Screen Time (Kids Music and TV Shows)

I have had in my list of potential posts for the site an item I called "kids music TV shows" for at least a couple years.  I'd probably been thinking about the idea for long before that.  The general idea was to survey the landscape of kids music and broadly cover the wide variety of kids musicians who were making television of some sort in the consumer guide fashion to which, for better and worse, I default.

But in between the time the idea first took hold in my mind and now, something has shifted, and we're in a far more uncertain time for the creation of visual entertainment.

Think back, if you will, to a decade or so ago, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth.  No, that's not right.  What I meant to say, back when Jack's Big Music Show and Imagination Movers aired on Noggin/Nick Jr and Disney Junior/Playhouse Disney.  While their premieres didn't literally overlap (Jack's last show premiered in April 2008, while the Movers' first show didn't air until September that year), in my mind they are lumped together in the golden age of kids music on television.

While Laurie Berkner had already released four albums by the time Jack's Big Music Show premiered in 2005 and had achieved some level of popularity, there's no doubt that her appearance on every episode catapulted her into kids music superstardom.  (It was the release of a Laurie Berkner DVD in 2006 that was one of the precipitating events leading to my first NPR piece.)  And the show gave guest spots to about a dozen other kids' musicians as well.  While I don't think the bump for individual artists besides Berkner was meaningful, I think the idea that there was a modern take on kids music broadly was.

The Imagination Movers' show was very different stylistically from Jack's, but it, too, had a dramatic impact on the Movers' career.  While they had achieved a fair amount of success, especially in their New Orleans hometown region, the Disney show significantly increased their reach.  I went to their Phoenix-area concert in 2009, and at least a thousand people showed up, outdrawing Dan Zanes.  They were a big deal.  (They're still popular, but I'm guessing they would be even more so were the show still on the air.)

Certainly the success of those two shows could have led to more shows that drafted kids musicians into leading roles.  And my memory going back to the 2010-ish era was that a lot of musicians wanted to be drafted.  But almost at the same time that Berkner and the Movers were having success, a couple of other shows laid down an alternative path that I think proved to be the downfall of kids music on TV: Yo Gabba Gabba and The Fresh Beat Band.

YGG debuted in 2007, even before the Movers' show, and Fresh Beat Band debuted in 2009.  In each of their own ways, their approaches likely diminished the allure of kids music to both television executives and audiences.  With Gabba, the guest musical artists didn't come from kids music -- they came from the world of music for adults.  The first season guest stars were very indie -- The Shins were probably the biggest "get" -- and lent the show a certain sheen of "cool" that kids musicians are unlikely to ever provide, certainly not on a kids' show.  And as the show became more popular, the guest stars did, too.  (When The Roots, The Flaming Lips, Solange, and Weezer are willing to do your show, there's no need to check out Zooglobble for the hot new kids music star.)

The Fresh Beat Band took a different approach, but one that also excluded kids' musicians.  By recruiting singers and actors for the band, the producers of the show essentially created the Monkees for preschoolers.  (Not a slam.)  It was an approach that also proved popular (the show toured live, as did YGG), but one that didn't require any current kids' musicians.  And even if you think, hey, a band of kids' musicians created out of whole cloth, that's better than nothing, well, the show was eventually sunsetted, with Fresh Beat Band of Spies, an animated show, taking its place in a way starting in 2015.

In the wake of Jack's and the Imagination Movers shows, and while YGG and Fresh Beat Band were on the air, there was a lot of interest by kids' musicians about getting their own series off the ground.  A TV series was held up as the holy grail, the brass ring folks sought.  I don't want to suggest that it was the only thing people cared about, or that they were obsessed by it, but... there was no small amount of interest.

It's not like there was no success -- Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band got their live-action series Lishy Lou and Lucky Too on the air on several Indiana PBS stations starting in around 2013.  Billy Kelly put together four interstitials called I'm Thinking of an Animal for Rochester, New York PBS station WXXI in 2012.  But the successes for Lucky and Alisha and Billy were more regional in nature.  And Laurie Berkner's return to kids' TV in Sprout's animated interstitial series Sing It, Laurie! never really achieved the visibility of her first show.

If you want to think of the cup as half-full, though, let's not forget Steve Roslonek, AKA SteveSongs, who as "Mr. Steve" served as a co-host and musician on PBS Kids' preschool morning block.  And perhaps the biggest success was that of Tim Kubart, who after years playing with the Jimmies and creating Tim and the Space Cadets, made it onto Sprout through co-hosting the Sunny Side Up show.  And just this week the Sunny Side Up show became Sprout House, a new morning show on which Kubart -- and other kindie artists -- will now play music.  This seems like a positive turn of events, though the expected bump for any artist besides Kubart in terms of visibility should probably be small.  As with Jack's Big Music Show, the important part is in the overall visibility, though Sprout's viewership, compared to that of Disney Channel and Nick Jr. of the pre-2010 years, is likely small.  Big, in the world of kids music, but small(er) culturally speaking.

