times your parents were weird about music

Not even the ancient past, either. A few years ago I started talking about jazz with my dad. He grew up in the 50s and 60s, a Texas preacher's son and a seminarian himself. But he spent enough time in New York and at various colleges that he liked jazz. He was hip for a preacher's kid. Sonny Stitt. Miles. Count Basie. Anyway I mention that I'd been listening to Mose Allison and how he seemed like kind of an oddball. He asked me what I meant and I told him about "Your Molecular Structure" and he got all weird, said he listened to "real guys" like the above mentioned, talked about the Village Vanguard. That he'd nurse his one drink minimum all night just to hear a Basie set. (Stories I have heard many times.) What the hell, dad??

A more explicable moment, this time from the ancient past: He is driving me to school around age 14 or so, and I have a Violent Femmes tape playing. He asks me what the name of the band is, I tell him, and his face changes and he doesn't know what to say, and finally says that's not a good name for a band

Mose was an oddball, but that was part of his charm. He was also a really good songwriter.

My dad had a fantastic record collection. I got turned on to people like Muddy Waters, Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart listening to his collection. But: he absolutely could not stand Led Zeppelin. And so, naturally, I collected and played Zeppelin as often as I could.

I remember my parents getting very annoyed at me playing bass along to a Can album - that's probably not weird though.

My dad also couldn't stand KISS; he thought they were talentless hacks. He wasn't wrong, but still, whatever, Dad.

mormon parents, nuff said

also: in the 80s

I've shared these before, but:

• Mom hated Brian Johnson's voice, so I wasn't allowed to play AC/DC in the house; on the other hand, she thought Iggy Pop had a pleasing baritone, so his records were OK
• direct quote from Mom: "Jazz is music for people who think they're smart." Almost used that as the epigraph for my first book.

Mose was an oddball, but that was part of his charm. He was also a really good songwriter.

jim if only you'd been there, you could have explained it all to him.

Part of the angle I'm coming at this from: I am now a dad. And I'm sure I'm weird about music in ways I don't understand yet. for instance, I'm horrified by some of the rap my 14yo listens to. So far so normal.. But like... "Bitch Please II" is one of my favorite songs. I mean.. I used to sing along to "Last Caress" on Garage Days Re-Revisited. But even that isn't really weird. Hypocrisy is not weird. I'm talking about when something about music makes something inside a parent seemingly sproing awry and their reaction veers in an unexpected direction

xp I'm sure that would have gone over well LOL

I can’t remember a particular instance of my parents being weird about music but Mose Allison is great!

my mom flipped her wig and asked me emphatically to stop singing in the house on three different occasions:
1) when i was belting out Sexual Healing, age 8 or 9
2) when i was singing Material Girl, same age
3) when I was singing Accident Waiting to Happen (the Billy Bragg song), in college

in retrospect she just couldn't handle those words coming out of this mouth so it's not that weird or shocking but i do think it's pretty arbitrary considering the songs i listened to but did not go around the house singing at top of my lungs

my dad was weird about his like of blood, sweat & tears. "now that's a group!" "their music was positive!" etc.

my mom was psychotic about everything but got really, really weird when i was "in a band" with my friends at 13-14 yo. wanted me to compose arrangements to church hymns as a counter to it.

My dad, who was weird anyway, would only listen to non-modern classical music - Sibelius, Mozart, Greig, whatever. I remember some crazy evil-doll's-house sounding Harrison Birtwistle piece came on the radio one time and he acted like a cat whose fur had been stroked the wrong way. In modern parlance it 'triggered' him, god knows why. He was truly disturbed by it. Good thing Radio 3 never played Xenakis!

sometime around 2019, driving with my parents along coast hwy on a beautiful summer day, headed for a family event in orange county (laguna beach area) and dad asks me to put on some “nice music” to fit the mood

i say “how about the beach boys?” and they seem pleased with the idea (they mostly like classical and oldies) and so i put on pet sounds

after a few minutes my mom leans forward from the back and asks with a look of concern “… is this really the beach boys?”

i smile and nod yes and my dad gets this savage look of total disgust and sneers “they SOUND like they’re ON DRUGS!”

oops it was around 2009*

hahaha perfect

i’m pretty sure i’ve told that story here before

lol that's great

My dad once walked into my room while I was playing Yo La Tengo's "Painful" and said, in puzzlement, "Are you listening to New Age music?"

Actual LOL at late great's story.

Feel free to let your parents know that when the Beach Boys actually played Laguna Beach (at the Festival of the Arts in 2015), the stench of expensive pot (rich Laguna boomers always have high-grade) did rival the level of Van Halen at the Honda Center 2007 and Aerosmith at an 2015 Allstate Insurance private party at (what is now) the Waldorf-Astoria golf course in Laguna Niguel.

I may have written about that somewhere around ILX (something like: "I was a human pylon at an Aerosmith corporate gig for successful Allstate Insurance agents"). If not, I should.

You really should.

The only time my parents ever objected to anything musically was when I got a box set of '77 punk in junior high and it was called The Shit Factory. DGAF about actually listening to the Sex Pistols or The Damned or whatever but the title of the box set made them mad.

Reverse weirdness - circa age 22 I got press-ganged into going with my family through one of those drive through Christmas light parks and I brought a mix CD w/ Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Old 97's, Gillian Welch, Neko Case, etc. and my parents were shocked that this was what I was listening to and made me leave the CD.

When I was about 10 years old my dad successfully convinced me John Bonham and John Paul Jones were killed by the devil

(Never mind JPJ is still alive!)

my dad heard something buried in the mix of my life in the bush of ghosts that was not only so offensive he demanded i turn it off but also apparently so clear he assumed i was trolling when i asked why, so the more i begged him to tell me what he'd heard the madder he became. still have no idea what it was but it did help build the album's mystique.

My mum once told me "I heard this song on the radio that was truly ugly...it made me sad, I didn't think music could be ugly like that, it could be awkward or subpar but not truly ugly like this".

It was "Love Shack" by the B52's.

hahaha amazing

that is incredible

My dad got really livid when I put on Howe Gelb's The Listener

So when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s my parents were evangelical christians until about the time I graduated high school. When I was 16, a friend got me into Led Zeppelin and I started buying their albums on cassette. After I bought a couple of cassettes, my dad staged an intervention where he forbid me from buying any more "Led Zeppelin tapes". He sat me down and explained to me how Led Zeppelin was wrong, citing "The Lemon Song", and asking me if I knew what it was about and then awkwardly explaining the lyrics to me. Then he talked about how they were evil and worshipped the devil "like Black Sabbath". I had never heard Black Sabbath to this point and all I knew about them was the reference in Cheech & Chong's skit, "Let's Make a Dope Deal", which my friend who shared LZ with me also played for me. So during this ultra serious lecture my dad is giving I start to laugh and he then asks if I am listening to Black Sabbath so I have to explain the source of my laughter.

The upshot of all this was I started buying Led Zeppelin on CD, since my dad had just gotten a CD player. He realized at some point and confronted me, asking why I was still buying Led Zeppelin when he had forbid it. I responded, "You said 'no more Led Zeppelin tapes', these are Led Zeppelin CDs".

The name of this story is "How PBKR Became a Lawyer".

Back in peak 1985 or thereabouts, my mom (who rarely listened to music save for the occasional Peter, Paul & Mary, though we're pretty sure she saw Dylan go electric at the Newport Folk Festival) told me she was not a fan of "Dancing in the Dark" because of the line "this gun's for hire," which she said promoted gun violence.

My mom heard me talking to a friend on the phone when I was about 13, describing Country Joe and the Fish’s performance of “Fish Cheer” on the Woodstock soundtrack album I had recently heard. She got very alarmed and serious. “You don’t actually OWN that record, do you?!”

I got in trouble when my mom found my friend's Ill Communication CD in the boombox she used to teach her Jazzercise class.

Oh, and Daniel_Rf’s “Love Shack” story actually made me a little sad that someone could dislike such a joyous song to that extent. I wonder if my mom has ever heard it?

this thread is overdelivering, thank you all for these stories!

My father had some pretty good records in 1979-81. Sure, Beatles and Stones but also David Johansen, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty. Sinatra, loads of jazz and opera.

My mother is a serious classical musician (violin and viola) with shelves of Brahms. Also she was a 60s boho folkie - she had all the Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Linda Rondstadt and Joan Baez and Judy Collins stuff. Plus musicals and show tunes.

Neither of them had any use for the music I liked in my teens and twenties. "Classic Rock" as understood circa 1988 was stuff like the Who, Floyd, Zeppelin, Bad Company. They didn't have any interest in what was called "college rock" like REM, Talking Heads, Pixies, U2, Smiths, Cure, Replacements.

In about 1995 I made a mix tape in for a road trip, hoping I could introduce them to modern soft that I thought they would appreciate. You know, like Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Goo Goo Barenaked Colvin Blossom Crows Vega Third Sugar Dave Alanis Blind Doll Hootie Doctors. They were completely resistant to it. Thought it all too sleep-inducing.

It's funny you say that YMP because my mother once famously (to me) (and I think I've told this story here before) said to me, after I had put on "Stairway to Heaven" in the car, "you know, if you like that there's this band called The Mamas and the Papas you should really check out" which in retrospect was a pretty sick burn

I just remembered there were a couple of guys I skated with when I was like 14-15 and they were heavily into all the hardcore that parents hated: M.O.D., Circle Jerks, D.R.I., Bad Brains, Misfits etc.. One guys' dad had actually built him a mini-ramp for his backyard, which was just incredible, we spent so much time on that thing (and I was always pretty terrible at it). Anyway, the ramp-building dad at some point actually listened to some of his tapes, became convinced the music was "Satanic" and literally piled them all into a heap and lit them on fire :/

when I was 6, my parents confiscated my copies of weird al's "dare to be stupid" (over the frankie says hollywood line "when you wanna cum" in his polka medley). they also took my wang chung album. I didnt understand why, but I recently realized it was because they said "fuck" in one song, a word I hadn't heard up til that point, but would later hear on my dad's grateful dead and jefferson airplane albums.

a few years later, my motley crue "girls, girls, girls" cassingle mysteriously disappeared. I have my suspicions.

― rustic italian flatbread, Friday, September 16, 2011 6:43 AM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

My parents had a music censorship streak when I was in elementary school. I still think the Weird Al and Wang Chung confiscation was a terrible, terrible idea. To their credit, they did dub the Weird Al album on cassette minus the offending song and returned the LP to me when I was an adult. No idea what became of the Wang Chung album.

After that, I was more judicious (secretive) about listening to music. If it seemed like something that would upset them, I'd save it to listen when they weren't home.

On one later occasion, my dad got loudly angry about the Cracker song Euro-trash Girl. "That's an awful thing to say about somebody. People aren't trash!" I tried explaining that it was just slang, but he stuck to his guns. I'm kinda with him on that now.

Also in my teenage years, I remember Mom ordered me to turn off the Bouncing Souls' song, Neurotic, which ends with the singer simulating a nervous breakdown. I hadn't thought twice about it, but my mom was going through some mental health struggles at the time and in this case, I realized immediately how it would be upsetting to her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDvmRZ6Vn5U

Those are the only conflicts I can remember with my parents about music, mostly not weird. Stealing my Weird Al record - fuckin' weird.

Now that I have adult children, I suppose I have my own weirdness about the music they listen to:

- My oldest is deeply into country music. Her knowledge and appreciation are vast. Which is wonderful, but she has a predilection for the modern, formulaic stuff that I just cannot stand. I'll never understand her love for faux redneck shit like Kenny Chesney.

- My second listens pretty much to the same stuff I do, but his tastes skew heavily male. When he controls the playlist, I'm usually asking him to add some female voices to the mix. I'm sure he's mentally rolling his eyes.

