Peter Alsop‘s SONGS TO CHEW

    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...

    Today we'll listen to 2 songs; LOOK AT THE CEILING, written from the point of view of a young girl who dissociates in order to survive her sexual abuse.  It's used in treatment programs, classes, training workshops, and private practice for adults and teens.  Therapists have used this song for years to gently get this subject out onto the table, and 'break the ice' for clients and women's grou...

    Today we'll listen to a song that prescribes a cure for sexual harassment!  It's been wildly acclaimed by thousands of feminists as we continue the fight to stop violence against women!   From my "Fan Club Favorites" album we'll listen to GIVE YOURSELF A HAND!  It's was inspired by a friend of mine, Dr. Betsy Stanko, a professor of Sociology who's been described as a radical feminist criminolo...

    There are lots of entanglements in our closest relationships.  We make commitments, and bring our own baggage with us, packed with our fears, hopes and stories.  In some cases, when the honeymoon's over and the work begins, we feel constrained and unable to unwind from each other with nowhere to go for help.  We strike out physically or verbally, and one or both of us may look for someone else...

    Do you wonder what to do when the world goes crazy all around you?  For today's SONG TO CHEW, we'll listen to ANTHROPOLOGIST from my "Camping With Dads" album and share a technique I use when this happens to me.  It's my 'tip for the week!'  Just because we're bored or stuck somewhere that we don't really want to be, why get all uptight and angry, when instead, we can just put on our Anthropol...

    Did you ever wish that you'd done something, that you didn't do?  Then later on, it was too late?  Today's 'Song To Chew' is THE DRAGON WHO FLIES BY MY WINDOW.  It's about 'remorse'.  A sign on my wall says "Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down!"  Good advice, but if we don't get our wings built fast enough, we quickly learn to be more cautious.  Feeli...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is 'CLEAN OUT THE ATTIC' from my 'Chris Moose Holidays' album. My family had an old wooden chest in our attic, full of my great grandmother's lace doilies that my Mom didn't want us kids to ruin by spilling juice on them, so she kept them locked in the attic, starched and ironed all throughout our childhood.  When she died, we opened the chest, and discovered the beauty...

    We've had a momentous week here in America, so this week's "Song To Chew" is "WE CAN BOUNCE" from my CAMPING WITH DADS album.  I often write kid songs that help parents understand important things about their kids.  Today's song is about some of the things I learned from my Dad, that can help and inform kids about their parents.  Even though my Dad gave me "good advice', I still had to learn t...

    Our SONG TO CHEW today is "Some Gifts" from my CAMPING WITH DADS album.   I make a distinction between giving a 'gift' and giving a 'present'.  A child comes home from school and 'presents' Mom with a "birthday crown" made of yellow construction paper, taped together with glitter and dried pieces of gold elbow macaroni glued on it.  Mom wears it around the house; maybe even to the store, becau...

    It's a very different Christmas this year, due to the isolated distancing we observe in response to the threat of CoVid.  I thought we might listen to "When Jesus Was A Kid" from my CHRIS MOOSE HOLIDAYS album to helps us focus on caring about others, sung magnificently by my daughter Willow.   While listening to a conservative Christian talk radio show, where the host made mean-spirited commen...

    Today our song is "Christmas Cheer", from my CHRIS MOOSE HOLIDAYS album, sung by my nephew, Marshall McDaniel when he was a wee-little tyke!  "Christmas Cheer" is the code name for 'alcohol during the holidays'.  It's a tradition in many cultures, and for generations kids have watched adults celebrate with alcohol, and then do stupid and dangerous things.  Most kids just accept it.  They feel...

    Today's song is 'unusual'.  Actually, many of my songs fit into that category!  "Buy Me Something" is on my CHRIS MOOSE HOLIDAYS album.  It's great for discussing the trappings of capitalism, and how we and our children can become trapped and addicted to shopping for things obsessively and compulsively.  After hearing this song, parents would often say, "My children already know this song!  Th...

   This week begins our 'Happy Holidays', so from my 'Chris Moose Holidays' album, we'll listen to "The Night Before Hannukah", about Santa showing up in a Jewish home.  I received an invitation to a 'Weinukkah' celebration from a couple of wonderful actor friends.  I asked what a 'Weinukkah' celebration was, and they said an old German refugee woman told them she didn’t know she was Jewish when s...

    On SONGS TO CHEW today we'll check out "Let's Go On Safari, Into My Sister's Nose".  As a performer, if I want to get kids' attention, I just have to mention "boogers" or "underwear", and they'll start laughin'!  It never fails!  This is a great song to let our imaginations run wild, and it also gives us a chance to think about 'teasing'.  Teasing is "playing with someone else's pain without t...

   Today we'll listen to a song called "Eulogy".  It touches on how we feel when there's been a significant loss in our lives. Fans tell me they've played this song at funerals for their loved ones. With all the CoVid deaths soaring around us, our mortality is very present in ways that it wasn't before this pandemic hit.  Death is very scary for most of us. I've lived with Death standing just off...

   Today we'll listen to a song I recorded back in 1981 on my UNIFORMS album, "Hopelessly Heterosexual".  I first played it in public at the 5th National Conference of the National Organization of Men Against Sexism.  I'd written lots of songs about gender and human sexuality, and I wanted to make sure that my humor wasn't inadvertently stepping on anyone's toes, or being politically insensitive. ...

    On today's SONGS TO CHEW podcast we'll listen to "Dads 'N Boys" from my CAMPING WITH DADS album.  We grow-up in patriarchal cultures from all around the world, and we learn that 'real men' NEVER do anything that a girl does, like 'caring for others'.  We learn that's 'not cool!'  This song lists many traits that Dads and boys have, and it reminds us that to build a more caring world, Dads and...

    Today we'll listen to a song I didn't write.  It's by my friend Stuart Stotts who plays one of the dads on my CAMPING WITH DADS album.  It's called "Different Choice".  The hidden messages we learn about male privilege and entitlements are so subtle and deeply woven into the cultures we grew up with, that it's difficult to "tease" them out of the fabric of our childhood.  CAMPING WITH DADS is...