Peter Alsop‘s SONGS TO CHEW

  Today's 'Song To Chew' is CHICKENS FOR PEACE, inspired and loved by thousands of children who want a peaceful world, but no one much listens to them, because they can't vote!  We want to protect our loved ones from wars and violence, but when we don't explain scary things to children, it can create more anxiety for them.  It's not easy, but it IS possible to talk with kids about serious subjects...

    On this week's "Songs To Chew" we'll listen to my friend Tom Hunter's song, FIVE MOMS AND THREE DADS.  It's on my 'Ebenezer's Make Over' album.  Tom presents a different vision for how we can support a more caring and fulfilling society by allowing and supporting more diverse kinds of family groups.  The traditional American 'nuclear' family, with two biological parents and their offspring, is...

    Today's short, little 'Song To Chew' is called ANIMAL CRACKERS.  It exemplifies how children act out their anger while they're playing.  When angry, hurt or sad feelings aren't allowed to be expressed directly, they will surface again, often in less healthy ways.  Healthy parents can set clear limits for children about what is okay and what isn't, and still allow kids to express all their feel...

     The SONG we'll CHEW today, from my 'Asleep At The Helm' album, is "THE ONE ABOUT THE BIRD IN THE CAGE' written by Rutthy Taubb.  It's about a man who keeps his "bird" in a cage, dependent on only him.  He feeds her, owns her, says he's going to teach her how to fly, and to sing, but he will have to clip her wings.  And she buys his story and loves him, but then wakes up to find that she is un...

    Our song today is called "AAARGH!", from my live concert album "Family Roles".  It's for all the 'family heroes' out here in the world, often the 'first borns', who have learned to seek approval from our parents.  We grow up feeling that we need to be perfect, but striving for perfection can become an obsession, and then everything we do becomes a test of our worth.  We have to study hard and...

    Our 'Song To Chew' today, PEEL BACK THE SKIN, was written by my friend Stuart Stotts.  He sings for grown-ups and kids in schools about how we can help each other live happier, healthier lives.  I really love this song because it makes a really important point.  When we hurt ourselves, before we put on a bandage, we have to make sure the wound is clean, or it won't heal properly.  And when I s...

    Have you ever noticed how much 'name-calling' goes on when cultural and social change is in the air?  I thought today we might chew on a Tedd Judd and Sandy Pliskin song I recorded on my "Ebenezer's Make Over" album.  It's called YOU AIN'T BEEN DOIN' NOTHIN' IF THEY HAVEN'T CALLED YOU GAY!  The form is based on a song written by Eliot Kenin back in 1982 called "You Ain't Been Doing Nothing If...

   Today we'll listen to a song written and sung by Holly Near, from our "Ebenezer's Make Over" album.  She wrote FOOLISH NOTION in 1980, and it's still completely relevant today.  Here we are, 40 years later, still asking the same, age-old question; "Why do we kill people, who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?" We'll chew on that idea after the song! I've never hit any of m...

    I have a friend who refuses to say "good-bye".  She says "it sounds like we'll never see each other again!"  So today's "Song To Chew" is AU REVOIR, from my "Uh-Oh!" album, because "au revoir" in French means "until I see you again!"  Much less scary!  Separation from someone we love, can bring up fears that we might not see that person again; that we might find ourselves all alone and abandon...

    On this week’s episode of SONGS TO CHEW, we have a couple of short songs to chew on.  In my family of origin, we grew-up with a lot of 'teasing' and 'making fun' of each other.  Everyone in our family was 'fair game' as a target, and sometimes we'd all laugh so hard that we'd start crying.  Most often, our clumsy attempts at being clever, were just dumb and ridiculous, and a bit cruel, and we...

    Our 'Song To Chew' this week is called "Dyin' To Be Thin".  I wrote it as the title song for a 1986 NOVA documentary on anorexia and bulimia that won an Iris Award for excellence.  In the US, an estimated 8 million people suffer from anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating disorders and that includes at least three out of every 100 adolescent girls.  "Dyin' To Be Thin" was used in a musical version...

    Today's Song To Chew from my Fan Club Favorites album, has been a big hit in junior high schools all across this country!  It's called LET'S TRADE BUTTS, so of course, it's humorous. When teens are asked about their bodies, they often express self-criticism, and strong feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and shame.  Our adolescent years are difficult because our bodies AND our role in society are...

