Sunday twilight deepens as the car moves farther south.
The man is driving his 13-year-old son home from dinner with the family. As all parents do, the man wishes to pass down some cultural interests to his child.
The father came in late to the movie of his son’s life, adopting him at age 10, so the lessons have started late – he was not able to let his son take in the cultural lessons via osmosis, when he was a more captive audience as an infant.
So, he has made a playlist of some music he likes. Mostly older stuff.
Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran plays. “You ever heard this song?” the man says to his son. “I was younger than you were when this came out.”
“No,” the child says.
The man furrows his brow. He’s really never heard this song? It seems odd, since the image of Simon LeBon flipping over a table in a bar will still be emblazoned on the father’s mind after he has long since gone senescent.
Maybe Daddy should be more forgiving. After all, it was almost 40 years ago. After a few miles, a groovy bassline and anguished lyrics start to play.
“So this is Michael Jackson. He was huge when I was your age. You ever hear any of his music?”
The teen considers it, then goes back to his tablet.
“I don’t even know.”
Really? Not even Michael Jackson rings a bell? The father remembers when he was younger than the child and watched Jackson do the Moonwalk on TV, with the family whooping with delight at dance moves that seemed impossible. “Well, I guess he did die when my son was just a baby,” the man thinks. Farther down the road, another 1983 classic plays.
“This is called Let’s Dance by David Bowie,” the father says. “Your dad and I really like him. You know him?”
In the rearview mirror, he can see his son shrug. Wow. Bowie created a whole planet of music—each album its own country of distinct sound—and the son just shrugs.
The hits just keep on coming.
Then, another stone-cold classic. Over a burst of synthesizers and electric guitar, a song about a bold father and unsatisfied mother.
Daddy smiles. “Ah, Prince. He’s one of my very favorites. You’ll be hearing a lot of him in our house. You know this song?”
The 13-year-old speaks in an exaggerated hem and haw: “Ummm … No.”
Daddy’s smile fades. It’s a strange feeling when such a unique song, bass-less and anguished, long ago branded a part of him permanently but does nothing for his child. As he gets closer to home, he feels a sort of tightening in his chest. It’s a leaden thud that is not quite a heart attack but something equally dreadful.
Then the motherlode plays. Slashing guitar gives way to a plaintive “Life is a mystery,” giving away to a roiling bassline, giving away to a gospel choir.
The man immediately feels again the way he did when he wasn’t much older than the son, and the song seduced and steamrolled him into an obsession with pop music. He can still smell the patchouli that perfumes the album’s liner notes.
“And this is my favorite of all time: Madonna,” the man tells his son. “You know her? You ever hear this song?”
The child looks up from his tablet, as if he may say yes. The father’s heart leaps.
“I don’t even know.”
The father’s heart deflates.
The song ends as he pulls into his driveway. The child bounds into the house as the man lingers in the driver’s seat. His head sinks lower and lower until his brow rests on the steering wheel. His bones suddenly turn to crystal, the blood suddenly slowing to a crawl in his veins. He has never felt so weary.
And when he raises his head to look in the rearview mirror, he could swear – swear – he sees some crow’s feet that weren’t there before…
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Aww, bcm, that made me choke up! (Well written, btw) But, you have to start somewhere, right? My stepsons were 12 and 14 when their dad was awarded full custody of them. All they knew about music was rap, and nothing else existed musically to them. So we just would play all types of music whether they liked it or not, lol, but at least they had more of a variety to make their decisions on. Eventually found 1 cd all 4 of us could easily agree on, and which wound up being played in the car ALOT over the years – Def Leppard’s Greatest.
Keep at it, bcm, he’ll have his musical awakening soon enough. 🙂
Beautiful post, bcm4648. It has given me a lot to reflect on my relationship with my father, as well as my relationship with my son (a toddler), and how music seems to signal the passage of time.
I’d like to say it’ll get better and at some stage you’ll bond over the music that means so much to you but…. sometimes you just have to accept their individuality and they’ll find their own way. It doesn’t mean they don’t care, they just see things differently.
I’ve mentioned my daughters disdain for my musical tastes before. The cultural lessons via osmosis had no effect on her. My work has a creche on site so for 3 years before starting school she was with me on the daily commute and got to listen to whatever I picked for us. Despite an hour a day of dad’s choice selections she’s brutal in her assessment now of what I play.
