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.

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.