Koo Koo Kanga Roo
Album Club is a regular feature where we get together a crack team of our contributors, add in some special guest flavour (this time in the form of Adam Gecking, owner of Say-10 Records and Skateboards, based out of Richmond, VA), and proceed to discuss a chosen album.
Imagine our team’s surprise, and perhaps horror, when Rice and Bread Magazine selected Whoopty Whoop, the latest album by children’s music hipster duo Koo Koo Kanga Roo, for our first instalment of Album Club.
After the dust cleared, losing a few participants along the way, below is what we had to say about what is quite possibly the most annoying album in recent history.
The album club:
Jason Schreurs, Rice and Bread Magazine
Megan Cole, Rice and Bread Magazine
Greg Pratt, Rice and Bread Magazine contributor
Blake Morneau, Rice and Bread Magazine contributor
Adam Gecking, Say-10 Records and Skateboards
The album:
Koo Koo Kanga Roo’s Whoopty Whoop
Jason: So, Koo Koo Kanga Roo… oh man, thoughts?
Blake: I’d say that when I got stoned and listened to this album, my enjoyment went up 30%.
Adam: I feel like it’s not the worst thing to happen in 2014. They have a couple of pros: It came out on Asian Man Records and one song features P.O.S., and I like that song, as far as all of the songs are concerned. But the whole thing kind of reminds me of a less douchey LMFAO.
Megan: Have you seen their photos? They look just as douchey.
Adam: No, I haven’t. All I’ve seen is the cover art.
Greg: I was kind of puzzled by the whole thing. I didn’t know if the band was trying to be a kids’ music band or adult music band. And I didn’t research them on purpose, just to focus on the music, which totally sucked. It was fun, and I’m not adverse to fun, but it was more kind of “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” under the guise of being kids’ music, but it’s really for 21-year-olds at the club. I didn’t know where they were coming from.
Jason: You said you didn’t read the press materials, but they actually refer to themselves as “kids music for adults,” which is also very puzzling.
Greg: I listen to a lots of kids music because I have kids, and there’s a lot of good kids music out there, and then there’s this, which didn’t strike me as being necessarily geared towards kids. So if it’s kids music for adults, what kind of adults is it for?
Rags: Yeah, what kind of douchey adults are listening to this?
Adam: Frank Turner!
Jason: Yeah, Frank Turner said it’s one of his favourite bands. And they also toured with The Aquabats and Reel Big Fish.
Greg: Yeah, but 15 years ago Atom and His Package toured with Assuck, but he still sucked.
Jason: Oh, I think Atom and His Package were waaaay far above what Koo Koo Kanga Roo are doing…
Greg: Yeah, I think so, too.
Jason: There’s some rhyming on here. Blake, you’re Rice and Bread Magazine‘s resident hip hop writer. What did you think of the rhyming?
Blake: I have to agree that the P.O.S. song, “Shake It Well”… I like orange juice and I like P.O.S., so that was pretty good. But the rhyming on this album is infuriating as a hip hop fan. I can’t get behind it. The P.O.S. song is the only listenable song on the whole album. Other than that, it really wanted to make me put something sharp in my ears.
Megan: I did a bit of reading up on the band and I saw that someone called them “Beastie Boys meets Sesame Street” and I just thought, “Are they trying to insult the Beastie Boys?”
Blake: And Sesame Street?
Megan: Is this what kids want to listen to? Songs about cake and pizza? It’s goes beyond being juvenile to being maybe for people that are a bit slow, or English isn’t their first language. It’s very bizarre.
Jason: I think it’s insulting to kids. Adam, it sounds like you listened to it more than the rest of us did, and you’re still standing. Is it absorbing into you, do you find that you’re humming the tunes at all?
Adam: No, not at all. Like I said, the P.O.S. track is the only listenable one on the album. I like pizza, but I hate the song “All I Eat Is Pizza.” The worst two songs on the album are the two songs that have blatant grammatical or text errors, where it’s like “Get Yo Body Moving,” which is awful, and in “Left 2 Right” the two is a number, so it’s like they are texting a song title. Things like that are not acceptable and I don’t understand it.
Blake: I feel like something that’s aimed at children should have an especially strong duty to promote good grammar. So that is extra offensive, now that you bring it up. I agree.
Jason: Greg, you listen to a lot of children’s music, and sometimes not by choice. You’ve got a couple of young ones at home. Do you think this even comes close to some of the stuff you and kids listen to and enjoy?
Greg: No, it doesn’t. I don’t know who these dudes are at all, but they strike me as hip 20-year-olds laughing at us. I’d be surprised if these guys have kids. I played it for my three year old and he was just bored. He walked away after a song, which is a pretty low blow to Koo Koo Kanga Roo, because he loves kids tunes. It’s that condescending stuff like that TV show, Yo Gabba Gabba, where it’s made for young, hip parents, but they’re missing the point if they’re trying to make actual good music for kids. And it’s totally possible. There are bands out there, like here in BC, Canada we have The Kerplunks, there’s Bobs and Lolo… I could talk about this stuff all day. There’s good kids’ music out there, but this is people just kind of being silly, which is fine, but to call it kids’ music is a bit of stretch.
