Track Listing

1. Jump Up
2. Rock Island Line (with the Rocket Ship Revue)
3. Malti (With Barbara Brousal)
4. The Hokey Pokey (with Father Goose a.k.a. Rankin� Don and the Dandelion Chorus)
5. Water For the Elephants (with Donald Saaf)
6. Linstead Market (with the Sandy Girls)
7. Fooba Wooba John (with Rosanne Cash)
8. Wonder Wheel (with the Rocket Ship Revue)
9. Yo-Yo Sweet Yo-Yo (with the Rubi Theatre Co.)
10. All Around the Kitchen (with Loudon Wainwright III)
11. In the Evening (with the Rocket Ship Revue and the Dandelion Chorus)
12. Flowers Of Edinburgh
13. Thrift Shop (with Sandra Bernhard)
14. Skip To My Lou (with Father Goose a.k.a Rankin� Don)
15. The Good Night Waltz (with Donald Saaf and Lyris Hung)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3938 in Music
• Released on: 2002-07-30
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued
• Dimensions: .32 pounds

Album Description
this is the follow up to the acclaimed "rocket ship beach" cd. it's the hip handmade sound of dan zanes and his friends bringing acoustic and electric guitars, fiddles, drums, harmonicas, mandolins, accordions, banjos, tamborines, and voices together for a mixture of traditional and original songs that can be danced to or just listened to depending on the occation. this is 21st century folk music made with the whole family in mind. special guests include Rosanne Cash, Loudon Wainwright lll, The Sandy Girls, Barbara Brousal, Sandra Bernhard, Rankin' Don aka Father Goose, and the Rubi Theatre Company.

Amazon.com
At a moment when mainstream music is clogged with a surfeit of stale, formulaic songs and huge egos, Dan Zanes has found the Drano. Family Dance, his second kids' record (after the fab Rocket Ship Beach), again comes through with big-name helpers--Sandra Bernhard, Rosanne Cash, and Loudon Wainwright III among them--but instead of assembling a mixed bag of self-important numbers, Zanes, who produced and plays on all but one of 15 tracks, maintains a cohesive vibe that's low-key and playful. Yet here's a disc that's all over the map, genre-wise. Gruffster Rankin' Don, a.k.a. Father Goose, rasta-raps his way through "The Hokey Pokey" and "Skip to My Lou," the Sandy Girls carry us off to a colorful Caribbean village for "Linstead Market," Cash folks up "Fooba Wooba John," and Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line" makes a stop in Memphis bluesland. Zanes's originals--"Jump Up," "Wonder Wheel," and "Thrift Shop," performed as a duet with Bernhard--manage to be wholesome, happy, and hip all at once, no mean feat. But it's the music making on Family Dance that impresses most of all. Fiddles, beatboxes, mandolins, tubas, banjos, and concertina elbow their way onto these tracks, and they're balanced by Zanes's arrangements and backup singer Barbara Brousal's graceful voice and guitar work. Kids 2 and up will be likewise captivated by the chunky board-book packaging, again with original artwork. --Tammy La Gorce

Customer Reviews

Great Stuff!
What a fantastic album for kids, parents, and anybody who loves a blend of folk/roots/pop. The whole album is great but these tracks stand out:
- Malti and Linstead Market have a Caribbean feel to them.
- Wonder Wheel has some good pop hooks and reminds me of The Kinks "Come Dancing.
- Hokey Pokey, Water for the Elephants and Skip to My Lou let parents listen to a children's song and still enjoy it even after dozens of playings.
- All Around the Kitchen is a kid's song that rocks.

Another Kid-Pleaser by Zanes
We own several of Dane Zanes' CDs, but this is the one that's currently in my car's CD player. Consequently, I've listened to it approximately a zillion times in the past month.

The good news? My 3 and 6 year olds love it, and both enjoy singing along. It hasn't driven me insane yet, and I'm actually quite fond of "Malti" and a couple of the other songs. My 3 year old has learned to count to 10 in Spanish. The CD comes packaged in a board book, and both girls enjoy looking at the book as we drive. My older daughter has learned to properly pronounce "Edinburgh."

The bad news? I wake up in the morning and find myself humming "Fooba Wooba John" or "Yo Yo." I think these songs are permanently imprinted in my brain. A couple of the other songs are a little boring.

I think kids of most ages will enjoy this CD, and grownups won't hate it. It's not my favorite of the genre, but it makes a nice addition to our car music rotation. Oh, and if you visit Zanes' website, most of the song lyrics are posted there. I wish they were printed in the board book so the kids could read along.

Dan Zanes saves the world from Barney and Disney
I feared having a child would mean ceding the stereo to "Cartoon Monkey Love Song" and whatever other dreck Disney and other companies pass off as kids' music. Fortunately, I saw a profile in The New York Times Magazine on Zanes soon after my son was born and ordered both this album and Rocket Ship Beach. I like this one a little bit better, while my wife prefers the other, but they're both excellent.

More important, our son loves them both. He's been listening to them since he was six months old, and he's gone from sitting on the floor clapping along to dancing around and bouncing up and down with the beat. I'm sure he'll be singing along soon. I'd say "Thrift Shop" is the best song on this disc, but they're all good, and the contributions of Father Goose on both of Zanes' albums are outstanding.

Another interesting note: Donald Saaf, the outstanding illustrator of children's books (check out "Pushkin Meets the Bundle" if you don't already have it), not only provides art for both of these discs, but he sings on both as well.