Forget post-partum depression, dirty diapers, sleep deprivation and even swallowing half-eaten baby food off the spoon. The hardest thing about having a kid is trying to get your rock 'n' roll head around music such as Barney. If you've suffered as Sharon, Lois Bram played on, let it be known that there's hope.
Baby Rock Records' Rockabye Baby: Lullaby Renditions has arrived.
The L.A.
-based indie label "transforms timeless rock songs into beautiful instrumental lullabies." Arranged and performed by the very talented Michael Armstrong, the nine releases in the series to date include baby-ized takes on the music of Nirvana, Tool, Led Zeppelin and even Metallica. There's a Coldplay disc, too, but their songs already put everyone to sleep.
"The first new-idea meeting I ever went to when I started working at the label, we were tossing out all kinds of ideas and I suggested a Slayer lullabye album would be funny," says Valerie Aiello. "That was 2004, and by 2005 the Queens of the Stone Age had released Lullabyes to Paralyze and we really wanted to do it from start to finish in lullabye form.
"So Michael Armstrong did some work and label owner David Hayley decided to give it a go and I made covers for every album I could imagine in the series.
The Radiohead was the first release, then Coldplay and Metallica."
As artistic director on the project, Aiello is responsible for giving them an ironic hipster look sure to appeal to collectors. Taking the idea of a teddy bear on each cover and tying it in with the design esthetic of each act's album art gives up everything from an angry looking teddy marionette in a lightning-bolt tee for Metallica to abstract colours in a teddy shape for Coldplay.
Very cool and funny.
"When the first three came out, everybody kind of grabbed onto whatever genre that was to their tastes. Metallica probably got the most press because it was so weird, store buyers loved the Coldplay and the Radiohead appealed to the '90s kids.
We've tried to keep the series geared to that demo."
Subsequent releases included everything from Pink Floyd to the Cure, with the final touches being added on the Pixies and Bjork collections coming spring of 2007. The kitsch factor is there.
But Armstrong's incorporation of non-typical instruments such as mellotrone, glockenspiel and harp bells in lieu of synthesizers gives Rockabye Baby! a genuine appeal. Who knew that searing rockers such as "Lithium" or "Kashmir" could make such fine easy listening.
"My idea was that I wanted it to sound like gnomes in a tree if they had a band. So they wouldn't have electricity, so it would have to be crazy or homemade instruments. He's not allowed to use any acoustic guitar, strings, flutes or stuff that turns up on those New Age CDs.
"
Every project goes through a lot of trial and error to "get rid of the cheesy stuff" and each one provides unique challenges. Not all work.
"We made a Nine Inch Nails one and it was like Lurch on a harpsichord.
Very scary."
Somewhere a wee mind is getting warped. Info at .
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