It’s an odd truism in music that the songs that last the longest aren’t the Grammy winners, or the Mull of Kintyres or the multi million-selling soundtracks, but the songs that are sung in the playground and passed down from generation to generation. Maybe things have changed since I was a loveable scamp, but certainly in the 70s I was gleefully singing songs about the various bells of London or mass death via the plague. Just as oddly, if I were somehow elevated a minimum of two inches higher than my classmates I would proudly declare them dirty rascals, despite the fact this hadn’t been an effective insult for over a century. Perhaps today a government department sponsored by an alcopop manufacturer gives credits according to which corporate-owned nastiness kids choose to jig about to, but I for one hanker after a more innocent time. Which is exactly where this album comes in.
I love my kids, really I do. Even when I think I don’t, deep down I know I do. I love my kids and I love my car and I love my music, so this album was put together for those infuriating long journeys and those infuriating short journeys, when Clive and Natasha are creating in the backseat. We all fancy a singalong but I’m not in the mood for the tweenies, but I am in the mood for a long list of names that almost rhyme with food, or songs about idiot amphibians or dance tunes about monkeys. This will keep us all entertained for a couple of hours, till the little poppets have worn themselves out and I can rest easy, safe in the knowledge that I’m a great dad, and that my kids are entirely fictional.
Which is a relief, as he doesn’t really look much like me and I’m not entirely sure if that’s how you spell her name. So here we go, a new musical curriculum for the young and the simple of mind.
By Mark Lamarr