- My third is probably the most eclectic, running from surf music to hip hop to 80s bands to grunge. I'm often struggling to guess what he might want to listen to.

Tracer's mom's Mamas and the Papas rec makes me smile.

late entry for Thread of the Year, loving this.

he stuck to his guns. I'm kinda with him on that now.

particularly enjoying this ^ subset of posts: "times your parents were weird about music, but in hindsight they were pretty OTM"

I remember listening to something that featured some chopped-up jazz sample and my mother being very confused and asking me about it. I explained to her what "sampling" was, thinking she would find it neat, but she was shocked and appalled at the idea that musicians would commit plagiarism like that. I tried to explain to her that it was (usually) on the up & up and involved royalties, licensing, etc. But she immediately became agitated about the potential legal exposure of owning an album that included sonic thievery and worried that if anyone found out we had this illegal album the cops would come and raid our house.

- My oldest is deeply into country music. Her knowledge and appreciation are vast. Which is wonderful, but she has a predilection for the modern, formulaic stuff that I just cannot stand. I'll never understand her love for faux redneck shit like Kenny Chesney.

I have more patience for this stuff than you do, but my sister will NOT listen to female country artists; she thinks they're too angry. But she adores Chesney (I like a song of his here and there).

My parents were very tolerant of my music taste in general, however I used to get "lucky dip" boxes of 10 remaindered 7" singles (this would be like 1987/aged 7/8) - and my mother (a catholic feminist hippie computer programmer) once decided that a single was not suitable, put it up on a high shelf where I could not reach it, and presumably threw it away at some point - it was this one:

https://i.imgur.com/If8h8O4.png

I was allowed to listen to whatever I wanted, wherever. I remember bringing home Run DMC's "Raising Hell" cassette and playing it at the dinner table (parents were very tolerant). There's the line in "Hit It Run" that goes "those dumb motherfuckers can't mess with us," at which point my dad asked me what they said and made me turn it off. That was the only time he ever did that, best I can remember.

the ramp-building dad at some point actually listened to some of his tapes, became convinced the music was "Satanic" and literally piled them all into a heap and lit them on fire :/

Oh, and Daniel_Rf’s “Love Shack” story actually made me a little sad that someone could dislike such a joyous song to that extent. I wonder if my mom has ever heard it?

I disliked the B-52s at the time. I didn’t like the ramshackle shouty sound they had. I can easily understand the comment about it being ‘ugly’. But funnily enough, I heard something by them again recently and didn’t mind it.

my dad has always been supportive of my interest in music, especially in making my own music, but he has almost no interest in music himself. one of his favorite things to say when my parents helped me buy music gear was that i should use it make music that has a melody that he can hum/whistle. almost all the music i've made in the past 30 years are variations on rock/pop music and tends to be pretty melodic - it's not noise music - but he says it every time. i'm pretty sure he doesn't understand what a "melody" is, he probably just means "make something light with a big obvious instrumental melody line"

i listened to plenty of obnoxious music growing up but the only time my dad burst into my room and was like "WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO? TURN IT OFF!" was when i was listening to ventolin by aphex twin, which, fair enough

lol

my mom hated all cover versions. the song would play for a verse or so, but by the time it got to the chorus it would be, "that's not the original. they're ruining the song."

to her credit, she always knew the difference between the og and a cover.

I came home late-ish from a gig one time and my mom asked me what the band was like and I was like "They were great" and she said "What did they sing about?" and I just goggled at her. What kind of a question was that?? Did she think I could understand the words???

Haha, the only time my mum drew the line was when I was listening to "Quoth" by Aphex Twin on the family stereo. Which, yes, fair enough.

I have more patience for this stuff than you do, but my sister will NOT listen to female country artists; she thinks they're too angry. But she adores Chesney (I like a song of his here and there).

Angry, really? My daughter adores female country artists, both old and new. She loves Miranda Lambert as much as she does Loretta Lynn. She was kind of procrastinating on getting a Covid vaccination until Dolly told her to go get one, then she was like, "We gotta go, right now!"

We had a pretty good library near us, and my conservative suburban boomer dad had a weekly ritual of borrowing a stack of CDs every week, taping them & returning them for a new stack - he did a lot of driving so was always in need of fresh tapes to listen to. But after a certain number of years he started exhausting all of the "white guy suburban boomer dad canon" type albums they had, and his craving for novelty and fresh tunes resulted in him starting to just get whatever new CDs the young librarians were buying, and eventually just anything he found that he hadnt heard. as a result, he ended up developing pretty catholic tastes as a result - shockingly so, considering the kind of straightlaced guy he was in just about every other respect. Road trips that had been soundtracked to The Band and Springsteen gradually became infiltrated by Kraftwerk, the Replacements, Grace Jones, Beastie Boys, Tom Waits. I remember one very awkward car ride where he popped in Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes, a fine album but slightly uncomfortable for a teenage boy to listen to alone with their dad. At the time I actually often bristled at his choices, but ofc as I got older I quickly became inspired by & envious of his apparent ability to truly listen without prejudice. He didnt like it all but he gave just about everything a fair shot.

When I was a kid my dad really liked smoky saxophone music, Boots Randolph with strings type stuff. Now when I go to my parents’ house he’ll usually be listening to vintage country (which I think is great.) I recently tried to flip the satellite station over to classic jazz during dinner thinking he might like it, but after 10 minutes he switched it back. “That one’s putting me to sleep” and “That sounds like a dentist’s office” were his critiques.

My mom loves the music she grew up with (50s and early-to-mid-60s, especially Motown, as she is from Detroit) and has very little appreciation for anything else. She once said she couldn't stand Bob Dylan because he sang "that awful 'Mack the Knife.'"

I have written, recorded, produced, or contributed to probably 15 album-length projects in the last 30 years. My mother listened to the first one or two, and now just puts them on a shelf she calls "family projects." She doesn't even pretend to have listened to them. Which is fine! To be quite honest, I don't usually listen to her recordings either, and she's the concertmaster of a perfectly decent community orchestra with some cool programming choices! Like, they're in St. Louis and do a lot of Scott Joplin stuff, plus themed collaborations with the art museum, the historical society, and the botanical garden.

My eldest child is WAY into the things they're into. Musicals/show tunes are present - but it's more contemporary musicals like Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Come From Away, Into the Woods, Wicked. They have no interest in Rodgers & Hammerstein or Gilbert & Sullivan or Cole Porter. Plus all kinds of Anime and J-pop and Ensemble Stars stuff that makes exactly zero sense to me, but I nod and smile while they gush over the latest obsession.

Younger kid can only process music that is filtered through talent-show and reality television, like Masked Singer or AGT or whatever. The idea of putting on a Cyndi Lauper album is completely alien to him, but he loves the Trolls version of "True Colors."

Music comes to different people in different ways and I am okay with that.

My parents are cool. My Beatles collection (including lots of solo Harrison) is my mom's. About the only time my dad ever said anything vaguely nasty was when sometime in the '90s I bought the single-disc Ryko Yoko Ono comp. He said something like, "Well, we all have tastes we can't explain to other people."

I was in my room listening to They Might be Giants and my Dad came in the room while "It's Kickin In" was playing. In particular it was the chorus:

"Stop to appreciate it/Let's hear the boyfriends say it"

my Dad goes "Whoa whoa whoa, that's pretty vulgar huh? You can't just say something like that!" Obviously he misheard something but to this day I can't figure out what and it puzzles me every time I hear it now. And of course he wouldn't repeat what he "heard".

can’t remember any specific artists my parents were weird about but when i was growing up both of them refused to let me watch MTV or The Box (VH1 was fine, this was back when they were the “softer” alternative to MTV). i suspect the primary motivation was so that i wouldn’t be exposed to rap music, even if they didn’t say as much. (obviously i disobeyed their wishes repeatedly and even secretly taped “120 minutes” episodes for awhile)

scandalous!

lmao frogbs that's the good stuff

Don't know if I can go there right now but enjoying reading y'all's posts.

Was this moral panic thing of concerned parents banning their kids from listening to "Satanic" bands exclusively a US phenomenon?

I had a school friend whose parents were devout Christians, as was he. For reasons I was never able to fathom, his parents decided Status Quo were the one acceptable non secular band that he could listen to. He went on to have quite a sizeable record collection of only Status Quo records.

Good thing his parents never heard Roll Over Lay Down or Big Fat Mama

The odd thing was that there was little differentiation betweeen the Satanic acts. Like, yes, of course Ozzy and Dio were satan worshippers, but so were Madonna and Billy Joel.

It was very Qanon.

I remember the outrage when Madonna wore that SATANISTS DO IT BETTER t-shirt

Another friend of mine in high school had never been allowed to trick or treat because his parents thought it was Satanic. Of course he ended up being a huge Ministry fan, Fugazi, Black Flag etc

Hmm. This is interesting to me but I don't remember many instances of my parents NOT being cool with racy/edgy lyrics (as far as simple listening goes). Like, my father had New York Dolls and Ramones records, so it would have been weird for him to object to Duran Duran or Genesis.

My mother is a more interesting case, because she also ran a dance school, and had different standards for different uses. She didn't care if we wanted to listen to Nine Inch Nails on our own time (why would she have either known or cared?). But when we were planning dance recitals (at a Catholic school!) she needed to be extra careful. I remember her being good with staging "Aquarius" from Hair, but she absolutely wouldn't do Jeffrey Osborne's "Baby Stay With Me Tonight."

Back in dual-cassette boombox days I remember her trying to do a school-safe edit of "Shuffle Off to Buffalo."

Note: "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" is from the 1933 version of 42nd Street. For some reason my mother thought that the lyric "I'll go home and get my panties, you go home and get your scanties" wouldn't be acceptable. This was approximately the time of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Relax."

Before my brother and I were old enough to drive, one of our parents would accompany us to concerts. One of the more memorable ones -- because it remains the worst performance I've ever witnessed -- was Yes at an outdoor shed in 1984. After the (interminable) concert, my dad said to us, "You know...they just didn't swing." He was right.

(He'd seen Ellington and Basie multiple times, and Mingus with Dolphy, so he knew a little something about swing.)

My dad’s music taste extended to liking a bit of Beethoven and Glenn Miller. He had once accidentally seen Buddy Rich play and would often say he was the world’s greatest ever drummer even though he had nothing to compare him to.

As a teenager I subjected him to all sorts of musical torture and he was endlessly patient and while he would roll his eyes and drop cliches such as that isn’t music he never really complained. That is until I brought home “Hole” by Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel and had it on endless repeat for months and months and he started to offer me bribes to stop playing it. Finally the track I’ll Meet You In Poland Baby made him crack. It has a rhythm track made from the sound of Nazi jackboots and features a good few sampled Sieg Heils. He requested (nay, pleaded!) that I only play that one when he was out the house. He also confided to my sister that he was worried listening to it so much might make me a Nazi.

Years later I was running a Sunday evening Ambient music club and he decided he wanted to come and try and understand what I was doing with my life. So, he and my stepmother came along to this basement club full of people who had mostly been up all night and were lying on cushions on the floor. There was a fairly pungent odour of cannabis in the air not very well disguised by incense and an extremely psychedelic lighting set up, plus projections.

He stayed for about 45 minutes. I think I played some Zoviet France, Pete Namlook, some then current ambient dub stuff and pandered to him a bit by mixing in Depeche Mode’s version of Moonlight Sonata at one point.

He called me the next day to say how much he had enjoyed it, except for the odour and the lights. He described the music as atmospheric, space jungle music which for someone who had absolutely zero reference points for what was being played (apart from Moonlight Sonata) was pretty spot on.

My parents were pretty censorious until I got to junior high or so. I remember dubbing a friend's copy of Appetite for Destruction in my closet so they wouldn't find out (not sure how I ever listened to it, since I didn't have a walkman). Another time they somehow discovered I'd bought AC/DC's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, confiscated it from me before I could even listen to it, and then subjected me to a sort of tribunal where they explained the various ways it was "unsuitable." I've still never heard that album!

