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June 27, 2006
A Serious Father-Son Talk
There come times in the relationship between a father and a son when they have a serious talk. It may be awkward, it can be humorous, but a father's obligations demand it.
I'm referring, of course, to The Talk about bad pop music. If a father doesn't impart this wisdom, well, a son picks it up in the gutter, and that could lead to severely warped views.
My son and I had our first talk about a year ago, as we drove around listening to a tape of Latin music that I bought for a dime (yes, for 10 cents) in the ultra cut-out bins at Tower Records. Out of maybe 20 such tapes, two or three caught my attention. The rest were mediocre. Therein lies the Talk.
"Shmoikel," I said, sounding very Fred MacMurray-esque, "I don't care much for this tape. It sounds like all the other Latin tapes."
"You mean, you don't like the other Latin music?"
"No, not that. It's just that nothing here sounds distinctive. The music, the vocals. Shmoikel, bad pop music is bad pop music, whether it's in English, Hebrew or Spanish."
Recently I had evidence, with my own ears, of the truth of that statement. A friend returned from visiting her family in South Korea with an armload of Korean CDs. They caught my attention because they had gorgeous packaging, with an attention to detail and non-standard packag sizes that made them stand out against your typical Yankee jewel box.
Some of the music, such as piano instrumentals, I liked, but other CDs . . . let's say my taste for Korean hip-hop is severely limited. Other CDs sounded like collections from the 2 a.m. entertainment shift at the Seoul airport lounge. I heard absolutely nothing that qualified some of the music as "world music," but rather as generic pop sludge that just happened to be sung in Korean (and sometimes in English, which eliminated vestiges of curiousity).
So this weekend I told my son about this and said, "I have to add to my earlier comment. Bad pop music is bad pop music, whether it's in English, Hebrew, Spanish, or Korean." My hope is that my son passes this knowledge to his kinder decades hence, and the wisdom echoes through the generations.
Van | 06/27/06 at 05:24 AM | Categories: Life and how to live it
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