Of course, kids haven't stopped watching video, they've just moved to other places -- Amazon and Netflix, and YouTube, for example.  But that switch hasn't meant kids music getting featured there.  Sure, Amazon includes full-length episodes from Lisa Loeb and Amy Lee, but those are just one-off on-demand productions.  (Also note that those aren't kindie-first artists.)   Other networks like Ameba and BatteryPOP will offer kids music channels (generally compilations featuring a single artist), but there's less of a sense of kids music as a genre.  It's great that that avenue exists for artists, but if you're a parent, you're unlikely to stumble across kids music serendipitously -- you have to seek it out, and most likely, seek out an artist you're already familiar with.  And unfortunately for musicians, the amount that YouTube pays per stream is waaaaaay less than even places like Spotify, which many artists already feel pays too little.  (If the numbers in the linked article are accurate, a YouTube creator would have to get 150,000 views on a video just to earn $300.)

So after all this hand-wringing, I am going to end with a list of TV shows/channels on the internet that feature kids musicians.  If you are one of those dedicated parents looking for serialized shows, or at least a channel that isn't merely videos, this list is for you.  Note that I'm deliberately excluding YouTube artist channels such as those from Laurie Berkner, Caspar Babypants, and Patty Shukla that are very popular (Shukla has 385 million views), but aren't featuring shows.

If you're a kids musician whose show has been left off this list, drop me a line!

Ralph's World - Time Machine Guitar [YouTube]

A couple notes: 1) This show is well done -- it features Ralph and a group of puppets learning about music and (eventually) time travel adventures.  It is in many ways reminiscent of Jack's Big Music Show.  Ralph's been working on the show for a loooong time (his daughter Fiona is now also working on it), so I'm glad to see it finally reach public eyes and ears.  2) Ralph, update the playlist for episode #2!

Miss Nina - Miss Nina's Weekly Video Show [YouTube]

This is a simple show -- every Tuesday morning, Miss Nina posts a simple live-action singalong song.  But it's probably that simplicity that's helped her attract more than 14,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, which makes her a star among YouTube kindie musicians.

Lloyd H. Miller - Ursa Major / Ursa Minor [Vimeo]

This is a serialized spy show for kids written and directed by Miller himself.  It's low-tech, and there wasn't too much music in the episodes I saw, but fans of Miller (solo or in the Deedle Deedle Dees) may want to check it out.

Dan Zanes - Dan Zanes and Friends [YouTube]

A short-lived series from 2014 featuring, well, a day (a week? a month?) in the life of Dan Zanes, musician.

How Do We Sing? [YouTube]

Finally, How Do We Sing? is a wordless meditation on weighty topics -- dreams, motherhood, death -- as told through the eyes of three puppet characters.  One of the co-creators (and puppeteer) is Chicago's Erin Flynn, thought of fondly 'round here for her Dreamer of Dreams album more than a decade ago and who also performed on the most recent Ella Jenkins album.  How Do We Sing? is definitely not a bright, shiny, poppy piece -- it's meditative and doesn't feature "kids music" at all -- but may strike some viewers as beautiful.  (If you're one such viewer, pitch in on their Kickstarter to make a full-length movie!)

Monday Morning Smile: "Princess" - Big Block Singsong

Yeah, I know that Monday Morning Smiles are usually not kids' music, but I'm pretty sure you don't need to be a princess, female, or wear pink to get a kick (in the rear) out of "Princess," one of the most awesome songs from the fairly awesome folks at Big Block Singsong.  (Really, they've got a CD and a DVD worth checking out.)  This video features a heavy beat, awesome vocals from Stacey Kay, and a dragon pulling a wagon.  What, exactly, is not to love?

Big Block Singsong - "Princess" [YouTube]

Review: Big Block Singsong Volume One and Big Block Singsong Greatest Hits

Big Block Singsong Greatest Hits

After I listened to and watched Big Block Singsong’s album (Big Block Singsong Greatest Hits) and DVD (Big Block Singsong Volume One) a couple times, my first question was “Why have I not heard of these before?”  I initially assumed that the fact it was a (relatively new) Disney Junior show meant that I was just out of the TV loop.

