About a year and a half ago, my teenaged son started getting way more into music.
I mean, I’d unsolicitedly bombarded both of my kids with music for the entirety of their childhood – not so much to indoctrinate them, so much as to demonstrate that there are verily whole worlds of music out there that they should avail themselves to. They didn’t just have to make do with whatever crap was on the radio or whatever insipid bullshit their classmates might be listening to*.
Unfortunately, they also probably both heard me lip off about any number of widely revered artists (as I’m wont to do), which did no one any favors, ultimately.
But I tried to play them a bit of everythig. I was also always curious about how their little ears and minds processed certain bits of music. I loved how Charlotte, as a tiny tot, warmed to the metronomic pulse of Kraftwerk or how Oliver was immediately put off by the voice of Elvis Costello. There was a disc of calypso songs by Bahamanian Blind Blake (not the blues guy) that used to make them both giggle maniacally. Long-time readers might remember a post I put together wherein, as an experiment, I had the then-12-year-old Charlotte listen to the entirety of The Pink Opaque by the Cocteau Twins and share her toughts about it. I was always subjecting them to this sorta stuff.
As a result of these shenanigans, both of my children were able to identify songs by bands like, say, SWANS, Devo and Killing Joke at very early ages. They may not have been familiar with whatever cheez-whiz Taylor Swift was pushing, at the time, but a single spin of “New Life” by Depeche Mode or “Start Wearing Purple” by Gogol Bordello would have them giddily chirping along.
On the not-so-positive side, both became initially very guarded about the music they were privately warming to, lest it fall afoul of their father’s needlessly outspoken scrutiny. Now, while they may not have believed me, there would never have been an instance wherein I spoke ill of whatever music they were digging. Even if I tried, there would be no way I could possibly steer the trajectory of my children’s musical tastes. I remember my own parents trying to talk me out of liking bands like KISS, The Ramones and the Sex Pistols, and boy-oh-boy did that ever backfire on them. My kids will like what they like, and that will be that.
Years later, I don’t know that music plays the role in my teenage daughter’s young life that it did in mine, at her age. Quite like her mother, while Charlotte genuinely loves music, she’s really not interested in getting into any ponderous discussions or heated arguments about it. And unlike her feelings about it during her littler years, I sincerely doubt she gives one single rat’s ass about what I might happen think about her favorite music, which is precisely as it should be.
Oliver, on the other hand, took the baton and ran with it and has since become as zealously preoccupied with albums and bands and the whole surrounding subculture as I was, when I was his age.
The odd thing is that Oliver is drawn to a very specific era of music, immersing himself in bands like The Stranglers, The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Theatre of Hate, The Clash, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Cult, Joy Division, New Order, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Love & Rockets and – wait for it – Killing Joke. Any of this sound familiar?
Now, while all those bands are also some of my own favorites, I keep encouraging him to widen the net, so to speak. About a year ago, I started making him (again, mostly unsolicited) playlists on Spotify, as -- until I recently bequeathed him a portable turntable that I bought at a school auction, some years ago -- that’s his go-to format. He’s now enthused about amassing his own collection of vinyl LPs, but I can’t compete with -- nor necessarily get him to share my pronounced antipathy for -- the sickly allure of the hands-free convenience that Spotify provides.
Anyway, while it’s not a problem, per se, Oliver seems to listen exclusively to bands from the `80s. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that – Hell, it’s verily my favorite era, as we’ve established – but there is still much more music out there that, if he digs the `80s stuff, he should also appreciate. Also, while I’m way more in favor of him listening to bands from the `80s than, say, Drake or Post Malone or Lil Yachty or Machine Gun Kelly or Ice Spice or whatever vacuous piffle is currently clogging up the pop charts like an immovable cluster of calcified dung in a rotting sewer pipe, he should, at least, be cognizant of other areas of music out there. It’s not that I’m the best person to expose him to that stuff, but if no one else will, I’ll certainly try.
I don’t quite know why, but `80s nostalgia seems to have a much greater stranglehold on popular culture than, say, `90s nostalgia does. This isn’t to say that nobody cares about the music of the `90s (witness the dispiriting preponderance of Nirvana and Sublime t-shirts out there, these days), but dead rockstars notwithstanding, the `90s still seem to lack the romantic exotica of the `80s.
But, as I’m quick to point out, the `90s weren’t just about Grunge, Gangsta Rap and bullshit boy-band crap. There were scenes and sounds and sensibilities from that era that had zero to do with flannel or wallet-chains. With this in mind, I made a few sprawling playlists devoted to `90s phenoms like Shoegazing and Britpop. I also made a list of more contemporary bands, just to further illustrate that there is musical life outside of the Reagan/Thatcher era. He’s been receptive, but his favorites remain his favorites.
While bored beyond belief, the other day, I started putting together a playlist of a lot of the music that I was steeped in for much of the `90’s, that being the fertile wellspring of constantly new sound that was the – for lack of a better term – British Indie scene, which along with spawning the aforementioned Shoegaze and Britpop bands, also gave us the so-called “grebo” outfits like Pop Will Eat Itself (who’d really kinda shed the Grebo thing by the tail end of the `80s), The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Eat and less-easy-to-accurately-categorize bands like Daisy Chainsaw, Cud, The Wedding Present, Birdland, the Kitchens of Distinction, Laika, Fatima Mansions (who, yes, are technically Irish, I know), The Wildhearts and several others. As a sidebar, the frustrating thing about this was discovering how much music from that era is, once again, NOT available on Spotify. I put together the graphic below to pick at that wound on social media.
Anyway, it ended up being a very long playlist indeed, despite what I’d consider some crucially unthinkable omissions. Here it is…
Oliver might even listen to it, out of courtesy to his ol’ man.
*I should concede, here, that I would not be half the insufferably obsessive music dork I am today were it not for the prescience, insight, patience and taste of crucial friends of mine – notably Brad O, John C, Rich K, Zach T, Rob B, Liz R, Jay F, Warwick C, Walter W, Judd T, Tim R, Steve H, Joanne H, Dean R, among several others – who went out of their way to tirelessly evangelize certain music to me when we were all kids. These folks opened up whole new worlds to me, and I am eternally grateful.
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