Cover Lay Down

The elderchild and her smaller sister are growing up fast, as kids are wont to do. They don’t need kidfolk so much anymore – are starting to make their own choices about music and listenability, and tend to prefer playfulness and performability to nuance or lyrical narrative, a trend which I suppose will linger until they hit their teens and begin to look for ways to identify themselves as “other”. They play unattended, and wander the folk festival grounds on their own; they do musicals, as their parents do, and sing the songs around the house for months.

But they also recognize a growing set of theme songs and jingles. Because now that they’re able to make their own choices, they spend more time than I’d like staring at screens. And though the prevalence of supposedly rich, interactive PBS and Nick Jr. programming on the computer makes it seem like a better bet than television for those thoughtful, deliberate parents who feel guilt at the thought of using the TV as a babysitter, with bandwidth coming into its own in the past few years, much of that content is in the form of full-screen episodes. Setting limits isn’t what it used to be.


As a teacher of media and communications, I have mixed feelings about children’s television – though my primary critique is truly about the passive gaze which television itself engenders, and about the easy willingness of parents and caregivers to allow the tube unfiltered access to the developing mind, despite ongoing caution from the pediatric and psychological communities that the best way to make room for television in a child’s life is to watch with your child, and model active, critical viewing through ongoing interaction throughout.

But Sesame Street is one of the good guys: thoughtful and deliberate from its inception, educationally and developmentally grounded, it is also rife with nudge-and-a-wink content geared towards making the act of active companionship not just tolerable, but actually pleasurable for the accompanying adult. When Jim Henson, whose characters remain the primary deliverers of so much of the musical and textual content of this groundbreaking show, populated the show with furry monsters and neotenic blue-skinned people, the vast majority of them significantly younger and more innocent than the adult human cast, he created the perfect vehicles – a cast able to wonder why out loud, and show pride in their growing understanding of the socio-cultural experience.

The team of lyricists and composers who have worked with the Children’s Television Workshop over the years – Joe Raposo and Jeff Moss, especially – understand that the songs they write should reach a multigenerational audience, and transcend the limitations of age, all within a span of two minutes or less. And though there are a surprising number of punk and ska covers out there, those who have taken on the Sesame Street songbook without irony understand that effective coverage requires both a gentle hand and a generous dollop of joy. For us, that means an easy journey past pop, and towards the singer-songwriters and indie camps, where musicians understand that sharing feelings and asking universal questions are a vital part of the folkways.

I’ve posted most of these songs here at one time or another. But it feels good to put them all in one place. The resulting set is a mixed bag of upbeats and downers, one which may be more nostalgic than practical for those of us whose children are already in grade school, but I’m confident it will also serve as a shared experience of gentle glee and poignancy for those whose kids depend on them to provide their media content. In either case, if we’ve raised them right, I’d bet a rubber duckie and a paper clip collection that one day they’ll come back to them with us.

• Reid Jamieson: Sunny Day
  We start our set this week with a delightfully warm, appropriately loving take on the Sesame Street theme song, now in service for over 40 years and 4,000 episodes, recorded earlier this year by Canadian crooner Reid Jamieson as part of a free, full-album-length coverset in honor of his wife’s birthday. Snag the whole thing here.

• Elizabeth Mitchell: Ladybug Picnic
  Once a fast-paced counting song that accompanied one of Sesame Street’s infamous mid-show animation blocks, here, with bells and guitar, Ladybug Picnic becomes a gentle albeit still rapid-fire lullaby in the hands of Kidfolk fave Elizabeth Mitchell.

• Ron Sexsmith: The Very First Day
  A sparse take from Ron Sexsmith channels Prairie Dawn’s wistful tone in this song from For The Kids, Too! Probably the most nostalgic (and, possibly, one of the least kid-friendly) songs in this set, but it makes for a sweet sleepsong.

• Mates of State: Jellyman Kelly
  James Taylor wrote and performed this fun little storysong for the Children’s Television Workshop show way back in 1979, complete with oom-pa and kid chorus; the following year saw the release of a studio version on ex-sister-in-law Lucy Simon’s Sesame Street songproject In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record. Here, a slow indie carnival take calls back to and updates the original performance, kids, tuba, and all. From For The Kids Three.

• Guster: I’ve Got To Be Clean
• Barenaked Ladies: La La La La Lemon
  A pair of Ernie and Bert songs from the first For The Kids cover compilation. Both are more alt-rock than folk, though certainly on the softer side of performances typically found from both Guster and Barenaked Ladies; both totally caught my children’s ears when they were younger. Hear the glee.

• Kelly Hogan: Rubber Duckie
• Prem Midha: Rubber Duckie
  As noted in yesterday’s feature, Georgia Tech doctoral candidate Prem Midha sings in what may well be the most beautiful voice on the web. Meanwhile, Kelly Hogan‘s twang and a jazzy blues bass and barrelhouse backup bring sultry to the soap.

• Dan Hardin: Sing a Song
  There’s plenty of cheesy covers of this one out and about, from The Carpenters’ 1973 top ten hit to a version with the Dixie Chicks and some Muppet chickens. By adding a dash of late-night hope, Dan Hardin makes it simple and beautiful again, all by himself.

• Ferdz Ines: Everybody Sleeps
  A lesser-known Raposo composition, typical of his work in the way it addresses the universality of the human condition. Fillipino YouTuber Ferdz Ines, a resident of the UAE, channels Richie Havens and David Bowie, transforming the song into an upbeat acoustic rocker with guitar and drum machine.

• Andrew Bird: Bein’ Green
• Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys: It’s Not Easy Being Green
  Two vastly different takes on what is perhaps the most covered song in the Sesame canon, thanks to signature performances on both The Muppet Show and Sesame Street – and appropriately so, given the song’s message of difference, diversity, and acceptance. Andrew Bird’s swooning live french version is due to appear on The Green Album, a forthcoming Muppets tribute album; Rex Hobart’s deep countrified take can be found on kids alt-country album The Bottle Let Me Down, as can Kelly Hogan’s Ernie cover above.

• Ann Percival: I Don’t Want To Live On The Moon
  In later years on the Street, Shawn Colvin did this one with Ernie; so did Aaron Neville. But contradance folk vocalist Ann Percival’s solo take is a true cover, offering the perfect combination of gentle and playful. From The Sweetest Hour, which is.

• Josh Radin: Sesame Street (Sunny Day)
  A maudlin, minor-key version of the Sesame Street theme, originally solicited by indiefolk patron Zach Braff for Scrubs. Josh Radin channels the street as an unreachable destination, a lost childhood utopian state that scars the heart by its very absence. We know better.

Today’s feature was brought to you by the number 12, and by the letters C, L, and D.