How has your music taste affected your children?

Alex in NYC to thread

My musical taste has prevented any children.

Well, it's not the only thing, but it's a part of the total package.

Don't have kids but my older brother informed me recently that he sings "Farewell, Farewell" by Fairport Convention to his 2 year old every night before bedtime. Don't know what effect this will have on the kid, tho. Another favorite in their household is "America" by Simon&Garfunkel -- with references to cigarettes replaced with cookies.

with references to cigarettes replaced with cookies

Yeah, I often forget some of the rough language in various punk songs. Not that it's surprising, it's just that after 25 years the swears don't register anymore.

I grew up in a household where we listened to Casey Kasum every weekend, so when I think of my kids growing up with thousands of CDs at their fingertips, I imagine it'll be rather different. Hopefully not intimidating.

My bet is they love it.

[/i]
My mother didn't like the performance of "Only the Lonely" because it was too slow! Meh.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (eastern_mantr...), June 10th, 2005.

I haven't bought Songs to Remember yet (I'll see how I like "The Sweetest Girl" before picking it up), but my mother still has the single for "Wood Beez" in the collection of what few records she has left (and she owned Cupid and Psyche 85).
-- Ian Moraine (eastern_mantr...), January 8th, 2005.

And this was not an April Fools' joke as my mother and I saw it, too.
-- What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), April 1st, 2005.

The first album my mother thought of when I asked her what some of her favourite albums were: Shriekback - Oil and Gold!

But my mother's really young so I don't think that counts...
-- What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), April 7th, 2005.


I despise mobile phones, and will never own one.
I loathe them, too, but my mother ventured to buy me one. Yeesh. I'm so unappreciative.
-- What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), March 29th, 2005.

Admittedly, I can barely watch it myself -- I'm just in stunned horror, as is my mother who absolutely worships Michael Hutchence.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine: that obscure object of desire. (eastern_mantr...), July 12th, 2005.

I was listening to some Yma Sumac song a few months ago and my mother heard the entirety of it while she was sorting out her closet and she said, "The music's great but her voice is terrible." WHAT?
-- Ian Riese-Moraine's Plateau Rouge! (eastern_mantr...), May 27th, 2005.

I only have the six song EP. It's really quite pleasant, but funnily enough I once listened to it twice over in the car with my mother and my former love interest and none of us realised it until "I Don't Care If You Go" started for the third time!
-- Ian Riese-Moraine eats nation-states for breakfast! (eastern_mantr...), June 24th, 2005.

Hari, don't tease us like that! Nice to see Delta 5...and my mother (bless her heart) found a copy of Return of the Giant Slits and bought it for me. Like most Japanese imports, it was about $28.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine (eastern_mantr...), March 9th, 2005.

Heh, lovebug, my mother not only named me for Ian McCulloch (I have no qualms with this) AND Ian Astbury (...and there I shrug), but my middle name's Nicholas because of Nick Rhodes (my mother's first celebrity crush!). I also have the seventh most popular name in Scotland.
-- Ian Moraine (eastern_mantr...), November 20th, 2004.

Just finished the Discordo EP...probably their oddest release, and a near-classic. My mother swears that the Pigbag-esque instrumental "Cherry Blossom" sounds like her junior high school band.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine (eastern_mantr...), March 12th, 2005.

Never had any such experience...after all, my father listens to Lords of Acid and my mother was the first person I knew to have heard Korn's "A.D.I.D.A.S." If they were to ban anything, it would probably be crap like modern mainstream country on the account of it blowing donkey nuts!
-- Ian Moraine (eastern_mantr...), December 23rd, 2004.

Wanted: The Au Pairs - Sense and Sensuality
Got: The Slits - Cut

My mother had borrowed my copy of Sense and Sensuality at the time.
-- Ian Moraine (eastern_mantr...), December 23rd, 2004.

I remember The John Larroquette Show! I can't remember any of the episodes, but my mother always made tapes of it for my father while he was in jail.
-- Quit glaring at Ian Riese-Moraine! He's mentally fraught! (eastern_mantr...), March 17th, 2005.

I don't mind it. I neither hate it nor adore it. It just gives me too many flashbacks about that fashion programme on E! that my father (who is a hairstylist and was very much into observing hairstyles and fashions and looking at models) used to watch all the time as it always played "Obsession" during the end credits.
Oh, my mother still has the 12" single! I thought so!
-- Ian Riese-Moraine has been xeroxed into a conduit! (eastern_mantr...), July 6th, 2005.

