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oakenguyThank you for all your song suggestions! I've been downloading as fast as I can. :)
I've already had a bad experience, though. I was on iTunes looking for versions of "Put Down the Duckie", the Sesame Street classic. They only had two versions, neither one the official one. There was a ska cover, cool enough. And then there was Bob's Favorite Street Songs, where Bob McGrath, for his sins, was apparently locked in a recording studio and forced to sing all the Sesame Street songs with only a canned synth for accompaniment.
But this was just the herald for the badness yet to come, the Silver Surfer of bad childrens music. For I made the mistake of scrolling down to read the 'Listeners Also Bought' column. And then I not only read the title Lullaby Renditions of U2, but thinking "Oh, surely not..." I clicked on it.
To paraphrase Justice Stewart's quote about hard-core porn, it's hard for me to define obscenity but I know it when I hear it. And I heard it when I listened to the lullaby version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
But wait, it got worse. Much, much worse. Because I looked up the people who made this atrocity and it turns out it's an entire genry. For 'alternadads', folks in search of horrifying gag gifts, and people who think muzak is too abrasive and hardcore, Baby Rock Records (www.babyrockrecords.com) has been busily neutering and gutting rock hits since 2006. Coldplay. The Pixies. Nirvana. The fucking RAMONES, and I bet that's how the whole thing started, I bet somewhere in Transylvania someone in a white lab coat with an oversized brain and a collection of fish-men in the basement rubbed his hands together and said "Igor, I have had a diabolical idea! I shall buy the rights to "I Wanna Be Sedated", turn it into a lullaby, and thereby make it an actual sedative! But wait--I shall create a cover with a logo which reads...wait for it...GABBA GABBA GOO GOO! Mwah-ha! Mu-hu-ha-haaa!! MWU-HU-HA-HAAAA!!!"
(Seriously. http://www.rockabyebabymusic.com/web/mp3/9622/Track02_I%20Wanna%20Be%20Sedated.mp3)
WHAT THEY SAY: "Rockabye Baby! transforms timeless rock songs into beautiful instrumental lullabies. The soothing sounds of the glockenspiel, vibraphone, melltoron and other instruments will lull your baby into a sweet slumber."
WHAT THEY MEAN: "Hey musicians! Every performance you do for two drunks in a dive bar, every road trip in a crappy van that smells like burritos, every time an audience throws a bottle at you or turns their back on you to watch a pool game or vomit on your amps, just remember IT COULD BE SO MUCH WORSE. Because we're out there. Oh yes. Every hour you're practicing in your garage, every hour when you're watching that Eddie Van Halen video in slo-mo trying to figure out how the hell he does those tapping harmonics is an hour you're not spent chained to a glockenspiel in our basement trying to suck all the life and emotion out of a Kurt Cobain song! There IS a Hell for Musicians, and we're it!"
I've already had a bad experience, though. I was on iTunes looking for versions of "Put Down the Duckie", the Sesame Street classic. They only had two versions, neither one the official one. There was a ska cover, cool enough. And then there was Bob's Favorite Street Songs, where Bob McGrath, for his sins, was apparently locked in a recording studio and forced to sing all the Sesame Street songs with only a canned synth for accompaniment.
But this was just the herald for the badness yet to come, the Silver Surfer of bad childrens music. For I made the mistake of scrolling down to read the 'Listeners Also Bought' column. And then I not only read the title Lullaby Renditions of U2, but thinking "Oh, surely not..." I clicked on it.
To paraphrase Justice Stewart's quote about hard-core porn, it's hard for me to define obscenity but I know it when I hear it. And I heard it when I listened to the lullaby version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
But wait, it got worse. Much, much worse. Because I looked up the people who made this atrocity and it turns out it's an entire genry. For 'alternadads', folks in search of horrifying gag gifts, and people who think muzak is too abrasive and hardcore, Baby Rock Records (www.babyrockrecords.com) has been busily neutering and gutting rock hits since 2006. Coldplay. The Pixies. Nirvana. The fucking RAMONES, and I bet that's how the whole thing started, I bet somewhere in Transylvania someone in a white lab coat with an oversized brain and a collection of fish-men in the basement rubbed his hands together and said "Igor, I have had a diabolical idea! I shall buy the rights to "I Wanna Be Sedated", turn it into a lullaby, and thereby make it an actual sedative! But wait--I shall create a cover with a logo which reads...wait for it...GABBA GABBA GOO GOO! Mwah-ha! Mu-hu-ha-haaa!! MWU-HU-HA-HAAAA!!!"
(Seriously. http://www.rockabyebabymusic.com/web/mp3/9622/Track02_I%20Wanna%20Be%20Sedated.mp3)
WHAT THEY SAY: "Rockabye Baby! transforms timeless rock songs into beautiful instrumental lullabies. The soothing sounds of the glockenspiel, vibraphone, melltoron and other instruments will lull your baby into a sweet slumber."
WHAT THEY MEAN: "Hey musicians! Every performance you do for two drunks in a dive bar, every road trip in a crappy van that smells like burritos, every time an audience throws a bottle at you or turns their back on you to watch a pool game or vomit on your amps, just remember IT COULD BE SO MUCH WORSE. Because we're out there. Oh yes. Every hour you're practicing in your garage, every hour when you're watching that Eddie Van Halen video in slo-mo trying to figure out how the hell he does those tapping harmonics is an hour you're not spent chained to a glockenspiel in our basement trying to suck all the life and emotion out of a Kurt Cobain song! There IS a Hell for Musicians, and we're it!"
