Baby Tool

On a recent perusal of the Toolarmy website I found myself in the message boards. At that time I found a link to Baby Rock Records and, more specifically, an upcoming album of Tool songs redone as children's lullabies. In fact, they seem to have a healthy catalogue of similar albums set to be released, each dedicated to many popular mainstream rock acts, acts traditionally not associated with children's songs.

And all I can say to this discovery is: Holy fucking shit! That is so fucking cool!

It sounds a bit strange, but there were always songs in the Tool catalogue that I could imagine getting treatments as full-on lullabies. Naturally, I never actually expected an album with such treatments to get made.

Oh come on, Michael, what songs of Tool's could you possibly have thought would make soothing lullabies?

Well, first and foremost, I always thought that "Third Eye" off of 1996's Ænima would make a great lullaby. With lyrics like "So good to see you, I missed you so much. So glad it's over, I missed you so much," it has a certain soothing quality about it. Definitely songs like "Parabol" and it's follow-up "Parabola" off of my favorite Tool album, Lateralus, could be envisioned as lullabies very easily.

Unfortunately, because this album, and all the other albums in the Baby Rock Records catalogue still awaiting release, I haven't actually had a chance to hear what the final product sounds like. I'm very hopeful that they will come out sounding nothing short of amazing, though I'm guessing that the lyrics to many of the songs in that series will probably be omitted and there will be no vocals at all. That's just a guess and I hope that I am wrong because a lot of these songs have such powerful lyrics, which I think might account for why they lend themselves to lullabies so readily. I guess time will only tell what the albums sound like.

I'm pretty sure I'll try to track a few of these albums down nonetheless. Not so much for my own listening pleasure, though I could probably derive great pleasure fom being lulled into sleep to a lullaby Tool CD or a lullaby Radiohead, or, hell, just about any album out of that catalogue, but rather because someday when I'm a father myself I will want to teach my kid a thing or two about good musical taste and what better way to get them some proper musical appreciation than to start them out listening to a Tool CD geared toward children? How fucking cool would that be?

So, thank you to bastardometer for bringing this unique Tool CD and, indeed, a very unique catalogue of albums, to my attention.

The Rockabye Baby: Lullaby Renditions Of Tool CD ships on September 19, 2006. Other albums in the series drop throughout the fall and into spring of next year. Tool will be playing live at Rexall Place here in Edmonton on August 25 and if you look at row 27 on the floor at that show you just might see the happiest Tool fan in the world that night.