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Maybe we should blame The Wiggles.
Key points:
- More rock and pop acts are diversifying into children’s entertainment.
- Rockers Regurgitator have reworked risque material for G-rated live shows
- The Little Stevies become The Teeny Tiny Stevies and find big success
On the surface, the trend of pop and rock artists swapping pubs for playgrounds to find new audiences seemingly stems from The Cockroaches morphing into The Wiggles in 1991.
But the trend of chart-topping acts switching to child-friendly entertainers predates The Wiggles.
For example, 1989 ARIA Award nominees for best children’s album included Darryl Cotton of 1960s Aussie rock royalty Zoot, and John Schumann of folk-rockers Redgum.
With more rock and pop acts trading the moshpit for the sandpit with a kids’ record, is this another sign of rapid change in the music industry and the need for artists to diversify to make a living? Or is the world of kids’ music getting cooler, to the delight of parents?
‘I sucked a lollipop’
The growing generational crossover is artfully demonstrated by dance-rock veterans Regurgitator, who took their genre-melding music to the top of the ARIA charts and even into a “bubble” in Melbourne’s Federation Square.
When they produced a kids’ album last year, it wasn’t too surprising to many fans.
Bassist/vocalist Ben Ely said the genesis for Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show and their release The Really Really Really Really Boring Album came from an invitation to play at Dress Up Attack, a Sydney festival created for parents to take kids to see rock bands including Custard and The Grates.
The band took the opportunity to play some of the songs Ely had written with his now-teenage daughters. Mostly amusingly for the grown-ups, Regurgitator re-worked some of their risque material for the G-rated crowd, spawning a version of one of their best-known songs, renamed I Sucked A Lollipop To Get Where I Am.
“It went down really well and felt quite natural for us because Regurgitator is a bit playful in a lot of ways,” Ely said.
He said he sees Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show as “a casual/part-time job that we do occasionally that we enjoy”.
“I don’t think we could be kids entertainers full time like The Wiggles or something like that,” Ely said.
“[But] it’s actually quite nice and suits us at our age, especially with the fact that we have kids.”
The kids are alright
The nominees for best children’s album at the 2016 ARIAs were the usual suspects — The Wiggles, Justine Clarke, Play School, and former Yellow Wiggle Sam Moran.
The Play School album was notable for featuring several rock acts and pop stars singing nursery rhymes, but it was the fifth name on the nominee list that really raised eyebrows – Pat Davern of chart-topping alternative rockers Grinspoon.
Since forming in 1995, Grinspoon has become well-known for their mix of heavy metal, alt-rock and punk-influenced sounds.
For his kids’ record Alexander the Elephant in Zanzibar, Davern set aside the distortion pedals, minor keys and squally guitars to bring to life stories his father created.
“He used to make up these stories called Alexander the Elephant to tell to his grandchildren: my nieces and nephews,” Davern said.
“I said to him, ‘how would you feel if I made a musical record (about Alexander)?’… so it was a tribute to my dad.”
The album became a kids’ book, too, and Davern said the whole exercise was about flexing different creative muscles.
He is one of many Aussie musicians who has a “day job” outside music, but he said the project was definitely not about diversifying his musical income streams.
“I was under no illusion it was going to make me any money … would have been nice if it had,” he laughed.
“It was more just to do something different. It’s a bit of a legacy item (for my kids). ‘Your dad wrote a children’s musical that ended up being a book’, which is kind of cool.”
Doing it for the kids
Folk-pop group The Little Stevies were mildly successful, regularly touring Europe and releasing several well-received albums after being “unearthed” by triple j in the mid-2000s.
But the band, led by sisters Sibylla and Beth Stephen, have enjoyed even greater success as child-friendly project The Teeny Tiny Stevies, spawned out of necessity in 2015.
“(Sibylla) got pregnant with her first child and, looking into the future we thought it wasn’t going to work to keep pursuing the overseas path, where you need to go back and back and back, so we diversified,” Beth said.
“We considered going into musical comedy, which is hilarious because I’m not particularly funny.”
The siblings settled on children’s music for their new avenue, partly inspired by Sibylla’s impending motherhood, and approached the project like a start-up company, Sibylla explained.
“It was our manager, who happens to be my partner as well, who got real with us and (said) ‘you can’t keep going overseas every year so … how are you going to keep being musicians?’,” Sibylla said.
“The Little Stevies were at a point where it was a bit confusing. We’d had a band member leave who was a founding band member, and I was unsure whether we’d make another album again, and I was pregnant, and I freaked out.
“I was like ‘who am I? I’ve amounted to nothing! And I’m pregnant!’.
“So for me, when I had my baby I worked so hard to basically just make something of myself. I was thrilled when Teeny Tiny Stevies (took off). I was like ‘thank god, I’m amounting to something to show my kids’.”
The Teeny Tiny Stevies is definitely working. Animated versions of their songs appear regularly on ABC Kids, their second album was nominated for an ARIA and they sell out shows around the country.
“(The Teeny Tiny Stevies) are so much more famous than us,” Beth laughed.
They say the success has been built on the “usefulness” of their songs, which focus on everything from toilet training to getting dressed.
The first album Useful Songs For Little People was inspired by the challenges Sibylla faced with her first child, while the subject matter for subsequent albums has been crowd-sourced from their fans.
“(The music is) literally inspired by what parents are going through,” Sibylla said.
Last segment
Regurgitator’s Ely says the benefits of children’s entertainment are two-fold: relief from the rock-star lifestyle, and another income stream.
“We’re getting older and doing rock shows where you go on stage at midnight and you get off at 1:30am and then you pack up … and get back to the hotel by 3:30am and you’ve got to get up and fly at 7:00am (is harder than) doing these kids’ shows where you go to a nice festival and play at 11 o’clock in the morning then it’s over and you’re in bed at a decent hour,” he said.
Diversification, he muses, is par for the course for artists in Australia. Ely is a visual artist and creates music for theatre while fellow Regurgitator frontman Quan Yeomans writes music for cartoons.
“If you’re an artist, especially in Australia, in any medium … you do work in a lot of different art forms just to stay afloat,” Ely said.
“The audience in Australia is not huge and you can’t tour constantly, so you do have to diversify and do different things.”
As for the material itself, Ely said The Pogogo Show is “catering to parents who aren’t so precious”.
“A lot of children’s entertainment … cutesifies things and we try to make our content a little bit naughtier and a little bit more upfront,” he said.
“We kind of encourage bad behaviour in some ways – we’re the bad boys of kids’ rock. Ha ha, that sounds so weird.”
Topics: childrens-music, music, arts-and-entertainment, music-industry, rock, pop, australia, warrnambool-3280, port-fairy-3284