I spent the day with my mother watching the horrible, horrible fucking MTV/Vh1 coverage (more commercials and harping on about G8 and crowd interviews than music). We kept flipping it half of the time to The Lost Boys and Hart's War.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine has been xeroxed into a conduit! (eastern_mantr...), July 3rd, 2005.

I recently dreamt that my father and mother could tolerate each other and were friends again (but not dating). My brother and I were not very pleaed with this. Anyway, we were going to take a trip to New York but for some reason had to stop by Orlando (a backtrack, essentially)...we never got past Orlando in the dream, but my father kept listening to Kitchens of Distinction's "Gorgeous Love" on repeat in the car.
-- Ian Moraine (eastern_mantr...), January 9th, 2005.

My mother and I are watching Jeopardy! and it's the second round and the last three categories are, well, "Joy" Division (where the answer has "joy" in the title), Warsaw (question about the city), and She's Lost Control (about female characters in literature and cinema going nuts).
-- What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), April 1st, 2005.

I'm trying to figure out why exactly I like Roxy Music's debut. My mother hates it...she think it's boring and insipid and Ferry sound horrendous and I think she's quite right...but I am enjoying it anyway. My "rational/logical brain" says I shouldn't and my "irrational and illogical" (and therefore ultimately superior brain, as nothing we do is really supposed to be rational) brain loves it.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine (eastern_mantr...), February 9th, 2005.

The properly remastered/remixed version of Sense and Sensuality (the original was mastered at the wrong speed and two or three semi-tones off according the liner notes) is one of my favourite albums ever and my mother seems to regard it as one of her favourites, too. She borrows it from me every time she goes for a walk.
-- That's not cocaine! It's Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), May 9th, 2005.

1998-1999: My tastes went on the decline around this time as my mother's then-boyfriend made fun of my mother and I for listening to Eighties music, and so I ended up listening to tripe like Stabbing Westward, Korn, Sevendust, Metallica, and Days of the New around this time, alongside modern electronica-based music like The Crystal Method, Propellerheads, Sneaker Pimps, Praga Khan, DJ Shadow, and whatnot, plus a few other modern rock oddities like Ben Harper, Joydrop, and Gomez.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine has been xeroxed into a conduit! (eastern_mantr...), July 6th, 2005.

Happy Mondays had more chart success ("Step On" squeaked into the Top 60 and their other singles did well in clubs and on modern rock stations) but are less remembered Stateside. This is evidenced by my mother having no fucking clue who they were until she heard me listening to "Hallelujah", and then she recognised that song and all the other singles too and has subsequently been borrowing my copy of Pills 'n' Thrills for several weeks.
-- Ian Moraine (eastern_mantr...), January 13th, 2005.

I heard this for the first time the other day and when I was playing it in the living room my mother thought I was playing the new Queens of the Stona Age single. I was completely flabbergasted that she thought it sounded like that and when I finally heard the QOTSA single yesterday I realised that she was right! The melody for the chorus in particular HAD to have been nicked from the chorus of "The Revolutionary Spirit"! It's just too similar for words.
Does anyone else think they owe The Wild Swans a credit? (You can download "The Revolutionary Spirit" from the Renascent label's site, by the way.)
-- What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), April 3rd, 2005.

My mother had Red Vines in California and says she prefers Twizzlers.
-- What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), March 30th, 2005.

Libertarians, as my mother said, are so self-righteous/arrogant/single-minded that they're frequently intolerable.
-- Let's keep the afterbirth and throw Ian Riese-Moraine away! (eastern_mantr...), March 20th, 2005.

Funnily enough, my mother actually bought A Knight's Tale and has watched it several times over.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine: a casualty of social estrangement. (eastern_mantr...), August 4th, 2005.

Do I really need to own Withnail & I
Fuck, if I had the money right now I'd buy it from you. My mother and I want to own it...we could watch it again and again.
-- What we want? Sex with T.V. stars! What you want? Ian Riese-Moraine! (eastern_mantr...), March 31st, 2005.

I always wonder whether there were any HR threads here. My mother swallowed a bug the other day while playing softball, incidentally, and when she came in the door she screamed, "THE GOOD TIMES ARE OVER!"
-- Ian Riese-Moraine is on toffuti break! (eastern_mantr...), May 24th, 2005.