But the best moments in retrospect were my Dad being surprisingly hip, like out of the blue asking me circa 1997 "do you know this band Portishead?" Or bringing me a copy of Different Class back from a UK trip before it was available in the US and without me ever mentioning the band (sadly, someone had stolen the CD out of the case, so I still had to wait for a domestic release to hear it). Or my favorite, when I was visiting home as an adult, listening to a mix I'd made, and my dad flipped out (positively) over Harry Mudie & King Tubby's "Dub with a Difference." I don't think he'd ever heard dub or barely any reggae before, would never have crossed my mind to play him something like that.

There was a lovely thread last winter on going to concerts with your parents that made me feel guilty for never inviting my folks to a show. At the time, I was deep into the Arooj Aftab record and was looking at buying tickets for her show. My dad is from India and still listens to Bollywood and traditional Indian music, and as a result is generally more receptive to non-western world music more broadly. He has a bunch of random world CDs in his car that span different cultures and languages.

So I send him a video of her performing "Mohabbat" live and invite him to accompany me to the show. I am excited to have found an artist that I adore that I think my dad will connect with and appreciate. And he sends back a text saying her violinist's style is bizarre and "She is singing in Urdu and unless you know it will not enjoy it."

Circa 1989, I went to a Billy Joel concert (Storm Front tour). My mother said, and I quote, "Get a generation." I guess she thought I ought to be more into Whitesnake? Or Paula Abdul? Not sure exactly what.

She is a strange person but a wise person and I like her a lot.

mom and dad hated swearing on albums, like, that's not strange, but it was more like, how angry they got about it, esp considering they both swore (mom wouldn't say "fuck", but dad would if you had mom out of earshot). dad felt like music was supposed to be classy, he got mad once where he saw Eric Benet perform on tv and said the word "ass".

Mom walked in one day when Offspring's "Bad Habit" played and about flipped her lid (but didn't make me toss the album or anything). and also I'd asked her to buy me Vulgar Display of Power and she came home and yelled "NEANDER ANTHONY THAL, you asked me to buy THIS? really? F'ING HOSTILE?"....but again, she did it.

nowadays, my mother gives much less of a fuck about it, esp since she liked Cee-Lo's "Fuck You"

NEANDER ANTHONY THAL

lol dying @ this

also, my very first Slayer concert tee 'disappeared', and I suspect I know who disappeared it

xp to Indexed
lol that is very much like my Indian m-i-l who plays phenomenally syrupy world fusion stuff in her car—pure musical tooth decay—but was hyper-critical when I played Alice Coltrane (the early jazz stuff, not the ashram stuff; I'm not that dim) once. Even my US-born partner, who does not speak Urdu at all, said something somewhat similar about Aftab on first listen, being familiar enough with the cultural expectations around ghazals

My old man saw shows I'd give my left nut to have seen. He never took me with. Tbf, I was pretty young for some of them.

- Hendrix with Ike and Tina Turner at Cobo Hall in Detroit
- The Rolling Stones numerous times in the late 60s/early 70s
- Bob Dylan at the actual Hard Rain performance in Fort Collins, CO
- Pink Floyd on the Animals tour

There are probably others I don't remember/never heard about. I kind of laugh when I think about it now; he's not the kind of guy who gets very animated. I can see him sitting there, just soaking in the vibes.

I've made a point of taking my kids to shows.

sometime around 2019, driving with my parents along coast hwy on a beautiful summer day, headed for a family event in orange county (laguna beach area) and dad asks me to put on some “nice music” to fit the mood

i say “how about the beach boys?” and they seem pleased with the idea (they mostly like classical and oldies) and so i put on pet sounds

after a few minutes my mom leans forward from the back and asks with a look of concern “… is this really the beach boys?”

i smile and nod yes and my dad gets this savage look of total disgust and sneers “they SOUND like they’re ON DRUGS!”

― the late great, Monday, December 19, 2022 11:27 PM bookmarkflaglink

lmao, that is great. i always love when you pull out an album by a parental favorite, one they never got around to listening to, and they are completely turned off by it.

My dad's parents claimed to love the Beatles. While at their house, I put on "Don't Let Me Down." My grandfather, after listening for about 30 seconds, said, "Don't let you down? I wouldn't let you up, you silly bastard."

my parents were obsessed with the Beatles, mom was also a big Lennon fan, but I put on Plastic Ono Band one day and mom asked to turn it off because she "didn't want to remember him this way" lol

hahaha

Hahaha, I can't blame her. I can barely stand to listen to "Double Fantasy."

I'd have loved to meet jimbeaux's grandpa.

He was an original. All of his grandchildren still quote him more than 30 years after he died.

The only time my parents ever objected to anything musically was when I got a box set of '77 punk in junior high and it was called The Shit Factory.

lol

I have written, recorded, produced, or contributed to probably 15 album-length projects in the last 30 years. My mother listened to the first one or two, and now just puts them on a shelf she calls "family projects." She doesn't even pretend to have listened to them. Which is fine!

I send my mom a copy of every CD my wife and I release on our label, and every CD my wife designs the cover art for (she's done about 10 releases for ESP-Disk) and I am 100% convinced she's never broken the shrink-wrap on any of them.

When I first got married, we lived with my wife's parents for a couple of months, and I think my mother-in-law threw away my Residents eyeball-head-guy-wearing-top-hat-and-tails T-shirt. My wife says no, but also claims not to know what happened to it. My suspicions linger.

I think the second CD I ever bought was The Presidents of the United States of America. I biked down to the used CD shop and found a copy for $5.99 which was just about all the money I had. I think I was 12 or 13. I was super excited and played it on my boombox with the windows open. Anyways if you've heard it you'd know there's one part at the end of "Kitty" (the first song) that drops a few prominent F-bombs. I remember laughing my ass off and then hearing the door open. My Mom had just gotten home and was like "WHAT are you listening to? You can't listen to that!" and she wound up taking the CD. I eventually stole it back and was kind of disappointed to find that was the only vulgar moment on the album. Not that I wanted it to be it just made me feel unlucky that THAT of all parts was the bit she heard.

My parents were never weird about profanity. Hell, the first Cheech and Chong album I listened to belonged to my dad.

My old man saw shows I'd give my left nut to have seen. He never took me with. Tbf, I was pretty young for some of them.

My father took my eldest sister to some pretty good shows, like some of the early Costello/Nieve duo shows. Plus pre-Poindexter Johansen. And early cabaret Bowie.

No I'm not like bitter about it or anything

Carry on

Definitely not bitter that the "Animals" tour was wasted on my old man. Nope.

I am 100% convinced she's never broken the shrink-wrap on any of them.

This brings up kind of a nice memory. In the 2000s, my cousin played bass in a moderately successful jam/party band. At the height of their ambitions, they cut a CD, and he mailed a copy to my grandmother. I was visiting her when it arrived – she opened it up and put in her computer's CD drive. I thought she'd just play a few snippets (as I would have)... but she sat there and listened to the entire thing, no doubt focusing on his bass playing, for the entire 35-minute (or whatever) running time. I'm sure she put it on the shelf and never played it again, but it was a good lesson to me.

Hell, the first Cheech and Chong album I listened to belonged to my dad.

My parents went to a drive-in to see a double bill of Up In Smoke and Reefer Madness, with us kids in the back seat, when I was six and my brother was three.

i suspect my dad was 'play-acting' his concerns about profanity/"evil music" for mom's sake, because he owned a copy of Coven's "Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls" (that he got in his 20s) and he hung the poster up at his job at the record store back then until his boss made him take it down. I stole it from him as an adult lol. that and his Sabbath records, which he claimed to never listen to.

I suspect the only real reason he hated metal was cos he thought it was all noise, not cos it was too dark and oppressive for his weird son.

"Rebuttal: Speaker Ashley Roachclip"

I suspect the only real reason he hated metal was cos he thought it was all noise

This was my old man's beef, as far as I could tell. Which was weird, because he owned some really out there material. I remember one album that sounded like someone ripping sheet metal.

ripping sheet metal

now I really wanna know what this is

- Hendrix with Ike and Tina Turner at Cobo Hall in Detroit

Pretty sure this was my uncle's first concert. He also saw the MC5 numerous times, and -- this kind of blows my mind -- the Bob Seger System at an afternoon high school assembly.

xp I've wondered myself for decades. He claims not to remember.

One of my aunts used to go see the Allman Brothers every time they played the Fillmore East. That same aunt came with me and my mom and my best friend at the time to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse (the tour with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion opening). It wasn't a chaperone situation - we wanted to go, they wanted to go, so we all went. The only time I ever had to go to a concert with a parent was in 1986, when my dad took me to see Dio and Accept. He came straight from work, still in his suit and tie from Wall Street. The other headbangers in our row had some fun with that. Years later, I took my mom to see Vicente Fernandez.

I was pretty fortunate to have parents whose tastes and CD shelf were dominated by the Beatles, Springsteen, the Band, and most of all Dylan. They were pretty supportive of my musical explorations but didn't get hip hop at all. It blows my mind that my 10-year-old daughter, whose taste in pop music doesn't range too far outside of Taylor Swift, is now basically the same age I was when my parents confiscated my tapes of The Chronic and Doggystyle. I can't really blame them for trying to minimize the influence on me of the misogyny and glorification of violence on those albums, though I like to think I took it all in stride.

More humorously - and I think this was the only other thing they ever took away and forbid me to listen to - was Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Parents read through the (I think handwritten) lyrics in the CD booklet (system upgrade from tapes to CDs with my Bar Mitzvah money), and decided that they would let me keep the CD, but they told me I couldn't listen to 2 songs - the title track and Sir Psycho Sexy. Even at the time I found it pretty hilarious that they thought I would comply with that. And honestly, what could they have found objectionable in lyrics like "Standing there with my hard on bleedin' / There's a devil in my dick and some demons in my semen"

On the other hand my mom apparently saw the Doors live when she was 15, so

I was listening to that RHCP album - my mom came in during "I Could Have Lied" (or whatever it's called; the ballad where the drums come in after a minute or so) and was like, "This is really great music!" It seemed a little less cool to me, lol

lol "don't listen to these two tracks".

my friend bought Stabbing Westward's Wither, Blister, Burn, and Peel once and the album doesn't have a lot of profanity, but the very first song has the word "asshole" and "fuck" in the first few lyrics, and his parents heard it and told him not to buy albums like that again. he's like "how the hell was I supposed to know", this being long before streaming existed.

this, of course, being the same kid who once sent me black and white porn pictures in the mail without warning, which I thankfully opened out of view of mom. called him and screamed at him for almost getting me in trouble.

In middle school I asked for a raise in my allowance. My dad sat me down and played me Randy Newman's "It's Money That Matters," and asked me to think about its message.

what song did he play when you brought your 2-foot tall friend home to play

my mom randomly bought me blood sugar sex magik, it was not something i had expressed any interest in it at all and was not something she would have listened to or known about. still not sure what that was all about.

my mom has been extremely tolerant and open-minded about the wide variety of weird shit I listen/listened to for my whole life pretty much, but I remember her being particularly miffed when I brought home the J. Geils Band "Love Stinks" LP... "that's an AWFUL title!"

The most unexpected Xmas gift was when my aunt bought me Poison's Open Up and Say... Ahh!.

xpost lol

My dad would always be like, "You know what they say... 'Piss on KISS.'"

Pretty sure I have never heard anyone but him say that!

Parents in Satan's Service

I didn't even listen to KISS, it was just whenever they came up

"you know what they say - piss on KISS!"

"dad I'm trying to do homework, can you please leave?"

"you know what would be crazy, what if your homework was to PISS on KISS? hahaha!"

"dad we're all very worried about you..."

