Great Green Globs of Teachable Moments

The other day my son wandered into the kitchen singing an old classic for the elementary school set, Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts (or GGGoGGGG as it's known online by the kids these days). My mom taught it to me when I was around 5 and I guess I taught it to my son a couple years ago. I don't remember teaching it to him, I assumed he'd learned it at school, but he swears it was me. For whatever reason it's become quite popular at our house the last week.

If you're not familiar with the song, it is sung to the tune of The Old Grey Mare*, and goes like this.

Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
mutilated monkey meat,
little dirty birdie feet!

All mixed up in all-purpose porpoise pus.
Gee I forgot my spoon!

(After a few rounds it ends with "But I've got my straw!" followed by gross slurping noises.)

*If you're not familiar with The Old Grey Mare you really need to brush up on your 1850s civic political operatives.

Beyond the nostalgia factor I ended up being really happy the song came up at this point in the kids' lives. Right now they're really into asking questions about things they don't know. They're not embarrassed by not knowing something, which I'm trying to encourage. It turns out they didn't know what most of the things in the song were.


"Dad, what's a gopher?"
"Dad, what are guts?"
"Dad, what's mutilated?"
"Dad, what's a porpoise?"
"Dad, what's pus?"

I love when my kids ask these questions because it shows me the gaps in their knowledge and the things I have not yet found time to teach them. I also love living in an age where I can go online and show them exactly what we're talking about. It's become such a staple of our time together that in a stunning reversal of the common trope my kids are often telling "just look it up" if I don't know the answer to something.


By the end of breakfast the kids knew four things they hadn't known when they woke up. Not bad for the 90 minutes before the school bus. The best part though wasn't the incidental educational opportunity, it was watching them squirm and giggle as they sang the song while brushing teeth and hair and on the way to the bus stop. Knowing what all those things are made the song all the more disgusting and fun to belt out.

And isn't that really the point of learning?

Songs About Food: Another Internet Playlist

I recently saw a cool post on "On a Good Day," a music blog for parents. The author put together a playlist of songs about fathers and fatherhood. It got me thinking about playlists that I've put together as a dad. There was about 5 years of my life or so that I really drifted away from listening to music. If I was at home or in the car I usually listened to talk radio and podcasts.

At some point I realized I was doing my kids a disservice by not having music playing in the house on a regular basis. I also wanted something fun to use as a distraction to get my young son through meals times. I started making a playlist of songs about food that I thought would be fun for kids. I modeled it on two aspects of my own childhood. The first was that my mom hated "kid's music" and refused to have it around. The second was a series of mix tapes that her friend made and gave out called "Carlo's Kids Songs for Adults." The tapes were basically regular rock and roll and pop songs that were fun for kids (think "Octopus' Garden" etc.).

My one other criteria was that the songs had to be primarily about food. They couldn't just have a food in the title, or make one reference to food in a lyric.I asked friends on Facebook to contribute to the list and got a pretty good set. Over time I did add some clear kid centered songs like "Don't Drown Your Food," and "Beans and Rice" from old PSAs. The list has also changed as videos are deleted by the people who upload them. Still, it's a great playlist for meal times or meal prep times. Basically any time you're in or near the kitchen. Hopefully your kids will enjoy these songs, and you'll have a good time together.

If you think there's something that should be added to the list please let me know in the comments.

Review: Sing-a-long History

When I was a child my mother was steadfastly against "kids music." She hated the high pitched voices and repetition. The result is that I was raised on a combination of The Beatles and show tunes. My mother decided she'd rather hear The Sound of Music 5,000 times than anything that had been marketed to kids in the 1980s.

When I became a parent I maintained my mom's disposition towards kids music. My resolve had been strengthened by putting up with the terrible music my little brother listened to after my mother softened her stance after a decade plus of parenting. My kids have mostly grown up listening to mid-90s rock and hip hop because that's what I want to listen to.

