Adios En Clave De Bolero. We Hardly Knew You.

The third CD from Miss B's most recent library excursion, a Spanish language collection called En Clave de Bolero, did not capture her attention. When I put it on for the first time, DJ B put her fingers in her ears. She was playing with a toy dollhouse and ignored the music entirely. I turned it down a bit since it seemed to be too loud for her and she continued to work on her project of removing address label stickers from her plastic dollhouse. Yet, after a few songs she pushed stop on the player, removed the CD and handed it to me wordlessly. When I asked her about it she said, "I don't like it. You told me I could watch a movie."

Obviously bored with the flurry of CD reviews that I was asking of her, Miss B reached her breaking point. I relented and let her watch a DVD that she picked up from the library.

The Little Willies' Fly Funeral Music

While at the public library DJ B selected the self-titled CD from The Little Willies from the shelf. The copy that she picked up had a purple cover and I'm sure that was part of the allure. Upon listening to it for the first time, Miss B smiled and hopped around before asking me the name of the band. She ran in place, kicking her feet and then ran and kicked going forward and backwards with her hands on her hips.

Miss B said, "It's like Kai-Boy music!.... No, cowboy!" I asked her if she wanted it louder and she yelled, "Don't write! Just watch." She then did a plie and jumped to the beat. After putting on some lip gloss she hummed along to the music and lip synced using her lip gloss wand as a microphone. 

After some technical difficulties (the CD skipped), Miss B sang, "sitting on a wall...here's what I did. Took off my shoes." She then applied lip gloss to her toe nails, spun in a circle, and made herself dizzy. She turned her attention to some dead bugs on the window sill and told me that she was sad, saying that the bugs probably needed a hug. She asked me how they died and said that she wanted to write a letter to them. She dictated it to me: "Dear Fly. I love you so much. I am the owner. The bug is my pet. Love, B."

It's amazing how quickly a dance party turned into a memorial service for a dead fly. That's the beauty of the 4-year-old mind.

Cranky DJ B Despises Opera

Well, it was finally time to return Seussical to the public library, so DJ B was invited to turn her attention to some of the other CDs that she's selected over the past few weeks. First up was Denyce Graves' release Voce di Donna. The first time we played it DJ B exclaimed "too opera-y!," a surprising comment since she went through a heavy-duty opera phase in which she listened to non-stop Verdi and even borrowed a neighbor's collection of opera DVDs.

I probed further and asked her if she liked opera, to which she responded "no!" I should probably mention that she was already in a bad mood before we put the CD on, so I should have anticipated this response. She played with a book she'd been looking at, grunted, folded her arms across her chest, and grunted some more. I noticed, however, that her toe was rhythmically tapping in the air. She looked at the CD booklet, tossed it up above her, and said, "This is boring! This is too boring! Too opera-y and too boring! I just wanna eat! No music!" She grunted, folded her arms again, but then started to rock back and forth when track 2 came on, bobbing her head and tapping her toe on the floor. She grunted at me with a scowl on her face and said, "Sit with me and turn this off. I don't like it," before screaming, "Turn it off!" She then, finally, resorted to taking control of the CD player and turned it off herself.

Today I played the CD again (after feeding her lunch) and Miss B's first reaction was similar to the last time. She yelled, "Opera. Boring!" But then she immediately started to sing along and do ballet moves to the music. Appropriately, she was already wearing 3 layers of leotards and 2 tutu skirts. She smiled as she performed for me, dancing and then balancing a frisbee on her head.

The lesson from all of this is that mood and food are clearly correlated with DJ B's reception of opera music.

Thee Oh Sees Spark Skeleton Teeth Art

 

DJ B's third and final purchase on Record Store Day 2009 was (at the time) a brand new album by Thee Oh Sees called "Help." This was actually one of the first things that she spotted after we arrived at Aquarius Records for the 2nd annual Record Store Day in April 2009. It was a featured release near the entrance to the store and Miss B seemed to be drawn to the bright cover art featuring a rainbow and a purple bat.

Before we played the CD for the first time at home, she perused the inside of the CD case and yelled, "Skeleton! Mommy!" She continued with a series of questions, asking, "Why are there skeletons, Mommy? Is it gonna be scary?" She then said, "I'm scary-ed of it. To turn it on. I just want to look at this right now." So she spent some time looking at the cover art with the bat and rainbow as she considered whether or not she wanted to hear the music. Finally she commented, "I don't like bats or Halloween or skeletons. I don't want to try it."

DJ B's Artistic Response to Thee Oh Sees

Miss B then stacked up the pile of CDs that she collected at Record Store Day and repeated that she didn't want to try them, adding that it was "too scary." She added, "Not any of these...just Easy Ride" [an Asian pop CD she had recently reviewed and was obsessed with]. DJ B kept saying how scared she was and implored me "don't turn it on!" Since I was really interested in her reaction to the music, I put it on anyway. She then started to scribble in my notebook and said, "I'm drawing scary skeleton teeth."  As she drew along to the music she asked, "Is this a Halloween CD? It sounds like Halloween." She drew for awhile, then danced, saying, "I'm a scary, silly skeleton" as she swayed her head. Eventually she turned off the music, but continued to draw a skeleton. And that was the last that we heard of Thee Oh Sees.

