Beyond Raffi: Kids' Music Doesn't Have to Suck

Written by Matt Schrunk
Edited by Kelley Dodd

I started to notice how frequently I was reaching for the volume knob in the family car, strategically muting the song that was playing in order to censor the occasional curse word that would pop up. It’s not as though I was listening to Cannibal Corpse with my kids in the car, mind you, but the music I played wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. My wife and I shared a lot of guilty looks. We knew something had to change.

We decided it was time to go through our CD collection and weed out the bands and albums that were inappropriate for our kids to hear. Our daughters were old enough to start to understand and (God forbid) repeat whatever they might hear on the stereo. We decided that the safest thing would be to remove the most objectionable material from our music library. I grudgingly said goodbye to a good many of the metal albums that had carried me through my own version of teenage angst, and I was convinced that my listening future would consist of, mainly, The Wiggles and Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang. Why wasn’t there more cool music out there that I could listen to with my kids?

I’m twenty-eight now, but at twenty-three I already had two kids in the house. Maybe most parents out there have a little more time to separate themselves from the music of their younger, wilder days and to settle into a more grown-up, less obnoxious musical palate. Not so for me—I was just two years out of high school when my first kid was born and still had a fairly impressive collection of discs sporting the “Parental Advisory” sticker on the front cover. Bands like Korn, Pantera, Tool, and (I’m ashamed to say) Limp Bizkit took up a large part of my CD racks—not exactly the type of music to use as a lullaby for your little ones.

Of course, every parent with a passion for music wants to share their tastes with their kids. But many of the songs I was playing for my daughters contained lyrics that I hadn’t even realized were inappropriate until I listened to them through the parental filter. We tried listening to some of the music made just for kids, but most of it was simply too annoying to tolerate. So what happens when you run out of ideas for fun, family-friendly music? Portland deejays Belinda Miller and Hova Najarian have just the thing.

***

Between 8:00 and 9:00 on Saturday mornings, Portland radio station 94.7 KNRK (www.947.fm) airs Miller and Najarian’s long-running show, Greasy Kid Stuff, playing music that’s fun, upbeat, very kid-friendly, and just plain cool. We’re not talking about Alvin and the Chipmunks—much of the music on the show is not specifically made for kids. But what you hear during their program is certainly a welcome respite from the often bland world of kids’ music.

In one hour, you can hear music from mainstream artists, like the B-52’s, Yo La Tengo, The Replacements, Beck, and They Might Be Giants, and more kid-centric bands, such as Lunch Money, Captain Bogg & Salty, and the Red Hot Chili Dogs. Greasy Kid Stuff first aired in the New York area in 1995 on freeform radio station WFMU. At the time of the show’s creation, Miller and Najarian (who are happily married) didn’t have kids, but they were inspired to bring better music to the children of the next generation.

I joined Miller and Najarian to sit in on a taping of the show, which is prerecorded on the second floor of their Southeast Portland house and sent in to the KNRK studio. I asked them about how it all began. Sitting behind a computer facing the couple’s modest recording equipment, Najarian said, “We were huge fans of WFMU, and started volunteering there. We had never deejayed before, and we were never even aspiring to deejay there; we just loved the station. We really didn’t think that we had anything to add—everyone was super knowledgeable and had huge record collections. Then we got the idea for a kids’ show. We pitched it to them, and they liked the idea.”

Najarian noted that at the time, many of the people who grew up with punk rock were becoming parents—their station manager at WFMU had just become a father when they pitched their show—and there just wasn’t a lot of good kids’ music out there. The mission of Greasy Kid Stuff, according to Miller, was essentially to “mine the history of music for kid-appropriate stuff, but not stuff that was necessarily made for kids.”

The first ten years of Greasy Kid Stuff were produced and aired in New York, but in 2004 Miller and Najarian decided to move back to the west coast, settling in Miller’s hometown of Portland, Oregon. They continued broadcasting the show to New York, running a live feed from their home to WFMU’s New Jersey studio through the phone line. Finally, in 2006 they decided to make the broadcast local, convincing program director Mark Hamilton to give them a slot on KNRK. They continued their remote broadcast to the New York area for a year, coinciding with the Portland show, until parting ways with WFMU in 2007.

Over the years Greasy Kid Stuff has received a good deal of attention from national media as a pioneer in the genre of kids’ music. Neal Pollack, author of Alternadad: The True Story of One Family’s Struggle to Raise a Cool Kid in America, has called it “the best kid’s radio program of all time.” In a 2007 blog on his Alternadad website, Pollack talked about visiting a Portland dance party for kids called Baby Loves Disco (hosted by Miller and Najarian). After taking in the scene and watching parents dance with their toddlers to the sound of classic disco music, he attempted to describe the current state of parenting and culture, saying, “I do know that the generic kid-centric culture of Barney, Mommy & Me, and Gymboree, while still part of the landscape, is fading and is being replaced by something that feels a little more authentic, a little more, well, fun.” The movement is growing. Greasy Kid Stuff is often the number one radio program in Portland during its time slot, and Baby Loves Disco parties, which started in Philadelphia, have spread to over twenty major cities around the country. But like any shift in the culture scales, this one started small.

