Southerly: Nine Months of Baby Hell
102 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 Newer→ Last
-
Anything to keep the kid away from the bloody Wiggles.
Stuff a little more up to date:
Gillian Welch
The Greencards (Graham's got a review, but I can't find it)
Nickle Creek (not Nickleback, you'd prefer the Wiggles).
Maybe when he's a bit older he can graduate to the outlaw country stuff like Waylon & Willie, say, when he hits the terrible twos.
Not sure about Robbie Fulks, but a song like She Took a Lot of Pills & Died should be a must for every pre-schooler interested in the genre. :)
-
My little man had the 10 day constipation thing, but our doctor prescribed enemas. It was not fun for either of us, but it made him regular pretty quick. Not that I'm a fan of poo, but how is food supposed to get into him if it can't get out?
He has very definite musical tastes, but Daddy just insists. It's my life too. He soon learns that music is a shared experience. I notice a distinct preference for anything lyrical.
-
Ah... my elder daughter could count to 10 at the age of two. And the day after her second birthday, she got up and said, "No Mummy. No nappies today. Today I wear purple knickers."
No such thing with my younger daughters tho'. They barely used words at all at age two, and it took them until about age four to manage counting to ten.
Second children are such a reality check.
As for powerful contraceptives - I recommend twins. They are often the last children in a family.
-
When I was little, there was still food rationing, so we didn't have today's volumes of eggs and cheese to bind our tiny digestive systems.
But most of my contemporaries' homes had the magic three bottles on the bench for the semi-daily dose - Milk of Magnesia, Califig (California syrup of figs), and Maltexo (malt extract).
The Maltexo was to make us big and strong, especially when we were old enough to reach the jar ourselves and could sneak some. Tasty stuff. But the Milk of Magnesia and Califig were produced at the first sign of constipation, and very effective they were.
That and:
Prunes, prunes the Wonder Fruit,
The more you eat the more you toot
The more you toot, the better you feel
Let's all have prunes for every meal!(There's a version of this old rhyme for beans as well.)
-
Baked Beans are good for the heart,
The more you eat, the more you fart,
The more you fart, the better you feel,
So eat baked beans for every meal! -
I wondered who'd be first!
Not the exact words we learned, but close enough.
-
The famous slogan:
'Beanz Meanz Heinz."led to the inevitable t shirt:
'Heinz Meanz Fartz' -
That's what I like about PAS - the learned conversations, delving into social history and poetry.
-
The only other version I know substitutes "beans, beans" for "baked beans".
Learnt at primary school in the '70's. I heard about rationing from my parents but it was before my time... :)
-
That's what I like about PAS - the learned conversations, delving into social history and poetry.
Just marking time till Colin reappears.
-
Actually stayed up past my bedtime on Saturday night to watch again the beans eating scene in Blazing Saddles.
As the TV2 promo material says:
"But it's really all just an excuse for a relentless succession of gags. Even if many are now a little dated, their frequency makes up for it. And a good fart joke never goes out of style."
-
Those of us at school in the mid-70s might remember this: a Dunedin band, but not of the sort you might normally associate with the term...
-
Belt,
Now that he's out of his Rodney Hide phase, Bob has returned to his original good looks
He's gone for the Paul Henry look I think?
Our goes for extended bouts of temperatures, but in exchange when things are healthy-like, we get instant putdowns without a peep.
I know. How did we get that lucky?
-
Ah yes, Rob - Mother Goose, yes?
-
Rob, I should have known someone would have that Mother Goose clip. Two things the Dunedin sound -philes don't like to admit - The Knobbz & Mother Goose!
For some reason, I was reminded of this. Was there a baked bean revival in the 70s or something? (the Beans kick in at about 4 minutes)
As someone says in the comments, how she didn't win an Oscar, I'll never know.
-
Mother Goose, yes?
Quite an amazing video considering it was NuZiland in the 70s. There'd be a few 80s bands who would have killed for that video budget. And who new Billy Connolly was a member of Mother Goose? Was that how he met Pammy?
As someone says in the comments, how she didn't win an Oscar, I'll never know.
But oh my, that Ann-Margaret is hot.
-
As Pamela Stephenson was later to say in Not the Nine O'Clock News, "Nice video, shame about the song"...
-
Obviously the memory kinda lingers....
-
And who new Billy Connolly was a member of Mother Goose?