Turns out that the delightful series of 2-minute music videos date back to 2009, when Canadian illustrator Warren Brown and composer Adam Goddard (now Goddard/Brown) first unleashed Big Box Singsong, as it was then known, onto the world.  (No such thing as an overnight sensation, right?)  So I have nobody to blame but myself for not knowing about the videos until their move to CBC, Disney Junior, and Nick Jr. in the UK and inevitable worldwide conquest.  Now there are 59 videos, 49 of which are the Season 1 pile which provide the 24 songs drawn for the album and DVD.  I, for one, welcome our new big block overlords.

What’s the concept?  Each video episode is about 2 minutes long and features an animated rectangular block with big eyes and mouth singing about a topic, usually themselves.  “Monkey”?  A gray-brown block with long arms singing about all the things he’s going to do meaning that it’s going to be a “two-banana day.”  It’s almost a celebration.  “Octopus”?  A red-brown block with eight tiny dangling legs.  The songs run the genre gamut, from folk (“Monkey”) to AutoTuned funk (“Sleep”) to Smile-era Beach Boys (“Nose”) to Queen (“Junk Food”).  The lyrics have a light touch and a sense of humor, with very little didactic “do this” guidance.

Big Block Singsong Volume One DVD

The videos are inherently humorous (it’s a square monkey, after all), but the lyrics sometimes offer opportunities for visual jokes.  You don’t need the visuals to enjoy the music, but there are definitely some videos (“Sleep,” for one) that add an extra layer of enjoyment.  While there's a unified animation style, of course, the different video and song concepts mean that if your kid is bored with one song, hang on, there'll be an entirely different one on shortly.

The music and videos are most appropriate for kids ages 2 through 6, but both music and videos (especially the videos) will probably tickle the funnybone of kids (and adults) considerably older than that.  The album and DVD are each roughly 45 minutes in length (with the DVD available with a French-language option of course).  You can get a complete list of places to watch the videos here, which includes the kid-friendly Disney Junior page.

The most difficult question may be, “if I get only one, which do I get?”  Sixteen of the songs including “Nose,” Sleep” and “Mad” are on both the album and DVD.  The advantage of the DVD is that you get the visuals in a format that doesn’t require an internet connection.  The advantage of the album is that you get the incredibly-awesome “Princess,” a track which doesn’t appear on the DVD, and, potentially, portability via CD or mp3 player.  If you don’t need multiple languages on the video, the cheapest and perhaps the easiest combination might be to get the standard-definition version of the 24 videos on the DVD via iTunes for just $6.99 and download “Princess” as an individual mp3 track.

So, yeah, I’m late to the party, but better late than never.  Big Block Singsong is ten tons of fun.  After listening and watching, your kids’ll probably have a two-banana day, too.  Both the album and the DVD are highly recommended.

Note: I received an electronic copy of the album and physical copy of the DVD for possible review.

Itty-Bitty Review: Back in Blue - Imagination Movers

The Imagination Movers were essentially kindie before kindie became cool.  Created in the early 2000s, the Lousiana-based band independently released 3 albums of kids' pop-rock before being recruited by Disney for their eponymous TV show on Playhouse Disney (now Disney Junior).

Their latest album Back in Blue  is released by Disney and features songs from the third season of the TV show, along with unreleased tracks written for the show.  For the most part, the tracks hew closely to the rock-pop formula that served them so well on the show (and live).  Given their origins as music written for the show, the songs have more of an educational/plot-driven feel (not to mention an ever-so-slightly younger age focus and an average sub-2-minute-per-song length).  But the Movers take pride in writing and playing all their own material, and it's clear they haven't sacrificed their love of the rock of their own youth (you'll have to ask the band whether "On Your Marks" is just an homage to Tom Petty's "Don't Do Me Like That"; you won't need to ask at all what "Gotta Get Your Work Done" is an homage to).

The 26-track, 47-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 6.  I preferred their previous album, the post-Disney Rock-O-Matic, to this one, as it felt freer, sillier, and less plot-driven, and if you're not familiar with the band or the show, that might be the better entry point.  (I'm pretty that that album was written after this one.)  But if you liked that album and -- especially -- if you're a fan of the show, then you should try this one, too.  Recommended.

Note: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review. 

Interview: Rick Garcia & William V. Malpede ("Quiet Is...")

Rick Garcia (left) / William V. Malpede (right)You may think of Disney's TV channels as filled with brightly-colored sets and sounds, and of course there are plenty of shows that feature those, but there are some quieter moments on the channel.

Some of the loveliest quieter moments come courtesy of the new Disney Junior interstitial series "Quiet Is...", a ten-episode series created by illustrator Sara Pinto and photographer/filmmaker Luciana Frigerio and produced by Scotland-based animation studio Ko Lik Films.  It's a series of two-minute shorts designed more for quiet time, for getting kids in the getting-ready-for-bed mood.

