Tickle Tune Typhoon - Hug the Earth (Tickle Tune Typhoon Recording Co. # TTT CA-002, 1985)

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Tickle Tune Typhoon was kind of a dumpster fire. Part children's entertainment machine, part Pacific Northwest progressive movement, the Seattle-based group released several albums and concert videos in the 1980s. Made up primarily of upper-class white people from the Seattle arts scene, their material, while musically above-average for a children's album, ends up being equal parts exploitation and cultural appropriation.

Consider a staple of their live shows: While performing a song from another album called "Everyone is Differently Abled," they bring out a man with no arms who plays the drums with his feet. This is not only impressive but arguably important to present to an audience of children being raised in the 80s. However, after the song is done, they simply put him away and their actual drummer returns. Wouldn't the truly enlightened thing to do be to hire the armless drummer full-time? It boggles the mind that Def Leppard understands this but the authors of "Everyone is Differently Abled" do not.

The uncomfortable handling of culture and diversity continues on this album. "Got the Rhythm," for instance, poorly apes Cuban pop; it could be a Miami Sound Machine B-side but for all the wrong reasons. A Ghanian children's song, "Kye Kye Kule," is inexplicably present, with no explanation of the non-English lyrics, as if to say "look at how funny these people talk!" Tickle Tune's guitarist, a tall, pasty red-headed man spends most of the album ripping off Ed Wynn's "Perfect Fool" character voice. The album's closer, "Oh Cedar Tree," is no doubt an actual Native American song from hundreds of years ago, but when performed by city folk it just seems so wrong.

It's just another ham-handed children's album until the last few tracks, though. Suddenly, the chorus of "Garbage Blues" exclaims "recycle! It's a better way." That's fine, but the verse preceding it mentions little that we recycle even now - "crusty old gristle hanging off a dish rag," "moldy old beans," "a melon and some doggie doo." Perhaps they couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "compost?" "The Family Song" wheels out various tropes about families that don't conform to a stereotypical standard. One verse describes a mom who's a doctor and a dad who's a nurse -- one struggles to think of any reasonable human being who would find that worthy of their ridicule, much less require a song to defend it. Another verse seems to come within a thousand feet of saying a father now lives with his gay partner, but they don't have the courage to specify it. This is followed by the title track, a largely forgettable and generic thing about how we're all part of the human race, which one assumes is what gives them license to rip off Ghana, Ed Wynn, Native Americans, and Gloria Estefan.

Oh, well. At least one can still enjoy the opening number in The Current Year, which invites children to "ride the tickle train to Tickle Town," right?

What?

Oh. Never mind.

"Hug the Earth" was released in 1985 by Tickle Tune Typhoon Recording Co. and is catalog number TTT CA-002.

00:00 Uncommon Ephemera Title Card
00:04 Tickle Train
03:31 Got the Rhythm
07:38 Skin
10:34 Doin the Robot
13:54 Kye Kye Kule
16:18 Sea Song
18:32 A Place in the Choir
21:30 Super Kids
25:43 Knickerbocker
29:06 If You're Happy
32:11 Garbage Blues
35:56 The Family Song
38:57 Hug the Earth
42:12 Oh Cedar Tree

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Tickling and Bondage
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