She’s 10 now, maybe she’ll come around, maybe as she grows up her and her friends will pick up on music from the past as often happens and discover it for themselves. It might just need the feeling of independence that its their thing and they found it rather than having her dad foist it on her.
There’s plenty other areas where our tastes and characters match so I’ve learned to let the music slide and accept her refusal to learn from me there with good grace and humour. Its tough when something can mean so much and you want that bonding experience but they don’t get it. Its one of those things you can’t force, be patient, focus on the other good stuff and maybe one day they’ll surprise us.
Lovely post, bcm. I especially like that opening line; a perfect set up for your scene. You really make us feel the “dying of the light,” so to speak.
I don’t have kids, and so I don’t have firsthand experience of this kind of stuff, but I can imagine how frustrating it can be, how disconnected and out of touch one can feel in the moment.
Like JJ Live at Leeds, I do think that probably the best tactic is to just not really put much effort into it. Let them show their own interest, if they want to. If anything, make it seem like it’s their loss if they miss out on some great stuff (which of course it would be!).
One thing that might make this kind of disconnect easier to resolve is the fact that there is so much nostalgia and retroism out there. Kate Bush creeping toward the top of the charts recently with “Running Up That Hill” is a great example. Chances are he’ll come across an old song featured in a movie or a show somewhere, maybe a cover version or a prominent sample, and then link that to something you’ve been listening to. Stranger Things have been known to happen. 🙂
I have fond memories of my mom singing along to “Midnight Blue”. I have a very soft spot for Melissa Manchester. I cackled when a Stereogum writer included Melissa Manchester: Live 77 as an album of note. That title reminded me of both, the Talking Heads debut album and a brown Monte Carlo that couldn’t accelerate on inclines. Enjoyed your piece, bcm4648.
Really nicely done. Although I find myself commiserating with the dad, I must admit I’ve been on the son’s end, too. It shocks me to think that the music from the ’70s through the ’90s that I loved so is as far away (or farther) from today as the music of the ’30s through ’50s that my dad loved.
I do this kind of math word problem in my head all of the time.
Let’s say for the sake of easy arithmetic, the average age of the songs in bcm4648’s excellent inaugural article is about 37 years old. We also have been told that his son is 13.
Calculate the year that you were 13. In my version of this thought experiment: welcome to 1971. Lastly, count back 37 years, and look at the charts.
Again, for my example, here would be the top 10 on my father’s playlist:
1 Benny Goodman – Moon Glow
2 Leo Reisman – The Continental (you Kiss While You’re Dancing)
3 The Sons of the Pioneers – Tumbling Tumbleweeds
4 Paul Whiteman – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
5 Duke Ellington – Cocktails For Two
6 Ray Noble – The Very Thought of You
7 Bing Crosby – Love in Bloom
8 Guy Lombardo – Winter Wonderland
9 Bing Crosby – June in January
I like to to think that I have a very open mind. But I must admit that 13 year-old me would have been bored to death with the music of 1934.
Yikes. Where is LinkCrawford when we need him?
Hey, now! But I, too, use this same arithmetic all of the time. It’s actually kind of depressing. For me the said year would be 1946…and 13 year old Link probably didn’t know many of those songs very well. (But I know them really well now, so maybe the attempt isn’t all in vain).
Link! We’re glad to see you! In your honor:
Billboard Year-end Top Singles of 1946:
1 Prisoner of Love – Perry Como
2 To Each His Own – Eddy Howard
3 The Gypsy – Ink Spots
4 Five Minutes More – Frank Sinatra
5 Rumors Are Flying – Frankie Carle
6 Oh! What It Seemed to Be – Frankie Carle
7 Personality – Johnny Mercer &The Pied Pipers
8 South America, Take It Away – Bing Crosby/ Andrews Sisters
9 The Gypsy – Dinah Shore
10 Oh! What It Seemed to Be – Frank Sinatra
I do this ALL THE TIME when I think about my students’ reference points. People/friends are very condescending about what our younger generations listen to and watch, but when I point out that, at their age, we would NEVER have given the time to a movie/song from Year XX until it was an absolute CLASSIC.
I also have been reintroduced to current pop music through my daughter, and sometimes I use it as a way to connect to older stuff. For instance, she’s a fan of “Big Energy” (not huge, but knows it well enough), so I made a Spotify playlist with Tom Tom Club and Mariah, and a few others that use the sample. She still prefers Latto, but at least she’s aware of the song’s history.
I was going to respond to bcm’s original post ( and I may well do so) but your list of songs brings back what I’ve talked about on this post before and the original Number Ones by Tom. I know basically all these songs by heart even though I was born in 1951.
