Last night we saw Ralph's World play an outdoor show at a park in Monroe, Michigan. Although my husband and I have been long-time fans of Ralph Covert from his grown-up band the Bad Examples, I had avoided Ralph's World until very recently. But after listening to their most recent album, Green Gorilla, Monster and Me, I jumped at this chance to see them live.
Because there are many of you who have never taken your children to a concert like this, I'm including lots of pictures to you can fully appreciate the experience. Look! People having fun! With their kids!!
The show was very much a rock concert atmosphere, but cleaner and more polite. The band opened with "Four Little Duckies" which got the audience involved right away. Shortly after that came "Things That I Like", for which Ralph asked the crowd to throw their arms in the air when he named that they like. When the initial response to this was somewhat tame, he reminded parents that it hadn't been THAT long since they had been to a rock concert, and to show our kids that we still know how to do this. That moment captured, for me, exactly why this kind of live music is so fun for families.
Throughout the show, there was a great deal of audience involvement - and more than just singing along. The area directly in front of the stage became a mosh pit for the four- to eight-year-olds, and some even crawled up onto the stage. Several numbers were about dancing, and invited the audience to "stomp your feet" or "dance around". This was one of my other favorite moments of the show - seeing a family near us holding hands and dancing in a circle. From the looks on the parents' faces, it may have been the most fun these people had ever had with their children. Ever. Go to more concerts, people. Listen to more music.
I've been impressed at how Ralph's writing has transitioned from the Bad Examples to Ralph's World. Musically, the transition is seamless. But lyrically, he has moved quite far from the raw, honest (and often dark and not child-friendly) poetry of the Bad Examples into very silly and light lyrics, with lots of references to animals, toys, and food. There are a few songs - like "The Coffee Song" - that have a lot of honesty and truth, but they are the exception. Because the music is so amazing, I didn't find myself getting hung up on silly lyrics like this:
We are ants, ants in your pants / Ants in the kitchen, ants in your pants / Ants who sing and go to the moon / Why are we marching? We are ants!
About halfway through the show, it struck me that I should write down a few notes, including which songs they were playing. Some parents nearby gave me a confused look, as if to say "How could she work on her grocery list at a time like this?"
So for all you Ralph-Heads (is that what you call yourselves? and please notice how I say that as if I am so far above screaming like a 16-year-old girl when he was on stage, or taking pictures of him with my son after the show), here is the rest of what I remember of the set list, in no particular order: River Flow, All I Wanna Do Is Play, We Are Ants, Red Banana, Freddy Bear the Teddy Bear, Dance Around, Barnyard Blues, At the Bottom of the Sea, Malcolm McGillikitty, Belly Button, Dumptruck. He did one Bad Examples song - Angel Wings and Lemon Blossoms.
The band was incredibly tight. Like the old Chicago Bulls, everyone always knew exactly where everyone else was. They were spontaneous and wacky, and made the music seem effortless.
Just before the final number, Ralph asked the crowd, "Who wants to be a rock star when they grow up?" Kids and parents alike waved their arms in the air and shouted "YEAH!" So he invited all wanna-be rock stars up on stage to join the band. Moms, who seemed more excited than the kids, dragged and prodded their children up to the stage, while a few very excited kids ran up on their own. Yes, I was up there with Walter, singing and dancing along to "Treehouse Orchestra." It looked something like this:
After the show we met Ralph and had him sign a t-shirt for Walter, which he ended up sleeping in last night.
Ralph and his guitar player also signed my husband's Bad Examples cassette from 1987, and the look on Ralph's face when he saw this nearly-20-year-old piece of history was priceless.
We left with a copy of Good Examples of Bad Examples, a collection of Bad Examples songs that have been re-worked to be kid-friendly, so parents don't have to explain "that song about a mariner's inebriation at a brothel, why the singer would rather drink an intoxicating beverage than wholesome milk in Heaven, or just what the fictional Adam McCarthy was dying from." The changes are very subtle, and I'm excited about playing some of our old Bad Examples favorites with and for our own kids.
So go find some live music for you and your family. I promise, when you take your kids to a show, there's a 99.9 percent chance that you won't have to worry about Patti Smith doing this.
It's pretty well established (if you've been reading here for any length of time) that kids' music has become much more parent-friendly in recent years. But as great as kids' music is these days, sometimes you still want to listen to your own music, and you want to share that music with your kids, too. You also want to experience music the way you used to - by going out to hear great local bands. This is why Rock n Romp was created.
