I was just trying to get Lucinda to take a nap, unsuccessfully teaching her to sleep without bouncing on the exercise ball, and listening to The Rhyme on XM. “That’s The Joint” by Funky 4 + 1 was on, not the most common lullaby but it was working just fine for us. But next up was Luke or 2 Live Crew with some “do the ladies run this mutha fukah? hell yeah!…do the men eat pussy? hell yeah!” That was too much for even my conscience, and I flipped over to Willie’s Place.
I’ve been singing to Lucinda a lot (just as I did to Zoe when she was an infant). While I don’t sing her anything as questionable as 2 Live Crew, I admit the canon of tunes I serenade her with is a bit out of the ordinary:
EPMD – You Gots To Chill
Thin Lizzy – The Cowboy Song
Stevie Wonder – most of Talking Book
Bad Brains – Sailin’ On
AC/DC – Ride On, Can I Sit Next To You Girl
The Pharcyde – Passin Me By
Willie Nelson – Whiskey River, most of Spirit
Sly and The Family Stone – most of Fresh, parts of Small Talk
Minor Threat – Betray and a few others from Out Of Step
Taj Mahal – Fishin’ Blues
Beastie Boys – Most of Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head
Rush – Passage to Bangkok
The Wailers – Get Up, Stand Up and Burnin’ and Lootin’
Misfits – Cough Cool, She, Hybrid Moments, Bullet, Astro Zombies, I Turned Into A Martian
Black Sabbath – War Pigs
I wish I could say this was just a list of the funnier songs that I pulled together for this blog post, but I think this is actually an exhaustive list of the songs I’ve sung to her in her first four months of life. With one large omission…
Pulp, This Is Hardcore. Jarvis and company’s dark follow-up to the hit Different Class is far from a children’s record, but there’s something about these songs that make them perfect for pacing with a groggy infant at bedtime — sweet but cracked, simple yet interesting, melodic though not so tricky I can’t fake them with my sadly limited vocal range. Through my daily Pulp recitations I have a new-found love for these songs and the damaged, aging hedonists who constructed them. From the opening declaration of “The Fear” (“You’re gonna like it / but not a lot / and the chorus goes like this”) to “This Is Hardcore”, a song dirty not in a 2 Live Crew way but in a “woah that’s a creepy spotlight you’re shining on mens’ fantasies I think I need a shower now” kinda way, these tracks are so crafty-yet-contemporary I still can’t believe they exist. Gotta love an album that can still deliver you a new favorite song ten years on. And the funny thing is, I think the song “TV Movie” is really a sleeping pill for Lucinda. Many a difficult-to-sleep night I’ve finished it track only to find a snoring infant in my arms. I haven’t tired of winding my way through it, either — much better than singing some trite Raffi jingle night after night. Thank heavens for This Is Hardcore. Special thanks to Jay Babcock for turning me on to this record when it came out (rVision d4yz 4 l1f3!).
As an aside, Jarvis Cocker has a new record and while it’s not This Is Hardcore or Different Class, it definitely doesn’t suck. I’ve made it through a few times and dig it despite the lackluster Pitchfork review. Good to have him back.
Finally, when searching for the image above I found this awesome page with lots of commentary from Jarvis on all the tracks on This Is Hardcore. Hot.
Music is the best. Kids, too.
ian
