Keeping an Ear Out for the Cops
[ed. note: Due to P.Pie's baby shower, Photo Mondays will return tomorrow. The HowAboutTwo.com management apologizes for the inconvenience. Those responsible have been sacked.]
One of the better gifts I received this holiday was the The Police Box Set – Message in a Box (something I’ve been wanting for a while).
I am not normally a huge fan of box sets. An artist/group’s ‘best of’ album (yes, I’m dating myself by saying album. Album, album, album.) is usually enough for me to get my fix. But the Police have such a vast catalog, and so much of it never gets airplay. All of it is collected here - unreleased tracks, B-sides, live recordings and the hits you know by heart (if you’ve never done an impression of Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs.singing Roxanne, well, then you’ve never lived).
Truly a magnificent collection of music – 6 CDs, 103 songs, 6.4 hours of music plus enough liner notes to fill a small book.
[ed. note, part II: for the younger audience, liner notes were usually written on record sleeves (the thing protecting the recording from the thin cardboard box it was kept in) with factual & anecdotal info on/about the artists and often by the artists. The compact disc format has killed the liner notes tradition and is responsible for the overall ‘dumbing down’ of music. Today, you’re lucky to get the lyrics in 4pt. font.]
As I was rocking out to the collection – particularly disc two – and skimming the liner notes, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if the twins could be lulled to sleep listening to really great music?
Now, how can I make that happen?
Yes, I’ve had that idea.
So I’ve created a playlist of what I think of as songs that belong in everyone's repertoire – The Police, The Band, The Beatles, The Allman Bros, America, Pure Praire League, BNL, The Beautiful South, Ben Folds Five, Black Sabbath, Bob Wills, The Cars, Cheap Trick, Chris Cornell… and the list goes on.
For an hour every evening, we’re going to slip an old school style pair of headphones over P.Pie’s belly and play some of the greatest rock ‘n roll for the twins.
Did this actually work for anybody?
posted by Rob Barron at 7:40 PM
3 Comments:
I did the same thing, kind of, though my music choices weren't nearly as cool as yours.
I sang a lullaby (Stay Awake) to my daughter every day while she was in utero. After she was born she would calm down instantly whenever I sang that one song. The lullaby stayed a part of her bedtime routine until very recently (she's 5 now), so my younger two children also heard it in utero every day when I sang to their sister. The song had the same effect for both of them as well.
It may very well be that even if they hadn't heard the song before birth it would have had the same effect -- it's a pretty, peaceful song, designed to soothe babies. But I like to think that they remembered and it reminded them of the comfort of the womb.
We planned on doing that but I just ended up playing music that I wanted them to hear. I figured if I didn't want to listen to it, why would they.
Coincidentally, we listened to The Police A LOT around month six.
when my boys were born, the only thing that got them to sleep - seriously, the ONLY thing - was jack johnson's "brushfire fairytales", which they never heard in utero.
guess it was just mellow enough.
and remember, you can fight all you want, but the kid is going to dig the lame kiddy music the most. at least until you can reason with them.
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