A few weeks ago, as I watched my daughters dancing to a children’s party mix featuring Mambo Number 5 (the under-rated Bob the Builder version), the Conga, the Birdie Dance, Reach for the Sky and other seminal classics, it dawned on me that I didn’t have a lot to pass on to them, musically. I think that it’s one of the duties of a parent to force peculiar, generation-inappropriate musical tastes on their children - see below - so that they grow up with both whatever pre-digested pap is currently standard fare for their age group and something with a little more soul. I play piano and guitar to them, they hear a fair bit of Mozart and assorted chamber music, but I’ve never been much good at, for want of a better word, pop.
My own parents had tastes that wouldn’t easily pass for mainstream. Mum was a country and western music fan - yes, we have both sorts here - and the cassette player in silver Mini Metro was usually home to Dolly Parton; Joleen (though I prefer Andrew Eldritch’s cover), Blanket on the Ground and, probably my favourite, Coat of Many Colours. Mum would sing along with the requisite country twang and, since I knew all the words, I’d sing along with her.
Dad, being a young man in the early seventies, was fond of his prog rock, specifically Genesis. The real Genesis, mind; he listened to the later stuff when Phil Collins took them mainstream and I still have, somewhere, the piano music for the Invisible Touch album, but in the black Ford Escort we listened to Foxtrot, Selling England By The Pound, Genesis and the like. Peter Gabriel on vocals, Watcher of the Skies, Get ‘Em Out by Friday, a Carved Oak Table .. and Dad had the voice to sing along. I could never manage the high notes and I don’t think that Dad was ever destined for a musical career, but on the way to school I could tune out Peter and listen to my Dad do just as good a job. In theory, he was also a fan of Yes and Bread, but he only seemed to have the tapes for Genesis, so that’s what we listened to together.
Grandma was a fan of Bing Crosby and Gentleman Jim Reeves. I have to admit, I though that was rather good, too. She also had a bit of a weakness for Tom Jones, specifically Delilah. She was also, particularly in later years, a little deaf - I used to be able to switch the sound off on my little 2 1/2” telly when she was watching Poirot in her bedroom across the hall and listen to hers instead. As a result, I mostly associate crooners with muffled voices coming through walls at still ear-tingling volumes. That, and Christmas since she was very much a seasonal listener.
I’ve listened to a few things in my life. Too much Queen, a fair bit of Sisters of Mercy, a smattering of folk - Fairport Convention, Steeleye Spam, some early Leonard Cohen before the X-Factor decided to defecate into his as-yet-unoccupied grave, Beatles, Stones. I can recognise Guns and Roses and A-ha on a fairly reliable basis, have one Transvision Vamp album, on which I like one song, and have bits and pieces by other artists. I don’t have any real breadth, though, and in each case other than the folk music, the taste has been externally-imposed. Sisters was Leeds - mostly Heather - Queen was school, mostly Hayward Milton, Guns and Roses was … I don’t know, Graeme Cohen, probably, as a segue from Poison. I don’t seem ever to have gone out and found anything for myself.
I’m probably not about to start, either, but I do want a clearer idea of what’s out there. A week or so back, then, I asked friends on Livejournal and Facebook to recommend two albums that they thought a person should listen to as part of a musical education and committed to listen to each album recommended. I should probably have been clearer about the criteria, since I’ve had some suggestions that seem odd (or, in one or two cases, downright cruel) to me but I do now have a list. My next post will set out the list and how I propose to deal with it.
I’m hoping that at the end of this process I’ll have made a few new discoveries and possibly found a few things to like and to explore further. These can then in turn feed into my own children’s musical background, so that in thirty years time they can find themselves in a position equivalent to my own, where I feel momentarily warmer and more secure when I hear “He’s got to go” or find myself singing along with Dolly.
Joleen, Joleen, Joleen, Jolee-ee-eeen, I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man …
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