Re: Have Tommy wear the Ankh and Eric wear the Fox makeup

Post by rewind84 » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:20 am
I think it would be the final piss on KISS legacy.

Dad: You know what they say...

Kids:

https://preview.redd.it/4js7pzqiqte91.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=8bf8d2a4be5593653ab3e5cb41bc0fd3fec95153

you've all heard of elf on the shelf, now here's

My dad was nearly 15 years older than my mom. I never fully grasped the cultural divide between them until we went to see The U.S. vs. John Lennon and at some point during the movie, it became apparent that my dad was rooting for the C.I.A.

lol @ the late great's post

This really is a thoughtful question, because I can't recall any real moment like this. I mean, I know there were things my folks didn't much care for, but it was a kind of a general listening household for lack of a better term, and music just wasn't/isn't quite as central to their lives as for me -- that said, they very much enjoy music, and had already amassed an interesting vinyl collection by the time I was more conscious of it in the late 70s. So my dad was always a big Bonnie Raitt fan, and welcomed her comeback run happily later, for instance, and he remains a fascinating bellwether for country listening over the decades -- essentially he's always good with whatever's current, meaning that almost in spite of himself he's ended up listening to a crazy range of music that fits under the rubric. (Like, he's the biggest Kacey Musgraves I know, literally?)

So if I had to name anything, it would more likely be for dad when he wanted to see what I was watching one day in 1989 and sat down with me to see the collected videos by Love and Rockets (I remember scratching my head and wondering what he must have thought of Daniel Ash's glammed-up approach but don't recall much otherwise) and for mom when she told me back in 1994 that she couldn't figure out why there was so much 'dark' music around and I made her a mixtape with things like In the Nursery's quieter moments and Aphex's "Rhubarb" and some other stuff and she was quite pleased by it all. (Many years later after Casino Royale came out -- mom's a big Bond and Craig fan -- and we were talking about it, I began to explain about who Chris Cornell was and she goes "Oh I know about Soundgarden!" and I'm all to myself "...what happened HERE? And how did I miss it?"

re: "parental advisory" + explicit lyrics

i was forbade from having those sorts of things in the house, but by the time i had my own spending money, snoop dogg and everlast were respectively allowed to say "fallin back on that ass" and "i ain't goin out like no punk bitch" on the radio (which i was also forbade from listening to for a short while + during punishment), so it wasn't that much of a stretch for my passive aggressively rebellious mind to buy blank tapes and make my own "albums." i think she preferred that i listened mostly on headphones because of the music i liked. also had a best friend whose parents dngaf and encouraged our enthusiasm for music, so i dubbed a lot of stuff from them. i think she finally relented by about freshman year of high school when she saw that i had started to build really healthy friendships based solely around music interest. so much so that by the time i deemed the crappy old family stereo "all in one" turntable unfit for me, she helped me pay for my first "REAL" turntable + mixer.

but after all of it, it still felt more like a secession of power than an actual support. idk, maybe wrong vibe for thread but it was always weird to me. i always invited her to gigs and, y'know, with the caveat that it's a loud bunch of young people letting loose* -- but i was there for the music and she could hang in the booth or BRING FRIENDS or whatever. the main point was: this is a huge part of my life and i want to share it if you would like to be a part of it.

always no. never any consideration, ever.

i asked her later if she never came because she thought it may be unsafe, to which she almost immediately retorts, "if i thought that i wouldn't have let you go."

big sigh. thanks for the turntable tho. that was cool.

*(not militant about it, but i was sXe until ~25)

xpost re:mixtapes for the folks- many, many years later i slipped a personal john klemmer mix into her 10 disc car changer and she ended up asking me literal years later how to get the cartridge out because there was one that came up every so often that she really liked, but hadn't a clue what it was. it was the klemmer mix. guess any good dj has to be able read the room.

rad thread. thanks all.

Parents, like children, are eternal mysteries.

Why did my stepfather like Endless Summer but hate the Barenaked Ladies song "Brian Wilson," which is acutally pretty good once the beat kicks in? I don't know. I do know that he heard the intro and promptly fast-forwarded through it because we were on a long drive and he needed to stay alert. He could have waited a few measures to when the beat kicked in but he didn't.

Pretty sure this was my uncle's first concert. He also saw the MC5 numerous times, and -- this kind of blows my mind -- the Bob Seger System at an afternoon high school assembly.

Crazy, right? Diana Ross played at my mom's high school in Walled Lake.

Killer thread.

I think this is my parents being not weird, but...

My mum only told me recently that the dude who used to clean our windows approached her when I was a teenage. He'd heard me playing some filthy death metal so peeked into my room and saw my walls festooned with a bunch of hairy dudes. Apparently, he said that anyone who listens to this kind of music either ends up homosexual or on heroin. Or both.

Neither are true. So far, anyway.

Seger was literally the hardest working dude in the biz back then, so I bet he played anywhere, any chance he got ups

xps not ups fuck u autocorrect

My dad wondered aloud in 1978 or so if Jerry Lee Lewis was the "hot new rock combo."

Wondering when my own kids are going to roll their eyes about me not being knowledgeable enough about Pearl and the Oysters.

I asked my 21 year old about Cage the Elephant and he laughed.

My parents were THRILLED when I got into Paul McCartney and Chicago as a kid. They took me to see Chicago in 1989, my first concert, and I was blown away. They were upset that a comedian opened the show and did the Tarantino "I bet I could piss on the bar" joke. But other than that, perfect.

So when I made the weird abrupt transition to metal as a teen, dad came in to try and talk me out of it by saying "Once upon a time, you told me DADDY, THAT'S JUST SCREAMING! what happened"

Got him a night in the dungeon it did but he learned

One of my best concert experiences ever was taking my now 21 year old to see My Morning Jacket at the Beacon Theater for his 15th birthday. What a trip, and what a show.

The last show we saw together was New Order/Pet Shop Boys at the Hollywood Bowl this year. We talk about it every time we see each other.

These are things I know he will remember for the rest of his life.

Love that

In 2018 or 19 my dad, mom, and I planned to go see Chicago again, but this was just as dad's decline was starting to progress and he said he didn't want to.

They played Chicago II in its entirety, it was glorious. Mom said it was the best show she ever saw.

REO Speedwagon opened and a lot of their dork fanbase left because they didn't know Chicago 2 and mom started loudly talking about how they were all posers

mom otm

I'm glad you got to experience that with your Mom anyway. "Posers" LOL

My dad's tastes were more for the Osbourne Brothers, Slim Whitman, Buck Owens and Marty Robbins. He usually would just shake his head at a whole lot of the stuff I listened to but the only thing I can ever remember him actually making a comment was as a kid I was listening to the radio as Prince's "Delirious" was on and him saying "Is it really supposed to sound like that?"

haha this thread is the best, thank you Tracer, the lols keep coming

tangential, but my dear departed grandmother once ventured into a hip Baltimore record store that I frequented on my visits there, in search of a birthday present circa 1983, and asked if they had any of those See-Ooh-See And The Banshees records. The way I heard it from my mom was that the staff was amused but not derisive, more power to them

...and that's how I fell in love with A Kiss In The Dreamhouse

also remember being in a car with my dad playing Current 93's track "Sucking Up Souls To Feed The Moon" and him asking "does this high pitched whining sound just keep going?" (I had not noticed it previously, yes it does)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ8kLiKfyNg

what a gorgeous way to get A Kiss in the Dreamhouse

still grateful almost 40 years later tbh

When I was pretty young, probably 8 or so, I remember asking my parents what the longest song ever was. The best they could come up with was the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" (about 4 minutes 30 seconds).

(My parents were in their early 20s in the late 60s).

terrific thread, thank you Tracer and everyone.

Everybody admit the first album u snuck into the house

I borrowed my friend's cassette of Appetite for Destruction, which I snuck up to my room and dubbed.

Age 9 probably.

It wasn't my first hard rock album, but I think my parents had talked to the record store clerks to ensure that Dokken and Europe were safe for impressionable ears, and I knew that was not the case with G'n'R.

I remember singing along to Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band" on the radio as a kid and my dad yelling "aw, that's gross!" from the next room. We didn't agree on music, or anything really so I took his comment as an indictment of my singing and it stung, especially in the context of the lyrics being all about a son carrying on the musical legacy of his father. Some years later I heard the song again and realized that he was probably just dad-joking specifically about the line "his blood runs through my instrument", which fair enough, is pretty damn gross.

This whole discussion seems anachronistic to me, like a funhouse mirror.

I am officialy An Old (born 1971), and so were my parents (born 1943 and 1944). Nothing that I "snuck into the house" could have been more vulgar than the cover of Sticky Fingers, which my parents owned. Ditto Transformer or Ziggy Stardust, which my parents owned.

As I've said, my parents were way more likely to mock me for the mellowness of my music taste, rather than forbid me to listen to something transgressive. Circa 1990, they could not understand why I was listening to Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls instead of, I dunno, Appetite for Destruction or Licensed to Ill.

If you're An Old, I must be ancient (est. 1965). But, my experiences by and large were similar to yours. My parents', and especially my dad's, objections were primarily over perceived lack of quality, not vulgarity.

Christmas 1979, and Queen were playing a run of shows at different venues around London for some reason. My brother (17 to my 11) and his mates had a spare ticket to the Alexandra Palace gig (Ally Pally as you know it if you're from north London, this was 6 months before it was burnt to a shell in a giant conflagration). Brother and his friend spent about an hour convincing our parents that it wouldn't be full of drug-taking or underage drinking or violence. Parents must have relented in the end as I did go - not much decadence on show in the crowd as I recall, although I did get caught in a crush and fainted. I just remember the look of anguish and concern on my mum's face, god knows why they thought I might be sucked into some netherworld of rock'n'roll loucheness as the place was actually full of footie fan types.

hip hop was essentially off limits in my house. i wasnt banned from owning it, but if it was sighted or heard by my parents i would get either roasted with racist mockery (my dad) or scolded with racist fearmongering (my mom).i could bring home Butthole Surfers CDs with disgusting covers and listen to as much weirdo punk glorifying drugs sex & violence as i wanted, but Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was a step too far for my parents.

Same as above. The Beastie Boys passed because they're white, but when my mom actually heard them she flipped out. This led to a big argument about my mom complaining about them using the words "motherfucker" and me complaining about my mom's use of the N word. All parental objections and weirdness were race related.

