Mister Wind

Snide Remarks #355

"Mister Wind"

by Eric D. Snider

Published in The Daily Herald on April 20, 2003

The last place I ever thought I would find something useful or significant was a shopping mall. Malls are generally good only for maintaining our nation's teenager-based economy, and for giving high school girls a chance to wear hootchie clothing in a parent-free environment, and for retail clerks to practice making you feel stupid by looking for the CD in the same place YOU just looked for it and it wasn't there and that's why you asked them about it in the first place and what do they think you are, an idiot? So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered Provo Towne Centre selling, of all things, my childhood.

Allow me to set the scene: My insane boss had made a demand for Mrs. Field's cookies, slathered in frosting. (I don't mean my boss was slathered in frosting when she made the demand, though it's possible she was. I only mean that she wanted cookies which were slathered.) In fact, what she really wanted was the frosting. If I could obtain a vat of it sans cookies, all the better.

Since I wanted to negotiate some additional vacation time, I agreed to perform this bit of monkey work. And so I found myself at the mall, despite my aversion to malls. And it was while walking through the concourse that I heard a song playing:

"Mister Wind is a mischief,
Mister Wind is a pest.
He blows my papers everywhere.
He never lets me rest.
Oo-OO-oo-OO-oo-OO-ooo."

Immediately and metaphorically, I was transported back to the early 1980s. My siblings and I are traveling with my parents to my grandparents' house, about 75 minutes away. In our van we are listening to a tape called "I Have a Song for You," featuring songs by Janeen Brady. These tunes are about people, families and nature. Themes include being special, snowflakes, brothers, and wiggling. We listen to this tape every time we go anywhere, which means we know the songs better than anything, including our own names. All it takes now, at the mall, is one bar, and I instantly know the entire song, as well as which songs come before and after it.

I determined the source of the music: a cart near the Mrs. Field's booth. Now, in the hierarchy of mall stories, the cart is at the bottom. First you have your flagship stores, like Nordstrom or Sears. Then you have your basic mall stores, your Gaps and Banana Republics and whatnot. Some of these basic mall stores are based on very simple and/or stupid ideas, like the stores that only sell socks or aprons or paper clips or whatever. And then you have the kiosks, which sit in the middle of the mall and which are apparently based on ideas so lame, they don't even merit their own stores, which is saying something, considering the aforementioned tie and flyswatter stores.

Below the kiosks, which are semi-permanent, you have the carts, which can be moved around at will. My childhood, in musical form, was emanating from such an ignominious location. A man was selling all manner of Janeen Brady products, including CDs, tapes and songbooks. All my life, I remembered the "I Have a Song for You" tape, but I didn't know Brady had written other things, too. Heck, I didn't even think anyone besides me and my siblings would remember the songs. I thought they were obscure. Little did I realize there was a Janeen Brady cottage industry.

Out of nostalgia, I bought the tape from my childhood, except I bought it on CD, because you have to draw the line on nostalgia somewhere. I also purchased the accompanying songbook so that I could play the tunes on the piano, though at what sort of occasion or gathering this would be appropriate, I could not imagine.

The songbook includes tips on helping children enjoy the songs more. For example, the previously quoted "Mister Wind Is a Mischief" suggests you use dancing to "let children express their own interpretations of the mischievous wind." It then adds: "Brightly colored scarves might enhance their creativity." I believe this is true in almost all situations.

Hearing these songs again inspired a strange and sudden burst of wistfulness. (I have not even mentioned my other favorite, "Sharing," which goes, "If I had a penny/And you hadn't any/I'd buy a candy stick/And let you have a lick." It always seemed exceptionally cruel to me to offer one lick of a piece of candy and call that "sharing.") When I visited home and played the CD for my family, I was glad to find they remembered the songs, too, and that since last hearing them 15 years earlier, we'd been imbued with the ability to create vulgar parody lyrics for them.

But back to the mall. As I completed my purchase, I saw three too-cool-for-school teenage boys walk past the cart, hear "Mister Wind Is a Mischief," and dance around in a spirit of mockery. I was going to be angry with them, but then I realized they were right. In their position, I would have done the same thing. The mall is not a place for introspection.

Notes:

The events described herein occurred in October 2002. I knew I wanted to write about it, but it was a few months before I could get the column to sound the way I wanted it to.

Every time I type the word "hootchie," which is alarmingly often, I spell it "hoochy" and have to be corrected. Do you ever wonder how they arrive at the proper spelling of brand-new, made-up words? Or who "they" even are? I do.

I encourage you with all due speed to visit Janeen Brady's official website, where you can download her songs. There is also a very good chance that you could hear "Mr. Wind" if you clicked this link.

This item has 36 comments

JJ says:
October 19, 2006 at 10:31 pm
I just have to say that I know exactly what you're talking about, hearing those tapes! There wasn't a day that went by that when we got into the car it would be a given that those tapes would play. I've been looking for them everywhere. thanks for sharing!
Karen says:
October 20, 2006 at 10:53 pm
I love it. I bought these tapes for my children and we got a lot of enjoyment out of them. My kids loved We Are Going to Grandma's and Up and Over and Down. I love Mister Wind is a Mischief. I had a second tape and can't find it. Now I'm looking for a place to purchase it and happened upon your delightful piece.
Kristi says:
October 22, 2006 at 3:33 pm
I think the JJ that responded in comment 1 is my brother. We grew up with these songs and were made to sing them at church like we were the VonTrapp family. My older brother recently made reference to them at a family dinner, so I know the memories are still seared into our brains. My favorite was "I want to be a mother". I loved some of the songs.
J.J. says:
October 22, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Actually, Kristi in comment 3, JJ in comment 1 is not your brother, but I am. You should know by now that I am J.J. not JJ. Anyway, great songs. I especially like to sing "Never Tell A Lie" in vaudville style as the the music book directs.
Moffio says:
August 8, 2007 at 9:44 am
My mom used to host Janeen Brady parties to sell stuff like Tupperware or Pampered Chef. It wasn't Nancy Reagan that taught me to say no..., it was Brady's Safety Kids. Good times, good times.
DrChumley says:
August 8, 2007 at 11:12 am
I loved all the Janeen Brady tapes growing up. In fact, I found the 12-tape "Standing Tall" set in my parent's basement and converted them all to .mp3s for my iPod. :)

It's because of Janeen Brady that I still remember my phone number from when I was seven years old.
card says:
August 8, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Great. Now I've got the sharing song in my head. If I had a stick of gum and you didn't have one, I'd break it right in two, give half of it to you.
mommy says:
August 8, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Thanks for the reminder...we went to the site and had fun listening to some songs. My favorites are "When I grow up I want to be a mother" "My Dad" and "Never Tell a Lie". I had never heard the Mr Wind song before...
JimJiminy says:
August 8, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Ah yes, Janeen Brady - a very important influence in my childhood. My maternal grandma worked for Brite Music and she even did the voice of Granny Grain on "The Body Machine." As a five-year-old I performed in the stage production of "Take Your Hate Off" at Temple Square.

I remember seeing this same cart at the Provo Towne Centre when we were still in Utah a few years ago. Now that my kids are old enough to enjoy the songs, maybe we'll pick some up via the interwebs.
Lindsay says:
August 8, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I guess my family was pretty old school because we didn't even have the tapes we had the records. Neil Diamond's Coming to America and the two Janeen Brady records were my childhood favorites. Mr. Wind is a Mischief was always the scary song on the record for me. I'm a VIP was one of my favorites and now I have it stuck in my head. Thanks.
Tyler! says:
August 9, 2007 at 9:43 am
My mom used to sell the Janeen Brady products door-to-door when we were kids so we too are all ingrained with permanent memories of those songs. We can bust out the chorus to anything from "Sharing" to "Safety Kids" at the drop of a hat. And now all OUR kids get to look forward to the same special torture.

One of the Janeen Brady products was a series of books and tapes called Bright which featured themes and titles like "Honesty", "Work" and "Dependability" and were meant to make building character fun. My parents enjoyed using them as clever punishments to match our crimes. "You didn't do your chores? Go to your room and listen to the 'Work' tape 5 times".

In hindsight I guess it was better than corporal punishment, I suppose, but to this day I still do my laundry strictly out of fear of the Work Genie.
Jake says:
August 10, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Thank you Eric! One of my childhood mysteries has been solved.

When I was a kid we had a mysterious green tape with a yellow label that mom used to make us listen to in the station wagon. I can't say I liked it then, but we sure heard it a lot.

Years later I found myself trapped in the ward nursery with a crabby 18-month-old ("Yes, nursery at last! -- Oh wait, the kid absolutely ABHORS nursery... Now what?"). Right after snacks someone pulled out a burned-at-home CD labeled 'Sing With Me' in sloppy magic marker and popped it into the stereo for music time. Holy crap, it was the old green tape! My obstinate crumb-encrusted toddler was soon forgotten as I was immediately and metaphorically transported back to a hot July day in Utah. The windows were down, the backs of my legs were firmly adhered the brown vinyl seats, and mom had graciously left the keys in the ignition so we could listen to the green tape while she ran into the post office.

I 'borrowed' the nursery CD and took it home to make a copy, thinking that what was good for me as a kid would now, obviously, be good for my own kids. But, alas, the recording was of poor quality. Somebody obviously converted this to CD manually from their own worn out green tape cassette, apparently using a hand-held microphone while breathing loudly through their mouth.

I Googled every variant I could think of 'Sing With Me' along with lyrics from several of the songs, but to no avail. The green tape had been lost and I was stuck with a mediocre version. Now, thanks to Eric, I find it is called Watch Me Sing Volume 1. Not only can I order it online, it has a sister album! I can't wait to inflict Volume 2 upon my own offspring next time I have to run into the post office!
Momma Snider says:
August 10, 2007 at 4:13 pm
I always liked to sing We Are Going To Grandma's House, because we usually were. But now that I'm the grandma, the line "pictures, keepsakes, old-time toys" makes me think. Do they mean the 20-year-old Barbies with the nappy hair from being washed in the bathtub? Or do they mean the 30-year-old Woody Woodpecker puzzle that Eric's grandma kept for him and his siblings to play with? Or maybe the 40+ year-old Yahtzee game? Because I didn't think we had any old-time toys,. but if that's what they mean, I guess we do.
Elizabeth says:
August 15, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I too am a Brite kid. I think it is becoming like a secret underground club, all these people who grew up in the early 80's crawl out of the woodwork when they hear those songs again. I am no different. In the midst of my mom moving last year, she uncovered several very worn cassettes. They looked pretty sad, but I thought I would see if after 20 or so years they still worked. To my utter astonishment they did. To my even greater surprise, I still knew all the words. Frightening! It only goes to show that the messages truly are internalized and will stay with children for a lifetime. Needless to say, last Christmas my own children became proud owners to the complete Brite set. And now, I find myself as one of the only Brite reps in GA. Crazy how that works!
JennyB says:
August 19, 2007 at 7:29 am
Does anyone else find it heartwarming that here at this site, Kristie (#3) found her long lost brother J.J.? :)
courtney says:
October 16, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Thankyouuu!!!! I have been looking for the little green tape for ages! All I knew was that it was green and I loved listening to it and I wanted to get it for the daycare I work at. YES
Emily says:
November 9, 2007 at 1:25 am
This article made me laugh out loud...I am gonna buy all of her music when I have kids!

ps. I'm a HUGE Janeen Brady fan. I have so many songs memorized!!
pps. I'm going to be in a musical written by Janeen Brady this Christmas 2007(she's directing it). Pretty cool huh?!
Jenny Gray says:
December 10, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Hi- I am dying to find the cassette that had the sharing song and the V.I.P. song. If anyone knows what it is called or where to find it I would love to know.HELP!!!!!
Dee dee says:
December 19, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Go to www.britemusic.com. I, once a Brite Music salesmom, am now a Grandma that is adding to my grandkids music library. I still know all the songs and am listening to Safety Kids now----never have I heard any children's music that is so memorable and so helpful to teach important things---like a telephone number. I now have to try to remember my children's phone numbers so I get it right when I sing it with the grandkids. The website now allows you to download the CD's. It's not to late to stick some Brite Music in your grandkids or kids stockings!!!

By the way, the Sharing song is on I Have a Song for You Vol. 1.
Jessica says:
April 26, 2008 at 11:15 am
It's so funny how a lot of us have the same memories. I remember driving the 12 hour road trip to my Grandpa's in California, and now I can't get the "Grandpa pa Grandpa pa I love my Grandpa pa..Olee ooo'OO" out of my head! Thanks though ; )
TN Lizzie says:
June 3, 2008 at 2:34 pm
According to Janeen Brady's official website, Brite Music is going digital! CDs and printed books are available while supply lasts...

https://www.britemusic.com
Lisa Larsen says:
June 22, 2008 at 10:09 am
I bought some of the albums when they first came out. Boy, my 4 kids had blast marching around to those songs. It is sounding as if most loved the "I m a Mormon" album as such as mine children did. Im hoping to figure out where I can get some copies for my 3 soon to be 4 grandkids.

I am not great or even good with all the confusion and frustration computers can cause me, so wish me luck.

I have a 9 & 10 year old and would love for them to partake in the joy this music brought to my 4 older children(26,25,24,21 yrs old). I also need one for myself or back up for when grandmas wears out. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT! ;^) Thanx
Liz says:
August 15, 2008 at 1:39 pm
THANK YOU!

I sing the sharing song and "clap clap clap goes the thunder when it rains" to my husband all the time and though he grew up in the '80's too he thinks I"mk crazy because he has never heard them. He missed out. I'm hapy I found this because now I can get them and force him to listen to the songs with me :)
kiwimommy says:
September 22, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I found the "I'm a Mormon" album online and could even download mp3s. It's at http://mormontracks.com
Laura says:
November 2, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I have tried going to the britemusic website with no luck. I definitely grew up on the standin' tall series and currently have the line, "When you have a gratitude attitude, ..." in my head. I want to buy these but can't seem to find them anywhere. Any suggestions?
A Petit Caucajeuner says:
December 6, 2008 at 1:20 am
I find it funny that all these people are reminiscing about these Janeen Brady songs and all I can think about is how hilarious a flyswatter store would be.

I imagine they'd have all manner of gourmet flyswatters from around the world, coffee table books about flyswatters from different cultures and the history of flyswatters (including doctrinal debates within Buddhism about the morality of using a flyswatter), and probably sketches of improved flyswatters by Ben Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci.

Even funnier is imagining the home of the man that owns the store. No doubt some sort of museum of fly horrors. And of course he'd have the centerpiece of his collection encased in glass...a ruby-encrusted flyswatter used by some ancient royalty in India or Egypt. Of course his friends would be few since all he wants to talk about is flyswatters.

Wow, I just wrote all that. I also need a life.
Clumpy says:
February 1, 2009 at 3:35 am
Wow - how strange to hear that song again. We had pretty much the entire "Standing Tall" series as kids (except "Dependability", a book with a sci-fi theme that I was always jealous my friend had). We also had "Safety Kids." Those were very well-done - well-done enough to not be totally square.
Dave says:
March 21, 2010 at 9:15 pm
See, I knew there was a reason I liked reading Snide remarks and still enjoy an occasional read from your writings. Also, this could explain why Jeff and I get along so well, not to mention my wife and I. We all grew up with Janeen Brady! My mom sold them, now my sister sells them. I found this post while searching for elusive album artwork for all the Brite CDs my mom has been sending me since expecting our second. This too is why I remember my address from when I was 12 and I remembered looking for a grandma or mother with children and could tell her my phone number when lost (with six children and 4 tag-alongs for the day, my mom didn't know I wasn't in the back of the VW) in Target at the age of 5.

Now I torture my wife with these songs and run around in circles with my daughter. I need some exercise too!
Amelia Thompson says:
April 2, 2010 at 10:56 pm
I'm so glad you wrote this so many years ago! I found this post in a google search. You see, I was looking for the name of this cassette tape we used to listen to on long road trips as kids. My goodness we loved those songs! Don't get me wrong...sometimes we hated those songs, but, man, we loved them. And reading through the comments, I have also learned where to buy cds of this wonderful music for my own daughters! Oh happy day. Thank you!
D. Stoddart says:
April 8, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Ours' is the same story....trips in the family wagon through Utah....lol! We loved those songs and loved hearing our kids singing, singing, singing!! Thanks to everyone for your comments. I'm going to try to find those cd's and send each of my kids one for their children to enjoy! Thanks Janeen!!
Anna Adams says:
July 21, 2010 at 3:42 am
YOU HAVE NO IDEA!! i take that back 'cause obviously you do, i rediscovered the "I have a song for you" cassette the summer before i started my freshman year of highschool (graduated in '99) and practically pissed my pants then & then i lost it. I thought forsure all hope was gone and that i would never figure out anything AT ALL about this tape! I have searched every possible website/search engine for the past 15yrs, atleast!
I sincerely feel like i owe you my life!
I am completely speachless so I appologize for the terribly writen paragraph above... blah blah blah.
Thank you and from the bottom of my heart, I truely LOVE YOU for this fantastic story of discovery.

sharing & caring 'cause that's the thing to do,
Anna Adams
Jaimee Adams says:
July 23, 2010 at 12:16 am
Ditto to Annas comment!

Shes my sister
Shes about this high
shes smaller than I
sometimes I help her tie her shoes
Shes my sister!
Ashley says:
December 14, 2010 at 11:42 am
Hi all! I've been looking for this CD for months (ebay, craigslist, search engines) and can't find it, as it is out of print. I don't live in Utah, which makes the search even more frustrating. I know I can go the website and download the songs and book, but really want the CD. Anyone have the CD they are willing to part with?!

Thanks! Merry Christmas
Natalie says:
June 23, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Thank you for blogging about this! I've been searching for these songs for years!! I still have the old cassette tapes from my childhood but they are virtually useless, plus I no longer own a tape player. I'm excited to hear they are available in CD format, there's still hope! :)
Amy Carpenter says:
October 6, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Hahaha, this is hilarious. Mister Wind is a Mischief = creepiest song ever. Where did you order this CD from / is there somewhere you can listen to it?
Diedre Etherington says:
December 8, 2011 at 10:16 pm
I just ordered it digitally on http://www.britemusic.com/ also there is a Brite music group on facebook now.

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Eric D. Snider