The Horrors of the Preschool Music Scene

There was a time when, as a preschooler, you had very limited musical choices. You had Bert & Ernie, or Ozzy Osbourne, depending on the type of household you grew up in. Today's kids have choices that are much, much more frightening than Ozzy.

The kids bands of 2006 are divided into an east coast/west coast rivalry that's based on the network they're affiliated with. Disney has the Wiggles, the Doodlebops, and Dan Zanes. Noggin has Laurie Berkner, who serves as that station's house performer.

Let's explore all of these, and why each is scary.

You all know The Wiggles. Four middle-aged Australian men, apparently rejected from Thunder From Down Under, who now encourage your children to "wiggle" rhythmically. They're accompanied by a pirate with a tickling fetish, a stoned octopus, and a dog whose ever-changing cheap costume seems to be the font of all continuity errors. One of the Wiggles recently retired due to blood pressure problems, but it doesn't matter. As long as the new one wears a yellow shirt, no one will be the wiser.

The Wiggles' Monkees are the Doodlebops. Three twentysomethings in grotesque day-glo plastic costumes and face paint, they're driven around Canada by their white-rapper bus driver who stole his moves from Vanilla Ice. They are all incredibly gay. In the Canadian children's television tradition of You Can't Do That on Television, one of the characters gets water dumped on him in each and every episode. But trust me, you don't want to see each and every episode. Once is enough to understand why Canadians, each and every one, are mentally retarded.

Dan Zanes (and Friends) does not have his own show. Instead, he exists in the five-minute void at the end of each half-hour where commercials would air, if they were allowed during preschool programming. Dan's Friends are a band of hip young retrosexuals who allow him to live out his fantasy of fronting the Talking Heads. Dan's schtick is that he invades a Manhattan townhouse and holds a mini impromptu party for the kids there and then leaves. Locking your doors and not buzzing him in should prevent this.

Ralph, a newcomer to the scene, also has no show of his own. He pops out of a suitcase, flops his long hair around, and sings peppy but banal tunes while his tweenage daughter is forced to wear a "My Dad Rocks" T-shirt next to him. Ralph isn't too convincing as a children's act. It's like he got kicked off a college radio station at the ripe age of 40 and decided kids were the only market that wouldn't see through him. But they do anyway.

I've only seen these guys a couple times, but the Imagination Movers are a group of college-age guys in matching jumpsuits, who think they're much, much more entertaining to families than they actually are. During their videos, the camera pans out to the audience, and it's always half-empty. The few people who are there are visibly bored, not clapping, and sometimes yawning. I haven't seen enough of them to really get what makes them notable except for the jumpsuits, but I think the suits speak for themselves. And the tomatoes from the audience say things best not spoken in front of preschoolers.

Across the dial on Noggin is the Laurie Berkner Band. She may be Noggin's only catch (they lost Dan Zanes to Disney) but they certainly put her to use. Asides from forcing her to sing to puppets on Jack's Big Music Show, they also use her in all of their ads, specials, public events, and ice-capades. Laurie churns out dozens of identical music videos, which feature her, her husband, and their female friend bopping around a world of solid secondary colors. You just know they're having a threesome offscreen, because no couple who hangs out with their female friend that much isn't having sex with her. Laurie invariably wears really tight shirts, but she also invariably wears a bra, because come on, this is preschool.

So now you know. The best, nay, only choice for your children's sanity and well-being is to lock them up, away from all music (preferably in a small closet underneath the stairwell) and board up your windows lest Dan Zanes try to kick through and stage an uncalled-for beach party in your living room.