***

Back in 1995, Miller and Najarian were producing what may have been the only kids' radio show in the country. A few others have sprung up since then, including Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child produced in Massachusetts by Bill Childs and his daughter, Ella. Childs approached Miller and Najarian in 2005 looking for advice on starting an indie rock show for kids. Miller told him, “I don’t know! We aren’t experts.” Even with other kids’ shows being started around the country, Miller and Najarian don’t see the trend as a threat. “It’s cool that people are doing it. We get jealous sometimes that people get attention, and that people get paid,” Najarian said, laughing, “but we’re still doing what we like to do.”

In the past few years, Miller and Najarian have relaxed their position of avoiding music that’s made for kids because “it’s just a lot better.” They cite recent kids’ releases by mainstream artists—Barenaked Ladies, Lisa Loeb, and Chris Ballew (of the Presidents of the United States of America) a.k.a. Caspar Babypants—as evidence that kids’ music is getting more popular and much more readily available, making it easier to find material to play on the air. “We started with a one-hour show,” said Miller, “and we were like, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to fill it?’” But over time, Miller and Najarian discovered more and more songs to use for the show, getting suggestions from their listeners and from other deejays. Now they have no problem finding material for their Portland show. Najarian said, “We could do two hours. We only do one hour on KNRK, and it’s not enough time.”

Miller and Najarian have a lovely daughter, Georgia, now five years old. When I told them about my experience with my kids and the music I felt compelled to give up, they related their own story. Miller said, “We talked to [Georgia] about cursing. But we don’t play a lot of stuff that we used to listen to, because it’s all grimy, punk rock stuff. We played the Ramones for her when she was little, and we used to dance to it all the time. Now we have to explain it all, so we don’t play as much because she’s very curious, and she wants to know everything.”

With the arrival of my first little girl, I figured that my days of going to concerts every week and listening to music I wanted to hear were over. My wife and I suffered through our share of the big purple dinosaur, but now that our daughters are six and seven, we are starting to share some of our favorite music with them. Thankfully, we’ve discovered a new source of entertaining songs from both familiar artists and new ones. A message to other parents of young children out there: don’t worry—your days of sleeping late on weekends may have ended long ago, but there’s a new way to enjoy Saturday mornings with your kids that doesn’t involve the television. Check out Greasy Kid Stuff and see what you find there. You may end up enjoying the music as much as your kids do. As Miller and Najarian say, “Grease on Earth!”

Valentine's Day playlist
Curious about the kinds of songs that can be heard on Greasy Kid Stuff? Here’s a sample playlist from a show they recorded on Valentine’s Day, 2009.

1. The Dandy Lions, "Greasy Kid Stuff," Greasy Kid Stuff: Songs From Inside the Radio (Confidential, 2002)
2. Death by Chocolate, "If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out," Death by Chocolate (Jetset, 2001)
3. Jellyfish, "Sebrina, Paste and Plato," Spilt Milk (Charisma, 1993)
4. The Rutles, "Piggy in the Middle," The Rutles (Rhino, 1990)
5. Shonen Knife, "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," What the World Needs Now (Big Deal, 1998)
6. The Galactic Heroes, "George Washington," unreleased
7. They Might Be Giants, "James K. Polk," Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants (Elektra/Rhino, 2002)
8. The White Stripes, "We're Going To Be Friends," Red Blood Cells
   
9. They Might Be Giants, "Greasy Kid Stuff," The Else/Cast Your Pods to the Wind (Idlewild/Zöe, 2007)
10. Yo La Tengo, "My Little Corner of the World," Greasy Kid Stuff: Songs From Inside the Radio (Confidential, 2002)
11. Caspar Babypants, "Sleeping Baby, Here I Am!" (self-released, 2009)
12. Snow Patrol, "I Am an Astronaut," Colours Are Brighter (Rough Trade, 2006)
13. Blossom Dearie, "Unpack Your Adjectives," Schoolhouse Rock box set (Rhino, 1996)
14. Blossom Dearie, "Doop-Doo-De-Doop (A Doodlin' Song)," Jazz for Kids: Sing, Clap, Wiggle and, Shake (Verve, 2004)
15. Olivia Olson & Eban Schletter, "Mouser Mecha-Catbot," Greasy Kid Stuff 2: More Songs From Inside the Radio (Confidential, 2004)
16. Parry Gripp, "Do You Like Waffles?" Do You Like Waffles? (Oglio, 2008)
17. James Kochalka Superstar, "Monkey vs. Robot," Monkey vs. Robot (Tarquin, 1997)
18. FunkeyMonkeys, "Ribbit, Ribbit, Tastes Like Chicken" (self-released, 2007)

***

Matt Schrunk is a native Portlander studying in the PSU graduate publishing program. He now lives in Scappoose with his wife and kids and hopes to be a book editor someday soon.