Is this baby a high roller?
Review of High Roller by Hullabaloo
Upbeat country music gets kids and adults dancing, and that’s the kind of music the San Diego based kid’s group Hullabaloo plays and plays really well. Hullabaloo’s fifth CD, High Roller, features Steve Denyes on vocals and guitar, and Brendan Kremer on vocals and cajon. But the star of the show is Dennis Caplinger whose, banjo, dobro, fiddle, and mandolin playing make it impossible to not want dance jigs to the tracks on the CD. The only thing stopping me from loving this CD are some of the lyrics of the songs that seem a little more creepy than cute. The song “Ants in My Pants” has real red ants covering a kid’s body (major heebie-jeebies) and “Dinosaur in My Backyard” tells a pretty scary story of an imaginary dinosaur trashing a backyard. The cover image on the CD will probably help you decide whether you’ll love the CD or just like it. Is a baby playing poker cute or a little creepy? But songs like “Choo Choo Choo”, a nice train song, a really sweet simple song called “Beans and Rice”, and a great version of “This Land is Your Land”, Hullabaloo makes “free-range, organic kid-folk” fun and your family is sure to have a hoe down right in your living room.
Sunday, June 13th at 12:00 pm: Hullabaloo is playing NYC.
Hullabaloo plays some great home timey music for kids. Catch this West Coast band while they are on on side of the world!
Details: Bowery Poetry Club 308 Bowery (between Bleecker and Houston Sts) Cost: $10
Review of Robot Dance by Mr. Leebot
Mr. Leebot’s latest CD, Robot Dance, takes the listener back to the age of the emerging electronic music of the 80’s. Mr. Leebot perfectly captures the sparse rhythmic style and the bloops, bleeps, and synth strings of groups like the Cars, Devo, and the Talking Heads. Mr. Leebot’s sound is so unmistakably 80’s throughout the CD that unless your family can’t get enough of the dance sounds of Yo Gabba Gabba!, you may not be able to sit through the entire sixteen tracks on the CD. Other than 80’s fatigue, the electronic music style that works so well on the title track, “Robot Dance”, seems out of place on “Green Family”, a song about a family that recycles and reduces to save the planet. Although I wouldn’t recommend the entire CD, there are some great tracks though that are great for dancing and totally evoke that great era of 80’s music. “Twirl! Twirl! Twirl!”, “Robot Dance” and “Bouncing Off the Walls” will get caught in your head and are perfect for teaching your kids how to do the robot and introducing your old break dancing steps. Check out Mr. Leetbot’s video on You Tube to see his awesome robot moves.
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Our music reviewer and listings editor, Charles is part of the dynamic duo Fati & Charles, called Abbasubi. They perform songs for children in Spanish from their original CD, El Baile del Sombrero. Fati, originally from Argentina & Charles, a native of Brooklyn, live in Midwood, Brooklyn with their two children who they are raising bilingually and who were the inspiration for the CD.