Customer Reviews

Songs for Ice Cream Trucks

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Yeah, why not?

With all this technology around us, with music coming at us from all angles, why are ice cream trucks still driving around emitting the same twenty second loop of a glockenspiel playing "Turkey in a Straw"? Why not some new music?

Forget the parents, forget the kids, think of the poor ice cream truck dudes. I bet some new tunes would do wonders for their spirits. I don't know how it is in other regions, but out here we have an epidemic of grumpy ice cream men, which can be a bit of a bummer.

Despite the potential, this is not a boring album. Mike Hearst has undertaken an exercise, which is to write music in the spirit of traditional circus music or ice cream truck music, but make it new and refreshing. Listen for yourself, but I think he pulled it off. It's got calliopes, glockenspiels, the occasional choir, in nice little waltzes and foxtrots, and with enough repetition to approximate the simplicity and feel of the more traditional tunes. But he adds enough variation to keep it palatable. Plus, there are some tasty, sinister undercurrents in these compositions, warbling forays into minor modes, to remind us that the ice cream truck is a parasitic capitalist appendage intruding into the naïve serenity of our playgrounds to extort parents and condition the palates of our children.

Sometimes a title says it all. "Songs for Ice Cream Trucks" is a delightful set of tunes that ring bells in your childhood memories. Hearst is one of the collaborators on One Ring Zero's As Smart As We Are, and the sly sense of humor carries over. You can look at these tunes as ironic and let your friends know you're cool, or you can just take them at face value and smile.

Stay clear if you're scared of ice-cream vendors the same way you're scared of clowns.

I heard a bit of this on the radio and was intrigued. I bought it becasue I'm game for the weird and wonderful, but I have to admit it wears thin and boring quickly. Sorry, I wish I had been delighted.

The music on this CD is not like anything I've heard coming from any ice cream truck before. Maybe it's "new age" but I prefer the old time stuff better.