NEW YORK POST

"TRIPPY SIPPYS IN THE CITY WEST COAST KID ROCKERS HIT CENTRAL PARK"

By BILLY HELLER

"Meet the Sippy Cups - a rock band for kids that's like nothing you've ever heard."

July 14, 2007 -- PAUL Godwin was in his back yard south of San Francisco the other day, stuffing streamers and confetti into a cannon - and wondering whether he and his bandmates could get their robot on a plane.

Meet the Sippy Cups - a rock band for kids that's like nothing you've ever heard.

Or, as Godwin, its New Jersey-born lead singer describes the band: "a mix of the Flaming Lips, The Who, early Pink Floyd, [David] Bowie, the Ramones . . . sometimes all in one song."

Forty years after bands such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane helped launch the Summer of Love in San Francisco, the theatrical, electric and family-friendly sextet is heading East in what they're calling, tongue in cheek (we think), their Summerlove 2007 tour.

They'll play tomorrow in Central Park. And if Godwin's prayers are answered, expect to see a confetti-shooting cannon, a robot and even a giant jellyfish - the better to accompany Sippy Cup songs such as "Hair Professor & the Jellyfish" and "I Am a Robot."

You'll also see some juggling and unicycling - possibly at the same time - courtesy of band member Doug Nolan, a Queens native.

The Sippy Cups were born about three years ago - inspired, Godwin says, by the sight of his then-3-year-old son Bodhi riding on his tricycle in the living room. (The Sippy Cups have eight children among them, ages 3 to 10.)

That tricycle incident recalled "Bike," the "early psychedelic masterpiece" from Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett.

"I sat down at the piano and played it," Godwin says.

It also got the youth-music educator thinking. He got some friends to join him, and they soon began jamming with some kid-friendly covers of classic rock tunes.

Later, when young Bodhi was persuaded by a teacher that the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" wasn't appropriate for school, Dad changed the lyrics to "I Wanna Be Elated." It wound up on the Sippy Cups' first album, "Kids Rock for Peas."

The new, second Sippy Cups album, "Electric Storyland!" - a riff on the Jimi Hendrix masterpiece "Electric Ladyland" - is the band's first CD of all-original songs. It's a musical fantasy - "a Magical Mystery Tour," Godwin describes it, with a laugh - with tunes such as "Little House of Jello," "Superguy Returns" and "How To Build a Dog."

For their New York debut, Godwin promises a cover of New York icon Lou Reed's "Rock 'n' Roll" early in the show.

"It always gets people up and going," he says.

The Sippy Cups play Central Park's SummerStage at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Rumsey Playfield, near the Fifth Avenue and 69th Street entrance. It's free. For info, visit summerstage.org