Kidsongs

My partner Carol Rosenstein and I both had children around the same time. When our kids were two, Carol came up with idea of making music videos of classic children’s songs for them. We went to our favorite music video client, Warner Bros. Records, and they agreed to back us. So off we went, switching gears from Rod, Mick and Prince to Old MacDonald, Mary and her Little Lamb. We put our hearts and souls into it — our ambitions were high and the amount of production was colossal. Still quite proud of Kidsongs!

“Down by the Bay” from Kidsongs: Very Silly Songs

The lyrics of this song just demanded that we push ourselves to the limit of what we could shoot in half a day:  A baboon holding a balloon, a whale with a polka dot tail (okay, it’s a bit of a cheat), a pig wearing a wig, a goat in a boat and a llama wearing pajamas. Classic Kidsongs.

“Sea Cruise” from Kidsongs: What I Want to Be

The standard Kidsongs budget and labor laws curtailing kids work hours made it necessary for us to shoot two songs a day. In retrospect, I am amazed that we managed it! For “Sea Cruise”, we loaded the kids, crew and equipment onto a Coast Guard Cutter down in San Pedro Harbor.  I talked the PR officer into letting the sailors wear dark sunglasses and mime playing saxophones. Our choreographer gave the sailors some moves and they really got into it.The combination of these incredibly talented Kidsongs Kids and the fun-loving Coast Guard puts “Sea Cruise” on my favorites list.A piece of Kidsongs Trivia — the lead boy, Chris Finch, went on to dance on tour with Madonna and later became Rick Dees’ radio sidekick doing lots of character voices.