My mom complained about Mazzy Star once because Hope "sounded like a ghost."

not my mother, but my aunt asked if my cousin and I were listening to "nazi music" when we played a neubauten record.

xp yeah my dad listened to & enjoyed the hits of the beastie boys, but i think they registered to his ears as "loud hard rock" bc the idea of white people making rap music just did not compute in his brain

Everybody admit the first album u snuck into the house

― Fash Gordon (Neanderthal), Tuesday, December 20, 2022 10:41 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Lo-Fidelity All-Stars "How to Operate With a Blown Mind". I tried to peel the parental advisory sticker off but to no avail

one thing that sounds really goofy in retrospect is that Wal-Mart would sell the censored versions of CDs but it wouldn't really be clear that they were doing it. I got Ill Communication and was wondering why there was so much random backmasking in it. it was even weirder hearing the real versions of the songs because they were censoring a lot more than just the swears. more amusing than that was Fatboy Slim's You've Come a Long Way Baby - I'd seen copies with the Parental Advisory sticker but mine was just "Illin' In Heaven" - when I heard the real version I laughed my ass off. now that is how you EARN that sticker.

the main complaint i remember my Mom levying against songs was when she found them to be "dirges." i wish i could remember specific ones, but it was probably stuff like "Blow Up The Outside World" or other relatively downtempo alt-rock. but it wasn't a problem specific to the 90s; i remember her responding negatively to "Draggin' the Line" and "Working in the Coal Mine," recalling her youthful reaction: "We're teenagers! We wanna listen to some rock and roll!"

she loved the Beatles and Fats Domino, and vividly recalled seeing James Brown and the Famous Flames, but i guess later fell hard for the folkier side of things, as her collection was heavy on Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Ian & Sylvia. i wonder if that was an early point of connection with my Dad, who was a little older, dug Dylan, and had gone to see guys like Dave Van Ronk play in the early 60s. in my childhood, Graceland and the Traveling Wilburys loomed large. mysteriously, when i bought Dark Side of the Moon as a teen, and first took off the shrink wrap, he hung around when i put the CD in to "hear the first few bars," suggesting some kind of familiarity with it that didn't really match the rest of his tastes or anything in his record collection. when he heard "Electrolite" by R.E.M. he said it reminded him of a song he produced in some kind of music composition class he took in college, but he mocked the chorus of "How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us" --- "oh, great lyrics, 'aaaaaaaaah.'"

both of them would often give fair shakes to whatever i was listening to, and Dad must have had the alternative station (Atlanta's 99X) in his car radio rotation, because he would periodically get current songs stuck in his head, although he would kind of translate them into more of a folky or bluesy idiom. "rat in a cage, I'm just a rat in a cage..." he would intone. for a minute there he was doing a lot of freestyle substitutions on the "Where It's At" chorus, "I got two (whatevers) and a (whatever)." both of them were big on this kind of play with songs, and i am too.

eventually my mom started to allow me to buy whatever tapes/cds/vinyl i wanted, just on the condition that i did not purchase anything with a "parental advisory" warning label. a lot of independent hiphop 12" singles back then didn't have full artwork, just plain black sleeves, so they often didn't bother to put the warning. between that, the grey area of albums like midnight marauders, and dubbing stuff from my friend's collection, it's hard to say what the first "explicit" music i snuck into the house was.

all i know is that by the time i saw the b.u.m.s on bet rap city, i went to wherehouse and bought the cd single a few days later and the warning label did not slow me down one bit.

My parents never seemed to pay attention to what I was listening to growing up, but admittedly, it was mostly rather benign. I do recall my grandma making a comment of deep disappointment and regret when she learned that the musician whose t-shirt she bought me for xmas had made disparaging comments about George W Bush.

so here's some harmless funny family drama—

the rest of my family knew all about my deep interest in music because my mom and sister would basically complain* to them about it at get-togethers. for a christmas present in 1996, my grandmother (mom's mom) got me the space jam soundtrack. she said that she had gone into sam goody and asked the employee for "rap music without profanity", as she knew my mom "would not be happy" if i were gifted such a thing, and that was their recommendation. she told this story in front of everyone, around the christmas tree, talking directly to my mom the whole time, as i was unwrapping the gift. it wasn't my favorite music ever on the album, but it did become a highly coveted totem in service of continuing to stick it to my mom. i will never understand what her problem was with my love of music. like i could see if i was fucking up in school or just being a disrespectful dick at home, but i was too busy in my room making mixtapes and minding my own goddamn business for any of that.

grandma knew what was up. we used to go to this pizza place where they'd have a live organist and she would always request "moon over miami" and then proceed to jam tf out.

*not maliciously, more like off the cuff bitchy comments: "well he's probably already going deaf because he never takes his headphones off", "the singers he likes don't actually sing", "don't play real instruments either", etc. it was just the way they dealt with their casual hatred of me i guess lol

although he would kind of translate them into more of a folky or bluesy idiom. "rat in a cage, I'm just a rat in a cage..." he would intone.

😎

one thing that sounds really goofy in retrospect is that Wal-Mart would sell the censored versions of CDs but it wouldn't really be clear that they were doing it.

lol, I found an Ice Cube cassette there once which only had three songs on it. it wasn't a single, either. it was just some mini-cassette they cobbled out of some of his songs that were clean enough as to not require editing.

oh speaking of ice cube—

while my mom's mom was wanting to be supportive but still somewhat respectful of my mom's rules, my dad's mom dngaf. i was visiting them for the summer when michael jackson's history album was getting released and that was an event for me, so i made sure i had brought enough money with me to buy it. when my grandma took me to the store to get it, she asked if i wanted "any other music." i was taken aback and sort of hummed and hawwed for several minutes before she finally insisted that i could get any three albums i wanted. bought me death certificate, the predator, and lethal injection all at once. not the edited versions, either.☺

he would kind of translate them into more of a folky or bluesy idiom. "rat in a cage, I'm just a rat in a cage..." he would intone. for a minute there he was doing a lot of freestyle substitutions on the "Where It's At" chorus, "I got two (whatevers) and a (whatever)."

Thread has achieved peak dad-dom.

I've got two hamburgers and an Astrodome

I got two flip-flops and some cargo shooorrts

Last month, I sent my parents a few clips of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard playing live at Red Rocks. My dad usually sticks to the classic rock of his youth and never responds to concert videos but in this case, he went down the YouTube rabbit hole. The rest of the night as I sent video clips, I kept hearing about the inspiration from the '70s in their music and how the "video graphics" at the concert were "pretty amazing." Now he's considering a road trip to Red Rocks next summer to see one of the next King Gizzard shows.

goddamn Austin shoutout to your grandmother, thats fucking awesome

my favorite story is when Metallica's Garage, Inc came out in 1998. most Metallica albums up until that point hadn't had a label on them (I don't know if Walmart cared about those albums as closely), but Garage Inc did, mostly due to "So What".

so a ton of these fans bought heavily edited copies with loud 'beeps' (no backmasking) and took to USEnet to complain about how Metallica "lost their balls" and "what's with this beep beep shit" (as one poster claimed).

LOL I found one of the posts from USEnet thru Google Groups

name redacted
unread,
Dec 19, 1998, 3:00:00 AM
to
this question has probably been asked but here it goes----
Has disc 2 been edited to bleep out the "fucks" during so what?
Or has Wal-Mart decided to dictate morality to me

xpost Eye— that was a fun day to have ears for sure!

and yeah, grandparents definitely had my back through all of it. i hate to put it like this, but i think my parents (especially my mom) were just kind of racist and mad that i liked Black music. obviously no clue where they got it from because all of my grandparents were normal, well adjusted people.

further random bitter/funny postscripts—
-funny how when it was time for my sister to get married, i was all of a sudden in everyone's good graces. some weeks later: "oh if we pay to rent the sound system, you can dj the wedding reception, right?" sigh. sure. happy to help.
-mom once remarked that michael jackson looked "a lot better" on the cover of bad, as opposed to the cover of thriller. i mean, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but uhh.
-my sister would make fun of my taste in music and call me things like "wigger" but when friday or saturday night rolled around and she wanted to impress her friends, she would come into my room and borrow cds from my shelf (without asking, of course) because i had the hot jams and she was just mad that i was as cool as the people she was trying to impress. or something lol idk.

and finally, never really had much interaction with my dad and music. he certainly loved music and had a lot of the stuff around that i now consider my roots (80s r+b). he just lived in a different house and was an abusive fucker, so shrug. he liked r+b, but really cheesy stuff for the most part. quincy jones the dude, michael mcdonald, kool and the gang ladies night. stuff like that. not the worst, but very cheese. so anyway, one day in the mid-90s i'm over at his place and he was an unpredictable person. so when he's talking to me about something and stops suddenly to say, "oh hey! now i know we're not gonna agree on everything. . ." i started to prepare myself for something violent.

he continues, "i'm old and not supposed to like the same music as you, but have you heard this song? this mariah carey and boys too men?!??! that's proof kids still know the best music!"

sure thing, dad. whatever you say; great song.

When I was 15, I asked my mom for a copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall for Christmas. She got me the Roger Water's Live in Berlin that featured the Scorpions, Bryan Adams and Cyndi Lauper, among others.

lol, I found an Ice Cube cassette there once which only had three songs on it. it wasn't a single, either. it was just some mini-cassette they cobbled out of some of his songs that were clean enough as to not require editing.

― Fash Gordon (Neanderthal), Wednesday, December 21, 2022 8:38 AM

complete derail: i've been looking for this on discogs since you mentioned it and i can't find it! i am extremely curious what was on it. . .

My mom complained about Mazzy Star once because Hope "sounded like a ghost."

That was a feature, not a bug.

In the early 90s, when she was in her early 60s, my mother got a job in the medical centre of the local TV studios (Central, Birmingham) and happened to become quite friendly with Gabrielle Drake, who was working on the soap opera Crossroads at the time. I told her the story of Gabrielle's brother Nick and sent her a tape of Bryter Layter, which I thought she'd be delighted by, but which she in fact found "horrifying".

I grew up firmly in the PMRC, Satanic panic era. Catholic school showed us videos about backwards masking. My mom got Tipper Gore's book from the library. She'd ask me, 'have you hed of this band Motley Crue?', and I'd say No and then hurry to my bedroom to take their posters off my wall (posters=torn out pages from Circus magazine) and hide their cassettes under my bed. All my memories of childhood are tied up with these sorts of stories. Blaring GNR in my headphones at the pro-life rally my parents made me go to. Crying when my aunt bought me a Kiss tape because I was worried my parents would see that one of the songs was titled Burn Bitch Burn. As I got older I was more brazen, I remember my mom asking me if I heard of Ice Cube and me saying yes, he's great, I have all his albums. In college in the 90s, writing about music for the 'alternative' newspaper I did a couple articles where I played random songs for my Mom and captured her reaction, and I'd always throw in some more scandalous ones to shock her ("what did he say, rape me?").

Also, btw the Ice Cube Wal-Mart likely tape would have been "At Will", the Kill at Will ep with the cover cropped to not show the gun, and some of the songs removed.

AHA! thank you!

I knew the satanic/sex rock panic was a thing and but I had no idea it was so pervasive. the PMRC had already won or lost by the time I became aware of them

my parents were quite permissive, I got the marshall mathers LP when I was 10 or 11 and when they became aware of the content all they did was let me know which elements they found problematic (which I like to imagine made me listen more critically)

my dad is a classical snob and any sort of groove signifies muzak to him, he likes to play up this attitude because he knows it really gets on my nerves. I did manage to get him into ornette coleman via euro improv shit over the course of about a decade so there's still hope

The satanic sex panic on pop music was pretty mainstream, crap like 20/20 and Phil Donahue would do episodes on that crap. I knew this dude in high school whose grandparents were 80s holy rollers that liked to watch Jim and Tammi Faye and so he took a Sharpie to his 'Highway to Hell' tape so that it said AC/DC 'Highway' in the tape box.

My folks were fairly mainstream 60s and 70s music listeners, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Rita Coolidge, Beatles et al., and my dad had a bit of soul and r'n'b "lite" in the collection too. I think we clicked when dad bought "Tusk" in 1979, I was 9 and became obsessed, a pretty good record to do that with. My mother, an unusual parent in some respects, shared a bunch of pop taste with me in the early 80s and it was all going well until I discovered The Cure at the ripe old age of 14. I quickly became obsessed and my mother became a one-woman PMRC who was convinced that my pathetic middle class goth leanings were the road to drug addiction and suicide, I wasn't allowed to play Cure records in the house lest it trigger distress and fear, a few of my oddball black garments "disappeared" in the laundry and the time I came home with a Smith-lite hairstyle she had to leave the house until I'd deconstructed it. I'm sure she thought she was protecting me but it was really fucking tiresome behaviour trying to foreground herself. At least it made me hyper-aware of weaponised disapproval, so my parenting mistakes have presumably been in other domains. I've never understood what it was about.

My mother used to sing Leonard Cohen songs to me as lullabies and the first song I remember hearing is James Brown's take on "Night Train." My dad collects versions of "Route 66," and my mom recently asked me, "Whatever happened to Beck?"

