The Charge is Electric...

Once you become a parent, you will soon find yourself watching childrens television shows. Some of them will be hard to get through, but you will suffer through it for the enjoyment of your children. Some of them will be so good that you will catch yourself actually watching them even when your kids aren't around. Good or bad, one thing that almost all kids tv shows have in common is music. It is nearly impossible to watch a kid show without there being some sort of song incorporated into the storyline.

As a musician myself, the music is often my favorite part of these shows and often times, I find myself inspired by some of these songs. The most recent of these shows is, The Electric Company, which airs weekdays at around 4 on PBS. My kids, who are ages 6 and 7, absolutely love it. The show is filled with songs by the cast and they also feature musical guests.

Here is one of my favorite songs from the show. It's pretty funky. Kinda makes me wanna dance.

One member of the cast is a dude named Shockwave, who is an incredible beat boxer. Here is one video of him teaching kids about punctuation.

My daughter, who is 7, beatboxes everyday and I have to attribute that, in part, to this show.

Here he is with a beatboxing guest.

My most favorite of Shock's beatboxing videos is when he teams up with Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Tony award winning writer for the Broadway sensation, "In the Heights".

I sing this song all the time!

... and this next one...

They also work together outside of The Electric Company. I found this little vid of them announcing an open mic mc battle.

Now, I'm going to get off subject a little to talk a little more about Lin-Manuel Miranda. I found out about him, hilariously enough, through this show. However, his talents far exceed what you see in this show. As I said before, he won a Tony Award for his work on the broadway play, "In The Heights". Now, I'm not a big fan of broadway, but this guy gave the best acceptance speech of any award anyone has ever won anywhere, ever! You have to check this out.

As if that wasn't amazing enough, he also performed at the White House and performed this little number.

So many MC's can write about how great they are at rapping. It seems like that's the only topic of most mc's raps these days. But, how many mc's can write an amazing rap about a historical figure? I doubt very many can.. at least not like Lin-Manuel.

So, now that I've gone far off topic to show you the outstanding talents of Lin-Manuel Miranda, let me get back to the Electric Company and show you one more outstanding musician that has been featured on the show. I'm talkin now about the "Music Man" or better known in the real world as, Reggie Watts.

Here he is performing live in Chicago. While he is mainly considered a comedic musician, his songs are still super bad ass! Just look him up on youtube and find a million incredible videos of him.

So, I will wrap this up now, but what is the point of this post besides showing you a bunch of videos of music? I guess the goal here is to show you that inspiration can come from anywhere... even the television shows your young children watch. So, pay close attention to the world around you. You never know where you might see a spark of genius.