Wake Up Jeff

Amazon.ca If the songs on Wake Up Jeff! don't rouse the tired, purple-shirted Wiggle, nothing will. As kooky a Wiggles affair as ever, this CD boasts the boisterous sounds of "Henry's Underwater Big Band", in which a jelly fish drums, a walrus hums, and an electric eel plugs in; a lot of splishing and splashing on "Swim, Swim, Swim" and "Having Fun at the Beach"; and "Romp Bomp a Stomp" and "Bing Bang Bong", both as rollicking as they sound. Besides the sleepyhead-stirring songs, though, there's a handful of old favourites (the traditional, tongue-twisting "Bucket of Dew/Paddy Condon from Cobar," plus "A Frog Went a Walking", "Five Little Ducks", and "Pipers Waltz") and two original tunes whose lyrics demand a careful listen: "Guess What" quizzes kids with questions like "What's really cool and keeps things very cold?/It's white and it's where your food can live" then "What's really soft and very warm too?/It's got a place to lay your head." Musically, this disc, like all the others by this group of goofball Aussies, traffics heavily in grooviness. Think of the Wiggles as The Monkees for munchkins. Fans of the foursome who caught the companion video and loved it should take a shining to this CD for its addition of 12 new tracks. For that matter, so, too, should anybody who's under 5 and predisposed to wiggling. --Tammy La Gorc