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Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This
A website called Baby Rock Records is selling CD's of "lullabalized" versions of popular music.
Rockabye Baby! transforms timeless rock songs into beautiful instrumental lullabies. The soothing sounds of the glockenspiel, vibraphone, melltoron and other instruments will lull your baby into a sweet slumber.
Presumably the intent is to turn kids into social misfits at the ripe old age of 3 weeks. Here are just some of the bands they've covered or are planning to in the near future:
- The Beatles (no arguments here)
- Nirvana
- Led Zeppelin
- Pink Floyd (with flying pigs on the album art - nice!)
- Metallica
- The Cure (!!!!)
- Tool
- Raidiohead
Apparently Ozzy, Iron Maiden, and the Sex Pistols were too difficult to obtain, but on the plus side, they probably didn't need to put in too much effort to convert Coldplay into baby music.
Seriously though, I like a good glockenspiel as much as the next guy, but the selected audio samples they provide remind me of the old MIDI's only MUCH creepier and eerily hypnotic. Take a listen to their take on Nirvana's Come As You Are (MP3) and Metallica's Enter Sandman (go figure). I'd be very curious to see what long term effects these may have on kids.
Then again, a better question might be if you'd really prefer Rafi.
More and more, there are alternatives to both the syrupy kid-music (like Raffi, who isn't as bad as others) and the weird bedfellows that can be found on these pop/kid hybrids.
Try Peter Himmelman or Ralph Covert (Ralph's World). Salon.com had a nice primer (especially "Meltdown" by Justin Roberts), but you may need to be a subscriber to veiw it.
That said, the toddler desire to listen to the same song over and over will eventually make any music--no matter how acceptable--intolerable.
Many years ago I had a conversation with a parent and we hypothesized that the reason why kids like the Rafi drivel so much isn't because of the music, but because the parents interact with the kids more when that tripe is playing. The theory would be that if parents spent more time playing with their kids to rock music they might like that better.
No volunteers just yet.
My 5-year-old liked Rafi when she was 2-3 because he sounded earnest and gentle. Now she finds his songs boring because they are too thin and repetitive.
I've got to wonder if many two-year-olds would take to de-fanged renditions of Metallica or even Nirvana songs, although adults obviously get a huge kick out of them -- at least at first. This is clearly for the adults anyway, but if the kid winds up liking the material, the adult will come to regret the purchase very quickly. Remember, kids want everything replayed *many* times . . . .