I thought more Alan Moore, the scariest facial hair in modern comics. And despite the critical plaudits, David, Lost Girls is one picture book you won't want Bob-The-Baby reading for a couple of decades.
-
when I take my 13mth grandson out in the car,I put 1950's cds on.He just loves Sugarbush by Doris Day,and kicks up a storm when that song is missed out.
-
Sorry for my tardy response to this brilliant post. I have only just found time to read it.
I agree with Danielle (who is the most well researched person I know musically) about country music. I started off like alt country like Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams but do like the old school stuff as well and have even found I like The Dixie Chicks.
Re badly behaved babies, around the time our baby had what we presumed was the mysterious 'colic' my mother gave us an article to read from the New Yorker. ('The Colic Conundrum' The New Yorker (Sept 17, 2007): p46.) Here are two excerpts from that article. The first is from a woman who had one baby with colic and then later twins with colic. It lasted 6 months each time and they cried continuously:"I got sick of hearing about easy babies," Amanda told me. "One said, 'My son is like a Buddha--he just sits there and smiles.' I wanted to chop her head off."
This second excerpt is quite disturbing:
The United States military has reportedly used the sound of wailing infants as an instrument of psychological stress, piping recordings of their cries into the cells of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
-
p.s The New Yorker article made us feel that our baby could be a lot worse.
p.p.s We tried soothing music with our baby but then found 'Sleater Kinney' worked a treat, calmed him right down and sent him off to sleep. Who would have thought.
-
Jake Pollock wrote:
The Anthology of American Folk Music is what you want. Four discs jam packed with depression-era 78s.
Jake, you beautiful human being. On your recommendation we purchased 'The Anthology of American Folk Music' and it has just arrived.
Bob absolutely loves it -- smiling, laughing, and trying to climb inside the speaker boxes to cuddle up with those cheerful-sounding musicians. Finally, we can play something that's not 'The Carter Family' (although they are represented in the collection, of course).
Your recommendation has resulted in a dramatic improvement in our quality of life, Jake. Whenever you're next in New Zealand please make contact and I shall buy you some pints.
By the way, Bob seems to particularly enjoy the banjo stuff. I don't suppose you want to try for the double and recommend any good banjo music from this period?
Maureen Gallie wrote:
when I take my 13mth grandson out in the car,I put 1950's cds on.He just loves Sugarbush by Doris Day,and kicks up a storm when that song is missed out.
Thanks for the suggestion, Maureen -- much appreciated! I'll give Doris a try, but I suspect that she'll be too modern for Bob's taste. My rigorous scientific experimentation suggest that his cut-off date for music is 1937.
-
Progress Valley Possum pickers might work if Bob likes a banjo -and its local :-)
I am pleased to say Baby #3 (9 months) has been introduced to Joy Division and it works a charm - a definitely step up from #1 and her Metallica thing
**REPLY:** Thanks Pauline, will investigate the PVPPs. Congrats on getting baby #3 onto Joy Division -- DH
-
Glad to help, even if I can't figure out the enigma of a New Zealand infant's obsession with American folk music.
Unfortunately, banjo music lies a little outside of my range as a dilettante. Nevertheless, a search on archive.org reveals a small trove of banjo tunes recorded on 78s. You could probably follow those 'Old Time Appalachian' tags to find more in that vein.
The other thing to do would be to have a look at the Smithsonian Folkways catalogue. You might find something he will like there, and a lot of it is available through emusic subscription.
He might also like something like Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads; no banjos, but the lyrics are suitably bleak. I listened to that one on a train going through the Appalachian foothills in Pennsylvania last weekend. Different parts of the country, but the themes of rural poverty and the cruelty of the winds of capitalism and big business were resonant. Although Bob probably won't be too concerned.
Anyway, early country and folk music is a rich cultural tradition that I don't really know a lot about, like I said (did you notice the songs in French on the Anthology? Now that's something that has dropped out of the narrative of American ethnogenesis). But I know people who do, so I'll ask around next week and see what else I can come up with.
**REPLY:** Thanks so much for those suggestions, Jake. That's given me a whole bunch of other good leads. I'm going to play Bob the sample tracks and get his opinion (although I might buy the Woody Guthrie for myself anyway). And yes, we certainly did notice the French -- but what dialect is it? Nothing like I learnt at school that's for sure. P.S. The archive.org tip has already been a lifesaver. I've just this moment halted a full-on screaming jag by playing the first banjo tune that came up on your search.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.