For maw and paw

Well... I've bought the following for my Father: about half a dozen Fall albums, The Young Gods, The Birthday Party Live, a Pogues album, Screamadelica, a Fatboy Slim album, 3 Hendrix LPs, a Telescopes album... plus quite a few others. Honest!

When jazz trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke started to make it in the city, he sent home records he'd made to his immigrant family in Bismarck in the midwest. On a rare visit home, he discovered them, stacked in a pile in a dingy cupboard. The brown paper wrappings were intact; the string he'd used to package them was uncut. He never returned home again, and died shortly after.

Now your dad, Johnathan...

My dad loves OK Computer, which I initially thought was odd as he seems to only listen to classical music...I'll get him Kid A for his birthday, and see how he reacts. My mum however is an overgrown teenybopper (I don't mean that as a bad thing), and can often be found bouncing around the house singing along with the Destiny's Child album I got her for Christmas.

Not quite the answer to the question, more just the general 'what has worked for my parents in the past' situation:

For Dad, probably Jimmie Dale Gilmore or Iris DiMent (anything other than the usual neo-Nashville swill I fear he has an addiction to, really, but there we are). Dale Watson went over pretty well as well.

For Mom -- Aphex Twin, Mojave 3 and Kraftwerk have all been remarkably successful. But no question that *the* winner for her is In the Nursery, who she can't get enough of. Happily, neither can I.

when i buy something for my parents, it's mob hits or the like for dad, elvis for mom.

i was playing serge gainsbourg's melody album one day and he came in my room because he thought he recognized one of the songs (?). he sat at rapt attention for the duration of the album. my father is 61 years old and likes frank sinatra and nat king cole. it was the oddest moment, i swear. he also was quite into scott walker.

My Dad, Mark... For years we've been going to the Hull Adelphi together. Among the treasures we've seen there: Loop, Spacemen 3, Primal Scream, The Young Gods, The Fall, The Telescopes... loads of others my tired brain can't recall. I guess his faves are The Fall (he liked them before I did) and anything Shane MacGowan does, though he particularly enjoyed Loop when we saw them. He also took his stepdaughter to the Rollercoaster tour a few years back - the My Bloody Valentine wall of sound was something he still enthuses about. Shame he suffers from rather bad tinnitus these days....

But not exactly a surprise.

My mum really digs Spiritualized. She stole my copy of Ladies and Gents until I went out and bought her her own. Went round her house the next time and she'd got some Spacemen3 discs, as well! My mum used to have quite decent taste in music, once upon a time when she was a mod.

My father on the other hand, forget it. All he likes is folky crap.

I tried to get my little sister into Syd Barrett when she was at a nice and impressionable age (about 5). But then kids have to grow up and turn into Whitney Houston fans.

Kate, you seem to have the coolest mum ever :) The most unlikely record I got my mum was Miles' 'Sketches of Spain', which was a succes and she even bought 'In a Silent Way' after that, which she also likes (i'm realistic here so I've no illusion she'll like 'Bitches Brew'). My father I don't try anything on music-wise, although I've dragged them both along to Bowie and Stones concerts.

i am not sure how i would react if my mother was listening to something like 'revolution' by spacemen 3. i might think that somehow i had entered the twilight zone. my parents are rather pedestrian in their tastes, my father records the satellite music channels for his trips to and fro and so i think the coolest thing i ever pawned on them was by crowded house and that isn't very cool. my mom likes the bats and belle and sebastian when i play them in the car for her but not when stuart murdoch goes on about 'will always pay a shitty wage' but then she'd wash my mouth out for saying darn so i suppose that is to be expected.

My mum quite liked the cabaret thing on Momus's "The Ultraconformist".

I'm lucky- I inherited a lot of great stuff from my mum's record collection. Not just the obvious Beatles and Stones stuff, but the Kinks trilogy records, the Creation, Small Faces (though this later turned into a worrying Rod Stewart obsession on my mum's part).

I wish I liked jazz, cause my father had loads of it from the 60s, but I was never able to get any further than Brubeck, and the rest of his records are folkie wibble.

My father has at various times been obsessed with Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Buckwheat Zydeco, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Mahler, Shostakovitch, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Prince, The Cure, A Tribe Called Quest, The Prodigy, Seal, Depeche Mode, The Time, Madonna, Vanity 6, Orbital, Squarepusher, and Pizzicato 5. In fact, the only things I can remember my father actively disliking that I've played for him were Eazy-E, Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, Mr. Bungle, and God. My mother primarily listens to talk radio and Vangelis.

They both listen to Poem-Cees, too, but that's hardly a surprise.

Definition of absolute optimism: playing your father Nitzer Ebb...

Buying records for my parents? I honestly wouldn't know where to start. Sometimes I buy they something they've asked for. The only recent thing I've played which won approval - from Dad - was the Bacharach box set, and then only "24 Hours From Tulsa" which he played six times in a row when we were going through the Channel Tunnel and had the windows open: Pitney's voice echoed through the carrier train and I thought somebody was going to come and murder us.

Tom, you know I scanned that post of your quickly and thought "WOW! Tom's dad really likes the Channel Six?" Help.

Mark:

I figured I'd give it a shot since he liked some of the Skinny Puppy I played for him. I really thought he'd go for "My Heart" since it's in 5/4, too. Oops.

Still reeling from the shock that someone elses mum likes momus: i think she was seduced by the music hall/sondheim-esque wordplay but was terribly upset whenever she saw his pallid mug.

My mum liked Momus's wordplay as well. She liked his way with the language even if she didn't approve of everything he said with it.

I've only ever bought one record for either of my parents: the Beatles' "Live at the BBC" whichever Christmas it came out, for my mum. Like Tom, I've still never bought a Beatles record for any other purpose.

The only thing my dad will listen to (and I'm not kidding) is Jim Nabors. On the other hand it explains how I turned out (badly).

I can only dream of a parent who would like the Spacemen 3, and quite often do.

So, you guys have parents who dig Squarepusher and Spiritualized? Weird...

My dad had actually been down with musical trends up to the beginning of the nineties, when it all ended with techno ("It sounds like dentist's drilling machines") and hip hop ("These black guys have forgotten how to sing, all they do nowadays is talk"). Still, playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at a relative's wedding once at 2am and clearing the dancefloor in process makes him pretty cool, I'd say. I got him a Jimi Hendrix box-set for christmas.

As for my mum, after the culling of most of the remotely interesting english-language channels on analogue satellite services, she has started watching MTV, and is now acquainted with most of the current chartbusters. A month or so ago the two of us were watching "Roswell High", and when the theme song started playing (Dido's "Here With Me", which I'm actually rather fond of), she said that Dido is the reason that makes her able to sit through Eminem's 'Stan' and tolerate him.

Yeah, I know, Dido makes mumsy-MOR and this shouldn't surprise me, but since my mum hasn't liked ANY music since the '91 heyday of Whitney Houston and Right Said Fred ('Don't Talk Just Kiss' was her favourite), it did come as a bit of a shock.

When I was in middle school my dad commented on the drive to school that the tape I'd put in, Dark Side of the Moon, sounded "pretty nice". So I bought it for him 10 years later.

and he of course never listens to it.