New Music: Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti

The all-star-musician benefit concept goes back years, of course, to George Harrison's Bangladesh concert, and a bit later the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and "We Are the World" singles. But with the exception of a few giants like Pete Seeger (who's been doing benefit and charity work with his music his whole career, really), there haven't been enough big names in kids' music for such a thing to be possible in the genre.

But Dean Jones (no, not the one from the original Love Bug movies—the frontman of kids' band Dog on Fleas), with a little help from the recent explosion of talent in this genre, has changed all that. Back in January, Jones desperately wanted to do something to help the earthquake victims in Haiti; he came up with the idea of a kindie-rock album to raise money. He joined forces with KindieFest cofounder Bill Childs, and the pair proceeded to put together an incredibly impressive roster of artists for the project.

The result is Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, a CD of 22 songs, one each from many of the top children's musicians working today. Seriously, if I were making a list of the genre's top echelon of talent, it would look a lot like this track list: Recess Monkey, They Might Be Giants, Frances England, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Jonathan Coulton, Dan Zanes, Gustafer Yellowgold, Elizabeth Mitchell...the list goes on and on. Even the venerable Seeger himself contributed a track!

The proceeds (all the greater because everyone involved in the album's production, replication, and distribution either donated or heavily discounted their services) will benefit the Haitian People's Support Project, an organization with a long history of important work in the country. Knowing this is certainly one benefit to parents and kids who purchase this CD.

But of course, you're also getting the best possible sampler of the cutting edge of today's kids' rock, pop, folk, and hip-hop. If your kids are already familiar with most of the artists, they'll be excited to get a new song from so many of them between new releases. (My five-year-old's favorites: "Fiddlehead Fern," by Recess Monkey, and "Quite Early Morning" from Seeger.) And if they're not, Many Hands offers the best single way I've seen to get a taste of so many of the genre's leading lights, all in one place, and find out which your kids (and you!) might want to hear more of.

So it's a great album, and a great opportunity, all serving a great cause. (I should also mention that there are still a few release shows upcoming in September in Brooklyn; Portland, Oregon; and Northampton, Mass., each featuring a number of the artists on the CD, so if you're in or near those places, check those out, too!)

[Cover image courtesy of Spare the Rock Records]

Security Blanket: They Might Be Giants

Most parents probably don’t need me to tell them They Might Be Giants make fantastic music for kids, so consider this more of a gratitude post. Because my wife and I honestly turn to each other from time to time and ask what we’d do without TMBG’s four children’s albums.

The miracle their music has achieved in our household can be explained in terms of a particularly vicious cycle: The more appealing a CD is to your kids, the more your kids want to hear it—usually on endless loops that last days. By the end of these loops, it often doesn’t matter what you, the parent, thought of the music to begin with. You now wish to never, ever, ever hear it again. (I mean, there’s not an awful lot of adult music that could stand up to 36 consecutive plays.)

Yet somehow, Johns Linnell and Flansburgh have created not just one but several albums that our sons can’t get enough of—and that we still enjoy hearing ourselves. Now, this is doubtless in part because both Whitney and I were album-owning fans of their adult music years ago, and because TMBG is the rare crossover-to-kid-music group whose sound—and lyrical cleverness—didn’t change one iota in the transition. (Indeed, TMBG still records adult albums, and tours them.)

However, there’s still something remarkable in the fact that I was recently at work humming “Meet the Elements,” off the Here Comes Science CD, and not only did I not start screaming in horror once I realized this fact, but I smiled and kept humming. (And before you pawn this off as parenting-related psychosis, let me assure you this is not my reaction when I catch myself singing the theme to “Elmo’s World” in the supermarket.)

That would be enough to be thankful for, but TMBG delivers more. The animated videos to their kids’ songs, many delivered originally in a series of weekly podcasts, delight Dash and Griff even more than the music alone does. They’ve proved invaluable, in more than one desperate moment, as short-term YouTube babysitting. And again, parents will find themselves being sucked in to watch the clips themselves at times. (This does admittedly reduce the babysitting value, but I have no one to blame but myself.)

On top of all that, we realized as we heard Dashiell singing “Roy G. Biv” the other day that, thanks to John and John and their band, he was…well, actually learning some things about the color spectrum. Education had honestly never occurred to us as a potential benefit of any children’s album, since most attempts at it are heavy-handed and, well, no fun. But TMBG’s songs—especially those on the science album, their most recent for kids—do what educational entertainment always tries but usually fails at: They make learning fun, so much that it doesn’t really seem like learning. 

So for all that—but mostly for the nonsuicidal parenting part—we thank you, John and John.