A copy of Rockabye Baby! Lullabye Renditions of Guns N’ Roses just landed on my desk.
And yes, “Mr. Brownstone” — a song about how cool heroin is — is on there.
What the fuck are these people thinking? The Rockabye Baby series turns familiar pop and rock tunes into kid-friendly lullabies. It’s supposed to be a way for “cool” parents to turn their kids on to good music (instead of having them listen to the crap that passes for children’s music).
In theory, it’s not really a good idea. Why not just let your kids hear the Beatles, the Beach Boys and U2? Do they really need to listen to these — as Rockabye refers to its releases — “blanket-soft lullabies”?
In practice, it’s an even worse idea. Some of the releases have been curios for music fans. Radiohead, Pink Floyd and even Coldplay made for some interesting, if not exactly enjoyable, listens.
But the Metallica, Ramones, Nirvana and Led Zeppelin outings showed just how ill-advised this whole series is.
Yet none of the past releases can prepare you for the GNR album, which comes out on November 10.
Songs include “Welcome to the Jungle” (about how Los Angeles turns everyone who goes there into sluts and junkies), “Paradise City” (about a mythical land where girls get naked, and the booze and drugs flow freely) and “Mr. Brownstone” (about heroin addiction sung from the point of view of someone who sees nothing wrong with shooting thousands of dollars worth of soul- and life-sucking junk into their veins).
Sweet dreams, kids! —Michael Gallucci
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2009.
Well, you can always go back to singing about when the ‘bough breaks and the cradle will fall’ (very reassuring to your little ones I’m sure)
good point, good dad. or singing about the plague! i happen to love the Led Zeppelin album from the rockabye series. a bit prudish, aren’t we Mr. Gallucci?
You live in cleveland where the norm is smoking cheap cigarettes and wearing a browns jersey over a 40 lb gut, drinking on a sunday until your drunk, crying and laying on the front lawn cuz your shitty team lost again. thats a much better role model
I’d rather have my kid’s listen to this than that kidz bop crap…now that’s poison.
and…did you actually listen to the record and notice there are no vocals? Unless the instrumentation conveys drug abuse, I think the kids are going to be okay.
Why not judge this album on its musical merits, and not by the original recordings?
Seems you just don’t like Guns n Roses, and used this as a platform to complain some more? Maybe?
As a peace corps volunteer I have found some reassurance in the fact that the children in third world countries are behaved and civilised, despite growing up in societies where they are constantly bombarded with the horrors of humanity. Starvation, drugs, natural disasters, etc… Whenever I return home I find that the fat lazy youth of America stares uneducated at the world with doe eyes and much like the coyote from looney tunes is sent into adolescense running off the end of a cliff only to be handed a book on gravity… Maybe letting children know how the world works at a young age isn’t such a bad thing at all.
This review sucks. There aren’t even lyrics on the titles listed! Haha… Did this knob even listen to the cd? Someone call his boss!
you sir are an idiot
hey now, be nice, this may be the most traffic that has come on his shitty blog anyway.
wow mike, people are loving this article. welcolm to the jungle
sorry, heroin must make you a bad speller .
are you fucking retarded?
the songs about how BAD heroin is.
or are you too fucking stupid too look that up?
DAHR.