We have a lot of very young friends and family here at Amoeba and once in a while we like to put on a special show just for them.  And what would make your average music-loving 3 year-old happier than Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang live on a Saturday at Amoeba?  You tell me.  Total excitement was what we got, along with a lot of farm animal impersonations and tiny tots dancing their diapers off.  It was a crazy show!

Gwendolyn has two musical careers: her “serious” adult career, making mystical psych-folk albums in the vein of Joanna Newsom, and her wide-eyed, pig-tailed, knee-stockinged career as Gwendolyn of the Good Time Gang, her wildly popular kids-music band.  The Good Time Gang just released their new CD, Get Up and Dance, and they’re well on their way to becoming one of the hottest kids-music acts in the land.  Sometimes your part-time job takes over…

It was an early Saturday show, but the kids showed up in droves (parents in tow) and there was a din of confused yammering and socializing in the mosh pit down in front of the stage as one o’clock approached.  Joined by her husband Quasar on the teeny-weeny drum kit and several members of local band The 88, Gwendolyn burst onstage and created the frenzied excitement that the kids love her for.  She kicked things off with her crowd-pleasing hit “Farm Animal Friends” (the kids got to make the farm animal noises), which is the equivalent for this crowd of the Who kicking off with “Won’t Get Fooled Again”: turning it right up to eleven.  That’s rock & roll!

Things only got crazier from there on out… we learned that “Red means Stop… Green means Go!”  Go crazy, of course.  Telling the Gwendolyn kids to “Get Up And Dance” was like telling a bunch of puppies to run around and bark.  They didn’t need a lot of encouraging.  The backup singers shimmied, the bass player boogied, and the kids went nuts!  We got a ballad about snuggling (which is like when the Who plays “Behind Blue Eyes”.

Finally, The Good Time Gang said goodbye and tried to leave and the kids wouldn’t let ‘em… so they encored with “The Selfish Shellfish”, their other animal-oriented crowd pleaser.  It’s pretty catchy, I must say.  The kids got what they came for and left with smiles on their faces.  And as we say here at Amoeba, the kids are alright!