Rock of all-ages

Photo: Ryan Brenzier

SURFIN' SAFARI Attack of the Surf Mamas will tune up at this year's Mamapalooza fest.

Photo: Ryan Brenzier

Back in the ’80s, Angela Babin was playing guitar with the avant-garde New York band The Ordinaires, whose songs critics likened to both Stravinsky and Captain Beefheart.

SURFIN' SAFARI Attack of the Surf Mamas will tune up at this year's Mamapalooza fest.

Photo: Ryan Brenzier

Back in the ’80s, Angela Babin was playing guitar with the avant-garde New York band The Ordinaires, whose songs critics likened to both Stravinsky and Captain Beefheart. But Babin's latest musical endeavor—psychedelic surf-rock versions of songs like “Frère Jacques” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain”—is on a whole new level. Say, about three-feet tall.

Why the change? Well, Babin is now a mother, as are most of the members of her newly formed band, Attack of the Surf Mamas. And while there’s no contract clause in the music biz banning rockers from playing drinking-age venues once they’ve popped out a kid or two (Babin still does), the Surf Mamas seem to think that little kids should have their own music, too. So, along with a handful of other bands made up of musicians-turned-parents, the Mamas will have the toddler set hoisting their sippy cups in applause during a for-kids-only segment of Mama R.O.X. (Mamapalooza's Riverside Park Outdoor eXtravaganza) on May 21.

Mamapalooza, an annual springtime concert series that runs for more than two weeks at a number of venues around New York City (TONY Kids happens to be a sponsor), is a celebration of moms who rock. The festival, which started in 2001, is best known for showcasing bands made up of women who didn't throw in the mike (or their fishnets) when they became mothers. These rockers typically play to Mamapalooza audiences of their own generation; the kid-specific event planned for ’06—dubbed “Tot Rock” by festival organizer and mom Alyson Palmer—is new.

Palmer herself will be taking the stage several times during the festival, as the singer and bass player for grown-up band Betty; but she and her partner, Tony Salvatore, will also be performing for the kids at Tot Rock. In contrast to Betty’s theatrical, post-punk-meets-techno sound, the couple’s new kiddie band, Tone Alley, plays simple, sweet tunes that could have come out of Laurie Berkner's songbook.

Adding Tot Rock to Mamapalooza certainly seems like a natural development. The festival was founded to empower the growing army of women who challenge convention by combining motherhood with a rock & roll sensibility (a possible anthem: “Eat Your Damn Spaghetti,” by mom-band Housewives On Prozac); it makes sense that these mothers would want to make their own kind of music for their kids. But the idea of rockers playing child-specific songs could seem a little ironic, too: A generation ago, there weren’t really separate categories of folk or rock for the littlest listeners. Sure, Raffi was pumping out LPs, and the odd record here and there was produced with kids in mind—Marlo Thomas and Friends’ “Free to Be You and Me,” and Carly and Lucy Simon’s “The Lobster Quadrille”—but most of today’s moms who rock grew up listening to the likes of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and the Stones—even the Clash.

So, why do women like Babin and Palmer go the Tot Rock route? Every musician lugging a stroller alongside her amp seems to have a different take on the matter. According to Rosie Lanziero—a singer, dancer, mother and Mama R.O.X. performer who’s been turning out revamped versions of childhood classics under the name Rosie’s Posies—it’s natural for rock musicians to adopt this new sound after having kids later in life and getting musical inspiration from their new roles as parents. “You sing, you make music, you have a baby, your musicality shifts a bit out of sheer necessity and suddenly, you’ve got the hottest rendition of ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ ever heard!” explains Lanziero .

Some mom rockers have found parenting to be an energizing experience that, in turn, motivates them to (finally) finish writing those songs they started early in their careers. “I’m fulfilling something I left off somewhere along the line,” says singer-songwriter Lisa DeSimone, one half (with her husband, bassist John Conte) of the one-year-old classic-rock kids’ band Leo’s Mom, another Tot Rock act. “It's almost what I was doing 20 years ago, but with kids’ lyrics.”

Lori Bingel, Surf Mamas’ bassist, notes that playing for tots—and especially playing surf-rock—is just plain fun. Surf artists once remade classic melodies for a new generation by putting a rock & roll spin on them, she notes. “Rock audiences back then were much like kids—they just wanted to move their bodies. Our wild, quasi-experimental take on traditional songs is set up for children to basically freak out and dance to. They respond to music and rhythm in all its primal immediacy.”

Mamapalooza takes place May 7–24.