Mooscick

So, three records that Flannery's digging, conveyed to you in a post by her Papa, who got her into this stuff. Before I go on, I must say that Flannery is an ardent devotee of nearly anything that makes sound, and of musical sounds in particular, and even more particular-er, sacred musical sounds. During the prelude at her auntie Katie Hathaway's wedding, she, sitting on my lap, kept turning to me and pointing at the cellist and pianist and whispering in the most delighted way, "Papa! Mooscick!" She insists on having something--anything, really--to sing out of during church, and it's usually my Greek Bible that she ends up with because it's more convincing to her than the bulletin. But the regular service music--the Gloria in Excelsis, the Lord's Prayer, the Nunc Dimittis--she doesn't usually need anything to sing out of. Because she seems to know the words. Would that one of the readers of this blog had looked at my Amazon Wishlist and seen the iPod Touch about halfway down the page and gotten it for me--whether for Christmas or for Sharon's birthday or for any old reason--I could have downloaded one of the voice-recording apps and discreetly recorded it for this blog by now, but y'all have your priorities in a real knot, haven't ye?

That said, she loves mooscick, and I'm beyond delighted, even in the mornings when she heads straight for the spindle piano in our living room or begins singing to her dollies about two hours before one's head is ready for the dulcet tones of her lilting little soprano.

So, the records, in no particular order:

First, Bloodshot Records' kids compilation The Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for Bumpy Wagon Rides. My cousin Beth sent this around the time of Flannery's birth, and as far as I remember, it's the first record she paid any attention to. It's a string of covers of children's songs performed by a generally hard-living troupe (Alejandro Escovedo, who hadn't yet cleaned up as of this recording, sings one; Split Lip Rayfield's on here, the Meat Purveyors, Freakwater, others). About half of Neko Case's backing band shows up on these tracks, in case there are Case completists among our readership; Flannery really digs Kelly Hogan's "Senor El Gato" and we played Robbie Fulks' "Godfrey" (the sickly unemployed amateur children's musician) and the Cornell Hurd Band's "Don't Wipe Your Face on Your Shirt" for her often enough that some scribbling was undoubtedly done on the wet cement of her little mind. For formative influences on your children, you could hardly go wrong with a record like this. I believe it is part of what has made her such a delight to others when we go out in public.

Next would be M. Ward's new and really excellent record, Hold Time. She refers to this one as "Bang Mooscick," most likely referring to the drums on the lead single "Never Had Nobody Like You" or the cover of Buddy Holly's "Rave On." Tonight as we were waiting for Sharon to get ready so we could all go out and get to the supermarket, "Rave On" came on and she made the following demand: "You pick me up and dance so I can put my arm around you and you hold my hand." And so I picked her up, and she put one arm around around my neck, held the other one out and grabbed my hand, and we dipped and spinned and two-stepped around the room wherever she dictated: "to the kitchen! no! not that kitchen! my kitchen!"

Hold Time is one of those records I hope forms something fundamental in her music tastes. I'll spare you my pontification, though, because I know y'all are here for Flannery, and not me.




And finally, the record that perhaps stirred this post out of me in the first place because of the frequency of her requests for it and the joy it gives her to hear: Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, or, in Flannerese, "Woooh Mooscick." Woooh Mooscick refers specifically to "My Girls," which might already be 2009's undisputed song of the year. Y'all go and watch the video contained in that link right there, and around the three-minute mark you'll understand why it's called "Woooh Mooscick" -- and if you listen all the way through you'll continue to understand its appellation. Flannery absolutely loves this song, and whenever they yell "wooooh!" in the song, I have to lip-synch to it, or she calls me on it: "You forgot the woooh! Papa!" Correction: I get to lip-synch to it.

You'll notice from the cover art and the video that these guys seem to dig the consumption of certain sorts of exotic fungi. The staggering thing about this song, however, are the lyrics, which go, more or less, like so:

There isn't much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
With a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house

I don't care for fancy things
Or to take part in a vicious race
And children cry for the man who has
A real big heart and a father's grace

I don't mean to seem like I care about
Material things like a social status
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls


I'm noticing this stuff because I'm realizing how two records that played almost constantly during my upbringing -- the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense and Neil Young's Harvest -- pretty much set my music tastes all but in stone (cousin Beth's influence at the crucial age of 12 or 13 pretty much established other listening habits from which I've never recovered). Most everything I listen to now in some way descends from the sounds I heard on those endlessly-repeated albums, even though I don't necessarily have those platters on heavy rotation 'round here. Those records were certainly a part of my, well . . . around here we call it the paideia, the world-forming nurture and admonition. Flannery, thus far, has grown up hearing Neko Case, Calexico, Dolorean, Iron & Wine, not to mention a lot of bluegrass, Brahms, Copland (Appalachian Spring), Tallis, Josquin, and the sacred songs we sing to her every night at bedtime, to mention but a fraction of it all. And I'm hoping this, that the music her life is filled with will, in part, help develop in her an intriguing and winsome and catholic eclecticism. Music and the world God has breathed are too interesting to raise her to be anything otherwise.