My mother would never allow me to join the Boy Scouts because they wouldn't allow homosexuals in, although she never explained it to me at the time. I don't mind now that she didn't, though, as I don't think I would've enjoyed being a Boy Scout anyhow.
-- Come, mah county killahs -- Ian Riese-Moraine can't run no MORE!!! (eastern_mantr...), July 31st, 2005.

I haven't spoken to my father or seen him in nearly four years. I don't want to hear about him until I know I can literally dance on his grave.
As for my mother, I live with her and love her very much. She's been wonderful.
-- Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (eastern_mantr...), May 6th, 2005.

$20 for salmon? What a rip-off! My mother bought a pound for about $7 last week!
-- Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (eastern_mantr...), June 11th, 2005.[/i]

My memories of my musical taste being pushed upon impressionable offspring of women I have cohabitated with include having a 6-year old girl walking around the house singing "Nausea" by X and now, having the 4-year old I currently live with go around the house syaing "Hey Ho, Let's Go."

Chaki, did you have that sitting around somewhere or what?

its from http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=40&threadid=50698
which was posted earlier today

my daughter learned how to spell "pizzicato five" when she was still in pre-school, and I got busted because she memorized the chorus to bis' "i'm a slut" and then sang it at the table one night

my kids have great & excellent musical taste but only a bit of it comes from me (s4mmy loving cab calloway and the four tops, emma keeping my loretta lynn albums in her room); they both listen to the radio a lot too, and s4m's obsession with show tunes comes right from his mom and his career goals

My musical tastes had no effect on my son whatsoever until I put on "Sex Machine" one day when he was about six years old. He's he's been on the one ever since.

That is awesome.

Well, my 2 1/2-year-old loves the Beatles ("Here Comes The Sun" is her current fav) and James Brown (NOT "Sex Machine"). And Rufus Thomas' "Memphis Train." Come to think of it, she really responds to '60s soul. Not much indie stuff or punk rock. She seems to like Belle & Sebastian.

The youngest isn't really speaking yet, so I can't tell what she likes. She nods her head whenever her favorite TV themes come on.

My daughter (who's 18) picked up a few interests from me, mainly Yo La Tengo. But mostly she's self-made -- anime soundtracks, film scores, Tool... Sometimes she'll read about something that piques her interest and she'll ask if we have any Simon & Garfunkel (or whatever) in the house, but mostly she's more interested in my comics collection than my music collection.

I will be in charge of the soundtrack for our kids' upbringing...at least until they can choose their own music. One of my favorite stories that my folks tell about me is that I once raised my hand in CCD (Catholic Bible Study) and said that, yes, I knew the story of Jesus' life: I'd seen "The Life of Brian." I look forward to having a similar story to tell about my kids once they grow up.

The first child to memorize Welcome to the Terrordome gets a car.

My 10-year-old boy is into Green Day, Nic Armstrong & the Thieves, Michael Haaga, "Damn it Feels Good 2 B a Gangsta," Queen, Metallica, AC/DC, the Beatles, and the humor of Weird Al and Hard N' Phirm. When he was younger he also liked Trio's "Da Da Da" immensely.

He says U2 songs take too long to get started. He would say that as all he knows is "The Joshua Tree."

My two-year-old girl also likes Nic Armstrong. Other than that, and ABBA, she pretty much confines herself to kids show theme songs at the moment.

I eagerly anticipate being a colossal embarrassment to my son by arguing with him about whatever's in the charts.

My now 13 year-old boy does not remember liking "Rock Lobster" when he was little or "Cheeseburger in Paradise"(he heard this one at pre-school, although I found it on vinyl for really cheap and then played it a few more times in those years for him. Not sure where it is now chuckles sometimes snobby me). He does remember the Jonathan Richman. Now he likes pop-punk and rap (plus the Streets and Dizze Rascal and some other stuff of mine), and tells people that his dad reviews Bulgarian gypsy music (and once in awhile he admits that Dad knows a little about rap and rock). He kinda likes the old soul, r'n'b, and blues I enjoy, but is not crazy about the salsa, african music, or Caribbean stuff. He is learning how to play guitar at school. He has told me that he knows alot more about music than most of the kids in his classes (he got some of this knowledge from both of his parents). He likes Green Day alot.

i dunno - aren't kids supposed to rebel against their parents' tastes at some point? so i always wonder if the music that i play now (around the 3 and 7 yr old) will be the music they hate in a couple years.

