Oregon Music News

Welcome to the kids page on oregonmusicnews.com!  I’m really excited to share the great music for kids and families that’s available in and around Portland with you all!  As a mom, I’m always on the hunt for

Belinda and Hova of Greasy Kid Stuff at Baby Loves Disco

music, both live and recorded that our whole family can enjoy.  Belinda and Hova, the DJs behind the legendary radio show, Greasy Kid Stuff, have brought families together with music for years!  We got to visit recently where I learned of their history, inspiration and their interviews with great artists like Jonathan Richman.

SS: Five years ago when I had my first son, I felt there was a disconnect between the kids culture I knew was out there and that I craved and what was accessible for children and families.  I know that I was as horrified by Raffi as I was boy’s clothing with teddy bears and fire trucks.  Was that your experience when you had Georgia?

GKS: When we had Georgia we had already been doing Greasy Kid Stuff for almost nine years. She was actually born while our friends were filling in for us, DJing Greasy Kid Stuff, and she had her first Birthday Holler an hour after she was born. The DJs played Willie Nelson! We knew there were great alternatives to traditional kid music, as well as the music that was being marketed to kids. But you know, we had WFMU’s entire freeform music library at our fingertips.

Funny you should mention Raffi. At one point when we first started, we made these little flyers advertising our show and as a kind of a tagline we wrote, “Our pledge to parents: No Raffi ever!” We’re not quite so line-in-the-sand militant now. I mean, we’ve still never played Raffi or anything…. But there are so many kids musicians now claiming to make music that “parents will love too” that the idea of someone just making music for kids – without a knowing wink – is actually kind of appealing. “Real” bands that decide they’ll dumb it down and make a children’s album, singing insincerely about boogers and baby sisters are the real problem.

SS: Can you share a brief history of GKS?

Greasy Kid Stuff was born in the summer of 1995 and raised at fabulous, freeform WFMU, before the Big Bang in children’s’ music. Our specialty was, and still is, to mine the history of music for stuff that’s great for kids, but not necessarily music made for kids. In some ways it was harder back then, because not too many people were creating allegedly “hip” music for kids. Now there are lots of children’s music bands that we play with joy and gusto! Which is good because we have much less time as parents to look for the greasy gem on non-kid albums. Plus we don’t have the luxury of WFMU’s glorious record library. We’re now broadcasting Greasy Kid Stuff’s rebellious teen years on Portland’s alt/rock 94.7fm. It’s still an unpaid labor of love.

I was born in Portland, Hova is from Southern California. We were in New York and New Jersey for 16 years, and did Greasy Kid Stuff kidless for eight of those years. When Georgia was born she was called DJ Waah Waah, and she really has grown up on the radio. We loved WFMU (still do), but we really wanted to be near family and raise our kid here in the Great Northwest, so we moved back in 2004.

SS: So you’ve been at this a while!  What was your initial inspiration to get GKS going?

GKS: We loved WFMU and had volunteered for years. We tried to think of what we could offer that WFMU didn’t have. There was no show for kids, and we thought we could do it. At the time the concept was a little different. We interviewed kids every week and interspersed the best bits from the interviews with songs that made sense. It was a lot of work! We ended up doing fewer interviews and playing more music, and having some regular kid guests — Max and Kate’s Real Life Review, The Pat Fact — as well as stories a friend of ours wrote, Uncle Randy’s Story Minute. It was a two-hour show, with no commercials, so we could go off on musical tangents, play all tap-dancing songs, or do two hours of Dog vs. Cat songs. It was all a lot easier before we had our own kid!

SS:  How Cool!  That sounds so fun!  There’s definitely an affinity between Portland and NYC.  I’ve often heard people call Portland the “New Brooklyn.”  After splitting your years between NYC and the NW, what do you say about the similarities and differences between the two cities, especially in how they relate to life with children?

GKS: I think New York has an unrealistic crush on Portland. They think we’re cute! We just took a trip to NY, and boy, it’s really difficult to be there with a kid. I’m probably not the one to answer this, as I think what NY sees in PDX is pretty shallow.

SS: You were providing great music for children, well before you had your daughter.  How did you get the gig AND why a children’s program over a straight music show?