Jason: At least Yo Gabba Gabba actually has some good bands on it. If Rocket from the Crypt or Jimmy Eat World did a kids album, I’d be all over it. These guys just don’t seem to have any musicality, they just program this stuff into their laptops and sing over it. How can they have so many albums?
Megan: They put out a greatest hits album in 2014.
Blake: What?!
Megan: They’ve been around for seven years!
Blake: What?!
Jason: Adam, you run a record label. Would you ever release anything by these guys?
Adam: No, I have released a couple of hip hop albums, but nothing like this. I tried to listen to this as more of a hip hop album than a kids’ album, not that I think it’s a hip hop album, but for a children’s album, like we talked about, I think it’s just insulting for kids. But I could see most top 40 hip hop albums being totally terrible, so I could lump this album in with those easily.
Jason: The keyboard effects and the Autotuning on this album just drove me up the wall.
Blake: Oh, it was just bad choice after bad choice. It was like a Jenga of bad decisions.
Megan: Kids music should have some responsibility to either teach kids about music, or teach kids in general, and this music just teaches kids to be obese, wear fanny packs and have a unibrow. It’s like we’re teaching them to be the next member of the Honey Boo Boo family.
Greg: As a man with a unibrow, I wasn’t sure how to take that song. As a man who trims and touches up his unibrow, and I think they’re saying embrace the unibrow, but I like to keep mine under wraps.
Blake: There probably is some kid somewhere with a unibrow who heard that song and felt good. So if that one kid felt good, I can get behind the song “Unibrow.”
Jason: How did these guys write this? I can’t even imagine the process that goes into writing this kind of stuff.
Greg: I can’t imagine. And I bet you it’s fun live. It’s one thing for us to sit around and listen to it and it’s kind of worthless, but I’m sure it’s goofy fun for 10 minutes when you’re waiting for a real band to come on. But as far as listening to this album, and how they came up with this stuff, who knows?
Megan: I think they’d have to do like Blake did to enjoy the album; smoke a big pile of weed and sit down and write stuff.
Blake: I couldn’t even imagine writing something this stupid on weed. It’s insulting to everybody, not even just kids. It’s insulting to music. It’s insulting across the board.
Jason: I really thought someone would have more good things to say about it. To tell you the truth, I did find it catchy. I found myself kind of humming along and some of the songs are sticking with me, but I’m kind of an idiot with stuff like that. But, really, I thought we might have one person who thought it ruled, but no one even seems close to that.
Blake: I’m offended that you told Megan that I might be the one…
Adam: Well, the production on it is fine. When I was listening to it today on Spotify at my day job, it would run into their earlier albums when I wasn’t paying attention, and the earlier stuff wasn’t produced as well. So this is a little better and easier to listen to, but that’s not saying much. The one thing I did like is it had a song about superheroes, which I can always get behind. Not that the song was well written, but that was some good content at least.
Jason: Wouldn’t it be awesome if we found out that some big metal producer like Machine was behind this and we were all like, “Whoah”?
Greg: [Laughs] Yeah. And the superhero song was a good one.
Megan: The one thing that is telling is these guys met in university and they tried to come up with another band, and it was folky pop band, but then they decided that it was so forgettable and generic that they gave up on it. So, if all they keep doing is producing forgettable, generic music, I’m surprised they’ve been around for seven years. That’s shocking to me.
Blake: If you want good children’s hip hop I’d recommend the Dino 5. It was produced by Prince Paul. It’s got Jean Grae, Chali 2na… It’a a narrative about a dinosaur who needs to fit in and has a hard time because he’s a big T-rex with lots of teeth and everyone’s afraid of him. It’s a very good children’s hip hop album. Don’t expose your kids to Koo Koo Kanga Roo.
Jason: I’m just blown away that there are kids’ hip hop albums. I had no idea. Final thoughts on this album?
Greg: The one positive thing I can say is at least it’s a couple of guys having fun. More fun music is always welcome. I just don’t enjoy sitting at home listening to it. There’s no harm done here, it’s just that it falls totally flat.
Adam: I will say I’m kind of bummed that I missed the Frank Turner tour when they played with him, because I would have been receptive to it live. It might have been interesting. The recordings just left me feeling flat.
Jason: And now that we’re done, we never have to listen to this album ever again!
Megan: It’s all uphill from here? Is that what we’re saying?
Greg: Sorry, Koo Koo Kanga Roo.
Koo Koo Kanga Roo‘s Whoopty Whoop is out now on Asian Man Records.
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