By George Boyland
Ah, the burgeoning awareness of a patient unborn brings the slow, sleepy realisation that it's about to see the sun. Embryo by Pink Floyd.
The protagonist in Jimi Hendrix's Belly Button Window takes a more anticipatory stance, so to speak. This little bundle of flesh has doubts, and doesn't feel wanted. Their are hints of reincarnation, but our embryo decides to get on with things and laugh in the face of anyone frowning at him. Good decision.
This poor lad didn't get off to a great start; his father off to die in WWII even before he was born; entered the world deaf, dumb and blind; with abusive relatives on top of all that. But somehow he discovered a skill that set him above the hordes. 'It's A Boy' by The Who celebrates the birth of Tommy Walker, Pinball Wizard.
In Kate & Anna McGarrigle's First Born, we understand that this chap enjoyed a significantly decent arrival. Obviously worshipped, young Rufus was given every chance, including the silver spoon that introduces the tune. There's even a verse for Martha, but it's really about her mother's adoration of her first baby, who turned out to possess a unique set of talents.
Sly And The Family Stone even back then tried to confront a perennial problem with Babies Makin' Babies. That's what we used to call 'social awareness'. Now isn't that a quaint concept? Nowadays, you'd think young people would be smarter, better educated, and mostly they are, but the ones who fall through the net, attracting society's scorn, tend to be younger … and younger. There have always been troubled kids, right back through time. Kids whose only solace is with each other, and yet there are sponsored self-righteous organisations intent on uneducating them, leaving them to the folly of their own desires, and then castigating them for the outcome, keeping them in bewildered poverty and pouring on the shame.
You see, here's a problem. Parents are sometimes too young to accept their new responsibilities, and sometimes it's the young mother who's left carrying the can. The young father feels he's missing out on life, and he may be right, but that's what grown-ups call consequences. Charlie Feathers tells us in Bottle To The Baby how he comes home at four in the morning after a night of innocent rockin' and immediately gets dealt the baby so that his young wife can catch some sleep. He doesn't seem to be complaining, and accepts the facts, but there's one fact he should be made aware of; he's all the baby's got in the world. Without him; nothing.
Swamp Dogg blends blues with funk, soul and R'n'B to voice his suspicions about the genetic background of the baby he's bringing up. Some things just don't look right, like the baby's blue eyes. But, that doesn't mean a thing, they could come from any gene in the parents' distant ancestry. It's like a hundred to one shot winning the Grand National. It happens … once in a long while. By the end of Dogg's Mama's Baby, Daddy's Maybe, he's decided he doesn't want to know the answer. Good man, that baby didn't ask to be born.
How well were you born? People who have nothing work like Trojans so that their babies can have a better life. Numerous parents moved across the world so that their children could have a future. It's happening now. And as hard as it is to travel it's as hard to be accepted in a foreign land. Sometimes the rich won't help their own offspring on the basis that they had to break their backs so why shouldn't their kids do the same. Some parents have only pennies which they have to hang on to and the kids are sent out to work. There are tiny children who realise very early, that they have to go out and get their own. Judy Henske takes Billie Holiday's God Bless The Child and runs with it, wringing out every ounce of emotion a poor ragarse could possibly express.
Occasionally a woman is asked to not give birth to the child in her belly. Outsiders, business people with in this case vested interests, even family, for financial reasons. Lauryn Hill in her To Zion tells us about having to face down the naysayers who didn't want her to 'ruin' her career by having a child. She was focussed, aware that inside her was someone unique, a gift. It's a woman's body and a woman's choice, as it should be. The song expresses not just the love but celebrates the sense of privilege she felt for Zion having chosen her.
Lauryn Hill
Here's one of those tales you come across in video nasties. Or should it be fairy tales? A family that is beyond dysfunctional. Somewhere between Cinderella and Sawney Bean. There's a baby, and a toy, and pins and . . . The White Stripes. The Hardest Button To Button leads us down a grim path. Maybe they think we need a jolt, such as the Brothers Grimm once provided.
Yes, it really happened. There was no maternity leave. Mothers had to carry their babies out into the searing heat of the cotton fields, bent double, back breaking, fingers swollen and cut, with one eye on the cradle and the other on the straw boss, who could have been the father. Who knew? Maybe her husband? Maybe the boss? Maybe the back door man, or even the plantation owner. Choice wasn't something that arrived on the breeze in the Mississippi Delta, despite Lead Belly's fond reminiscences in his Cotton Fields.
Children always want to be with the parents, no matter what. Good times, bad times, it matters not to a kid. Offer them a better life and they will refuse in horror. They just want their mother's attention and their father's strong arms. The familiar. Nothing more required, especially for toddlers. The Pretenders' song Kid catches this phenomenon, and mixes in the worries of the parent that they're doing right by the child. Clever stuff, but a sharp observation, too.
Here we are at the end. Has it all been a dream? Yes it has really, according to Spirit's Dream Within A Dream. We are born, and in the flash of the love in your mammy's eye we are gone. Some of us are fortunate, while most of us aren't. Don't waste your time…
The Infant A-List Playlist:
Pink Floyd – Embryo
Jimi Hendrix – Belly Button Window *
The Who – It's a Boy
Kate and Anna McGarrigle – First Born
Sly and the Family Stone – Babies Makin' Babies
Charlie Feathers – Bottle To The Baby
Swamp Dogg – Mama's Baby Daddy's Maybe
Judy Henske – God Bless The Child
Lauryn Hill – To Zion
The White Stripes – Hardest Button To Button
Lead Belly – Cotton Fields
The Pretenders – Kid
Spirit – Dream Within a Dream
* Hendrix not on YouTube, but on Vimeo here:
The Big Bouncing B-List Playlist:
The Grateful Dead – Morning Dew
Jonathan Richman – Not Yet Three
Natalie Merchant – Wonder
Cream – Mother's Lament
Brandi Carlile – The Mother
Peter Blegvad - King Strut
Cocteau Twins – Pitch The Baby
Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch & Alison Krauss – Go To Sleep You Little Baby
Paul Weller – Moon On Your Pyjamas
Captain Beefheart – The Spotlight Kid
Free – Guardian Of The Universe
Ivor Cutler – Baby Sits
Slapp Happy – The Unborn Byron
Nick Cope – The Baby's Done A Poo * (no permission to embed in playlist but shown below)
Guru’s Wildcard Pick:
Everything But The Girl – These Early Days
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations from last week's topic: The mighty waaahh: songs about babies. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
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