I felt a little bad for my children. My varied musical tastes pretty much outflank any genre of music that they could discover and try to play really loud to shock the parents.
Heavy metal? Come on. They tell me to turn it down.
Rap? I have Eminem on the playlist. And they think the Beastie Boys are dinosaur music.
Jazz/Big Band/Swing? We remember what happened at the art museum.
Country? They were stunned when they discovered I was familiar with country and western music, and we’ve got a preset on the car radios for a country and western station. And Dad knows all the tunes.
The Jack music (is that even the name anymore?) that is the greatest hits of the 80s, 90s, and today? Between an extensive collection of cassettes and CDs, Dad knows all the songs on the radio stations’ abbreviated playlists and most of them on the weekly reprise of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 from the 1980s.
Electronica and dance music? Dad just bought a CD’s worth of songs by The Fat Rat, and their beautiful mom used to compose EDM.
Hip hop? I guess they could flank me here, as I don’t care for much of it, but I do have enough R&B to perhaps keep them away.
But you know what they found to annoy me?
Seventies folk music.
Apparently, inclusion in the video game Fallout 76 has revitalized John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and it now appears on the playlist at hockey arenas and whatnot.
Wait a minute, Brian J., don’t you own Their Greatest Hits Volume 1 by The Eagles? Well, yes, but they’re a band with California folk sound. I don’t know why the guy and a guitar folk rankles me so much.
What about all those Linda Ronstadt and Olivia Newton-John albums you own? True, and you could also bring up the Lynda Carter album as well. What do these have in common? Beautiful women who sing.
So the boys have discovered my beautiful wife’s John Denver albums and play them on the record player every morning and evening.
If they discover her Dan Fogelberg albums, I don’t know what I’ll do. Perhaps blow out my ears listening to heavy metal too loud on ear buds all the quicker, I suppose.
I left them such a small gap. And they exploited it.
Kids in the modern age rebel musically by telling their parents to turn it down. This has happened to me many times.