Video: "Miss Elephant's Gerald" - The Pop Ups
I am not a huge Halloween fan, and so I'll be upfront and say that I'm not gonna feature too many Halloween-related tracks here. (At least, I'm sayin' that now.) So when I say that the new "Halloween" track from puppet/kindie (kindie/puppet?) band The Pop Ups, "Miss Elephant's Gerald," isn't very Halloween-y, that's actually a good thing from my perspective.
It does swing, however.
(Below the video is a Bandcamp widget from which you can purchase the track -- also available on iTunes.)
The Pop Ups - "Miss Elephant's Gerald" [YouTube]
Red Eyes and Nemeses: Kindiefest 2012
There are relatively few benefits of living on the West Coast from a Kindiefest perspective. It's a long plane flight, which means reduced flexibility in choosing how you get to Brooklyn, how long you stay, and what you do when you get there.
One advantage, however, is that you get a 5-hour flight. That's not so great when you're going there anticipating the conference (or when you have to do it on a red-eye as I did this year). But when you're flying back, it's a lot of time to sit and think about all that you heard during the weekend.
It is hard to overestimate just how much listening one does at Kindiefest. There are the panels, of course - those are more typically geared toward musicians, but if you are more broadly interested in how one carves out a career as kids musician, a non-professional musician can find nuggets of things to ponder.
Besides the panels, there is all the music. The showcase performances on Saturday night, the public festival on Sunday -- it's more than 7 hours of music in total, from all sorts of genres and all around the country.
And depending on your personality or need, you can spend more time than either of those just listening to others in one-on-one (or more) talks. Conversations are two-way, of course, but as a member of the media who isn’t looking to do interviews but meets a lot of artists who want to say ”hi” or tell me about their album plans or just introduce themselves, I do a lot of listening then, too. It's enough to make you want to see a museum or go out for a run on Sunday morning, neither of which I got to do this year.
What did I do at this year’s Kindiefest? Well, I got into Littlefield, the conference's home for the past 3 years, about 12:15 PM Saturday after the aforementioned red-eye, so I missed the keynote on Friday night and the post-talk schmoozing. Which meant there was even more schmoozing to do in the limited amount of time I was there. I did a lot of it -- seeing old friends, like Jeff and Dave and meeting folks I had previously known only through the magic of the Internet (hi, Jeff Giles!). I also talked with a lot of musicians and booking artists and PR folks. I don't think I talked with every single one of the 350 or so record-setting number of attendees, but there were times when I felt that I did. The only way I know I didn't is that there were folks that I wanted to talk to whom I realized on the flight home I didn't.
Itty-Bitty Review: Radio Jungle - The Pop Ups
Radio Jungle album coverHas any kids' act in the modern, kindie era raised such a ruckus with their debut album as the Brooklyn duo The Pop Ups with Outside Voices? You remember that album, right? So did everyone else.
Expectations are high, therefore, with the release of Radio Jungle, the follow-up up to that 2010 album. Can they meet them?
Pretty much, yeah. At their very best, nobody makes better modern pop for preschoolers than the Pop Ups. Leadoff singles "Connect the Stars" (featuring Shine and the Moonbeams' Shawana Kemp on vocals plus Oran Etkin on tenor sax) and '80s throwback "Box of Crayons" should rule kindie radio airwaves through fall. And if that's enough, "Pop Up City" (with hints of Prince and Springsteen) and the flamenco'd tune "The Bat" there to extend the band's dominance through 2013. These songs should be blasting out from every lemonade stand and driveway art show.
The rest of the album, starting with "Math Rock," isn't as pure pop joy as those first four songs, but do have their own charms. All these songs are probably part of the forthcoming Pop Ups puppet show, but it's more obvious with these latter tracks, such as the counting on "Math Rock," the color matching on "Color Wheel," and the phonetic spelling of words on "Elephant." These last six songs are more Broadway than Brill Building. (OK, off-Broadway.)
The 38-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can hear the album at the band's Bandcamp page (or stream below). Radio Jungle is a solid follow-up to, and equal of, its storied predecessor. It's a little more showtune-y than Outside Voices, so your family's personal preferences may vary, but you'll probably still swoon over most of these tracks, too. Highly recommended.
Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of the album for possible review.
