Servings from the Cereal Bowl

Mar 16th, 2009 | By admin | Category: Creative Kids, In Every Issue, Learning Kids, Servings from the Cereal Bowl

Servings from the cereal bowl

By Dave Loftin

Jetta and the Jellybeans

Tell Me What You Want to Be

Jetta and the Jelly Beans’ new album is pure pop music goodness. Topics range anywhere from hygiene (“Wash Your Hands”) to deciding what job you want when you grow up (“Tell Me What You Want to Be”). One thing the band does not forget is that their audience is made up of children. Tell Me What You Want to Be celebrates just how awesome it is to be a kid and recognizes that kids need to learn valuable lessons, but they also need to have fun. Jetta and company make sure kids get plenty of both. And as far as great pop tunes are concerned, you can’t go wrong when you have at the helm the man who produced music for The Monkees and The Turtles. This is yet another CD that may not see the light of day for awhile once it enters your car’s CD player.

Robbert Bobbert & the Bubble Machine

Robbert Bobbert & the Bubble Machine

The world of indie music for grown-ups and tunes for kids continues to merge. Enter Robert Schneider, front man for The Apples in Stereo. His new persona, Robbert Bobbert, takes kids on a romp full of electronic bleeps and beats and enough guitar work to whip the tots into a frenzy. The first single released from the album is the bubbly little tune “We R Super Heroes,” about a family of secret superheroes who live on a secret base. “Fee Fi Fo, Fee Fi Fum” is a low-fi pop tune sung by a high-pitched mouse who has to run and hide when someone comes into the kitchen at night. And you don’t want to miss the track “I Love the Animals,” a song about Robbert’s love for all animals. Robbert Bobbert & the Bubble Machine has been likened to new-wave Beach Boys—it’s nerd rock that will get your kids to truly love music.

Bunny Clogs

More! More! More!

Bunny Clogs, the brain-child of Adam Levy from The Honeydogs, is another fine example of masterfully blending many musical styles into a fine album for kids. Levy recorded the album with his children—his son contributed the artwork—and it’s “part comedy record with weird characters, part dance party with all of the attendant drum loops and house and hip-hop accoutrements, and part subtle message of peace, love and positive gastronomy.” One track that’s sure to get feet tapping is “Confessions of a Teenage Lima Bean,” which sounds as if early-’90s Siouxie and the Banshees got together with Funkadelic. “Song for Powderhorn” delivers a simple message about being nice to one another and not judging others. Bunny Clogs has been described variously as “a three-way train wreck between Kraftwerk, the Beastie Boys and Harry Nilsson” and “The Beatles on a solid macaroni and cheese diet.” It may not suit everyone’s taste, but—bottom line—Bunny Clogs is a fun record.