o this Burns character calls me, right, says he’s like some editor, read about me in that Parenting magazine, the one that profiled me and a bunch of other women? You know, the one about harried mothers with large families and how we cope, blah blah blah, what we do to keep from goin’ insane? I guess he liked what I said, about how I use music to keep my kids in line, so he called to see if I might be interested in reviewing some CD, apparently some record of children’s music, for his magazine. I figured, hell, why not, anything to replace that Barney crap, so I said send it over, we’ll listen it to and give ’im our two cents. Well, we liked its cover painting of some carousel horse but damned if it didn’t sound a whole lot different from everythin’ else we’ve heard ‘round here. ‘Electronica,’ he said—whatever that is—from some foreign label ‘Bruchstuecke’ and, sure enough, it cleaned out our ears big time. Anyway, it sounded so strange to me that I decided to get some help makin’ sense out of it and who better to ask than my own kids—after all it’s supposed to be for them isn’t it? Five of ’em ought to be able to come up with somethin’, right?

So I got ‘em together (no easy task) and we sat down and listened to the first song by some group called Chica & the Folder. The info we were sent told us that this woman Chica Paula (seems her real name is Paula Schopf) came up with the whole project idea due to her daughter Romina’s interest in music. Anyway, Chica’s song ‘Luchin (Cover Version)’ sounded nice enough with its acoustic guitar but my three-year-old Stefan thought the background noises of voices were a lot more interesting. Some fella called Console caught Ellen’s ear (she’s four) with his pretty nursery room bells on ‘La Le Lu (Cover Version),’ and it’s got some nice organ runs too, but I can’t understand why they didn’t try to clean up those clicking sounds. The same thing happens on ‘(Nicht) Schubsen’ by this guy from Berlin, Thomas Fehlmann. There’s all kinds of hiss and noise and echo too! Somebody told me this is a ‘dub’ style, whatever that is, and that it’s all there on purpose, including the clicking noises. Is that true?

Well, wouldn’t you know, the more we listened to the darned thing, the more we got to likin’ it. It’s different from anythin’ else we’ve listened to in these parts but really bright and sunny, and my kids are hooked on listening for the strange noises that appear in every song it seems. My youngest, Drew, seemed to like the familiar sounds like the baby cries on Nicol et Lucien’s ‘Conversando Con Mi Hija’ the most. My other daughter Antye liked its South American rhythms and couldn’t stop dancing ‘round the living room whenever it came on—wore me out jus’ watchin’ her! She also sings along with ‘Mi Amigo El Leon’ by Jorge Gonzáles but I just know I’m gonna get sick of its sing-song chorus if I hear it too many more times. Drew also thought the phone sounds on the song by Dandy Jack (now there’s a name the kids liked!) and the duck squeals on ‘Play a Sound’ by Pink Elln* were pretty neat, and, to be honest, I loved that song by Elln* the most. It’s got this slow beat that’s so cool and then it has a really nice guitar melody and these nifty shimmering keyboard parts. I also liked the lullabies, ‘cause they put two of the kids to sleep in a second! There’s one by this weird guy Max Loderbauer that softly repeats over and over but it’s got all kinds of crackling all over it, kinda’ like an old scratched record. Guess what title he gave the song? ‘Prinzessinneneselfroschgänseteig’! I’m not kidding! Tom Thiel (someone tol’ me the guy’s a bus driver or somethin’ like that) created this song ‘Sum Sum’ but it sounds like some alien type of moody jazz; it sure don’t sound like kid’s music! Terre (you know the one, my eleven-year-old who keeps tryin’ on my dresses and foolin’ with my makeup?) liked it anyway. Go figure.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy Burns contacted me ‘cos my kids really like this record and I’m happy to hear somethin’ new too. Seems to me, though, that the title Music for Children is a bit of a stretch—maybe Music for Families might be more accurate, seein’ as how we all pretty much enjoyed it equally. It’s a nice addition to the family music library and we really like its variety and how it’s so unpredictable. As for my kids, any record that has a song on it by someone named Dinky will always be tops in their book.