Recently I learned about something called "Kindie Music," which is essentially indie rock for kids. I was stoked. This seemed like a great middle ground. Even though I was happy that my kids were appreciating music I liked I still had reservations about some of the themes they were being exposed to. Also, my daughter has been increasingly asking to hear Disney songs on Pandora, so I knew I had to find something else to bridge the gap between "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and "Seven Nation Army."

So far I am still new in my forays into the genre but it's been a fun journey. I was recently offered an opportunity to review some kindie albums, which I'm very excited to be doing. Today is the first in what I hope will become a semi-regular series of kindie music reviews.

"Sing-a-long History Volume 1: Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! An Introduction to the Civil War Era for Kids" by Lloyd H. Miller

I grew up in California as a huge Civil Was buff. Moving to DC was a thrill for me because of its proximity to so many of the sites I'd read about or seen in sepia tone photographs while watching Ken Burns' Civil War documentary. When I transitioned to full time Dad status last year I started bringing the kids to as many of these sites as we could. The kids enjoyed going and listening to the ranger's tours and then running around the sites. The last day of summer before my son started kindergarten he asked if we could spend his final day of freedom at, "a battlefield or national park or something." All of this is to say that I was very excited to find Lloyd H. Miller's "Sing-a-long History Vol. 1: Glory!Glory! Hallelujah! An Introduction to the Civil War Era for Kids". I had been surfing through various kindie rock acts that had been sent to me and Lloyd's was the one that made us stop and settle in.

In the press materials Miller says he tried to give the songs, "the exciting feel of the old-timey jazz and rock and rock and roll I play at shows today." He succeeds there. The album has a nice mix of songs and styles including a goofy pseudo-hip hop number sung in the person of a dead horse named Baldy. Miller's vocal styling in some songs retains that familiar kids song flair of exaggerated tonal shifts, which is some of what I am trying to avoid in the songs I listen to with the kids, but songs like "Baldy" grow on you for the clever lyrics and catchy hooks. On "John Brown" Miller's boppy vocals manage to make the original lyrics feel that much more gruesome.

The best songs on the album are the traditional and historic texts set to music. "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Marching through Georgia," and "O Captain! My Captain!" are wonderful pieces. "Follow the Drinking Gourd" hints at Klezmer influences, while Walt Whitman's words are arranged as a beautiful duet in "Captain."

"Marching Through Georgia" is one of the traditional Civil War era songs on the album. Miller's arrangement is light and lively with the kind of martial gravitas you'd expect at a county fair. Another Civil War song on the album, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" may sound familiar to fans of the Ken Burns documentary as it sounds like a soulful companion to the rousing Union tune "Battle Cry of Freedom." Miller, Chris Johnson, and Marianne Tasick provide a lovely rendition of "Tenting" that you'll likely find yourself humming the next time you go camping.

Miller bills this album as the first in a "multi volume 'musical textbook' that uses songs to introduce kids to stories from history." Small print at the bottom of the CD case advises that lesson plans and reading lists are available at Miller's website. It's a little hard to find so here's a link to the PDF. Some of the original songs on the album go from good to great when paired with more information and historical context. Enterprising parents might also take to the internet to find that "Weeksville" is about "a neighborhood founded by African American freedmen in what is now Brooklyn" (Wikipedia). "Henry Box Brown" is a story song that kids will enjoy. "Keep the Hate Mail Coming" mixes the life of abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher with modern political and media references that may require some explaining for some audiences.




The supporting materials on the website are further supplemented by Miller's Sing-a-long History podcast. The podcast is a fantastic compliment to the album. Miller talks about the history behind the songs and also gives insight into his song writing process. I listened to some of it with my kids while making dinner but had to stop in the middle. They woke up the next morning wanting to hear the rest. They were excited to discuss the parts they knew and the places they'd been, as well as to have chance to learn new information and ask new questions.