I think the generation gap, at least as far as music goes, has temporarily gone away. I think the whole rejecting your parents music thing was an anomaly of the baby boom in large degree.

Shit, I took my dad to the Fader party at SXSW and he really dug Vietnam. Mind you, he was a Blue Cheer fan back in the day and has probably eaten more acid than the Vietnam guys ever did or will, but still...

Until there's another revolution of hip-hop sized proportions, parents and kids will be, broadly speaking, into the same music.

x-post

Yea, that's what I figure as well (although I read somewhere someone, Nelson George maybe, suggesting that in most African-American homes the parent/child rebellion thing did not happen until funk and then rap came along), though it may not always be the case (and now my jazz and Frank Sinatra listening parents like some rock and pop). Once my son grumbled about some pop star not writing their own songs and all the girls at school liking her songs. I think I let it go a few times and then later pointed out that various Motown singers and others did not write their own songs either. Indoctrinating a kid on 'rockism is bad' theory -- classic or dud?!!!

The generation gap thing did happen with my mom and her parents especially. My grandmother was a Sinatra-style pop fan (even got his autograph) classically trained on the piano and as a singer and it just crushed her when the Beatles and Beach Boys seduced my mom, so much so that she ceased training her other daughter to be musical. Which was too bad, as the family has natural talent on that side.

So my grandmother has pretty much hated all popular music (save for Simon and Garfunkel) since 1962, if not before. But she does like zydeco. I have taken her to two shows here in Houston and she just loves it. I think she likes anything that has a Catholic tinge.

As for the c/d on the rockist thing, it hasn't yet come up with my son. I've never much cared about the authorship issue, precisely because people like Bobby Bland never wrote their own songs and Duke-Peacock took a factory approach in making some of the best music of all time.

He has just edged on to the cusp of music geek-dom, about a year ahead of my schedule. What's gonna be interesting to watch is how he develops. Back when I was his age, a lot of my taste was formed by quality rock radio and MTV, neither of which exist as musical tastemakers, at least in Houston. He's gonna get it all through video games (that's where he found Nic Armstrong) and my music library and through his friends, and later through the blogosphere I guess.

he's more interested in my comics collection than my music collection.

Yeah, this is another area that I'm looking forward to sharing, and also concerned that my kids will find 10,000 comics at their fingertips a bit overwhelming.

Comics and music - don't smoke, don't drink, gotta spend my money somewhere.

I've found that recently I've felt the urge to reproduce my Dad's musical collection so I've been busy collecting certain Neil Diamond, Herb Albert, Sinatra, Bert Kaempfert (Swinging Safari!) Trini Lopez, Burt Bacharach, The Seekers, Peter Paul & Mary, Jim Reeves to name a few, and I've got admit I love them - would I love them if I hadn't heard them as a kid? I think his taste has had a big influence on me.

I think you guys are being a little over optimistic about this generation gap thing.

My 14 year-old son listens to (in no special order or frame of reference) and can quote every lyric to:

Fear
Ween
Butthole Surfers
T. Rex
13th Floor Elevators
Daniel Johnston (whom he is named after)
Run-DMC
Black Flag
Dead Kennedys
Negativland (ok, there is SOME pattern emerging)
Donovan

The Kinks are next onto his oiPod

Funny, my dad's taste has me listening to Johnny Smith, Warne Marsh, Stan Getz, Jobim, Tristano, Komitz, Django, Basie, Prez, Bird, Miles, Stitt, Clifford Brown, Joe Pass, Bill Evans-- oh wait he is principally my mom's favorite-- Ike Quebec, Lucky Thompson, Ben Webster, Bartok...

Johnny Smith is his best hookup to me... teh geetarzor. Damn, I love that dude.

My dad was a fresh ass mutha from CHI too. Repped West Jackson but I think he is Southside-loyal now (after 40 years). Still kickin and playin the axe too at 83. My inspiration.

Thanks for the music dad!

erm Konitz-or

question, my son keeps asking for the Dwarves... Do I give it to him or can that be prosecuted in some states? (He just loves "Dead Brides In White" and I don't know if that should worry me or not-- because I love it too!).

Sorry to monopolize some shit... it's late here and everyone is asleep except ILM!

I stopped listening obsessively to music once I was pregnant. Now I still listen but the kid is usually not around when it happens. :-( That said, I don't mind, this way she can still rebel by listening to punk instead of crap trance music. ;-) It'll be fun when she discovers I like X as much as she does.