This August, I will be making my second trip to Lollapalooza. I went in 2008, mainly, to see Rage Against the Machine. They were incredible. I also got to see other artists I enjoyed; such as Louis XIV, Butch Walker, and The Black Keys. I was even turned on to some new artists: Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s, Gogol Bordello, and the Ting-Tings… Yes, the Ting-Tings. And it even made me LESS of a fan of some bands. (Radiohead and Brand New). That weekend made a huge impression on a lot of my current listening habits. Regrettably, I missed out on Lollapalooza the past two years. However, I will fix that, this year. I will attend Lollapalooza 2011.
As luck would have it, local radio station Radio 92.3 FM has agreed to let me submit reviews of the3-day festival to their website. Hopefully, they will like my reviews and analysis of Lollapalooza, and post it up on their website. I am very excited for this opportunity.
Obviously, there are tons of bands that I am not familiar with. So, I am taking it upon myself to get a few new CDs by some of these artists to familiarize myself, get to know them a little better, so I can make a fair judgment of their performances. I already have OK Go, deadmau5, Fitz and the Tantrums, Cage the Elephant and more, but I’m still looking for a few specific artists I plan to see. So, I went to the used CD store (The Exchange) to look for the latest Flogging Molly and Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley.
While looking in the reggae section, which at first glance seems to be made up entirely of various Marley family members, my eyes skim over Ziggy Marley. Instantly, I’m reminded of a CD I heard was released a few years ago by Ziggy. It was a children’s CD. I now have a child. I gave a quick look, and found it. It’s titled Family Time. I decided that my daughter will love this CD. Sorry Damian, you’re going to have to wait, listening to music with my 3-month-old daughter comes before Lollapalooza preparations.
The reason for the title is painted clearly in the lyrics of the title track and all over the insert book. Ziggy sings, “Now the world gets busy, but it’s not hard to see, Family means the most to me.” I can’t help but agree with you Ziggy. Now that I have a family, I can’t think of anything that could ever be more important Family Time is delivering its clear, focused point at every turn, and that is that family is important. Despite being a children’s CD, this is no mere collection of silly songs. They have meaning. Nearly every song here delivers the same message on family, but in different ways.
My favorite, on this album, is Cry, Cry, Cry, which seems more geared towards parents with its lyrics. Jack Johnson assists on this track, in which the lyrics say,
“Mommy loves to work and daddy loves to play,
Sometimes daddy got to go far away,
I’m too young to go quiet in the night,
Try to put me to sleep I’m gonna give it a fight.
I’m gonna cry, cry, cry…”
and
“Wake you up at 5 am,
Before the sunrise I’ll be your friend,
And you know I don’t like for you to take too long,
Just come running when you hear this song.
I’m gonna cry, cry, cry…”
Obviously, I’ve always known babies wake up in the middle of the night. But now having a baby of my own, and hearing Ziggy sing these words from the point of view of my 3-month-old daughter makes me laugh. Occasionally the lyrics seem a little too deep and insightful. From the aforementioned Cry, Cry, Cry, we hear,
“Practice makes perfect and that I agree,
So don’t be surprised that I want to be free,
I know what I know and that’s all that I know,
But I been told you reap what you sow.”
What is a child supposed to get out of lyrics like that? Don’t worry. Lines like that are few and far between. In Ziggy Says we get back to easily hummable repetitive verses where every line opens with “Ziggy says…”, like,
“Ziggy says sing like a bird,
Ziggy says hiss like a snake,
Ziggy says roar like a lion,
Ziggy says talk like an ape.”
As I listen to this album, I’m realizing this isn’t just a children’s CD, but it is a whole family CD. Even in ABC, where Ziggy goes through the whole alphabet, “A is for Africa. B is for Brother…” And so on. “J is for the Jammin’” makes me smile every time. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Ziggy sings of the importance and value of family. So why would he make a CD to purely entertain a child? I really enjoy this CD. Now, most likely I will not put this on when I am by myself. But when it comes to music to listen to on road trips with screaming children in the back seat, this will easily be my first pick. I just hope my daughter grows to enjoy this CD, so she will be just as excited to listen to it with me, as I am I to listen with her.
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