Old Ears, New Music

There comes a time in a father's life when he needs to give his offspring The Talk. And while it isn't always easy — children will often get contradictory, even risky information from their peers — it's necessary that their son or, in my case, daughter learns the facts without confusion or shame.

I'm talking about the correct choices in pop music.

Every generation thinks their music is the best — but we boomers know that ours really is the best. So once my daughter Maric was of a certain age — probably six months — she got her first taste of the Beatles. And since she was living with an avid collector, much of the Beatles music she was exposed to was via bootleg LPs. By the time Maric was five years old, she was as familiar with outtakes as her peers were with "Yellow Submarine."

As she got older, her music education became more contemporary. Along with the usual suspects like Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson were musicians virtually unknown not just by her friends, but their parents. The Wondermints, Sparks, XTC, Richard Hawley and Nick Lowe were on heavy rotation at home, along with obscure '60s psychedelic pop. An occasional outlier like Bing Crosby further rounded out her education.

It seemed to work. Maric got so familiar with "my" music that she noticed the melody of a certain Bob Dylan song sounded like Bing Crosby's recording of "Red Sails in the Sunset." For me, this was better than if she won first prize in a math contest. Surely, my influence would last a lifetime.

Alas, surely not. I neglected to take into consideration that every child needs to carve their own path, even when said path leads to places we parents strive desperately to protect them from: musicians we don't understand.

Why did half the male singers have the first name "Lil"? Why didn't women like Rihanna and Kesha have last names? As for Ludacris, Fabolous, and Trey Songz, did they skip spelling class?

It was a sad day indeed when I listened to Maric's playlist. "I can't tell these rappers apart, they all sound the same to me," I muttered — an admission met with gales of laughter, and the remembrance of my parents saying the same thing about the bands I listened to in the '60s. Their comment made no sense to me then, just as mine didn't to Maric five decades later.

It was cold comfort when a work colleague assured me that the old school rappers Maric preferred — those whose songs tackled social issues, condemned materialism and drug use, and supported feminism — were better than the current crop. I just didn't enjoy music without melodies with lyrics shouted through a bullhorn.

Which was OK. I wasn't supposed to like this stuff. Maric and I were destined to travel different cultural roads as my parents did with me.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the stereo. By the time Maric graduated from college, she was already turning to indie music that wouldn't stand a chance on Top 40. And this is where the student and master traded places. Now it was her turn to tell me, "I think you might like this."

And what was weird is that I really did like much of what I was hearing. Perhaps it was due to much of it sounding, to my ears anyway, similar to my own collection of arcane psych-pop. OK, so maybe some of the bands still had strange names like Tame Impala. But was it any stranger than Strawberry Alarm Clock, Procol Harum, or even — gulp — the Beatles?

Our influence on each other has gotten to the point where it isn't unusual when listening to a particular song, one of us will ask, "Did I suggest this to you?" to which the other will reply, "I thought I suggested it to you!"

Going from being divided in our musical tastes to claiming credit for being responsible for discovering the latest cool band is a progression neither of us anticipated, but has been another shared experience to enjoy — and proof you can teach an old dog new music. By the way, Maric's disinterest in Top 40? My influence, without doubt.