Christmas and Holiday Kids Music 2015 (Songs and Videos)

To go along with my reviews of 2015 Christmas and holiday kids music, here are some videos and singles for your further enjoyment.  I'll be adding songs and videos as they're released, so feel free to check back throughout the season (or shout out the new songs I've missed).

First, let's hear from Laurie Berkner, who has a new video for "Children Go Where I Send Thee," a track which appeared on 2012's A Laurie Berkner Christmas and the just released Laurie Berkner's Favorite Classic Kids' Songs.  Pretty simple -- it features Berkner and regular Berkner bassist (and kindie musician in his own right) Brady Rymer and a bunch of children dancing around happily.

Laurie Berkner (with Brady Rymer) - "Children Go Where I Send Thee" [YouTube]

Next is a song I've already posted the video for, but it definitely merits a repeat mention, and that's "L.A. Christmas" from Andrew & Polly featuring Mista Cookie Jar.  It's a sweet, sunny groove with just enough bells and holiday spirit to make it a nice alternative to a lot of holiday music.

Andrew & Polly and Mista Cookie Jar - "L.A. Christmas" [YouTube]

Of course there are Christmas-themed bands.  The Yule Logs from California have four holiday albums under their belt, and have just released their fifth such album, Up All Night.  The title track is a jangly bit of celebratory nonsense.  The band isn't really a kids band, but this song and video passes the parental test.

Moving from L.A. to N.J., Jason Didner and the Jungle Gym Jam offer up a little bit of The Boss -- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band -- in their appealing single (and track from their forthcoming 2016 album) "Summertime Santa."  Apparently the West Coast isn't the only coast that can offer up a beach-based Christmas celebration.

Speaking of songs featuring Santa mashups, Montana's The Salamanders move out from the beach onto the sea with their holiday single "Pirate Santa."  As with "Summertime Santa," this is hardly a serious take on the holiday season, but combining "Yo Ho Ho" with "Ho Ho Ho" is a pretty good idea.  (The last line, is also a darn good pun.)

And there's no reason why we can't have multiple versions of the same song in a single year, right?  Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem offer up their own take on "Children Go Where I Send Thee" that's a little more pensive and rootsier than Berkner and Rymer's take.  Gotta believe that one of these will be to your family's taste.

We're in the midst of Hanukkah as I add this track, the latest from Jewish-themed rockers The Macaroons.  This year's sing-along track, "Jews All Over the World," does give a shout-out to Hanukkah, but it's got an advantage in that it'd probably sound just as good in May as it does now.  Try saying that about "Last Christmas."

This last embed isn't kindie, but as with most Christmas streams, it's certainly family-friendly.  It's a Spotify playlist from Universal Music's vast library.  At more than 4 hours (!) in length, there's plenty of room for the classics (just look at the first 5 songs in that embed stream) and new songs (e.g., Carly Rae Jepsen's take on Wham's "Last Christmas").

Other Songs/Videos/Album Streams

The Big Cheese Band - "The Christmas Crocodile" [YouTube]

Rockin' Robin & the Magical Tree - "Sparkly Christmas Things" [YouTube]

The Little Ditties - "S'no Day Like It" [Bandcamp]

Andrew & Polly - Other Days [Bandcamp]

Rain for Roots - Waiting Songs [Bandcamp]

Review: Rise Again Songbook - Peter Blood and Annie Patterson (editors)

Cover of Rise Up Singing Again

Can singing together change the world?

On its surface, the answer is "no," but the act of singing together produces a lot of other changes that might nudge the world into a better place, particularly in how we deal with people we meet.

No doubt Peter Blood and Annie Patterson, the editors behind the Rise Again Songbook, strongly agree.  Musicians and songleaders, the two of them in 1988 edited and published through Sing Out! magazine Rise Up Singing, a collection of 1,200 songs.  (The fact that no less than Pete Seeger wrote the introduction was a leading indicator of the book's acceptance in the folksinging world.)

Now the pair are back with Rise Again: A Group Singing Songbook, a sequel featuring another nearly 1,200 songs for singing alone or (presumably preferably in the eyes of editors) with others.  The late Pete Seeger contributed a preface this time around and Billy Bragg the foreword.  Assuming three minutes per song, that's another 60 hours or so of singing.  (Better bring your throat lozenges.)

We purchased the original Rise Again (the 15th Anniversary Edition) more than a decade ago, and while I can't say that it's led to nightly rounds with the family, neighbors, or strangers passing by on the street, we do dip into it occasionally.  So while I don't know if I'm the followup's primary audience, I'm certainly more predisposed than the average American to find value in Rise Again.

The basic structure of both books is to include lyrics and chord changes, along with some basic songwriting credit and recording history, but not to include melodic notes.  (You can see part of a sample page here.)  This is an eminently reasonable decision -- only a small percentage of the population can actually read music, and if you're trying to choose songs to sing, you're probably going to gravitate to familiar melodies for which you don't need the music.  It does mean that folks like me (who can read music) who love exploring unfamiliar songs need to turn to Spotify, YouTube, the CDs by Patterson and Blood featuring basic melodies, or the public library to learn the songs, but that means turning away from the pleasures of diving into the book.  (But again, I'm probably in the minority here.)

In both books, the songs are organized by theme.  Some themes are fairly obvious and well-defined -- "Faith," "Seas & Sailors," "Travelin'" -- while others are a bit more nebulous (and also reflect the desire for social justice that in part was the animating impulse behind these books), such as "Earthcare," "Peace," and "Struggle."  (There are also sections specifically for kids under age 8 and lullabies.)  While it's possible that a reader could find a song of interest thumbing through individual sections, or guess in which section a particular song might nestle, they're far more likely to use the Titles index in the back.