GKS: WFMU is an all-volunteer station, and we had been volunteering for seven years. Many people volunteer as a step toward getting a show, but we just loved the station. They kept asking if we were interested in doing a show, and one day we decided we were. Hova has great taste in music and knew what was hip; I had a lot of experience with kids. It made sense, so we did it. Hova later had a fantastic freeform music show — kind of “top 40 radio from a parallel universe.” He got to interview John Doe and Joe Strummer. You can still listen to archives of both shows.

SS: And for those unfamiliar, can you fill us in on WFMU?

GKS: Oh man, WFMU is simply the best radio station ever. The DJs don’t get paid, but they are so dedicated and knowledgeable. The station is freeform, which means a show’s genre might be very loosely defined, or not defined at all. I think that helped us a lot — since WFMU was already so diverse, we didn’t feel we needed to stick to one thing for kids. And it really didn’t divide kids and parents, it brought them together. It’s very gratifying, and that’s what keeps us at it, since we still don’t get paid!

SS: I see GKS everywhere!  You’ve been involved in Baby Loves Disco, Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art’s Tiny TBA Festival and much more.  They Might Be Giants have even written a song about you!  Please share with us some of your best gigs AND some of the fun people you’ve had a chance to work with!

GKS: We’ve been so lucky. We feel like the godparents of the new kid music movement. It’s not exactly what we would have raised, but it’s nice to see it do so well. So it’s nice to get some props from people who are rising on the tide that began so many years ago. One of our funnest experiences was going to painter Rodney Alan Greenblat’s house in Soho. His house was exactly like his work, and he played WFMU all the time, and he loved Greasy Kid Stuff. He became our “Artistic Uncle Rodney” and he illustrated all of the compilation CDs we’ve put out. We got to know author/illustrator Lane Smith, who is an amazing kook. We got to interview Patrick McDonnell who had played on WFMU with his punk band long before he started the Mutts comic strip. We interviewed Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground once, and Jonathan Richman a couple times — we’ve always referred to him as the Patron Saint of Greasy Kid Stuff. The first time we met him was amazing: We asked him all the same questions we’d been asking the kids we interviewed — stuff about superpowers and school and pizza — and he loved it! Unfortunately, we later discovered our tape recorder hadn’t been working properly, and all we were able to salvage was a sentence or two from Jonathan and a station ID. Neal Pollack’s always been very kind to us, and we DJ’d a dance party at Powell’s when he was here on his “Alternadad” book tour.

One of our favorite gigs was a “Grease Ball” we organized and hosted at the Wonder Ballroom a few years ago. We had Captain Bogg & Salty and the Jellydots playing music, a stunt-bike dance performance from the Sprockettes and movies from Indiekid Films. Very fun! It was sort of like the You Who shows that have started up recently at Kennedy School. And the T:BA festival is always a blast. I love that kids get to experience weird art and films made for and by kids and modern dance and stuff they don’t usually see. Tiny T:BA is always a surprise until the last minute, but it’s one of our favorite events. It’s nice to do the Greasy Kid Stuff dance parties — and not just because we get paid for them! We love meeting people who love Greasy Kid Stuff, and it’s so cool to do a dance party for people who don’t know GKS. They start to get it after a few songs, and they don’t expect us to play YMCA (though we will if they really want us to). We’re excited to be donating our services to the Community Cycling Center’s Holiday Bike Drive, and we’ll be doing the Children’s Museum’s New Year’s at Noon celebration this year.

SS: I was at the Grease Ball.  That was a blast!  Please let us know if you’re working on anything new or if there is something we can expect.

GKS: We have our third compilation of Greasy greats out this year, perfect for holiday gift giving! Greasy Kid Stuff 3: Even MORE Songs From Inside the Radio (companion to volumes one and two) is filled with our favorite songs from Greasy Kid Stuff. All three CDs are available at Reading Frenzy on SW Oak. Since Greasy Kid Stuff is a labor of love, and we do it in between full-time jobs and parenting, we’re not up to date with our web site, and our Facebook page is slow going, but we do have an e-mail list people can join so we can let them know what we are up to. They can e-mail us at stuffatgreasykidstuffdotnet and we’ll add ‘em to the list!

SS:  Thank You Belinda and Hova for taking the time to chat AND for all that you do for families with Greasy Kid Stuff!  Look forward to continuing the conversation in the near future!

Greasy Kid Stuff can be found on Saturdays, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., on radio station 94/7 Alternative Portland.