***Daddy A Go Go***

With songs named “For Those About To Walk, We Salute You”, and “Pink Floyd Saves Hugh Manatee”, and a cover of a Spinal Tap tune (yes, that Spinal Tap), you know something goofy’s goin’ on. “It’s a kids’ world, yeah yeah yeah, and everybody else just gets to dance in it,” goes a line from Daddy A Go Go’s newest CD, Eat Every Bean and Pea on Your Plate. From the CD title’s pun to John Boydston’s running standup act, this is definitely a kids’ CD, and it is guaranteed to cause third graders to both giggle and air guitar.

Boydston, an Atlanta resident and Oklahoma native, has released four CDs on his own Boyd’s Tone Records and his fifth is a full-on rock and roll extravaganza, powering along with the same stumbly swagger that fellow Georgians the Black Crowes and the Georgia Satellites learned from the Stones. While grownups play spot the influences (listen for ACDC, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones, Lulu, Pink Floyd, the Replacements, the B52s, Spinal Tap, and the Beatles), kids can laugh out loud at songs about having to play on the crappiest little league team ever, brothers and sisters who bug the snot out of you, and the album-closing saga of a guy who absolutely cannot make a rhyme. With two twangy instrumentals rounding out the set, this is the perfect album for any guitar loving pre-teen.

It’s great to find a kids’ musician who rocks out unapologetically, who believes in the universal appeal of the powerchord, and who delivers his message without a smidgen of self-consciousness. Daddy A Go Go…[insert cannon fire here], we salute you.