Please fill in the required fields.
juliepippert My friend Julie recommended this to me -- said it's fantastic and meaningful music about some tough topics, and it's cool for moms and great for kids:
An Indie Rocker Finds His Inner Child
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/fashion/29justin.html
“Willy Was a Whale” is the kind of head-bopping, silly-clever song that is a staple of the kiddie rock movement. It comes complete with a hand motion — throw arms up to form a big W with your head — for the tots in the mosh pit up front at concerts, and a little joke — Willy walks “all the way down to Weno, Nevada” — for the parents who buy the tickets. Justin Roberts and the Not Ready for Naptime Players do “Willy” at pretty much every show: it’s their “Born to Run.”
Multimedia
But when you listen to “Willy” on the CD “Yellow Bus” — the second of seven children’s albums recorded by Mr. Roberts — the song that follows it is a bit jarring. “Mama is sad and I know that/she’s taken off her ring,” it begins. The child in the song tries to cheer Mama by offering toys — “I give her my Lego blocks to play/but the blocks won’t fit together today” — and, ultimately, himself: “I give her my heart and I don’t want it back.” It’s pretty much impossible to listen to without crying.
When he wrote “Mama Is Sad,” strumming a guitar outside on a sunny day, “I was laughing because I was like, ‘Nobody writes a kid’s song that’s so sad and depressing,’ ” Mr. Roberts recalled in an interview earlier this month.
“As adults we like to think kids live in this fantasy world of innocents,” he added. “But I watch kids really respond to their environment. The idea that a kid would see their mother or father was sad about something and try to fix it was very real.”
You might say Mr. Roberts is the Judy Blume of kiddie rock. Beside divorce, Mr. Roberts has songs about death (“Sandcastle,” written for a friend who lost his mother); changing homes ( “Moving,” for his wife, Chris, who grew up an Air Force brat); cancer (“Roller in the Coaster,” for a colleague of Chris’s); and demonizing the enemy (“Maybe the Monster,” loosely inspired by 9/11). In these and other story-songs, about bullies or blaming your brother or being afraid a pop fly might actually come your way, Mr. Roberts, a childless 40-year-old who pursued a religious studies Ph.D. after his indie-rock career never quite happened, has a remarkable ability to see through a child’s eyes.
I FELL for Justin even before I had kids, trailing my nieces and nephew to a couple of shows in Chicago, where he is based.
Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/fashion/29justin.html
about 1 year ago - Comment
