State of the Reviewer: The Famous Final Scene

Thirteen years ago, my son Ben started to listen to music while he ate breakfast. I would throw on a Sesame Street CD or one of the homemade “birthday CDs” comprised of pop tunes and the Wiggles. I also printed out the playlist from iTunes — and Ben would mull it over, looking at the cover art and telling me which songs “lacked” representative illustration. I never imagined that years later, those early selections would lead to more than 750 event previews, live event and music reviews, and interviews, as well as commentary about children’s music and more.

I recently alerted artists who have contacted me in the past two months that I am done for 2019. If their video, song, or album had a 2019 release date, I apologized but the shop is closed for the year. More to the point, I am phasing down my children’s music portfolio. It’s been coming for the past year, as Ben has long aged-out of the demographic. And his younger brother (9) prefers modern pop (think Imagine Dragons) and sighs heavily if I suggest bringing new, unplayed kids CDs on our road trips. Regular viewers of my blog see the number of posts dropping, year over year. That’s not by accident.

In my oft-told tale, family acquaintance Uncle Rock (Robert Burke Warren) began recording children’s music and we bought his first CD. When “Rock and Roll Babysitter” was played on Bill Childs…