Once when I was 17, I got very stoned with some friends and used a payphone to tell my parents I'd be missing dinner. I got home and they were both drunk, dancing around the kitchen to "(I Wanna) Testify" while doing the dishes. I had just smoked a blunt with three other 17 year olds about 30 minutes earlier, the whole scene is still seared into my brain. (Fwiw, my parents appear very straight-laced).

Needless to say, except for the 3 years of being into grindcore (about 12-14), which they did NOT like, they never cared about what I listened to or why, and in fact encouraged me to listen to whatever I wanted in some ways. Very lucky, it seems!

Did you tell your mom what happened to Beck?

there was a period of two years in high school that I thought Beck was Jeff Beck

Note: he was also not in Hanson

there was a period of two years in high school that I thought Beck was Jeff Beck

I was listening to Odelay once while doing the dishes and when my mom heard the line "She's got a cigarette on each arm" she said she didn't like me listening to songs "about cigarettes."

lol yeah, my parents tried to avoid me listening to music with lyrics about things that you're old enough that you're already seeing in the wild anyway.

mine didn't want me listening to "I Shot Reagan" and I was like "mom I saw Reagan shot last week get bent"

*story 100% made up

This is kind of a melancholy topic because when my mother heard me playing music she didn't like, she would say, "you can listen to that after I'm gone". She was right. My two older brothers cleared the way for me to an extent (one of them used to rehearse his New Wave band in the basement), but on the other hand I usually listened with headphones so there wasn't a lot of music infliction in the household.

A friend told me about a holiday in the 80s when his relatives came to visit, resulting in his four grandparents and him sitting in silence on the couch watching the video for Berlin's "Sex (I'm a...)".

In middle school I asked for a raise in my allowance. My dad sat me down and played me Randy Newman's "It's Money That Matters," and asked me to think about its message.

You should have burned down his cornfield.

my parents were never really into music.

basically, i grew up in the 70s with Radio 2 on in the background all the time.
the only 'new' album i remember them loving was Variations by Julian Lloyd Weber, and possibly Sky now that i think of it.

however,there are two occasions when i clearly made my parents question my choice of music.

the first i described in the opening paragraph of this tQ interview i did with jim foetus a few years ago :

https://thequietus.com/articles/06354-foetus-jg-thirlwell-interview

the second time was when they fell for all the media chaos re Sigue Sigue Sputnik, and so 'banned' me from getting the album.
needless to say, i ventured into a record shop on day of its release and sneaked it back home and listened to it more than just about any other album i had in my collection at the time.

there was a period of two years in high school that I thought Beck was Jeff Beck

For an embarrassingly long time I thought Ne-Yo was like a new cool way to refer to Neil Young :(

I have a vivid memory of singing along to "Into the Groove" with my mom and sis on Memorial Day weekend '85. She was 36 at the time, still listening to top 40 radio because we did -- and she did until my sis graduated high school about a decade later.

My favorite record at 15 was Louder than Love which not only had the “gonna kill your mother” line in hands all over but also “yeah I know what to do / I’m gonna fuck fuck fuck fuck you” lol

my parents were never really into music.

basically, i grew up in the 70s with Radio 2 on in the background all the time.
the only 'new' album i remember them loving was Variations by Julian Lloyd Weber, and possibly Sky now that i think of it.

this sounds uncannily like my mum. maybe she had a 2nd secret family. ;-)

haha.

that '85 xmas was the first time they had actually come face to face with my new era music choices.
they knew i loved madness/2-tone and all that side of things.
but in '84 my groove changed, and they had no idea.
hence the reaction re the some bizarre collection, especially the foetus track, which to this day is one of my faves of jims catalogue.

When I bought my first rap tape, I was informed by my mother that I could only listen to it between 7 pm and 8 pm, and that also I wouldn’t be able to have any other rap albums.

It was 1990 or thereabouts. The tape was a Fresh Prince/DJ Jazzy Jeff. I wasn’t really into rap so this wasn’t a hinderance to me then but in retrospect, lol Mom

Maybe it was 88, 89? Something like that

mum always got v uptight about the post “Rubber Soul” Beatles albums. Like, MAD at me if i brought it up because of the long hair & mustaches & drugs & weird song.
In our house they broke up in 1965

she did not appreciate me pointing out they were all on uppers from the get go
but whatever

also WOE BETIDE YOU if you made a fat Elvis joke. she loved Elvis & was v pained by his decline & still wishes ppl would just enjoy his beautiful voice instead of japing about his karate moves & jumpsuits <3

ha! i mention my parental foetus story upthread.

i used to have that jim foetus being crucified poster on my wall which didn't go down very well either.

that some bizarre collection is all time!

x post

I venerate fat Elvis.

i was listening to seamonsters by the wedding present and my mom said "they should let the singer stand closer to the microphone"

ha! i mention my parental foetus story upthread.

ta for the pointer, i missed this due to the thread chaos.
seems like we have had a similar groove ..
but hey, i think we both realised this a few years ago.

p.s. best thread in a long time.
loving the stories.

Full on Kevin’s mom

Many xposts— I did tell my mom what happened to Beck, and she said, "Oh, that's too bad. That "Loser" song was so good!"

An even longer elaboration of her thing for Beck: we used to go to church, and the year that "Loser" came out, a Sunday School teacher was saying how awful it was that one of the kids was singing the chorus to "Loser." My mom said to her, "Sandy, it's irony, dear!" I was standing next to her when she said this— a very weird moment.

The funniest moment with my pops was when I told him we'd all been listening to a lot of Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan in college (this was 2005 or so), and he said, "God help us all!" lmfao.

My dad - a bigger Dylan fan than I’ll ever be - actually being kind of impressed by this song after I put it on a mix CD for him. “Clever!” he declared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EbAJxaM_Y4

My dad has shown less interest in music lately, it’s kind of a bummer. I’ll mention or send something to him from time to time, and he doesn’t have much to say about it… he even seems less interested in Dylan than I am these days. I guess it happens…

My dad was and is a big Dylan fan--as I mentioned upthread, he managed to see the "Hard Rain" concert--but he told me that when The Times They Are A-Changin' came out, he wrote Dylan off as "some punk trying to look tough."

My mom sometimes calls Panera Bread “Pantera”

I laughed out loud at that.

before the era of online shopping/Prime exploded, sometimes when mom asked what I wanted for christmas I used to ask for death metal albums/merchandise just because I wanted her to have to ask for them out loud and it was amusing to me

she said someone in hot topic laughed when she asked where Slayer shirts were

"I'm looking for the latest album by . . . Children of Boredom?"

One thing maybe I can contribute is that a lot was captured during the scene in Say Anything when John Mahoney “sings” along to “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and bangs out mad rhythm on his hand percussion steering wheel.

my parents never listened to music.

on long car rides to iowa to visit my relatives, it was silent for the entire 5-hour ride. on the 12-hour rides to and from Destin, it was silent.

i have no recollection of my mom ever saying that she enjoyed any music, ever.

my dad claimed to enjoy a few bands, but i never saw or heard him purposefully listening to music. the most alone time i spent with him was on the way to school for a few years in elementary school. first he dropped me off in an el camino, which i thought was incredibly embarrassing but now recognize was actually really cool. then he dropped me off in his cop car. on the 15-minute trip into town we always listened to christian radio, and it was always playing the end of paul harvey ('good day!', also 'now page 2', which were the words that always preceded harvey reading an advertisement for Bose speakers), followed by a very loud angry man named rush limbaugh. rush would still be screaming about something when i was finally released from the car to go to school. you could hear him muffled, in the cop car.

the bands/albums he claimed to enjoy were Chicago (his favorite), Pink Floyd (just DSOTM), Queen (Night at the Opera), and the Braveheart soundtrack. later in his life he thought we were Scottish (he was wrong) so he bought a Scottish flag that was about a square inch smaller than the U.S. flag and flew both of them proudly in our front yard, bought multiple kilts and all the accessories that come along with them, and learned how to play the bagpipe. at this point a new musical influence was added to our household, which was Davy Spillane, an Irish musician. i never really heard him listen to Spillane, but i saw that he had added the CD to the...collection (the pile of 4 or 5 CDs in the tv cabinet), and i would sometimes hear him exclaim "Davy Spillane!" to people.

i am 99.5% sure he didn't know that freddy mercury was gay.

the one musical moment i can remember with my mom was when she was giving a ride to my, who was about 15 and a couple of her friends were in the car. the friends didn't understand that we were a "no music" household, so naturally when they got in the car they wanted to hear the radio. for one of the first times in my life, i saw my mom point the dial to a music station. we, of course, all wanted Q106.5 THE POINT, which played "alternative". as soon as the dial switched over, we heard "LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX BABY! LET'S TALK ABOUT YOU, AND ME, LET'S TALK ABOUT ALL THE GOOD TIMES, AND THE BAD TIMES THAT MAY BE, LET'S TALK ABOOOOOOOUT SEX! LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX! LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX! LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX! --" and it was during that final "let's talk about sex!" that my mom couldn't stand it for a moment longer, and turned the whole radio off and said she didn't think we should be listening to that. i was 12 at the time and it was the first and last time i ever heard her either give an opinion about music or be caught within 20 miles of the word "sex"

i should show another side of my dad. it's close to what NA said earlier "my dad has always been supportive of my interest in music, especially in making my own music, but he has almost no interest in music himself."

my dad got me my first drumset. for a few months i had been setting up pillows in my basement, as toms and snaredrums, and just stomped on the cold floor for the bass drum, playing along to what i had (the beatles anthology). one day he came in an unmarked white van, which he used for law enforcement stuff. he opened the door on the van and it was stuffed with drum gear. 2 gigantic 24" bass drums, 6 rack toms, 2 floor toms, hi-hat, ride (a nice vintage zildjian which is still my main ride), several crashes, and all the stands and mounting equipment. there was a cowbell. and it all was soaked to the bone with cigarette smoke. it reeked of cigarettes and the smell never came out even after i cleaned the shit out of it. he offered some really weird explanation as to where he got these drums, and i didn't ask many questions. i am pretty sure he "confiscated" it from a very unfortunate local drummer.

but he did support my musical adventures, even though he really hated the one song he ever heard of mine, particularly the lyrics

I'm guessing as a Chicago fan, he didn't know that they dedicated an album "to the people of the revolution… and the revolution in all its forms."

Karl, really liked the way you descritbed all that, sorry you had to deal with it.

thanks james, and it wasn't so bad. we had lots of good and funny times together which were non-musical :)

Glad to hear you finding some peace with your past Karl. Great anecdotes too.

for a minute there he was doing a lot of freestyle substitutions on the "Where It's At" chorus, "I got two (whatevers) and a (whatever)."

I think I’ve told this story before but:

Saturday morning, I’m eating cereal and watching MuchMusic (Canada’s MTV). They’re covering the Reading Festival. Dad walks in, no shirt, fresh coffee in hand, and sits down on the couch beside me. As he takes his first sip of the piping-hot beverage, the coverage cuts to a clip of the Butthole Surfers playing. He simultaneously spits out his mouthful of coffee and spills some on his chest, scalding himself, shouting “Butthole Surfers?!”

He is outraged and amused at his own outrage and also annoyed and amused that he has injured himself in his reaction.

I resolve to become a Butthole Surfers fan. It doesn’t really stick.

I grew up in a very churchy family, so there was constant weirdness. My parents are Woodstock generation boomers, but even as teens never listened to whatever other people their age were listening to (my mom's favorite singer is Dean Martin and my dad just likes broadway musicals and church/choral music).

So when I was renting some videos for a birthday party (probably 13th or 14th birthday), I brought home that Police vhs that was released to coincide with the 1986 greatest hits album. I was showing my dad what I'd rented, and he stopped me when I got to that one and said "I'm not very comfortable with you kids watching those HEAVY METAL videos."

lmao

thread just keeps on delivering

I'm shocked at the Satan thing and how pervasive it was! I went to a pretty liberal Catholic school where kids were into Judas Priest and the like, and the priest came to our religion class and said "Satan" was bullshit and a record was only bad if "it made you want to hurt yourself".