While the visuals themselves are striking, they're accompanied by tender, often (but not solely) mellow songs that don't so much explain the visuals as much as give the visuals an extra dimension.  The series' songs were composed by Rick Garcia and William V. Malpede.  The songwriting team have worked together on a number of other projects, including the movie Rango, but this project was considerably different.  They chatted with me by phone yesterday in advance of Sunday's Father's Day premiere of the tenth episode in the "Quiet Is..." series, an episode titled "Dad Reading."  You can see the nine previous episodes at Disney Junior's videos page, and even though the rest of the world won't see the latest video 'til Sunday, you can watch it here today.  Read on to find out about the series' origins, the challenges of writing for this particular project, and whose voice they're blown away by.

Zooglobble: What are your first musical memories?

Rick Garcia (RG): My first memory is from age 4 -- my mother was a singer and a big fan of Nat King Cole.  She put on a record of his, and I was blown away by his voice.

William V. Malpede (WVM): Yeah, he had a fantastic voice... I have two memories.  First, touching piano keys -- I was in 1st grade, maybe, and there was this magical connection between the body and the music.  I also remember hearing opera, my mother playing opera, and my sister playing classic rock albums from the late '60s and early '70s.

How did you get involved in the project?

WVM: I had worked with Rick for about five years or so, working on films.  We were both friends with Lori Mozilo [Development Executive, Disney Junior], and she approached us about working on this.  I was thrilled.  I'm a big fan of music in animated films, and this was tied to that.  She brought mostly-completed videos to us, and they were lovely.

I was going to ask you next how the songs were created -- whether they came first, or simultaneously -- but it sounds like they came last?

RG: Yes, we met first with Lori and Nancy Kanter [Senior Vice President, Original Programming and General Manager, Disney Junior Worldwide].  They brought us a video and asked us to write a song for it.  They loved the song we wrote and asked us to work on the project.

You know, the videos are beautiful in their own form.  We were after an emotion, not as much the lyrics.  The songs are truly unique unto themselves; even if you heard the song separately, you'd still be hit the same way.

WVM: The songs are supposed to be timeless.  One of the directives we received was the songs weren't supposed to narrate the visuals, but instead tell a companion story -- they didn't want it to be spot-on.

You also wrote songs for Rango -- how was the experience of writing these songs different from writing songs designed to move the plot along in the movie?

RG: The Rango songs were written very differently -- they were the first pieces of music written for the film.  We had a lot of free rein.  The lyrical content in the songs was musical narration, so there were a lot of rewrites lyrically (and musically) for that.  Here, we knew we were able to write different styles of musical.  In Rango, there was a specific musical style (mariachi owls).

WVM: For "Quiet Is...", we'd often talk about instrumentation -- the choice of instruments sets the emotional landscape.  It gives us musical colors or a palette to help out... One piece we did have to treat a little differently, there's a piece with some sheep getting a bit rambunctious ["Counting Sheep"] -- in that case we needed to be a little more literal.

What have you enjoyed most about the project, or what were you surprised by at the end?

WVM: There are many ways to go about scoring to pictures -- there needs to be a balance between the song form (a verse, chorus, so on) and the pictures.  In theory, those two approaches conflict.  But there were times when we'd write a song on piano or guitar and sometimes those things would go great with the pictures.

At times, some songs had too many lyrics and we had to get rid of some, but I expected that.  Overall, it was really good.

RG: It was effortless working Lori and Nancy -- they have a lot of expertise, and their feedback was helpful throughout.  In terms of concerns, you're always nervous when you have timelines to meet but people to be 1,000% satisfied.  There was a certain amount of rewriting necessary, but it was a great experience, a great creative time.

It sounds like you had a lot of creative freedom, but I also know from talking with musicians that getting used to writing songs that are 2 minutes long -- not 2 minutes and 10 seconds, not 1 minute 50 seconds, but exactly 2 minutes long -- can take a little getting used to.

RG: We are used to writing to a certain time length and those constraints.  But those deadlines, you start sweating bullets.

WM: When you write for media [pictures], it's just part of the experience.  Not really a concern.

What's next for you, either with "Quiet Is..." or other projects?

RG: I don't know what's next with "Quiet Is...".  There's a possibility of another project with Disney, but that's still in the works.  Beyond that, want to dive back into the film world.  I'm always writing, always singing.  And it's such a joy to work with William -- it was mostly effortless.

WVM: Echoing Rick... I would love to see "Quiet Is..." get some buzz, but it's fairly early in the process.  I'd like to write more with Rick, not just kids music but also other music.   I also write choral music, so I'm always looking to do more with that.

Photos courtesy Disney Junior