The Washington Post is starting a music blog. Bully for them! In its inaugural post, Post Rock promises to write about “Rock, pop, hip-hop, country, R&B, maybe even the Wiggles.”

As it happens, I attended a performance by the Wiggles yesterday at the Verizon Center. It was the 3 p.m. show, and the arena was only about half-full (ha-ha, the Wiggles outdraw the Caps), but the screams that greeted Dorothy the Dinosaur’s appearance made things feel a lot closer.

Live, the Wiggles rely heavily on prerecorded music, which is a disappointment to anyone who came expecting to see the Wiggly Orchestra that so enlivens the Live Hot Potatoes CD and DVD. The Wiggles themselves step in on guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards from time to time and seem quite good at their instruments.

Mostly, though, they sing, and that’s all live. A couple times (during one routine where Captain Feathersword tried to pass himself off as a duck, for instance) individual members seemed to crack up over ad-libs in the routine. I know that if I were in the Wiggles, I’d probably stay high constantly.

My 3-year-old son did not notice that Greg is now played by a fellow named Sam. On the train home, he didn’t believe me when I mentioned it. This is where 37 extra years of observation comes in—-the other three Wiggles are rich-guy thin; Sam jiggles around a little inside his yellow jersey like William Shatner in the Star Trek movies. But his voice was fine, and he drove the Big Red Car very well. My son thinks that was especially great, because of all the colors on the car.

But the best part of the show was the Wiggly Dancers, who opened the show and augmented most of the bigger numbers. I discovered that one of them, Catarina (Cathy) Mete, has quite a following online, at least outsize what you’d expect for a backup dancer for the Wiggles. Here’s a page of poetry and art devoted to her (the drawing on the page, replicated above, does not do her justice; she looked fairly smokin’ from Section 101, Row F).

And that’s really everything I can think of to say about the Wiggles today. Over to you, Josh!