Sounds for Our Fathers

As most of you know, I am a musician, and music is pretty much my lifeblood. It's cliche, I know, but it's true - the moments are few and far between that I'm not either listening to music or humming or whistling something. I have songs that remind me of some of the best times in my life, as well as songs that hearken back to some of the worst times in my life. It's just part and parcel of my life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So I was at the cafe tonight, they were playing a bunch of oldies - or what I was raised to refer to as oldies; songs mostly from the sixties, lots of doo-wop and stuff like that, and I had a comfortable warm feeling creep over me. I realized without a lot of thought that the reason was not that I was drinking (I wasn't - just coffee) or that I was feeling the effects of the thermostat being turned up. Rather, I realized these songs were comforting to me because they were the songs that my dad would always listen to. I never gave it much thought before, but my huge love for doo-wop probably comes directly from the fact that those were the albums (yes albums on vinyl) I heard pumping out of the big pioneer speakers in my parents' house whenever my mom was out of the house for any length of time.

It's funny, with myself being a musician, and my sister once being a very talented pianist, neither of my parents really had a musical bone in their body. My favorite story to tell about my father when asked about my parents' influence on my sister's and my musical educations is this: as a child, my dad was a tinkerer, which led directly to him pursuing a career as an engineer. However, he did take clarinet in middle school. That ended one day when, being the engineer he was, he noticed that all the screws on his clarinet were loose, at least to his perception. So to rectify this, he got out his small-sized screwdriver and went through, one by one, tightening the screws on the clarinet. However, when he tried to play it a few minutes after "fixing" it, he discovered that every single key on the instrument was stuck -- he didn't realize that the give in the screws is what allowed the keys to move, and he'd inadvertently rendered his clarinet completely unplayable. At that point, according to his account, he knew his music career was as good as over.

But getting back on topic - I was enjoying the songs selected at the cafe, thinking of how they reminded me of those cold afternoons at home where my dad would sit at his desk, balancing a checkbook or paying bills, listening to these classics of the fifties and sixties. Then that got me thinking: if I have kids, will they have similar affections to my music? It could be due to my odd tastes, or the fact that most of the bands that I listen to and enjoy the most are all currently active and putting out music, but I don't see my hypothetical kids, when they are thirty, gleefully whistling or humming along to We Are Scientists songs, tapping their toes to Motion City Soundtrack, or reveling in the epic sounds of Explosions in the Sky. Maybe they'll latch onto their grandparents' music, and love the fifties sound too, or maybe they'll like none of it.

It's even a discussion I've had with older generations from time to time: fifty years ago, there wasn't the broad range of music that there is today. For the most part, there was just "popular" music. With the exceptions of specific stations who would play classical or jazz, most mainstream radio stations played a whole range of the music that was popular at the time. There was not the division of stations that there is today. Just imagine if you turned on the radio and it played like your iTunes library on random - oldies, metal, hip hop, punk, indie, whatever. You'd probably complain that the station had no focus, or that it was inconsistent. The best way to contextualize it is to use the retirement home analogy that my mother uses: for her parents generation home, if you were in the common room at the retirement community, if you put on Big Band music, they'll all love it due to the memories and emotional connections to the songs. For her generation, it's early rock and roll and all the other music rolled up into the "oldies" label. So what will happen with my generation? Will we all be excited to hear Nirvana when we're 80? Will Snoop still be a go-to when I'm in a wheelchair? There has become such a divide, with the opposing sides entrenched against each other, over music nowadays that there isn't much of a common ground for my generation.

Am I crazy? Do you think that there is a universal music that captures our generation? Am I overly romanticizing the music of yesteryear? Or am I just a big sappy pile of musical mush because I heard some old Commodores and Four Tops while drinking coffee a few hours ago?