As rock star dream fades, "Kindie" takes off

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - Luke stands on his seat and strums wildly on his copycat rock guitar. Isabel and Jasper pogo and body slam with the best of them in the mosh pit. Potential crowd surfers and stage divers are held back by minders.

The gig is in south London, the star is "Mr Ray", and the audience are mostly between three and four years old.

This is "Kindie" -- a combination of kids' and "indie" or independent music and a genre which is taking hold of British pre-schoolers and bidding to oust the grinding of "The Wheels on the Bus" from the family car CD player.

Mr Ray (www.mrray.com) has played with rock gods like Bruce Springsteen and Meat Loaf, but now, he says wistfully after his London gig, "as the rock and roll star dream fades, it is great to be the soundtrack to families' lives".

The 41-year-old musician from New Jersey in the United States is part of an emerging set of alternative or Kindie musicians who want their own children to enjoy real music that engages both them and their parents.

"I'm starting to write more for families than just for kids," said Mr Ray, aka Ray Andersen, a father and Kindie rock star and the man behind such tracks as "Gimme a Hi-5" and "George the Groovy Giraffe".

"There are more and more mums and dads showing up at gigs with their kids."

With song titles like "Kalien the Alien" and "I'd be a Dinosaur", Andersen knows his market, and plays right to it.

"If I could be anything I'd be a dinosaur...If I could have anything I'd have the meanest roar," he sings as his young fans snarl and roar at his feet.

Andersen says he gets just as much of a buzz from performing to a venue full of toddlers sugared-up on raisins and apple juice as he did when he played with Springsteen.

"It's different -- it's daytime, everybody's sober -- but I love to see kids singing and dancing and enjoying the music."

"HIDEOUS NURSERY RHYMES"

Neal Whitmore, once Neal X from the 1980s cyberpunk band Sigue Sigue Sputnik but now one half of British Kindie duo Green Means Go, said the arrival of his own offspring made him take a hard look at the children's music market.

"When we took the kids to friends or neighbors or toddler groups, people would play these hideous nursery rhyme CDs.

"I think I've got quite broad tastes in music -- but nursery rhymes done by someone with a school-marm voice and a synthesizer are awful, and I thought there has got to be something better than this."