I’m Biz Markie and making more than one sound with my mouth is my cool trick! Bye bye!
Surely the brainchild of hipster parents who take their children to music festivals to sit in the mud and listen to Animal Collective, Yo Gabba Gabba is possibly the best kid’s show since Sesame Street. It manages to be both highly educational and fucking hilarious, treading the thin line between parody and pastiche.
Yo Gabba Gabba appeals effortlessly to both children and parents. Like many of today’s CG animated movies, the humour works on two levels, each for a different audience.
Like most kids’ shows, Yo Gabba Gabba features semi-alien creatures in fuzzy costumes, a “zany”, vaguely ethnic host along with a plethora of silly noises and songs. Unlike most kids’ shows, it frequently features guests (both musical and not) to join in on the fracas.
In “The Super Music Friend Show” segments, the best of which are viewable online, we get to watch different super cool indie bands performing original, kid-centric songs. Watching The Shins hoppin’ and boppin’ around to “It’s Okay!, Try Again” before the orange-wigged host DJ Lance explains to us that “Listening and dancing to music IS AWESOME!” is absolutely surreal.
While its guaranteed that the vast majority of 4-year-olds will never have heard of Mates of State, it really doesn’t matter. Thanks to watching their performance of “No One Likes to Be Left Out”, little Jimbo will likely grow up with vastly superior music tastes than his Black Eyed Peas-adoring miniature friends. I’m not convinced that I want children to like Of Montreal, but anyway.
Performances by indie artists manage to be both tongue-in-cheek hilarious and endearingly genuine. If you can watch this and look at ?ouestlove without busting into a grin, I will give you eight dollars.
The sheer amount of new ideas on display is just astonishing – and it’s this freshness that ultimately should be rubbing off on little viewers. Kids have been saturated for too long with the same Saturday morning shit, copies of a formula that has been stale for many years. Yo Gabba Gabba is brave because it’s so damn terrifying.
I can only imagine myself as a seven year-old watching Japanese punk-rocker Cornelius perform “1,2,3,4,5,6″ and completely soiling myself from livid fear. It must certainly be an eye-opening experience for a toddler audience to watch, and one that is educational because it pushes kids out of the creative comfort zone they’ve been accustomed to.
I now urge you all to gather around Biz’s Beat of the Day. If you can ignore the fact that Jack Black guest stars in one episode, that might be for the best.
