kids’ music that’s not jus for kids,” and they get about as close as you could reasonably expect; you’re probably never going to reach for “Panda Rock” or “Diggin’ a Hole to China” when the little ones aren’t around, but (as I can attest from personal experience) you may very well find yourself humming the melody to “Sugar Makes Me Loco.”

What it lacks in wacky sound effects and silly gags, The Baby Grands more than makes up for with themes that will be relevant to its key demographic — stuff like the alphabet (“Why Is It W?”), the planets (“Pluto”), hopes and dreams (“Dream Big”), and the family pet (“Wet Nose Friend,” which is not, as I’d initially assumed, about my year-old son). It’s all uplifting, sweetly melodic stuff, with all the replay value you’d hope for from a band that got its start from a chance meeting at a playgroup. Try some samples at the Baby Grands’ MySpace page, or have a look at the good time had by all at their record release party last November:

DVD Review: Phineas and Ferb,”The Daze of Summer” and Wizards of Waverly Place, “Supernatural Stylin’”

If you’re like me and you wind up watching the same television programs as your children, then you know that most programming falls into two categories: Shows aimed at kids but filled with some adult (but not naughty) humor to elicit laughs from moms and dads, and shows that make you want to crawl away from the television to make the pain go away.  Two examples of these categories are the latest Disney Channel hits, Phineas and Ferb and Wizards of Waverly Place. Both series have new DVD collections that put together several episodes from their respective shows.

Phineas and Ferb is a delightful animated series about two genius brothers who are always coming up with outrageous ideas (a circus in the backyard, a portal to Mars, you know, stuff that only works in cartoons) that rile their older sister, Candice.  Each 11-minute episode is rife with vivid colors, snappy dialogue, and there is generally a musical number.  Additionally there is always a subplot involving the boys’ pet platypus, Perry, who is a secret agent assigned in foiling the plots of a mad scientist named Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.  Phineas and Ferb is innocent and goofy stuff made by artists who seem to enjoy doing their job.  On DVD the artwork of the show is much crisper and the sound is much better, plus you won’t have those annoying pop-ups that happen randomly throughout the show announcing what is coming up next on the Disney Channel.

This DVD collection, The Daze of Summer, contains ten 11-minute episodes, including the two-part story “Unfair Science/Unfair Science Redux,” about a science fair in which the boys build a portal to Mars and Candice get transported to the red planet and becomes queen for a day.  This episode in particular is very clever in that part one tells a complete story, then part two tells the same story from a different point of view.  My kids especially like “It’s A Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World.”  In it, Phineas and Ferb build a monster truck speedway to help Candice to learn of to drive.  Phineas and Ferb is the kind of hit show that deserves its success and as a parent; you’ll probably find yourself laughing at things your kids don’t understand, which is a good thing. Read the rest of this entry

Product Review: Fridge Phonics by LeapFrog

My wife and I went to our first pre-school tour a couple months ago. We live in Los Angeles and had been frightened into action by a friend who was visiting for coffee. The friend was admonishing us for waiting so long to start the waiting list process. After all, Zoe was already eighteen months old. For all intents and purposes, we were “too late to get into any good schools.” The way she said it made it sound as though we had consigned our daughter to a lifetime in the service industry after four years at a community college because the only choice left to us was the J. W. Gacy Clown-Around pre-school.

Before calmer heads had the chance to talk some sense into us we found ourselves in the office of one of the more prestigious pre-schools in the Los Angeles area. The children in this school system graduate to the next level with an average 85% or higher. They don’t mess around here. Only a handful of students per teacher. No holiday is celebrated or hailed so as not to leave anyone out. And the children are not forced into narrow cubbies when they are bad, though a few of them looked like they should be.

What really stood out to me though was when the principal sat us down to give us the low-down. I’ll skip all the details and get to the salient point:

“It used to be,” She said, sternly. “That children came to Pre-K to get ready for Kindergarten, where they would learn the alphabet and their numbers. Nowadays, children come to pre-school already knowing their alphabet and our job is to further enhance their experience to get them ready for a world where they are already ahead of the curve.”

Yipes. When did pre-school get so…advanced? When I was in Nursery school (as we called it) we played Duck, Duck, Goose! Now, the kids are practically pre-algebra! Daunting to say the least. But not impossible to overcome and I’m gonna tell you how we did it. Because it was remarkably simple and our daughter seems to be a genius. Albeit a genius who craps her pants and thinks cheesy poofs are part of the four food groups.

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