On the 1st of August my wonderful girlfriend gave birth to our first child Imogen 🙂
Imogen shares her birthday with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead), Boz Burrell (King Crimson), Robert Cray, Chuck D (Public Enemy), Joe Elliott (Def Leppard), Suzi Gardner (L7), Coolio, Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) & Dhani Harrison.
We are trying to give her a rounded musical education & the help of theafterword would be grand. Please can you help me out & drop some tracks/artists she should hear into this playlist
Cheers
seanioio
Congratulations! What an adventure you have ahead of you.
Just play dub. All babies love dub. It reminds them of the womb. Everything else, let her find her own path.
This is sooooo true: I am the magic grandad cos only I could get the tiddler to sleep with some bass heavy roots.
As I recall the first songs that our three really reacted to, in the sense of wanting to hear them again and again and again, were respectively:
Edelweiss
Must be Santa
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
No need to thank me.
PS – congratulations! I assume she has you wrapped around her little finger already.
Warmest congratulations! No sleep for you then?
I’m afraid you are too late with the music.
We were told to play Mozart to our son while he was still in the womb. He would then grow up to be a genius. The acoustics must have been crap in there as he’s growing up to be a rebellious hip hopper.
Congratulations – what lovely news!
Many congrats, seanioio!
Congratulations!
Imogen, as you say, shares her birthday with Jerry Garcia. There could be no better start in life!
What Garcia music might you play to her?
Well, you could jump in at the deep end and go for the 44 minute version of Dark Star from the Rotterdam show on 11 May 1972.
Or how about the 39 minute version of “The Other One” from Baltimore, 17 September 1972?
Hours of fun for all the family!
Hearty congrats!
Lull her to sleep with In The Court Of The Crimson King. It’s all there, in that one song. 😉
All good wishes for you and your family.
As far as the musical education part of the post is concerned, I am the last person to ask. With our daughter, the elder of our two and now 22, I worked hard to instill in her an appreciation of the subtleties of my record collection. I failed spectacularly. I hate the bands she loves, though I am pleased to see that she is truly devoted to them and not just a casual music fan. On the other hand, in her younger brother’s case, I imposed myself less – and, perhaps as a result, his tastes and mine more closely correspond. (Nonetheless, I have had no luck whatsoever getting them to appreciate vintage R&B or soul, but as this didn’t come until later for me I can only hope they’ll discover it as they mature.) So, my advice is expose her to everything you like, but don’t be ‘educational’ about it.
Not sure about a newborn. Keep it simple I guess
Our 3 yo has his own playlist on our Sonos. As of yesterday
Pilot – Magic
XTC – Senses Working Overtime ( the 1,2,3,4,5 bit particularly)
XTC – I’d Like That (whenever we talk about anything that’s tall he will usually say “like a sunflower”, arms stretched upwards)
Bad Manners – Can Can (while playing this all of us are required to lay on our backs while kicking our legs in the air. I used to kick his little legs when he was very tiny and I was changing him, oftenI’d be humming this song)
Queen – We Will Rock You (he has a tremendous geetar stance that he does for this when brer May’s solo kicks in)
They Might
Be Giants – Clap Your Hands (TMBG album ‘No!’ is superb. This song gets us all on our feet)
The Beatles – Yellow Submarine (well, you just have to don’t you. Some day he gets to hear The Beatles proper for the first time. All of it. How fucking great is that??!)
XTC The Mayor Of Simpleton ( yes, there’s a bit of an XTC thing going on. We didn’t do this. He hears stuff on the radio and likes it)
As I’ve been writing this post I’ve realized how lucky he is to be able to hear so much wonderful music for the first time.
Congratulations, Sean! Dub, as per Poppy and Retro. King Tubby all day long, most especially King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown (the instrumental dub of Jacob Miller’s Baby I Love You So. It’s perfect and will keep little Imogen gurgling away very peaceably.
Actually add in a bit of chilled ska/reggae and bung on Radiodread by the Easy Star Allstars too.
Then get used to the idea that this is about the last time you’ll ever be able to dictate her listening taste or “musical education” and just go with it. 😉
Enjoy, man. Children really couldn’t be more life-affirming and amazing. And they just get better and better. I’m so ridiculously head-over-heels with mine! So happy for you. 🙂
Congratulations.
Nothing Joe Elliott has sung will be suitable apart from “Bringin’ On The Heartbreak”.
Even that is a step too far I fear.
My daughter loved Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” though as a baby…albeit as we sung it to her with the lyrics transposed to “I want you to sleep now, I’d love you to sleep now”. Followed by later in the song “we didn’t didn’t hear you crying…yeah yeah yeah!”
Once asleep I would go off to feed the cat and call it in to the tune of “Cool For Cats” by singing outside into the garden “Food For Cats”.
Kids do this to you!
Kids open up new incredible highs and new incredible lows whilst filling the gaps with vast tracts of time having to do things you don’t really want to. It’s been a long summer.
Congratulations! Our little girl is also called Imogen. She’s 9 months now and happily bops along to most things, although Crazy by Gnarls Barkley gets a particularly good response. As does Sheela Na Gig by PJ Harvey, oddly! Enjoy it, it’s amazing how quickly they change!
Congratulations to you both, and The Beatles. A sounder start in musical life you could not give . Tunes, love, beats, compass, and there you go. The Map thereon is theirs.
(Bung in some Buddy too)
Congratulations! I’ve fond memories being up with our baby daughter in those early months listening to Mark Radcliffe on radio 2. I remember she thought that FBI by The Shadows was fantastic, especially with daddies added dum de dums!
Congrats. As a toddler, my son loved Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield,
Please allow me a little bit of indulgence here.
7 & a half years ago I posted this thread following the birth of my daughter. Well tonight we are taking her (along with her younger brother) to their first ever gig & it reminded me of this post.
We have always been careful to not push our love of music onto them, but have embraced what they like (which has meant a lot of baby shark & hey duggee tunes over the last few years) & slowly but surely they are finding their own music tastes & it’s an absolute joy to see. She loves all things pop & anything Abba or Beatles related, whereas he likes the heavier stuff & will dance around to AC/DC given half a chance.
Tonight they are going to find out what Mum & Dad do when the grandparents are kindly babysitting & will be joining us on a trip to Manchester Apollo for a gig! We will be seeing Carly Rae Jepsen & we are very excited to share this with the little ones as it’s our thing.
Oh wow – what a lovely postscript.
I’m off to see CRJ next week in London, can’t wait. She’s reliably brilliant live, so should be an excellent first gig for your kids. Hope you guys enjoy it.
You are in for a treat. She was on top form & I would say better than when she toured in 2020 (something i thought not possible). New stuff is great live
What mum and dad do when the grandparents are kindly babysitting?
Hey kids! The Dead Kennedys wrote a song about that. Altogether now…
haha, yes everytime we say ‘Grandma is putting you to bed on Thursday’ we get a weary ‘who are you going to see tonight then?’
Nice to not have to do this for the show last night! Not sure they will be up for Ezra Collective in a few weeks though so the babysitting will be back!
Enjoy.
Never saw your original post so belated congratulations.