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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Rockabye baby...

Jude's friend, Nate and his wife just had a baby, and instead of the usual gift-card, toys, or baby blanket, we thought that it might be kinda fun to give Nate something to gently initiate the baby into the big bad world of grown-up music. Baby Rock Records produces a line of baby-friendly records that are in fact sweet, lullaby versions of sometimes rather loud, unsweet, and definitely not slumberful tracks. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of cherub rock!

We only managed to download the U2 and The Cure albums, but you can hear excerpts from all their available albums on their website. The main instruments used are the glockenspiel, harp and bells, so the tracks are indeed extremely soothing. And trust me, some of these tracks will really make you smile :)

Not everything translates well though- the compelling strings of "All I Want is You" end up sounding kinda discordant with the bells, and "Friday I'm in Love" definitely loses some of its exuberance in the translation. But there are of course songs that lend themselves naturally to this sort of re-intepretaion: Radiohead's "No Surprises" is one, and I love almost every excerpt I've heard on the Coldplay album. The Beatles works pretty well too (especially "Here Comes the Sun".)

So there- who would have thought that we would one day hear a lullaby rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", although do you really want to send your baby to sleep to Metallica's "Enter the Sandman", lullaby version or not?

1 comment:

Tannie said...

It's all pretty cute. I thought the song selection for the Nine Inch Nail lullabies were pretty... well, interesting.

"Closer" is just so wrong for babies...