Given that Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke's Rise and Shine was my second favorite kids music record of 2010, you would expect that I'd treat the news that they'd recorded a couple Christmas tunes for Little Monster Records with great excitement.
Even better, the tunes themselves don't disappoint. You will not dance to another Christmas song with more abandon than to "Sing a Song of Christmas Cheer." And their take on "Silent Night" is somehow simultaneously a little punk and a little reverential. Together they're just $1.29...
And if you're not sure about it all, for the price of an e-mail, pick up "Silent Night" for free using the link below...
Listen To This: "Mary the Fairy" - Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke
This song's been floating around for awhile now, but never in quite such a blogger-friendly form. It's "Mary the Fairy" from Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke, and Little Monster Records has offered it for sale, either by itself or in some other combinations. They also note that it'll be part of Little Monster's Magical Creatures, Musical Pets compilation, available "next year." Of course, the compilation has been promised for so long that I wonder if it isn't as mythical as the creatures supposedly sung about within. (I kid because I love.)
Share: Coloring Book from Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke
Given that Key Wilde is not just part of the great Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke but an illustrator, you'd think that if he decided to make a coloring book, it'd be kinda cool. And so, following the lead of Justin Roberts and John Upchurch and Mark Greenberg (not to mention Charity and the JAMband and the Deedle Deedle Dees), Wilde's got a coloring book of his own. Download the coloring book and give your kids their own opportunity to add even more medals to Sylvester's chest. Or just scribble randomly.
Video: "Big Pet Pig" - Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke
I know, I posted this video from Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke once already a few months back, but I haven't had the best luck watching the videos, including this one, on the Topspin widget. YouTube doesn't fail me, though... and, hey, it's always fun to go back and rediscover videos you haven't seen for three months. It's akin to that toy you hid from your three-year-old and brought out a few weeks later. Like new, right?
Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke - "Big Pet Pig" [YouTube]
Topspin and the Kindie Artist
I think the first time I became aware of the Topspin media widget was a couple years ago when David Bryne and Brian Eno promoted their new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today using it. As someone who writes a website, the content-filled nature of the widget appealed to me, but it appealed to me as a fan as well. Sure, from a listener perspective, it's just a way to give an e-mail address to get an mp3, but it did it in such an elegant and well-designed way that it typically was the only type of widget that I'd actually respond to.
In time I realized that kids musicians were starting to use the widget, too. At this point enough of them are using the platform that I thought it'd be worth asking the users what they thought of it and its good (and bad) points. Among the artists who responded were Debbie Cavalier, Jeremy Toback, and Kevin Salem from Little Monster Records, along with one of his artists, Key Wilde. I also talked some with Mike King from Berkleemusic -- if you need an overview of Topspin, you could do far worse than checking out the videos King made with Topspin CEO Ian Rogers.
What made you interested in working with Topspin?
Most artists came to Topspin via some personal connection -- Debbie Cavalier first heard about Topspin nearly two years ago when, as the Dean of Continuing Education at Berklee, they started to plan the development of the “Marketing Music with Topsin” course. Jeremy Tobck knew Topspin cofounder Shamal Ranasinghe when he was developing the idea for Topspin, and was "super intrigued" by his idea of deepening the direct relationship between artists and fans. Toback says that Ranasinghe, dug Renee & Jeremy, wanted then to be beta users, and "helped convince us that we had built enough on our own to benefit" from the platform.
As for Kevin Salem, he says that Robert Schneider’s manager told him about it, though he "was slow to respond." (Robert Schneider is another Topspin artist, both for the Apples in Stereo as well as his Little Monster Robbert Bobbert project.) But the Topspin representative was an "old acquaintance" from Salem's time as a solo artist after giving him a quick tutorial, Salem thought it could "help plug the considerable holes in [his] physical distribution network." He also says he thought it could help create "unique products" for the fans and "shift the ratio of physical-to-digital sales in our genre." [I'd note that at Kindiefest, Salem noted that the next Little Monster release, a compilation, will be entirely digitally distributed.]
Video: "Big Pet Pig" - Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke
Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke (from their fabulous Rise & Shine disk), with animation to boot from Wilde as well. It, uh, tells the story of a big pet pig. A winner video indeed. I also enjoyed the Coen Brothers-like disclaimer - "A true story..."
It's got music from