Track Listing

1. Wee Hairy Beasties
2. Flies on My Taters
3. Animal Crackers
4. Ragtime Duck
5. Housefly Blues
6. Newt Called Tiny
7. I'm an A.N.T. (I'm a M.A.N.)
8. Road Safety Song
9. Cuttlefish Bone
10. Glow Worm
11. Buzz Buzz Buzz
12. Cyril the Karaoke Squirrel
13. Toenail Moon
14. Lightnin' the Turtle
15. Wee Hairy Beasties (Reprise)
16. Toenail Moon [Multimedia Track]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141017 in Music
• Released on: 2006-10-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .16 pounds

Album Description
These Wee Hairy Beasties--Cyril the Karaoke Squirrel (Jon Langford), Marjorie the Singing Bee (Kelly Hogan), Monkey Double Dippey (Sally Timms), and the amazing musicians of Devil in a Woodpile--firmly believe that "kids' music" NEED! NOT! BE! UNLISTENABLE! In fact, their dance-with-ants-in-your-pants blend of back porch country blues, hippity-hop country, and wiggly old-timey swing is bound to please any child or adult--OR any insect, amphibian, reptile, mammal or other creature within earshot. The Wee Hairy Beasties first performed at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago--and being under the mistaken impression they would be playing FOR the animals, they wrote all their songs about animals. But there were children and parents there too, and--from what the Beasties could tell with their highly tuned instincts--the humans seemed to enjoy the show a great deal, and so it was agreed that a CD of this music must be concocted. The resulting buggy-bumping Beastie music on their debut album, Animal Crackers, is mostly for kids but it is groove-inducing for parents as well. Thrill your thorax with the sing-a-long tunes about ducks, squirrels, flies, newts, turtles and more! Let your inner music geek marvel at the dexterous harmonica and clarinet action--and the waterbug-graceful National steel guitar playing! Move any number of legs and warble along with the Beasties' scientifically excellent vocals! All creatures great and small will benefit from the important lessons about road safety, keeping flies off your supper, and the perils of karaoke. A plethora of songs about animals that are fun for music fans of all ages is already an embarrassment of riches, but Animal Crackers has more to share. The CD is also enhanced, with a video for "Toenail Moon," Sally Timms' first animated work.

Amazon.com
A kids' album by insurgent country's leading Marxist, disco country's leading diva, the sexiest member of the Mekons, and Chicago's most-juiced jug band? An improbable scenario, to be sure, save that John Langford, Kelly Hogan, Sally Timms, and Devil in a Woodpile are all close pals and frequent co-conspirators; you can imagine them tossing beers back at the Hide-Out and laughing hysterically as they devised their alter-egos: Cyril the Karaoke Squirrel, Marjorie the Singing Bee, and Monkey Double Dippey (as identities go, Devil in a Woodpile was already quirky enough). It's a fun, folksy, bluesy romp that never talks down to kids and never traffics in sentimentality. They turn the melody of "St. James Infirmary" into a buzzing, old-time ode to swimming the backstroke in a bowl of corn puffs and transform Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy" into "I'm an A.N.T." (with a shout-out to Johnny the Cockaroacharoo). They cuddle with cuttlefish, root turtles across the dance-contest finish line, and sing helium-voiced love songs to glowworms. With imaginations as perverse, wacky, and voracious as the average six-year-old's, the Beasties simply have a blast. --Roy Kasten

Customer Reviews

Smart and Catchy
After just one listen, my two year old was singing out loud for Wee Hairy Beasties. Seriously. We were jumping for each "wee" and giggling, and she wanted to hear more about Cyril the Karaoke Squirrel. And all this in an an albumn that doesn't make my ears bleed.

Truly original and totally indebted
Wee Hairy Beasties brings together a mix of bluegrass, Dixieland jazz, and blues that offers a relevant blueprint for a model of goofy kids' music that demands stellar musicianship and timelessness. If the band could be said to have a frontman it'd be former Mekons member John Langford, whose aggressive but friendly brogue makes a major contribution in addition to his lead acoustic guitar playing and percussion work; other band members and guests also take on vocal duties in a well-balanced blend of voices on this entertaining and often downright funny album.

The band isn't afraid of caricature ("Housefly Blues" is what you might suspect, and "I'm an A.N.T." is a straight-up parody of "I'm a M.A.N."), but overall, Wee Hairy Beasties creates a unique and cohesive musical world for children to enter when listening to the album. Two of our favorite tracks are songs which purport to back dancing animals performing for listeners, complete with supportive hollers from the band and comments from the animals themselves. This album is a deliberate, if restless, throwback to an earlier time, complete with jug, kazoo, washboard, kick drums, and a lot of zaniness, and it works beautifully.

Top Tracks: Wee Hairy Beasties / Ragtime Duck / I'm an A.N.T. / Cuttlefish Bone / Cyril the Karaoke Squirrel / Lightnin' the Turtle

Three Silly Chicks Review
Reviewed by Three Silly Chicks - Readers, Writers, and Reviewers of funny books for kids. www.ThreeSillyChicks.com


You may think that all we chicks do on any given day is read silly books and eat sprinkled donuts. And you would mostly be right. But every now and then, we chicks get a bee in our bonnet to shake our tail feathers and our groove things and our whatnots. And when we do, we crank up ANIMAL CRACKERS by Wee Hairy Beasties for delicious, romp-stomping tracks like Flies on My Taters, Ragtime Duck, and A Newt Called Tiny ("I call him Tiny because he's my newt.")

Featuring Kelly Hogan, Devil in a Woodpile, and British punk rockers Jon Langford and Sally Timms of Mekons fame, these Wee Hairy Beasties know how to raise the roof and rock the roost. Kids will eat up these jiggle-wiggle songs like coco pops while parents fall to their knees in gratitude for a children's music CD that doesn't induce nausea after more than one listen.