One note about the content on both the album and the podcast, I do suggest giving it a listen before you listen to it with your kids. Many parents will find nothing wrong with the content, others may want to wait to expose their kids to some of the lyrics. In the opening track Miller refers to John Brown's plot as "dumb" more times than I cared to count, which isn't terrible but for me was something I didn't necessarily want my kids to pick up and start using everyday. The album does talk about war, death, killing, shooting and other themes that are totally reasonable for a discussion of the Civil War. Miller clearly feels that kids can be exposed to these concepts without euphemism or sugar coating. Also, if you have secessionist sympathies this likely isn't the album for you. It has a Yankee/Liberal perspective and may be the only kids album to name check Dan Savage and Anita Hill (both in totally child friendly ways). The album might be better appreciated by older kids, but my four-year-old was singing "John Brown" all through bed time last night.

Sing-a-long History Vol. 1 works fine as a stand alone album. As with many sing-a-long albums it would be great for listening to on road trips, maybe on your way to visit Harpers Ferry. The album works even better as part of an integrated media package including the podcast and the lesson plans and supporting materials. Any parent interested in history will likely enjoy engaging in the materials and the album with their children. I can see stay at home parents and home schoolers getting a lot out of it. It would also make great summer time fare for parents who want to do enrichment with their kids while school is out.

With Sing-a-long History Volume 1, Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! an Introduction to the Civil War Era for Kids Miller does what he sets out do. He crafts a fun, educational album that kids will enjoy and parents won't easily tire of hearing. I'm looking forward to future releases.

You can find more of Miller's work at http://lloydhmiller.com/

"Can Music Save Your Mortal Soul?"

I started writing this as a self-pitying year-in-review taking stock of my sad, sad 2004. Then I realized that would be a bunch of bullshit. Instead I hit upon something infinitely more important about 2004 than my depression over getting older. You my gentle reader have been faithfully reading about all the things that piss me off for about a year and half now, so today I've decided to expound upon some of the things I actually liked in 2004.

 The inspiration for this radical new line of thought was brought about, in part, by one the things I liked in 2004, a book called "Planet Simpson," a postmodern deconstruction of the TV show "The Simpsons." The important thing in this discussion is something almost totally unrelated to the overall subject of the book. For now I'll concentrate on something from the last chapter. In a section entitled "The Rebirth of Sincerity" the author writes about the exact moment when he regained his faith in rock n' roll. Prior to this point in his life the author details how the cynicism of youth culture in the 1990s had pretty much consumed his entire being. In his mind rock was "played out." He then goes on to describe how he regained his faith in rock n' roll.

This resonated with me as I had been going through the same rock malaise since 1994. As you may recall that was the year Kurt Cobain decided that being Kurt Cobain was played out. With Nirvana gone a whole horde of whiney-Wallflower-Bush-crappy-McCrap rock rushed in to fill the void. Ever since then my relationship with rock n' roll had stagnated into an adoring love for all the songs I loved during high school mixed in with an occasional single from a current band. At no time in the decade between then and now did I feel the need to rush out and buy an entire album from any one rock band.

Now, allow me to be not one bit original or insightful. Here's the thing, I don't know about music the way, say, my friend, and former contributor here,  Daniel knows about music. I know what I like, and, except for a few isolated singles most of what I like was released prior to 1996. That changed in 2004. The past year was the best year in music since 1991, which saw the release of Nevermind, Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and The Low End Theory (along with Metallica's Black Album). 2004 finally saw the release of three very good rock albums:

-Jet: Get Born:

The Rolling Stones can go ahead and retire. Remember back when everyone said that Oasis were the next Beatles? Uh, where's Oasis been the past few years? Yeah, that's what I thought. If anyone has assumed the mantle from the rock bands of the 60s and 70s it's Jet. The problem with Oasis is that they were pretentious. They set out to be the next Beatles, they believed they were the next Beatles, they were decidedly, NOT, the next Beatles.

Jet however has done exactly what I, as a rock fan, want, an unpretentious rock album, an album without any real message, an album that is not intended to shock people, or make them think, or any of the other BS things that bands try to work into their albums. This is an album that simply rocks. This is the album, in particular the first single "Are You Gonna Be My Girl," that restored my faith in rock n' roll. Topics covered on the album include women who are, by turns, unattainable, unreachable, and evil, bad DJs, and general RnR malaise. In other words, they cover all the old rock standards.