    Today our 'Song To Chew' is sung by an ecological activist, Snowy the Frostman!  The kids and I are hanging out at the mall during the holiday season, listening to Snowy 'stutter-sing' his way through "G-GEE IT'S WARM OUT HERE" from my "Chris Moose Holidays" album. It's about climate change and global warming!  "So why does Snowy the Frostman stutter?", you may ask. I think 'stuttering' sounds...

    Let's chew on the 'Wonderful Diversity of Human Sexuality' with MY SECRET, a song from my very first album.  I often use humor in my songs to share tidbits of information that I've found valuable.  This song is loaded with bad puns and exaggerations.  We humans have a huge range of diverse sexual behaviors, many of which are common, but there are some secrets that people hide, out of fear that...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE, about having hope when things look 'the darkest'.  Hope is a very powerful force in our human world.  Our attitude can limit us when we're negative about ourselves, but it can also expand and open doors for us, when we're optimistic and hopeful about our future.  Our expectations actually have an effect on what does happen!  One of the many wond...

    Today's Song To Chew is YOU GET A LITTLE EXTRA WHEY YOU WATCH TV, from my 1983 "Wha D'Ya Wanna Do?" album.  It's about all the hidden messages delivered to us constantly through our televisions and internet.  Commercials and news and sit-coms model for us how the rest of the world around us operates, right?  But we see what the producers and marketers want us to see!  Have you noticed how extr...

    Today on 'Songs To Chew' we'll listen to a song called SO LONG, and talk about sadness and loss and grieving.  We know that things in our lives have beginnings and middles and ends, and so it is with people.  Leaving people, places and things behind can be scary and sad and exciting all at the same time.  Sometimes leaving things or people that created problems for us becomes even more complic...

    Today's Song To Chew is called "STICK MY NECK OUT" from my "Grow It At Home" album.  It's easy to spot things in our world that need to work better.  When we see them, we say, "Hey!  That's not okay!"  But as kids we learned "Don't rock the boat!  Mind your own business!"  But I think, it IS our business to think up better ways to do things and speak up about how to fix 'em!  If we don't do it...

    This week's Song To Chew is a pun-filled satirical song, I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND, DEAR, from my 'Fan Club Favorites' album.  It holds up some of our 'male behaviors' in the hope that we might see ourselves a bit more clearly.  It's sung by remorseful man who tries to explain to his lover, why he's leaving her and going back home to his wife and family.  But alas!  Behaviors have consequences, an...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' was recorded live in concert at the Ice House in Pasadena, California.  The full title is "Stuck On You (From Sniffin' Glue)", so you know it's not your every day, run-of-the-mill love song!  It's full of puns.  One reviewer said it's about "adolescent heartbreak, from having to play second fiddle to a tube of glue."  It's not unusual for someone to fall in love with an...

     I released GET ON HOME on my "Camping With Dads" album to help kids understand why folks in Malibu decided to tear down an old dam up in their hills.  It tells about the steelhead trout struggling to 'get on home' from the ocean, back up the stream where it started life, and the rain drop wondering how it can 'get on home' to the ocean, after traveling in a cloud, then falling onto the Malibu...

    Today's song, LIFELINE, is from my "Fan Club Favorites" album.  When my Grandmother came to live with us in California, it presented us with challenges, and an opportunity to have some blessed intergenerational time with each other.  As our own children grow up and begin to go out into the world on their own, our parents or older relatives begin to need our help.  We then face tough decisions...

    Today's Song To Chew is SONICAL DIGITAL MUSICAL BOX, a functional song from my "Camping With Dads" album.  For anyone who wonders where the piano, horn section and electric guitars on the song actually come from, since we're on a camping trip up in the mountains!  My songs usually have content that helps listeners find more balance in their lives, but some songs like this, are just silly or fu...

    This week's Song To Chew is GOOD TIME, sung by a lonely man who picks up a lonely woman in a bar.  It's an old story, played out thousands of nights in thousands of cities.  He feels empty during sex, and sad and lonely afterwards, and he only came out to have a "Good Time".  Seduction and the search for sex can become a way of life.  If we can get someone else to "go all the way" with us, the...

    For today's Song To Chew, I borrowed a tune from a song written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work, "My Grandfather's Clock".  You'll probably recognize the tune, but it's not about my Grandfather, it's about my Dad and my childhood.  I love using humor to address loaded subjects, so let's take a look at how porn affects us and our attitudes about sex.  From "Fan Club Favorites"  and my "Songs On Sex...