‘High Fidelity meets high chairs’

 The New York Times writes about the latest trend of ‘hip’ children’s music. From repurposing classic rock tunes (turning Metallica’s Enter Sandman into a lullabye) to rockers releasing kid-friendly albums as side projects (Perry Farrell toured with ‘Kidapalooza’), Gen X parents are looking to instil cool in their kids right from the start.

Field observations confirm that the new breed of coolness-bestowing parent takes its music seriously. At an all-ages “Baby Loves Jazz” concert at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan in September, the air was thick with grown-up longing. Parents swayed, clapped and whistled, while their 2-year-olds fidgeted with the salt shakers on the tables.

“You could just see that parents are dying to get that awe back, the childlike awe you lose when you start forming opinions about what’s cool,” said John Medeski, of Medeski Martin and Wood, who played keyboards alongside the soul singer Sharon Jones at the show, and whose trio recently recorded a Little Monster disc for release in 2007.

“There’s been a void,” Mr. Medeski added, referring to parents. “The music becomes like medicine.”

If so, the market may be headed for an overdose. The sales gap between the kind of CDs many hip-minded parents consider pablum — the consistently chart-topping “Kidz Bop” series especially — and the indie releases they champion has never been wider. Unless the music gets television exposure or is associated with a brand like Disney, selling more than 20,000 copies is rare.

I imagine the trend is not only driven by a desire for baby to be cool, but also because parents have a hard time listening to crappy children’s songs – and if your kid likes those songs, you’ll be asked to play them over, and over, and over, and over …