Baby Got Books

Indie Rock Alphabet Party

Yesterday I spent what was easily the best four hours EVER in a children’s book store. The Little Shop of Stories hosted the book release party for Paste Magazine’s An Indie Rock Alphabet Book. With this book, Paste has cornered the aging hipster/kiddie book demographic in one shot.

The book is written by Caren Kelleher, Kate Kiefer, and Rachael Maddux with artwork by owen the owen. The book began, so the story goes, as an in-house project for a baby shower. Once the original book was finished (the now completed babies were in the audience), someone realized that there might be other people interested in having a book like this. And here it is. The huge crowd at the Little Shop says they guessed right.

The party featured Dale’s Pale Ale for the grown-ups and started off with groovy electronic background music by Judi Chicago to set the mood. Eventually the action shifted upstairs to the reading space. Terra kicked things off with an inspirational reading of Punk Farm. Two kids then read An Indie Rock Alphabet in its entirety. Cute! Book signing followed with two of the authors and owen the owen. Back downstairs, Judi Chicago played a few hyperactive songs that wowed the crowd and annoyed the squares at the Starbucks two doors down.

Squares, be gone!

Before the party, I ran into Frank (of the awesome and sorely-missed former music blog That Truncheon Thing) who expressed his disappointment that W was for Weezer and not Wilco. He must not have seen the entry for U:

You can check out the book in its entirety at Paste. Rachael Maddux has also posted a playlist based on the book. Listen with your child to build his/her indie street cred.

Check out video of Judi Chicago rocking the Little Shop here and here.