Gustafer Yellowgold Review

Photo courtesy of www.gustaferyellowgold.com

Apparently, for this little yellow guy from the sun, the nightmare that is trying to find a place to park in San Francisco is not a problem. By the time the crowd of infants, toddlers, tweens, and adults begin to arrive at the Fisher Children’s Center in the San Francisco Main Library, Gustafer Yellowgold is striking a laid out, cool, and relaxed pose on the 6x6 screen placed in the center of the room. The tranquil sounds of Donovan’s late 1960‘s classic song Mellow Yellow plays from the P.A. system while children and parents alike wander the Storytelling Room looking for just the right place to sit and enjoy the show. Some sit in chairs lining the outer edges of the room, while others find it perfectly comfortable to sit on the carpeted floor with their child in their lap. Most of the parents chat quietly with each other over kids and work while their children inquisitively walk the room pulling books from the shelves and then handing the randomly selected book to their adult counterpart. Eventually, the crowd of about a hundred start to settle to their spots and begin to bask in the warm golden glow that is Gustafer Yellowgold.

Who is Gustafer Yellowgold?

If you aren’t familiar with who Gustafer Yellowgold is, he is the wide-eyed, cone-headed animated / musical creation of indie rocker Morgan Taylor. A long time vision of Morgan’s, Gustafer is a cool, calm, and inquisitive dude from the sun who now lives in a cottage in a forest in Minnesota. With his equally unusual friends Slim the Eel and Forrest Applecrumbie, the flightless Pterodactyl, Gustafer humorously explores his new Earthly surroundings attempting to find answers to the questions he has about life, living, and how to be a good Earth person.

Gustafer’s Full Potential

Gustafer Yellowgold’s potential wasn’t fully realized until Morgan’s wife Rachel encouraged him to expanded upon the little yellow person bouncing around inside his head. First sketched in 1997, Taylor released Gustafer onto the kindie music scene in 2007 with his debut album Gustafer Yellowgold’s Wide Wild World. Garnering critical appraise for his unique approach to children’s music, Morgan’s glowing yellow creation quickly became the fancy of children and adults alike. 

Gustafer Yellowgold: Going Beyond C, G, and F

If the same three guitar chords played repeatedly over and over again with lyrics about spiders crawling up spouts and wheels on buses going ‘round and ‘round is your idea of children’s music, then sit back and relax because you are about to have your idea of children’s music changed forever.

The Gustafer Yellowgold CD/DVD series is everything but typical children’s music. With strong indie rock influences, Morgan’s Gustafer albums more closely resemble music you might hear on an alternative rock station, however, there is no mistaking that Morgan’s target audience is definitely children and the parents that love them. With themes and situations children can relate to, the Gustafer series takes a more sophisticated approach to children’s music and entertainment. By providing music that can be listened to and enjoyed by both children and adults, and artfully interweaved with themes of friendship, love, and exploration, Morgan successfully bridges the gap between monotonous children’s music that might get one play through on a family road trip with music that can easily be put on repeat and thoroughly enjoyed many times over.

The SF Main Library Show

Dressed in a green shirt buttoned to the base of his neck and brown pants, Morgan Taylor cooly takes his place to the side of his 6x6 screen with the projection of Gustafer Yellowgold lit upon it. Double checking to make sure his guitar is tuned a half step down,  Morgan softly greets the expecting audience by politely asking everyone to say, “Hi” to Gustafer. Everyone enthusiastically obliges, and that is when Morgan emphatically raises his fists into the air and softly roars, “Are you ready to soft rock!” The comment receives a genuine chuckle from the adults in the crowd, and Morgan begins the show with a song from the first Gustafer album, “I’m From the Sun.” With minimally animated slides of beautifully illustrated drawings of Gustafer and his friends that coincide with the song that Morgan is playing, the show continues on with one of the best songs from the Gustafer Yellowgold’s Infinity Sock album, “Slim Gets In ‘Em.” As the show develops, Morgan skillfully engages the audience in conversation about Gustafer and how he happened upon planet Earth. By the middle of the show, the entire audience of children and adults are bouncing and singing along to Morgan’s catchy songs, and by the end Morgan leaves the audience with wanting more. No show can go on forever, Morgan thanks his audience for coming to see him and his friend Gustafer. Everyone waves goodbye to the little dude from the sun, and in parting words of wisdom, Morgan tells everyone, “To keep it yellow.”

Chatting with Morgan Taylor

While simultaneously chatting with me in the Fisher Children’s Center at the SF Main Library and bouncing up and down attempting to sooth his youngest child into falling asleep by convincing him that he is being walked down the street, Morgan Taylor describes the process that lead to Gustafer Yellowgold. “Back in Ohio, I started writing some comical songs for fun and began accumulating all these character songs. After a while, I realized I had created a fictitious world. I knew the songs were special.” With one child strapped to his chest and the other one at his feet rolling around on a ball Morgan said, “The songs were written in the first person, yet I knew they weren’t about me. I decided to base the songs on a character that I had created years before.” Morgan continued on to describe the Gustafer series as a process that has evolved over the last few years and continues to evolve into what is now Morgan’s first full narrative using the Gustafer character, Gustafer Yellowgold’s Infinity Sock.

Infinity Sock CD/DVD

With the same quality in sound and production as in the prior CD/DVD’s in the Gustafer series, Gustafer Yellowgold’s Infinity Sock is the latest incarnation of Gustafer Yellowgold. For the first time in the Gustafer series, Morgan has fully developed a story arc complete with a beginning, middle, and end. Infinity Sock will take you and your child on a calm and soothing minimally animated ride through the world and life of Gustafer. Following Gustafer through his discovery and quest to find the end of this infinitely long sock, Gustafer explores his outside world through an entertaining journey through a Minnesota forest. Along the way, Gustafer learns many lessons as he kicks back with his head in a beehive to watch a Band of Bees play “Beehive,” tries on clothing made out of cheese during “Wisconsin Poncho,” and his discovery of an oddly still cat with the song “Cheddar.” Each song in this CD/DVD builds upon the next, and by the end you will want to know if Gustafer will ever find the end of the infinity sock. Excellent bonus features in this CD/DVD set include “Proof or Foof (Does Gustafer Yellowgold Exist?),” along with “Gustafer Guitar Lessons” and “How to Draw Gustafer” explained by Morgan Taylor himself.

For more information about Gustafer Yellowgold and when Morgan Taylor will be coming to a city near you, please check Morgan’s touring schedule at www.gusterferyellowgold.com.