Arise! More Reasons to Babypants Your Kids

Prolific.

I'll say that about Caspar Babypants (aka Chris Ballew).

I don't mean it in a bad way, either. His stuff is consistent. Consistently good. For a guy who is producing one CD every nine months, on average, Chris has a pretty high batting average.

His eighth release, RISE AND SHINE! is no exception. After a Beatles-esque detour last year, Chris is back to mining the minds of preschoolers with a collection of original tunes and reworkings of chestnuts like "Rock A Bye Baby" and "Hush Little Baby." Instead of being reverent and treating the songs as sacrosanct, Mr. Babypants stretches them like taffy to their logical conclusions.

For pure silliness, you also get "The Girl With the Squirrel in Her Hat" and "Bird in an Airplane Suit." Chris is happy to provide the "stories behind the songs" on his website. However he has yet to get around to whatever original thoughts provoked these two tunes.

Chris is seriously dedicated to delivering silly and sweet children's music. With guest vocals from Rachel Flotard and Jen Wood, his latest disc is crammed with ideas, characters, and concepts. If there's any theme to RISE AND SHINE!, it's a "day in one disc." After "Good Morning," the littlest worm and the silly bird get their own songs (for some reason, the early bird helps close out the CD). The album ends with the one-two drowsy punch of "Sleepy Eyed" and "Bye Bye Day."

Let me be clear: Caspar Babypants is not trying to teach your children. He is not trying to force them to their feet to dance. He is not even interested in indoctrinating them to new styles of world or multi-cultural ethnic homogenization. He wants to entertain your kids, however long their attention spans may be. And if 19 songs in 49 minutes can't keep your wee ones from nipping at your heels, then you've got bigger fish to fry. Hmm, that's a concept ready-made for Chris.

RISE AND SHINE! is available Tuesday, September 19 from Caspar Babypants' website, Amazon, CDBABY, and iTunes.


Here is the video for Caspar Babypants' song "I Found You":