Why have I only just discovered the album ‘Snacktime’ by the Barenaked Ladies? Andre Vincent played it in the car on the way home from our Wolverhampton excursion, and I can honestly say its was a happy aural realisation. If you haven’t heard it, its an entire album of kids songs, including a track called Ninjas which goes like this:
How is that not awesome? To answer your question, it is totally not not awesome and therefore a big pile of awesome. Sometimes I forget that songs written for kids are much better than normal songs. Throughout my life I have gathered some favourites amongst the kids song genre and for the purpose of this list, I shall exclude Disney songs otherwise it’ll be two blogs worth of stuff. Instead here are just three of my faves, probably missing out louds of great ones:
The Pinball Song – The Pointer Sisters
How is counting that much fun? Up until hearing this song on Sesame Street many many moons ago, counting to 12 was a tedious mind numbing chore. 1,2, 3, yawn etc. I could never count Angry Men or Monkeys because I’d never get past 11. Then suddenly the Pointer Sisters funked up the whole scheme and suddenly it became more than fun to get to 12. It goes along with my motto that adding funk to anything makes it ten times more interesting. I’m still waiting for a funk song about doing your taxes.
The Beastman Theme
Not really a valid song in itself, but it was on the B side of the He-Man theme vinyl I got when I joined the Masters of the Universe fan club a year ago, ahem, sorry, when I was six. What was amazing about the Beastman theme was that it was exactly the same as the He-Man theme except where it should have said ‘He-Man’ they replaced the words with ‘Beastman’. Points for a huge lack of effort. Saying that Beastman was the sort of scoundral who would just steal a theme tune and I bet it made He-Man get proper angry about the whole thing. Above all of this, the vinyl was a thin bit of see through red plastic that actually creased. Amazing.
The Laughing Policeman
Guaranteed to make myself or my primary school friend Finbarr wet ourselves at any given occasion at the age of 4, the Laughing Policeman is a triumph in music. Simply a large deep voiced man chortling to a jaunty tune, it is pretty much impossible not to laugh along. Why is the policeman laughing? Maybe he’s used unnecessary force on a demonstrator? Perhaps he’s used his status to express deep seated racist views upon innocent ethnic minorities? However you look at it, its pretty creepy.
Tonight I’m doing the London Comedy Improv once again. It shall be brilliant. Here’s the link for all the info:
