A feeling which all children know, a feeling which surely rings a bell for most people when they think back on their childhood? Good Sunday Morning is in fact a record for children which adults can also get a lot out of. At a time when children's culture was often dominated by 'bongo drum pedagogy' or the pointed forefinger, Anne Linnet made a children's album which set off in a very different direction.
Kid-size rock
At that point Linnet had just dissolved her Shit & Chanel rock band and was on the way to forming her own Anne Linnet Band. Good Sunday Morning is essentially kid-sized rock music - rock for children - music abounding in idiomatic refrains and zestful melodies. Anne Linnet has written a number of texts in which children play the role of the storyteller; here no bossy parents are around to spoil the ambience with their words. In the song dubbed "Sigurd", it is Linnet's own daughter Eva who sings; this is just one of many songs which have long since become the permanent repertoire of the Danish kindergarten.
The simple refrain:
"Mum, I would like you to/say hullo/ to my new friend/ he's called Sigurd" goes straight into the listener's ear with its tale of burgeoning friendship.
But maybe the song is also a nostalgic dream picture for adults, making them think back to the idyllic childhood they wished they'd had. With the whiff of freshly-baked chocolate cake in the kitchen?
Full of wonder
The 13 songs in Good Sunday Morning glow with that sense of curiosity and wonder about the world which dominates childhood. How would it be to fly just like a bird? Why do you get a tingling feeling in the stomach when you kiss on the mouth? And why do the grown-ups stay in bed so long on Sunday mornings?
Good Sunday Morning sets childhood to words and music, without in any way being sentimental or schoolmasterish. The world is big, when you yourself are only little. And it doesn't really get any smaller as time goes by. Not even when you are old enough to decide for yourself when to go in and have supper.
Peter Elsnab is music critic on the URBAN newspaper and the music periodical Gaffa. Jesper Nykjaer Knudsen is a writer on culture and music.
Anne Linnet with her children Jan-Martin og Eva who are singing on the record, 1980. Photo: Hans Otto.