If you are a big name kids musician, who do you call in for a guest artist gig? It appears that Andrew Bird is the Justin Bieber of the kindie rock set, as he's made appearances on two big kid-friendly albums. First off was his take on Kermit the Frog's classic "Bein' Green" on The Green Album. Next up is the Dan Zanes album Little Nut Tree, which features a duet between Zanes and Bird on "I Don't Need Sunny Skies." Yes, Bird whistles. But every good "trend" piece requires a third data point to prove the thesis, and that's what I have for you below. It's Bird's first appearance with kindie rock royalty. At the very least, a proxy appearance. Here's Bird as "Doctor Strings" on Jack's Big Music Show from 2007. There's no Laurie Berkner here, but it's hard not to smile anyway. Andrew Bird as Doctor Strings on Jack's Big Music Show [YouTube] Photo credit: Cameron Wittig

For those of you who would like to be able to delete all those Jack's Big Music Show episodes from your Tivo (so you can leave more room for 24 or something), good news. A DVD may be on its way. The always-amusing Chag started out looking for additional JBMS merchandise for his two-year-old but ended up interviewing the head honchos at Spiffy Pictures, the creators of the show. And he got this nugget out of them: Currently the only merchandise available from Jack's Big Music Show is the CD. What other types of merchandise will we eventually see in stores? We think a second CD and a DVD with four episodes on it, one of them never seen before! (cool, huh?) My only question is why they would stop at four episodes. I guarantee you they could put out a 2-DVD set with the complete series and it would sell like hotcakes.