My mom said there was no Satan in music and let me listen to my favorite band AC/DC. My brother and I would try to shock her or grandma with song titles or bands and they would just laugh. It was kind of disappointing that I couldn't get a rise out of her, but she said the sixties had more outrageousness than anything anyone came up with later.

I thought my mom was conservative by local standards (my hometown was super liberal) but she said she didn't care if I went to concerts or clubs "as long as there weren't drugs there."

My grandparents had a bar with (good) grandparents' music - stuff like Charlie Rich - but the jukebox had a "rocker" section for the bikers that stopped by. Stuff like ZZ Top or James Gang.

I felt guilty about this growing up. For the other kids, I mean.

One of the reason I got into "weird" records - which was like exotica lounge or The Shaggs or something - was because I couldn't get my mom to be shocked by anything.

My mum only likes music with "oomph" to it. Music she admires but doesn't totally love is sometimes deemed "clever". The last album I remember her describing like that was Skeleton Tree.

My mum had a habit of easily bringing me down to earth when i'd play anything in the car... so reaction to Blur's Great Escape was "just listen to the Kinks" and Mr Bungle's California got "just listen to Trout Mask Replica".... she was at the Isle Of Wight with Doors/Joni/Hendrix/Who.... my Dad went to Canada in 1969/70 to see The Band and Neil + Crazy Horse and basically followed them about a bit. so maddeningly jealous of all that but also grateful i was hearing On The Beach, Big Pink etc from early age due to their collection.

The funny thing is looking at what happened when they had kids and didn't have spare cash for LPs anymore... so two hippies who didn't really get into punk did somehow buy the Frankie debut, the Culture Club debut, but nothing in the 80s from the usual suspects from 60s/70s.

reaction to Blur's Great Escape was "just listen to the Kinks" and Mr Bungle's California got "just listen to Trout Mask Replica"

LOL... this sounds like a comedy sketch idea.

jamie's mom OTM

she was at the Isle Of Wight with Doors/Joni/Hendrix/Who

And a tripping Leonard Cohen! Oh, to have been born ten years ealier.

feel like my folks didn't have that rich knowledge, even if my dad did have 4000 records (most he had never touched more than likely).

he did impart a love of doo-wop onto me though, and he was beaming up a storm when my quintet in high school sang The Silhouettes's "Get a Job", with me doing the bass part.

I'm shocked at the Satan thing and how pervasive it was! I went to a pretty liberal Catholic school where kids were into Judas Priest and the like, and the priest came to our religion class and said "Satan" was bullshit and a record was only bad if "it made you want to hurt yourself".

almost my experience exactly; in middle school smack in the middle of the 80's, in Colorado, lots of satanic panic around, absolutely no one at my non-diocese associated catholic school gave one fuck, and we continued to wear Iron Maiden and Judas Priest badges on our jean jackets.

Our parents' demographics are diverse.

In high school (circa 1988) I had a friend whose mother had been at Woodstock. The story went that she was nakedly photographed, possibly filmed, and that she had allegedly sat on the lap of Jimi Hendrix (possibly while still naked). At the time we could neither confirm nor dispute this, as we didn't have evidence, but it seemed believable.

The timing worked out, certainly. It was pretty easy to have been born in 1951 and be 18 in 1969 and then go on to have a child in 1972, who was then in 10th grade in 1988.

I know there are lots of different cultural bubbles of prudishness about music but age/generation itself is not a sure indicator.

there was def a panic over Marilyn Manson at my church

My mum saw the Beatles and Hendrix live and has staunchly stood by her claim that both were terrible live. I have tried to break this down with her on a few occasions and the problem seems to be less with the musicians themselves, and more with sound systems of the era. She says the Beatles were very difficult to hear over the screaming and it ruined the show for her. That Hendrix was just a "dirge-y noise", haha. She did like both the Beatles and Hendrix on record, and knew what to expect going into those shows from a musical standpoint.

To be fair, it has made me ponder how good those shows sounded if you were there, especially when you hear some pristine, ultra-cleaned up live recording from back then.

I can relate. When I was 15, I saw Motorhead on their first U.S. tour (they were opening for Ozzy). I knew nothing about them, and didn't realize at the time that they were Lemmy's new band. They sounded like absolute sludge. Now, my 21-year-old is in awe that I got to witness that.

My mum and family were at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music and fortunately she kept vague memories of it.

She saw Bowie "in the 80s" at Wembley Stadium and didn't enjoy it. Given (besides Live Aid) he only played there once, in '87, I'd have liked her to recall the giant spider or the stupid backing dancers but no all she remembered was the Bangles opened and were miming. But the Bangles didn't open afaik so she's mixed it up with something else.

My dad repeats the same anecdotes repeatedly. At some point in the near future he'll tell me - yet again - he went to both of the north's best-loved nightclubs (i.e. Wigan Casino and the Hacienda).

Sound at the Hacienda was also supposed to be shit.

My mom once mentioned that she saw Dire Straits, early on, and “was surprised they were white”(??) I think she also said that she brought flowers to meet them backstage…

I posted this upthread, but my dad saw Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong several times in the '50s and maybe '60s too (and definitely Basie in 1983, which was also my first concert). He saw Thelonious Monk in Boston, a somewhat notorious gig recounted in Robin D.G. Kelley's Monk bio. He also saw Charles Mingus -- the band with Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, Clifford Jordan, et al -- two nights running at the Five Spot in late 1963. When I was old enough to understand what a massive deal this was (about 30 years after the fact), I asked him what it was like. He paused, stared into the distance, and said, "It was one of the greatest experiences of my life."

My mom is a journalist, and around 1966 she interviewed Esther Gordy, and met Berry Gordy, who gave her a tour of Hitsville, and introduced her to Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Holland-Dozier-Holland. Both my parents saw the MC5 once, but only because my mom was covering a rally they were playing. All they remember is that the MC5 were loud.

She says the Beatles were very difficult to hear over the screaming and it ruined the show for her.

I knew someone who saw the Beatles in Chicago in 1964, and she said pretty much the same thing. All she could hear was the screams, Ringo's cymbals (a higher frequency than the screams), and the between-song announcements (because everyone quieted down to hear what they were going to play next, and then screamed too loudly to hear the song).

Mom is a stones fan, dad a jazz guy

The sound system at the Hacienda was indeed shit. Shockingly shit, actually.

My in-laws saw the Beatles supporting Gene Pitney, and they weren’t particularly impressed. By the end of the tour, the Beatles had taken over as headliners.

I watched TOTP with my father and stepmother in the week that the Sex Pistols made their debut on the show with “Pretty Vacant”.

After it had finished, my dad said “dirty… depressing… how can this music make anybody happy?”

“Didn’t you like the Sex Pistols then?”

“Oh, they were fine. At least they had a bit of get-up-and-go about them. It’s this lot I’m talking about.”

Which was Hot Chocolate, then at Number One with “So You Win Again”.

One of my earliest memories is a back yard party and “is this love” playing and I’m like 4

I would have liked to have seen Van Halen opening for Black Sabbath.

I love this thread!

my father used to work with a woman from liverpool (again, how she wound up in colorado in the 80's is beyond me) who had seen the beatles at the Cavern; she said they were 'good'. I never got much more out of her!

I remember Lemmy telling me about seeing the Beatles at the Cavern Club and being kind of baffled and saddened that the band he described, who were a bunch of angry, hungry speedfreaks playing rock 'n' roll covers, ended up as, well, the Beatles.

should someone start a thread about the music our kids listen to and whether we are weird about it? or would that be too cutesy?

xp akm, I am from Colorado myself. A lot of the musical experiences I've mentioned here happened while I lived there. I went to high school in Pueblo, and saw a lot of bands during that time at the State Fairgrounds in Pueblo and the City Auditorium in Colorado Springs, which is where I saw Ozzy and also the Pretenders.

xp my kids are much more weirded out by some of my musical tastes than I am by theirs.

hey I was also in Pueblo, until 87. What HS? I went to Central for one year, 86-87 (and then we moved back to california). I never got to go see those shows at the state fair, I was particularly bummed I missed the Go Gos. Shit never came to that town (I was young anyway)

Amazing thread. I have far too many of these stories to really know where to start, but this one is top of mind right now: My dad was a straight out of central casting silent generation guy with absolutely zero awareness of or interest in any post rat pack popular culture and when I was maybe fifteen or sixteen he asked for my advice on choosing a song to be played at an event commemorating his long tenure at his office job. (Incidentally this memory resurfaced because my partner recently had to do the same thing!) He was looking for a version of "That's Life", which is -- I've gotta hand it to him -- just absolute peak performance for a recently divorced dude of his era and sensibilities.

Being a shitty teenager, I thought it would be funny to put on my best poker face and tell him that his younger colleagues would be impressed with how with it he was if he went with David Lee Roth's rendition of the song. (This was the mid-90s, when this statement was probably at its most untrue.) To my shock and horror, he latched onto this idea and absolutely would not be dissuaded. I have no idea how it went for him at that office party (he didn't discuss it), but to this day I regret not having done more to talk him out of it!

xp Pueblo East, class of 83, baby!

We got a bunch of bands around that time, including Aerosmith (the version without Joe Perry), the Scorpions, .38 Special, Quiet Riot and Dio (off the top of my head). Not bad for an out of the way place like Pueblo.

If we're exchanging Beatles at the Cavern stories, I met a woman at a Christmas party whose sister-in-law saw them there, and whom Paul McCartney offered to kiss for her birthday.

should someone start a thread about the music our kids listen to and whether we are weird about it? or would that be too cutesy?

I like the idea, but it could devolve into a lot of hand-wringing about Imagine Dragons. And also this:

xp my kids are much more weirded out by some of my musical tastes than I am by theirs.

https://www.theonion.com/cool-dad-raising-daughter-on-media-that-will-put-her-en-1819572981

My mum claims to have seen the Beatles at the Cavern (and had an argument with Cilla Black when she lost her coatcheck ticket) but by the time I was growing up she was listening to Val Doonican and John Denver and told me she thought Morrissey sounded like he was "singing in his sleep". She got into the Cowboy Junkies when I went to university, after rifling through some tapes I'd left at home.

My parents both saw the Beatles at a synagogue apparently.

My dad loved music but was extremely “my car my music” when we driving as a family. If a track displeased him, the tape came out, or the channel got changed, no further questions. This meant my cassette of REM’s Out of Time never got further than “Low”. One day we listened to ab entire side of Paul’s Boutique and I have no idea how it happened.

My parents both saw the Beatles at a synagogue apparently.

Ob-La-Yahweh

Just got a text from my mom, who went to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra with her sister's ex-husband last night (no, there's nothing weird going on, they just live close to each other and stayed friends after my aunt ran off to Wyoming and filed for divorce by mail). "Music was dreadful but the lights and pyrotechnics were great fun."

both of my parents saw a motown revue tour in this tiny place in Southampton which was then a social club, now a gym - "Little" Stevie Wonder was part of the show:
https://goo.gl/maps/tbdvJsF4gLg1SFBK8
30 years later, i saw Hot Water Music on the No Division tour in there, heaving with 14 year olds passing the mic - pretty classic no stage hardcore show for £3 on the door.

something about music makes something inside a parent seemingly sproing awry and their reaction veers in an unexpected direction

The new album from Sproing Awry takes post - BCNR Sprechgesang in a thrilling new directions: the seven members of the band etc.....

Ah, I misremembered: my in-laws saw the Beatles supporting Roy Orbison, not Gene Pitney. Second date of the tour, Hanley, 19 May 1963. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Orbison/The_Beatles_Tour

I was thinking it was going to be Tommy Roe.