The television was still a new invention but it began to proliferate in the early 50’s and radio was still in the pre-rock and roll middle of the road song lists.
So to make up airtime, many of the thirties and forties movies would play on TV and the songs of the forties would be intersped with the radio song lists.
So for me, the thirties, forties and early fifties are basically of one group.
Fast forward to a few years ago when cable television exploded and HBO, Showtime etc. were ruling the airwaves.
My two sons came up to me one day and confessed “Dad, now we get you”.
My response was “What do you get ?”
They said we didn’t know why you did the things you did (stand up when a lady entered the room. took your hat off indoors, opened doors for ladies etc.) until we were watching “Madmen” and we realized out that’s what men did in the ’60’s!
We have such a proliferation of media access that many times a whole section of the population has no idea what another section is watching or hearing as opposed to to the days of three channels on TV and no FM radio. In the past, I could ask my cousins on the west coast what they thought of a certain show and we all had watched it together, albiet at different times.
Now, if you ask someone if they’ve seen a certain show, they’ll mostly likely say I don’t have access to that on cable or streaming and have no idea what your talking about.
That’s what I love about your setting up this site. I learn from people who are way younger and more informed on certain subjects than I am but I can also give an insight as to where this all came from.
bcm, you bring up a subject that is near and dear to my heart, communicating with the next generation ( or two).
When my first three children were born, I had music playing all the time or music on MTV playing. I took them to all the G and PG movies I could and made sure they read books and magazine articles.
But with the advent of the ’90’s and earphones(now buds) and I-pads, younger children moved away from that form of media and to to the self absorbed form.
I’ve talked about this before, but my wife and I adopted my step-daughters boys in the early 2000″s and try as I might, they have resisted any attempts on my part to involve them in any aural form of music.
The older boy of the two gave me the same response as your son when I tried to get him to listen to music on the car radio and the younger one has no interest what so ever in either music, books or movies.
So, as the ruler of the library, I’ve taken a more subtle approach, playing songs targeted for the day.
Now I get students going “Hey, thanks for the music that meets my mood” or “Thanks for picking up my day”.
So do not despair my friend. In the words of a famous person who is now in bad shape( but it doesn’t make his words any less worthy).
“Our children may ignore us but our grandchildren will love us because it’s God’s way of giving us a second chance”.
Have a good weekend ( and play EW&F”s “Boogie Wonderland” for him and see what happens). Just a thought.
It’s gotta be a two way street, especially now that he’s a teen… he already has his own taste in music. I’ve learned a lot more from my 16 year old son musically than he has learned from me. I have learned to dig a lot of the hip hop, rap and R&B that I ignored when I was younger. Gotta come with the mutual respect, I learn from you, you learn from me, then see what sticks.
Huge generalization alert:
I feel like “kids today” aren’t making deep connections with music in the same way previous generations did. They don’t have the same kind of self-defining connections with genres and bands that kids of the ’80s and ’90s did; they’re not following the same kind of musical trajectory from pop to more complex sounds.
A few speculative reasons why:
1) They never have to choose – they have the entire history of music at their fingertips, and pretty much never buy an album or single, so they never have to decide what music is worth their money. It’s all subscription fees.
2) They rarely just listen to music. Mostly they’re listening to music while gaming or texting, or they’re encountering songs on TikTok, with unrelated imagery accompanying the music. So the associations made with the music aren’t with the performers, they’re with the TikToker, or with the game they were playing at the time.
3) The music they’re listening to is compressed to hell with little dynamic range. This is one I feel strongly about, but don’t have the technical chops to really go deep on, but if all of the music you’re listening to is streamed, and usually over mediocre earbuds or crappy laptop speakers, you’re missing out on a lot of the richness and breadth that music can have. It’s never vibrating in your chest (maybe in you’re booty at best, if you’ve got the bass turned all the way up.) And todays pop hits are made with a limited dynamic range in the first place, designed to be played in flattened compressed streams.
Am I an Old Man Yelling at Clouds? Probably, but for the same kids who grew up with no concept of when a TV show is “on,” I think they’re growing up without a concept of listening to music as an activity in and of itself, and musicians and bands as foundational pieces of the identity you patch together in adolescence and refine in adulthood.
>Am I an Old Man Yelling at Clouds?
Not at all, and it’s because you didn’t lead with the, “our music was great, yours is trash” type of argument.
These are all excellent points.