DJ B's Previous Record Store Day 2009 reviews:

Black Time's Scary Overtones
Bottom's Mean Stepmother Music

Black Time's Scary Overtones

 

This past weekend we celebrated Record Store Day 2010 by hitting up two of our favorite indie music stores in San Francisco. Our first stop was Aquarius, the site of a successful Record Store Day trip for DJ B back in 2009 when she selected three CDs. Before posting about her 2010 selections, we figured we better get caught up on our reviews from last year. Yes, we're slackers...

DJ B has already covered her feelings about Bottom, so next up on the review pile from Record Store Day 2009 is the Black Time release "Midnight World." Also selected by her from the bargain CD bin (easily accessible, since she was able to sit on the floor while looking through the cardboard box full of items), Black Time caught her eye and was in the pile that she wanted to take home with her.

When we pulled it out to review for the first time last fall she looked at the cover and said, "How about night?" and asked me, "Is it scary? Less scarier?" She added, "When I turn it on I think it's gonna be scary." After some reassurances by me, we put it in and pressed play. DJ B bobbed her head and started dancing immediately, patting her hips while she rocked. After a few seconds she stopped it and said, "Now I wanna try the bat one." When I asked if she liked Black Time she said, "uh huh" and we moved on to listen to her next Record Store Day selection.

All Seussical All the Time for DJ B

Recently we saw a performance of the Dr. Seuss-themed musical Seussical at the San Francisco School of Performing Arts (SOTA) and Miss B was riveted. It quickly became her new obsession, with its cheery songs, fluorescent-colored costumes, and high-wire acrobatics. She announced to us that she wanted to see the musical again and that she wanted to BE IN IT.

Since we haven't yet found a musical theater program for 4-year-olds, we settled for checking Seussical: The Musical (Original Cast Recording) CD out of the public library. When it arrived through inter-library loan, DJ B was ecstatic and the CD has barely left our player since we picked it up.

Before listening to the recording for the first time, Miss B got into a fancy pink leotard, purple tutu and put on one pink glove in preparation for her performance. As the music started she kicked her feet into the air, laughed excitedly and sang along. Getting into character, she pronounced, "I'm the sour kangaroo," as she shook a cape around her waist and over her head. As the music progressed, Miss B imitated various characters from the musical. At one point she put on a large raincoat and said, "I'm the mayor." She then left the room and returned just wearing a leotard, pronouncing, "I'm the trapeze girl." For her next costume change she placed a pink tutu on her head and announced, "Jojo!" And, then, for the final act she put on a fluffy tutu and simply stated, "Gertrude McFuzz." She then tossed a balloon into the air, tied another balloon to a stuffed Easter bunny and swung it around her head.

Variations on this initial performance have played out every time we listen to the CD and sometimes other family members are invited to join in the fun "on stage." The one downside is that the library CD had already been well-loved before it got into our hands, with several of the tracks not working. The technical snafus disrupt Miss B's momentum when the tracks sputter, skip, and stop. Unfortunately it also means that she's missing a few key songs, so we may actually have to fork over some cash to buy our own copy so that she can perfect the choreography for every single song and finally hear those mysterious "hidden tracks."

Shape Shifting and Pogo Dancing to Ornette Coleman

During one of her recent listening sessions, DJ B opted to spend some time with Ornette Coleman's "The Shape of Jazz to Come," a CD that she hand-selected from the public library. Right when the music began she exclaimed, "Dance with me!" as she spun around and reached for my hand. She then set her sights on her singing lamb, yelling, "Lamb's coming!"

After opening her Mother Goose book to a page with blue and white squares on it, she told me, "It's a diamond, but it's it a square when I move it that way" while adjusting her head to show me her great understanding of shapes. After issuing a series of instructions to me, she told me, "I have a new dance. It's called the flower spinners." In rare form, she continued with a series of dances, telling me, "This one is called the kangaroo jumper. This one is called the pogo stick." She then swirled, saying, "Ice cream...strawberry shortcake...and spinach and cheese" before leaping through the air.

At this point it was nearly impossible to keep up with Miss B's flurry of both words and activity, but there was talk of butterflies, bugs and princesses, along with more instructions to me.

She then asked, "Do I look big?" When I said "yes," she said, "That's because I am big." She continued, "Read this and you can see...Practice it. Sing along. Do it with your fingers and sing. Sing!!! Say butterfly.... It's called the Butterfly Dancer of the World." With that she sang a bunch of nonsense words and played a few notes on her keyboard before turning the volume down on the CD player. She then calmly sat in a chair "reading" a book aloud, saying, "It says that a monster turned it off. And the CD died." She then said, "OK. I'll turn it back on" and turned the volume back up. Miss B then put a pink plastic chair over her head and yelled, "Help! I'm in jail!"

I'm exhausted just recounting her reaction to Ornette Coleman. I guess that's the power of jazz.