Musical Snacks for Busy Bitches

My high school days as a roller rink DJ playing pop hits that were safe for six-year-olds reminded me of the existence of "Radio Disney"-- a radio station that existed to sanitise the Top 20 for parents.

A quick Google finds no evidence this still exists, but I did find this video of Selena Gomez performing the insanely catchy "Come and Get It", which we already knew we loved, in a dress and dance routine that seems fairly safe for young children (it's a live Radio Disney performance, after all!).

Nice slow chords that are super fun to play in an easy circle: Em, G, C, Am

Kudos to the Norwegian production team Stargate for this insanely catchy song!

This Pixies song off their 2014 album Indie Cindy is a great video to play for kids to entertain them while practising some incredibly fast chord transitions. Cartoon, fun, and totally G rated.

I find this one of the hardest Pixies songs to play on piano just because of the speed, but one advantage is that each strum is on the downbeat, so it will be a fun challenge to help with rhythm.

The song is actually about alcoholism, but I dare say Frank Black's metaphors are super child-friendly and adorable. - Hannah Thank you user scred33 at Ultimate Guitar for the chords! Chords:

This review of applying the Electro-Harmonix Lizard Queen guitar fuzz pedal to the bass showcases some beautiful tones, especially when he palm mutes as he plays. You need a channel splitter though to make this sing on the bass. I also love the harmonics sound when the balance and octave are both at 50%--it sounds like GIzmo singing in Gremlins!

Talked with Mary last night about the distorted “blowing your shitty speakers” production of Sleigh Bells on their song Infinity Guitars, Spotify started playing song radio based on that song and our ears both perked as we came across this! Haven’t found much Grimes but might start listening to her more now. Had this on a couple times on loop while dancing around K Road heading to the film screening for Martin’s film yesterday. Very empowering feeling behind the song. 

Kicking off our Tumblr rotation! 

Ray and I stumbled across this song while I was playing records from my collection for her while she made dinner the other week... It caught both our ears. 

Things liked about it... Hmm.  • It’s happy!  • Simple chord changes form the backbone, lots of weird stuff around it • The verse is almost spoken word, but ends with a nice sung “Mm hmm”...?  • There’s a melodic “response” in what I guess is the chorus from a group of people that’s totally different from the verse, that’s cool. I think it actually sounds like it’s ‘missing’ a chorus; I kinda want it to soar at some point. Songwriting exercise at one point maybe? 

Who’s next?