DADDY BRAD: There has been an explosion of kid’s music produced over the past few years and unfortunately much of it is crap but today we look at the golden nuggets.

This episode of Quality Time is brought to by Baby Bjorn, rocking baby gear, Baby Bjorn. We follow the 50/50 music rule in our family, especially while we are driving.
We listen to 50% kids music and 50% adult music when we are together so it’s very important for us to find kids music that both mom and I like. This type of music is known as Kids Cross Over tunes.

My pick for the best cross over kids album of the year is Gustafer Yellowgold’s Mellow Fever. The album tells the story of Gustafer, a little yellow dude that comes to earth from the sun. He enjoys the coolness of the upper Midwest and hangs out with his friend the eel and the pterodactyl. The cd is accompanied by a dvd of hand drawn minimally animated illustrations of Gustafer and his buddy’s having advntures. These are great songs and beautiful illustrations and my kids enjoy watching as much as much as listening.

This album is solid start to finish. Morgan Taylor is the illustrator/songwriter behind Gustafer and he is joined by rock hottie Lisa Loeb as well as some of the dudes from Wilco. The album kinda sounds like the Beatles and the dude from WorldParty got together with P.D. Eastman and ate a bunch of mushrooms and discovered a shit load of crayons in a room made out of white paper.

Two of my favorite tracks are “Getting In a Tree Top” and “Panther Stamp Pants.” These tunes are so good they earn the honorable distinction of making their way into my adult I-pod play list and that’s no easy feat. Rock on Gustafer!

My kids can listen to the same song over and over again and never seem to get tired of it, thus creating the category of I’ve heard it a billion times and still kind of like it.

The winner of this is the title track from Ben Rudnick’s “A Frog Named Sam.” This song is a really good song, it is very Wide Spread Panic and Phish esque. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trey transitioned into this after a scorching version of “Sample in a jar” during this summers tour, check it out.

The rest of the album is much more traditional featuring several bluegrass songs and folk standards highlighting multiple mandolin, harmonica and accordion solo’s. A Frog named Sam is a strong effort overall.

The final musical nod is geared toward the little ones. I like to call it the “Anybody but Barney Category” and the winner is Robert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine. While I don’t usually dig wrapping squirrels that sound like Alvin the Chipmunks, this album has a couple of unique offerings.

“We are super Heroes” sounds like a duet between the Beach Boys and Daft Punk and “Boom Boom” is is definitely kid funky. This one is sure to please the 4 and ender crowd.

That’s all for us this week in quality time, thanks to our sponsor baby born, if you have some quality kids tunes that you like, head on over to dadlabs.com and turn us on!