The band also produced two of the best rock videos of the past decade, for "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" and "Look What You've Done." I simply can't stress enough how great it is to finally here a band that's not overly poppy, or whiney, or any of the other crappy adjectives that can be placed upon most of the crap that has passed itself off as rock and roll since Kurt killed himself.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AQVCL/qid=1106947785/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-3740391-5741558

-Greenday: American Idiot:

I spent a long time trying to figure out why this was such a good album. In the dark years after '94, after Green Day's "Dookie" was released I had a lot of hope that this would be the band to shine through and take over where Nirvana left off. Then that stupid "Time of Your Life" song found it's way into every TV show in the Western Hemisphere. I remember watching NBC one night and hearing that song on three shows back-to-back-to-back. At that moment Green Day went from being a slightly disappointing band, to an object of down right scorn.

All that has changed. "American Idiot" is a great, let me repeat, great rock album on sooo many levels. First off it's an overt return to politically based anti-establismentary punk. I don't know if Green Day has been inserting political messages into their albums all along, I do know that their singles haven't had anything like the edge that "American Idiot" has. The album, like the title song, rails against the powers that be, and have been for the past few years. There's an awesome send up of the Governator on the third track "Holiday." The last voice begins with an intercom type announcement that "The representative form California has the floor." The next few lines take the piss out of both Bush and Ahnold,

Sieg Hail to the President Gas Man
Bombs away is your punishment
Pulverize the Eiffel Towers
that criticize your government

And it goes on like this throughout the whole album. The radical thing is not that a band, or anyone else, would speak out against the idiocy of the US government, or the media, the radical thing is that it would come from a band that has such a strong history of making commercial pop-punk. That is, we're used to rebellion from the counter culture segments of the population, but rarely does a band with something to lose put out a statement this strong. That's why the call of rebellion in this album hits as hard as it does, because it comes from people who don't need to use it as a device, it comes from those who have already "made it" and are now risking rebuke from those that gave them their position.

But rebellion and angst are only a small part of why this album rocks. The album is actually a concept piece. It tells the story of St. Jimmy, The Jesus of Suburbia, and a girl they call Whatsername. The album tells a story in a very loose sense. There's no real clear narrative. Instead the album guides the listener through an emotional pseudo-story that, like a film noir project, is meant to leave the audience with the experience of a feeling rather than a coherent story. The album sounds like a soundtrack to a play that doesn't exist, which it kind of is. However, the fact that the album is being fleshed out into a Broadway show is irrelevant. The point is, in an era of good musicals also standing as good rock albums (Hedwig, Rent), Green Day has put out a solid rock album that should do well as a musical. It's this interplay that allows Green Day to escape their stripped down power trio roots while maintaining a solid punk sensibility that was missing from their later over produced mass-market schlock.

I'm not doing this album justice. Buy it, or better yet, steal it, listen to it a few dozen times, then get back to me.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002OERI0/qid=1106947742/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-3740391-5741558

-Killers: Hot Fuss

Anyone else miss Depeche Mode or New Order? Well, the Killers aren't really like them, but they're like a bastard love child of punk and new wave. They're album, which includes the singles "Mr. Brightside" and "Somebody Told Me," is another one that makes over produced punk sound cutting edge rather than just commercial. I really don't have as much to say about this album as I did with the previous two. It pretty much just rocks

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002858YS/ref=m_art_bow_1/104-3740391-5741558?v=glance&s=music

So there it is, 2004, the year that saved rock. I know there are other good albums that came out but many of these (To The 5 Boroughs to name one) came from groups that have been putting out a consistently good product forever. Instead I wanted to focus on the bands that surprised me and restored my faith in an art form.

Also deserving mention:
-Franz Ferdinand: Take Me Out
-Maroon 5: This Love (I know it's cheesy but it helped me through a tough time.)
-Modest Mouse: Float On
-My Chemical Romance: I'm Not OK
-Velvet Revolver: Slither (So GnR yet So STP, let's have some peanut butter cups.)