Because readers are likely to turn to these books to sing familiar tunes, the differences Rise Again has compared to its predecessor are not insignificant.  I haven't done a statistical analysis -- it would take some time to tally up the results from 2,400 songs -- but it feels like I know considerably more songs in Rise Up Singing than in the new book.  There are more public domain songs, more songs that have been around for generations, centuries even.  The comparative lack of familiar songs isn't a problem in and of itself, but for me there are just fewer familiar songs.

On the flip side, however, Rise Again features way more contemporary artists than the original book did, and not just because the original book came out in 1988.  Here's a partial list of artists just from the first page of the Artist Index in Rise Again who aren't in the equivalent index in the 1988 book: Adele, Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, The Avett Brothers, The Band, Billy Bragg, Garth Brooks, Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Johnny Cash, Tracy Chapman, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Cliff, Bruce Cockburn, and Coldplay.  I'm not going to recognize every song by those artists, either, but that's indicative of a book that's trying to reach a broad audience that might not necessarily have copies of Peter, Paul & Mary albums in their iPhones.

(As an aside, there are also some familiar kids music names -- besides daisy mayhem, familiar names like Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Bill Harley, Peter Alsop, Jay Mankita, John McCutcheon, The Nields, and Barry Louis Polisar appear in the book.)

A couple technical comments, one positive, one a suggestion for improvement.  First, the positive: these are spiral-bound books, which aids greatly in its use -- it lays flat anywhere, and you can even fold it around so you only see one page.  The suggestion for improvement?  Add a ukulele chord chart to go along with the guitar chord chart on the last page.  The ukulele is an incredible sing-along instrument, and deserves to be a part of this book as much as the guitar.

So would I recommend Rise Again?  From a sheer familiarity standpoint, I'd probably recommend Rise Up Singing before this new book as I think that even with another quarter-century's worth of songs included in Rise Again, for most folks I think they'll find the original has more songs they'll be able to sing.  But there are certainly enough songs that have seeped into the national consciousness in this new book that it'd keep your family occupied for months if not years to come.  And hopefully it's not too much to ask that this be an ongoing project, that this become a trilogy another quarter century from now.  I'd definitely recommend Rise Again as I do think in its small way it could change the world, one singalong at a time.

Note: I was given a copy for possible review.

Review: All Kinds of You and Me - Alastair Moock

All Kinds of You and Me album cover

I think Alastair Moock is the rare artist for whom taking on Free To Be... You and Me, the classic 1972 album and book from Marlo Thomas, would be a safe choice.  That's because Moock's last album was Singing Our Way Through, the celebrated and Grammy-nominated album Moock recorded while he and his family helped his daughter Clio fight leukemia.  The album sang to kids and families going through tremendously difficult times with grace and even a little bit of humor.

But still, yeah, just about anything would seem lighter after that.  And with Clio's leukemia in remission, for this latest album, All Kinds of You and Me, Moock turned instead for inspiration to that 1972 classic which celebrated gender individuality, equality, and neutrality.  That album inspired him (he speaks to it most directly on "You and Me") and now he's trying to pay it forward.

My favorite songs on the album are the ones that wear that desire to honor the album and its impluses lightly.  "It Takes All Kinds," which leads off the album, is an infectious song about a boy who wears a dress, a girl who loves worms, and a cat who drinks wine. It's a song about acceptance, but the chorus -- "It's me, it's you, it's us, it's true / It's life, it's fine, it takes all kinds" -- doesn't hit the listener over the head with the message of you should accept others.  Generally, the idea of "should" is far away from the album's lyrics, which is to its credit.  "Kenya Imagine?," which could have become a very "should"-filled song about thinking of others around the world and how everyone has the same needs, reaches its apex when Moock and Jennifer Kimball sing "Love!" repeatedly (a dozen times, to be precise) -- it's a reminder, not a command.  And "Everything's Upside-Down But Me" is another strong track in which the title is not really a metaphor - it's a most Shel Silverstein-like song.

Moock gets strong assistance with his folk-with-a-hint-of-rock from 75% of Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, with producer Anand Nayak playing on many tracks (and duetting on the horn-aided "All in a Day"), Scott Kessel, and the always-welcome Rani Arbo providing vocals on a number of tracks.

The 45-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 5 through 9.  You can stream the entire album here.  (And for those of you still buying your music in the physical format, always nice to see album art from Key Wilde.)

Unsurprisingly for an album born out of an acute medical crisis, Singing Our Way Through was an album intensely focused on the here and now.  With the medical crisis past, with All Kinds of You and Me Moock turns his attention to the world his daughters will grow up in.  At its best, the new album features the same grace of its predecessor with a level of high spirits that encourages others to envision the same world Moock sees for his daughters.  I think Marlo Thomas would be proud to hear it.  Definitely recommended.

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

Video: "It Takes All Kinds" - Alastair Moock

All Kinds of You and Me album cover

If you set out to make a modern update of Free To Be You and Me, as Alastair Moock has done, you've got a pretty high bar to clear.

But based on the first song from All Kinds of You and Me, Moock may have stuck the landing.  The first video from the album is for "It Takes All Kinds" (which inspired the album title), and it's a feel-good sing-along -- no hand-clapping, but definitely encouraging of hand-clapping, and with nice vocal assists from Rani Arbo and Anand Nayak.

And then there's the video itself, animated by fellow kindie musician Key Wilde, which does a nice job of melding Wilde's familiar animals-doing-crazy-things (a cat on skis!) with the theme of the song, accepting all kinds of people (and animals), such as a boy who prefers dresses and a girl who loves to climb trees.  It's just good, good stuff.

All Kinds of You and Me is out June 19.

Alastair Moock - "It Takes All Kinds" [YouTube]