Strollerderby : rock

Baby Penis Album only five bucks

Brett Singer — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Thanks to Mike's brilliant post linking to the NPR interview with the kid who is nekkid on the cover of Nirvana's breakthrough CD, I will forever think of 'Nevermind' as The Baby Penis Album. (Kids, "albums" were these shiny black things with a hole in the middle… oh well, whatever, never mind.)

If Mike's post made you nostalgic for the nineties (that was a really tough sentence to write), you can do it fairly cheaply: Amazon has the MP3 version of Nevermind on sale for only five dollars. (I'd say something about Amazon being the man who sold the world, but that's a different album.)

I myself did not smell the teen spirit when Kurt Cobain's magnum opus took the world by storm in 1991, but at these prices, maybe I'll check it out. Who says I'm not hip?

image: Amazon.com

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The Baby Penis Known Around the World

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:31:00 GMT

"Quite a few people in the world have seen my penis, so that's kinda cool. I'm just a normal kid living it up and doing the best I can while I'm here."

This is from an NPR interview with Spencer Elden, 17. If you shopped in a record store in the 1990s or saw even the remotest glimpse of popular rock bands, you, too, have probably seen his penis.

That's because 17 years ago, Spencer Elden was photographed for the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind -- the album that changed the course of rock music and also had the photo of a cute little baby, naked, swimming after a $1 bill. Turns out the baby grew up, attended military boarding school for six months, plans on traveling and is just your average-sounding high school student -- whose penis is known throughout the world. That's got to help break the ice when chatting with girls, no?

It's worth a read to discover exactly how the poor kid earned his dad $200 by getting tossed "into the drink" and, simultaneously, into rock and roll history.

Xtina and Max Rock the Vote

Brett Singer — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:04:00 GMT

Remember Rock the Vote? How it was supposed to be a game-changer, bringing all these young people to the polls? And then George W. Bush got elected two times in a row?

Well, that hasn't stopped celebrities from using their fame to get us to the polls. Christina Aguilera literally wraps her son Max in the American flag and sings about those Purple Mountains Majesty.

I'm a big fan of voting, and I agree with Rock The Vote's mission. I just wonder how much it really does. I mean, is someone going to say, "Well, Xtina told me I should Rock The Vote. Well, dammit, I'm going to!"?

I guess every little bit helps. Here's the video. It's way better than Puffy's "Vote or Die" campaign.

image: RockTheVote

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Three kids that play guitar way better than you

Brett Singer — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Well, unless you're Slash or something. They definitely play better than me.

Not only that, they have pretty solid taste in music. The Beatles, Ozzy Osbourne, Santana -- no Miley or Jonas Brothers for these guys.

Flipping through YouTube, there appear to be dozens of kids who play incredibly well. Screw Guitar Hero, this is the real thing.

First up: this guy does an amplified acoustic rendition of "Come Together". It would be impressive enough if he just nailed the basic riff. But he plays the lead guitar part, the bass line, and even taps out the drum beat on the side of the guitar. Sheesh.

Here's the original, for comparison purposes.

This kid, Yuto Miyazawa, is even better. First, he looks younger. Second, his guitar is bigger than he is. Third, he sings as well as plays. Last -- but certainly not least -- the song is Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." Ohhhh yes. Later in the clip he does "Crossroads," echoing Clapton's guitar solo perfectly. Then he closes with "Smoky Char", a tune I'm not familiar with but he seems to play it pretty damn well. Each is with a different band, and each time he's the frontman -- er, frontkid.

Back to acoustic for Lucciano Pizzichini, a 7 year old who treats us to a little Carlos Santana. Despite having major guitar chops, he's still a kid -- check out the Spongebob sticker on his axe.

image: youtube.com

Concerts With Your Kids: Cool or Waaaaayyyy Uncool?

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:28:00 GMT

One of my very first concerts was the very first Farm-Aid. At 5 a.m.on a cold summer morning in 1985, I wound my way through the ticket-holder herders into a stadium in Champaign, Illinois, found a prime seat in the stands and waited and squirmed and waited and squirmed some more to see Willy Nelson, Neil Young and yummily young Jon Bon Jovi. I was ecstatic. And I was with my parents.

It wasn't my first concert with my parents. At that point, they'd already taken me to see Billy Joel (twice), John Cougar (also twice, pre-Mellencamp embracing) and the 90-minute disaster we recall as the Whitney Houston Experience. Even at thirteen, I remember thinking they were pretty cool to get me close enough to see my favorite musicians sweat, sing and put on a show. By the next year all those cool points had faded into rebellion and the declaration that my parents would never get Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Erasure and Anything Box the way I did. And I was right. As long as we were listening to the same music (and oggling the same raspy-voiced long-haired gorgeousness that was/is John Cougar), then my parents and I were all good on the rock scene. Once the synthesizers and black lipstick kicked in, though, it was time for us to all move on.

Today, the music scene is (ahem) a bit different. This summer, I jammed out as much as my preschooler to The Imagination Movers and many of my favorite musicians have crossed-over to make alternakiddie albums. I'm still holding on to the old school notion, though, that at some point we will thrust our devil horns up at an Ani DiFranco show together or that he will be amped that I got us all tickets to see Pink and JT.

Are these memories and this hope my own desire to be seen as cool by my kid who will undoubtedly be way cooler than I ever was? Oh hell yes. What concerns me even more is the possibility that we won't ever get the chance to share lawn seats and $12 sodas together or debate whether or not buy a concert tee that costs more than the tickets. I'm holding on to the circle being unbroken, but the reality could very well be that my kid rolls his eyes and says the extra ticket to see Raffi is really for someone from playgroup, and that I'm on my own. Would that mean I've raised the little rocker right? And does that come with its own set of cool points? And finally, is going to a show with your kids awesome or embarrassing? And for whom?

Children of the Korn Promote Family Values

Kelly Mills — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:38:00 GMT

Are you ready to RAWK? Korn is kicking off the "Family Values" tour. The tour, created in 1996 by the fine gentlemen of Korn, returned in 2006 after a five-year hiatus, and was hella successful, bro. Now this tour features Atreyu (that's from Neverending Story, isn't it?) and Trivium. Also headlining is Hell Yeah, a band featuring Pantera(!) drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott. As I type this, one hand is automatically making devil horns, while the other is compulsively reaching around for a lighter.

Korn is also releasing an eighth studio album, called...it, uh, has no name. "'We didn't want to label this album,' Korn frontman Jonathan Davis said in a statement. 'It has no boundaries; it has no limits and why not just let our fans call it whatever they wanna call it?'" That's right, society can't make us label our album, cuz those are the suits' rules. Metal is about rebellion. So maybe this fan will just call it, Korn friggin rocks you so hard your teeth get loose and you can't contain it cuz it's so insane so don't even try you wussy. Our family values nu-metal, baby. Though the kid is actually more of an old-school Sabbath fan, to be honest.

Babble Talk: Rock Camp for Girls!

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Wed, 02 May 2007 21:06:00 GMT

Ada Calhoun's Babble piece on rock camp for girls will make you salivate. Are you pondering how to counteract the Bratz and Barbie and "Sex Kitten 69" t-shirts you see young girls wearing? This rock camp is the way to go, my friend.

Calhoun interviews founder (and lawyer and a brillion other things) mama Hanna Fox, who spun off the program from a similar one in Portland back in 2004.

Fox notes that music is really only a proxy, a tool used to teach girls about empowerment and self-expression. And? they learn self-defense as well as performance (heeeYAAA).

And did you hear there's even a rock camp for mamas now? THAT would rock.