Milkshake

I'm not sure if I've ever blogged about this, but I thought it was worth a mention (ahem, name drop).  Back in the day, in the late 80's/early 90's there was a really great local Baltimore band called Beyond Words which eventually morphed into a band called Love Riot.  My band, The Wanting Seed (I played drums), used to play with them often around the local Baltimore area original music club scene.  Ahhh....those were the days.   Two of the folks from Beyond Words/Love Riot were Lisa Matthews and Mikel Gehl.  Not to brag, but pretty much everybody around the local original music scene knew who The Wanting Seed and Beyond Words were.  We were two of the bands that played alot and had good size followings and we played together frequently and hung out.  The local music scene in the 80's and 90's was incredible.  A tight group of folks that supported each other by either playing clubs together and coming out to support each other when they weren't playing their own gigs.  Everybody knew everybody, ya know? 

Fast forward to 2004 when I became a mom and started to notice all the little kid shows on TV.  One of the only one's I could stomach was Barney...nah...just kidding!  It's called Jack's Big Music Show and I always thought it was really cool that they would have *real* musicians as guests (like Sweet Honey in the Rock, Cathy Richardson, Lisa Loeb, Yolanda Adams, Buddy Guy etc.).  And one of the best children's artists around, Laurie Berkner, who has been called "the Ani DiFranco of kid's music".  There were a few songs from the show done by bands such as Hot Peas and Butter that were actually REALLY REALLY catchy.  Even though it was music about numbers and letters, from a drummer/musician perspective, it freakin' rocked out!!  I always had to chuckle because I went from drummer in a really cool original, regionally well known, band to jammin' out to a band called Hot Peas and Butter! LOL!!

Ok, so getting back to the point, one of the bands that I really, really liked was a band called Milkshake.  There was one Jack's Big Music Show episode that I had DVR's for about 8 months called "Marching Band" where Jack and Mary (the characters) can't go out and march because it's raining outside.  Milkshake performs a "video" called "Sunshine" on that episode and it really and truly a happy, fun song.  I watched this episode almost every day for 6 months because Shaye was ADDICTED to it.  Seriously, every day she would sit for 30 minutes glued to the TV to watch this show.  So, I heard this song and saw this video a lot.  A lot.  Oh, many, many, many times.  I used to think, "Why do those people look so damn familiar to me?", but I just brushed it off and thought, like me, they were probably once really cool pop/alternative musicians who now have kids and have to make a living or put a new deck on the back of their house (a.k.a. selling out).  About a year ago, I was flipping through Cookie Magazine and saw a little blurb about this cute little band and almost fell off of the couch.  Milkshake was Lisa Matthews and Mikel Gehl!!!!!!!  NO WONDER THEY LOOKED FAMILIAR!!!  

My old friends (that I have long since lost contact with) are now married (not to each other) and are a mommy and a daddy and write AWESOME kid's music!!!!  For those of you with young children and have seen the show, you will probably know them when you watch this video from You Tube.  Every time I hear this song now, I just have to laugh.  Someday soon I'll be taking my own kids back to Baltimore and instead of hanging out in the hip local original music scene dives, I'll be taking them to see my old friends Lisa and Mikel at the local kidfest!

Milkshake on Wiki

Milkshake's website