The Wiggles (album)
| The Wiggles | ||||
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| Studio album by The Wiggles | ||||
| Released | 11 July 1991 | |||
| Recorded | February 1991 at Tracking Station Recording Studios, Sydney, Australia | |||
| Genre | Children's music | |||
| Length | 34:42 | |||
| Producer | Anthony Field | |||
| The Wiggles chronology | ||||
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The Wiggles is the debut album by the group of the same name. As a student music project at Macquarie University, the band assembled a group of songs reworked from The Cockroaches as well as arrangements of children's music. It was the only album that involved Phillip Wilcher as one of the group's members. The album sold 100,000 copies, and received Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) and Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) awards.
In 1991, while working with the early childhood music department at Macquarie University, Phillip Wilcher met musician and former member of the Australian rock group The Cockroaches, Anthony Field, who was studying child development. According to Wilcher, Field asked him to join The Wiggles, which would become "Australia's foremost children's entertainment act", and to help them produce the album. The album was dedicated to the memory of Paul Field's infant daughter, Bernadette, who had died of SIDS in 1988.
Wilcher financed and "contributed the most musically to the debut album", composing 75% of the music. Like a university assignment, they produced a folder of essays that explained the educational value of each song on the album. They needed a keyboardist "to bolster the rock-n-roll feel of the project", so Field asked his old bandmate Fatt, for his assistance in what they thought would be a temporary project. Recording sessions were held at Wilcher's home, and the album cost approximately A$4,000 to produce.
The group reworked a few Cockroaches tunes to better fit the genre of children's music; for example, according to Field, a Cockroaches song he wrote, "Mr. Wiggles Back in Town" became "Get Ready to Wiggle" and inspired the band's name because they thought that wiggling described the way children dance. There was also a piece by Phillip Wilcher, "Summer Dance", that appeared on the album, as "Archie's Theme".
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