1995 baby.
Got into Weird Al at the age of 10. Finally found something my mum really enjoyed too. Until one day she told me to turn off “you’re pitiful” because it was too negative. I didn’t listen to weird Al with her after that.

My dad forbade me from listening to hotel California because it was demonic. Weird, as this was a one off of him being like this about anything. Never happened before or since. Probably once a month he tried to get me into “under the Milky Way” by The Church. Would not relent in trying to talk me into it. Didn’t like anything that was not bosa nova level chill playing too loud (he is a big bosa nova fan).
One day he came into my room while listening to Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath and asked me sincerely, with no malice, “what is this?”. I could tell he just did not understand so I said “music” and he blankly accepted it and moved on. Was expecting at least a “turn it down” but I think he respected it somehow?

He also would not let me change the cd from Pink Moon the entire time he taught me to drive (my cd, I introduced him). He liked it so much that he ruined it for me through its constant repetition. Such a short album too

I think my mum liked my Can CD’s I played when driving with her until Damo Suzuki started vocalising, at which she would express her normal “what is this”, in the opposite way to how my dad meant it.

My mum asked me to explain why I thought “the queen is dead” was good when we were driving once. First and only time I think she sincerely wanted to talk about music with some openness with me. I didn’t know how to answer.

Once, during some time that I lived with my parents while working through mental health issues, I was blasting Lucio Aquilina’s “Magic M,” and my mom knocked on my door and asked me what it was because she was so taken with it.

ha, the only Weird Al song i remember my mom rejecting was "That Boy Could Dance," immediately following the mean-spirited opening lines.

Probably once a month he tried to get me into “under the Milky Way” by The Church. Would not relent in trying to talk me into it.

Dad OTM.

My dad forbade me from listening to hotel California because it was demonic.

he was right, but not for the reasons he thought

"These are cheap demons, son. You gotta go for the real shit."

Well, yeah.

my grandfather stopped liking Dylan after he went electric, but he REALLY liked christmas in the heart when it came out.

One of my earliest memories with my dad and music was listening to the oldies FM station in the car. He had been lecturing to me about "cusswords and foul language," and how only ignorant people resort to using bad words to get their point across.

I said, "I bet the Beach Boys (my favorite band at 8 years old) never cuss."

"That's right. They're great with lyrics. They don't need to cuss."

"I bet the Beatles (my second favorite band at that age) don't cuss either."

"Hmm yeah umm I'm pretty sure they never use cusswords."

After a moment of deep thought, I said, "What about the Rolling Stones (my dad's all time favorite band)? They never use bad language, do they?"

"Uhhh. I can't remember...."

awesome update to my mom never having any thoughts about music (except her disapproval of the "let's talk about sex" song): she just signed up for a group beginner's ukulele class on Fridays!! i am very excited for her. we went to a shop yesterday to check out the wares, and she nearly bought one, except that it was blue and she wanted a more traditional mahogany-stained finish. but she's excited about the class and is going to order one after talking to the instructor.

at this point she refuses to learn how to tune it, and says that she will just go to the store and pay them to tune it for her. i did try to gently mention that i thought it would be a good idea to learn how to tune it, that it would save a lot of time and money and that there are even apps that can just basically tune it for you, but she would have none of it. the only tuner she would consider is a pitch pipe, and she is still leaning heavily toward paying someone to tune it for her, every single time. but i'm hopeful that after she attends class a couple times and sees everyone else tuning their own instruments, she'll change her tune mind

You could get her a clip-on tuner, they're easy to use, cheap, and I bet all her classmates will have them...

(unless she wants to run over to the music shop multiple times per lesson...)

Yea I have one of those. Mega convenient

I usually have like four or five NS Micro clip-on tuners ($15) laying around the house so that I always have one when needed

i will definitely mention the clip-on tuner to her, thanks! but i think seeing her classmates using it will be way more persuasive than my suggestion, haha. i'm just glad she's trying something new. I have never known her to have a single hobby during my entire life. the thought of getting to hear her play a beginner ukulele song is honestly kind of thrilling, and i seriously hope i don't cry because i won't be able to explain what's going on, haha

Not at all what thread asks for, but parent-related: I am 19, and my mum has Tanita Tikaram's Ancient Heart on her wishlist. As I do on a weekly basis at least, I pop into one of my two favourite record shops in Oslo, one that is pretty firmly on the alternative side, but not so much so that they might not conceivably stock the album.

So I ask H. behind the counter whether they have it, careful to let slip that it's actually my mum, not I, who desire this somewhat uncool disc. Ah, sorry, no, he replies, that is just outside our remit. Thought it might be, thanks, I say, and wander into the depths of the shop for some serious browsing. Some time later I return to the counter from the Industrial section with 23 Skidoo's The Culling Is Coming.

H. gets this really weird look on his face, giving me a confused or even downright worried stare. It only lasts for about a second, before our respective pennies drop, and I exclaim "ah no, this one's for me" at the exact moment he realizes it anyway.

love it (also a big fan of that 23 Skidoo album)

update: my mom loved the ukulele class! as expected, the teacher had a recommendation for an instrument to buy and used an app to tune (guitar tuna), so my mom's on board with learning how to tune.

also, the teacher has everyone in the class pronouncing it "ooh-kuh-lay-lee", with a hard U at the beginning. i understand that's the original hawaiian pronunciation. it's one of those things like whether a WASP from Iowa should be using the correct Spanish pronunciation of Mexico or the American English version. there is a gripping wikipedia debate going on here, lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AUkulele

aww, that's awesome. glad to hear it.

Good stuff!

Yeah, I was so glad to hear it. Their first two songs were the Coconut song (I confirmed that it was indeed the Nilsson song) and Skip to my Lou. I wish I could have seen her in there working on those, my heart would have exploded

lol Coconut song is a good one to start w/ cos it's only one chord. one of the first ones i learned.

Lots of Soulfly songs are only one chord too, I think. I know there's at least one that only requires one string.

Glad your mom is enjoying it. My mom loves learning it and I want to send her back as it's a great hobby

Thanks to Homestar Runner, I'm glad to be ahead of the haole ukulele pronunciation curve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABuvy5jfxVU

I know that it's oo-koo-laylay in Hawai'i, but...

Is the short form "uke" supposed to be "ook" or "yook"?

this is really changing the way i think about the Addams Family

both of my parents saw a motown revue tour in this tiny place in Southampton which was then a social club, now a gym - "Little" Stevie Wonder was part of the show:
https://goo.gl/maps/tbdvJsF4gLg1SFBK8
30 years later, i saw Hot Water Music on the No Division tour in there, heaving with 14 year olds passing the mic - pretty classic no stage hardcore show for £3 on the door.

― Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz), Wednesday, 28 December 2022 16:15 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

There is a great documentary about that Motown revue tour on the BBC i-player at the moment. It played to near-empty venues across the UK, but there are some wonderful memories from people who saw it.

ooh thanks, will check that out and tell them about it

When I was little (late '70s) my dad was big into rock music, had a pretty decent stereo setup and record collection (hundreds of titles). I don't remember specific titles, because I was a bit too young to be aware of that sort of thing, although for some reason I remember a Frank Zappa record, probably because it had a funny cover and he wouldn't play it when we were around due to some off-color lyrics. Then he became a born-again Christian, and decided listening to "secular" rock music wasn't compatible with his new identity. I remember the day he packed up all his records (except for a few classical albums) into boxes and took them down to the record store in town and sold them. From then on it was Christian music only on our stereo. As I got older, naturally that restriction applied to my record purchases as well. Eventually "secular" albums were allowed, so long as he reviewed and approved them (ie. no profanity or explicit lyrics). Heavy metal or hard rock was fine as long as it had Christian lyrics. Christian hip-hop wasn't a thing yet, but I'm sure it would've been fine too. At some point in high school, I guess he gave up on reviewing every purchase, and I was allowed to buy most things, as long as the cover wasn't something outrageous. Or I would just dub it onto cassette, and he'd be none the wiser. This is probably a typical story for people raised in conservative religious households. To this day, he mostly listens to classical music or Christian music. Occasionally when he finds out about some old band that I'm into, he'll make a comment. Such as mentioning how he listened to Captain Beefheart or Incredible String Band back in the day and saw them in concert before I was born, or something like that.

The "Satanic panic" was definitely a thing when I was around junior high age. I remember we watched a documentary in Sunday school about the evils of rock: how bands used backward-masking to conceal Satanic messages (I think the Beatles were mentioned here), how rock rhythms were based on African drumming used in demonic rituals, lyrics encouraging kids to commit suicide, etc. The only time I remember my dad mentioning a band that he thought was Satanic it was the Rolling Stones, of all bands.

how big was yr Petra collection?

I think we had the ones from "Never Say Die" through "Not of This World" on vinyl (purchased by my parents), and I remember buying "Beat the System" on cassette and listening to it on my Walkman.

Actually I may have purchased some of those Petra records with my allowance, now that I think about it. There was a Christian bookstore in town, which was the only place I was allowed to buy records, so I would get very excited when anything came in that looked like it might actually rock.

haha, I had "Not of this World". kinda still dig that one, actually.

"I remember we watched a documentary in Sunday school about the evils of rock"

I was also exposed to one of these as a kid, I wonder if it was the same one. It kinda backfired though cuz this thing was made in the 80s and the majority of acts covered were mega uncool to a bunch of teens in the middle of the Alternative era. Lot of laughs were had, much to the chagrin of the adult who put it on.

during my Fundie years, I made the mistake of bringing my Offspring "Ixnay on the Hombre" cd to church and leaving it unattended. not even playing it, I just brought it to look at it and read the lyrics.

came back to my seat, cd gone, and before I could raise a stink about 'who stole my shit', our youth group leader (who sadly recently passed away) comes in with it, as well as a small stack of paper. she explained to me that she took the lyric sheet and made photocopies of it, and read through it, and what a horrible message the lyrics were. and explained how our brains are little computers and if I kept listening to this stuff, it might change me as a person. the conversation lasted like 15 minutes, mega uncomfortable.

years later at a lock-in, I brought my guitar and she warned me not to play riffs that dishonored God. (I suspect God was dishonored by my horrible, out of tune string bends, but w/e).

in any case, listening to that cd did change me as a person, as I was no longer someone who spent money on Offspring cds after that mediocre album

What did she do with the photocopies?

I remember there was a Christian youth group I attended during high school where one week we were encouraged to bring in a secular album that we owned to discuss whether or not the lyrics were appropriate for a Christian. It was funny because it seemed like people made an effort to bring in something inappropriate, almost like showing off in a strange way. I remember people bringing in AC/DC and the Smiths (I think we discussed the lyrics to "Girlfriend in a Coma", but I don't remember what we concluded about that one).

Jesus doesn't think girlfriends in comas are a laughing matter.

I don't think people thought it was supposed to be funny. Everything was interpreted hyper-literally. But I think people thought it was inappropriate because of the implication that the person singing might've been involved in domestic violence.

As in, he beat her into a coma? Wow, that never occurred to me.

It also never occurred to me to take the song at all seriously.

What did she do with the photocopies?

no idea. she probably put them in a folder of terrible evil music

this leader also demanded one of the people in the group destroy her Marilyn Manson cd. in retrospect, she was on the money on that one.

Everything was taken very seriously. With lyrics like: "There were times when I could / Have murdered her / But you know, I would hate / Anything to happen to her", the singer's protestations of innocence seem a bit insincere.

xp

Haha, I don't think Morrissey has written a sincere lyric in his life.

The one weird parent thing I had was that, before I started grammar school, my mother was a head-banging acid rocker. We would drive around listening to some really heavy (for a parent) shit - "hard rock" like Zeppelin, Stones.

She totally denies it now when I bring it up, although she still likes more mellow sixties stuff. But I remember all of that stuff.