Music for the Front and Back Seats
Someone asked me the other day what kind of music I’m into. Not for the first time, I thought to myself, “Kids music.” And for the first time, I actually said out loud, “Kids music.”
I don’t know what other families do, but when I’m driving around with my kids, we listen to kids music. Since my new car has a free trial of SiriusXM radio, I’ll sometimes play the “90s on 9” station, but the girls don’t have the same fondness for 90s music that I do (presumably since they didn’t exist back then), so we generally stick to kids music.
Good kids music.
Not Barney. Not Kidz Bop. Not even VeggieTales, even though I’m a big fan of Bob and Larry. (More 90s music!)
No, we listen to “indie music for indie kids,” thanks to Bill, Ella, and Liam Childs and their Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child radio show, available everywhere by podcast. And if you’re about to go crazy listening to Raffi’s “Baby Beluga” for the millionth time, you should listen to Spare the Rock, too.
(No offense to Raffi. He’s great. But not on infinite repeat.)
Bill Childs (who has a day job as a law professor) and his two kids host and produce the show out of Northampton, Massachusetts, and it airs weekly on 93.9 The River. They do a wonderful job of finding and sharing family-friendly music from talented singer-songwriters all over the country.
For instance, check out Lunch Money from my home state of South Carolina, singing “Tiny Dinosaurs.” (Skip to 0:24 for the start of the song.)
Or listen to some of these songs from Frances England. “You & Me” is a favorite.
Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, released by Spare the Rock Records, has raised over $40,000 for clean drinking water for those affected by the massive earthquake in Haiti. Here is Jonathan Coulton‘s contribution, “The Princess Who Saved Herself,” which the girls love:
Another one of my girls’ favorites is “Lucy and Tighty” by the Okee Dokee Brothers:
Spare the Rock features these and many other artists, including some artists not known for kids music who have kid-friendly songs, like Rodrigo y Gabriela, Bruce Springsteen, and Buddy Holly. And every show begins and ends with a track from the kid-friendly They Might Be Giants.
Driving the girls to and from school is so much more fun now that we have Spare the Rock to listen to. And the “Children’s Music” section of my iTunes library now has songs I actually want to listen to.
Sometimes even when the girls aren’t around.
I can’t resist an anthem for tiny dinosaurs.
Image: “iPodular Monkey,” emilybean, Flickr (CC)