Young people these days…
I live a sheltered life. I know very few people who think that the Daily Mail is a credible newspaper, I am quite frankly shocked when I meet someone who still likes Oasis and I don’t actually know anyone between the ages of 5 and 25.
So my session this morning with our work experience person was a bit of an eye-opener. We were meant to be talking about my job and ‘career’, but as soon as I discovered her interest in music we seemed to spend most of the time talking about that instead. Doing untold damage to the image of our organisation, I found myself lapsing into the role of incredulous eldery aunt type, gently quizzing her about ‘the young people of today’ as though I had been living in a box in some remote outpost for the past 10 years, rather than in the centre of groovy London town.
She is 15. She likes a wide range of music (doesn’t everyone), but her favourites are The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division, Bauhaus, the Sex Pistols, Bowie, Nirvana and Bob Dylan, she loves Bob Dylan and is desparate to see him live. How did she come to hear these fine examples of ‘rebellious youth music’? Her Dad bought them for her.
And she buys vinyl, second hand stuff from the markets and record-exchange. Does she buy LPs on spec? How does she know what to buy? Easy, her Step-Dad advises her on classic albums she needs to have in her collection.
Does she listen to any new music? No, because it’s all rubbish (apart from the Arctic Monkeys). She and her Dads agree on this.
Does she read the music press? No, she used to read the NME but grew out of it. Dad said it used to be good in the 70s and 80s though. She wishes it was still the 80s, it seemed so much better then.
How old are her Dads? Really old. How old is really old? 42 or 43.
I imagine that this is hardly news for regular readers who have any contact whatsoever with the outside world, but as I said, I live a sheltered life. And a naive one. What do you rebel against when your parents have got excellent music taste and they’re your own personal walking version of the Melody Maker album review section?
February 9th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
My brother, who is 39, has 2 twin teenage daughters. One has excellent taste (Gorillaz, Slade, The Beatles etc) and one likes utter shit, including the lower end of the girl or boy group spectrum, and even Bewitched (which is truly bizarre). The point is my brother rams home to them, what’s good and what is utter shit (he’s much more candid and unforgiving than my Dad ever was) and this has truly rubbed off well on Billie but not Ruby. You never can tell. I like to think Billie will one day take after Ruby, just to spite him, the opinionated sod. Heh.
February 9th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I’ve got some cross-over in music taste with my parents. My Mum and I both like the Eagles and Don McLean, Dad and I like Duane Eddy and Buddy Holly. But they didn’t ever force their music taste directly upon me, and when they told me that New Order were boring and that the Happy Mondays were unlistenable drivel, I knew they were WRONG!
So good luck to Ruby for going her own way. Although how the heck does a teenager in 2009 discover Bewitched?!
February 9th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
My parents had/have terrible taste in music, my dad only likes classical really, to this day we never agree on stuff although he quite likes eno. Not sure where my taste came from the BBC and NME probably. Not sure about the next generation half of them have dreadful the other one is 9 has his own band and wanted the white stripes sheet music for xmas so nature, nurture or nietszche? your work expereince will end up as Tory candidate for Guildford probably
February 9th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Ahhh, BLTP, you’re from a generation though where music was still about defining yourself against your parents. What was odd about the WE girl was the her parents were her main source of music information, not the press, not her friends, not blogs, not radio (other than a bit of XFM).
And you might be right about the Tory rebellion. I went to uni with someone whose parents were massive hippies and who had offered her weed to go alongside the Hendrix and Grateful Dead albums when she was a teenager. Obviously she grew up to become a straight-laced arch conservative. So let that be a lesson hippy parents!
February 10th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Also with music/gigs I do wondered if you are into all this at a young age what you have to grow into as an adult. I see gangs of12 years olds running round at festivals won’t they be jaded by the time they are 21. one of my step nieces had a party in the back of limo that involved I imagine driving round their small northern town’s centre (many times) drinking pop and screaming this was when she was 10. What is she going to do for her 30th a Moonshot?
February 10th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
My dad had no interest in music at all, but my mum was quite into Motown and especially the Carpenters. But that was kind of it really. We’d never swap notes but it seems all kids to that now.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
My mum’s music taste is quite broad and she does actually get some of her albums from me – but almost never vice versa. My Dad used to listen to modern jazz as a young man, but seems to listen to very little these days.
The problem is their record collection looks like some kind of overspill from the local Oxfam. Terrible easy listening albums abound, alongside budget Best Of cassettes (Their Best of the Bee Gees tapes features B-sides aplenty, and no tracks beyond 1969), scratched classical albums and not much else. They also both offer the opinion that it’s pointless buying anything apart from “Best of” or “Greatest Hits” albums because “studio albums are too patchy”. This is a belief they’ve had since the days before the album market was the industry cash cow, and they’ve refused to revise it since despite my many arguments to the contrary.
They’ve had next-to-no influence on me, then. Even artists you would have expected my parents to own material by (Scott Walker, for example) they never had, and I was left to discover him for myself.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Oh God! That’s child abuse!!! ;)
Seriously though, as one who missed out on the giddy joys of liking rubbish music before I started buying Jesus Lizard records, I hope you can instill in her the sub-conscious desire to go out and buy some Reynolds Girls CD’s……… =D
February 10th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
It would appear then from everyone’s comments that music taste isn’t inherited…
If the contents of most Oxfams are anything to go by Dave, then it appears that your parents are not unusual. Although I don’t mind a bit of easy listening myself.
And what’s wrong with the Reynolds Girls Ill Man? You know that they’re one of my favourites… I’d rather jack, then Fleetwood Mac…
February 11th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Reynolds Girls? Not my bag, but nothing wrong with them either. I was being serious. It’s not natural to have such serious tastes at such an age……..
February 11th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
I must admit to being weirdo the first single i bought was the Stranglers followed by tom tom club I don’t have any guilty Baltimora singles at the back of thestack, it’s slightly dull really, maybe I should buy some spagna or sonya to balance things out.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I’ve got a 15 year old cousin that I’ve been introducing to good music. He’s listening to a lot of different things that most of the other guys at his school. What’s cool is that he’s actually gotten some of them hooked on the stuff I find for him. It’s weird though when I turn on MTV and don’t recognize most of the artists up there. It does make me feel old or at least out of touch with what’s going on today. Oh well.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Keith, I think we’re all old(ish) around here aren’t we?! ;) I don’t think that anyone under the age of 30 reads this blog!
That’s great that your young cousin is interested in different music. I had fun introducing my younger brother to new stuff – somehow that seems the right way to find out about music.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I loved scorning my parents’ Jim Reeves records. And I took huge pleasure in playing the opening lines of Ian Dury’s ‘Plaistow Patricia’ as loud as I could (but only when my Mum was in earshot; my Dad would have taken a hammer to it.).
And I was horrified when I came home one day and found my Mum playing my copy of ‘Trans Europe Express’. It just seemed utterly wrong.
Lots of my friends now go to gigs with their offspring. I’m really not sure how the offspring feel about it.
February 13th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
ISBW, I think that you should be proud of introducing your mum to the delights of Kraftwork! That is some achievement. My own mother once suprised me by requesting that I fill up the end of a C90 of someone like Barbara Streisand or Kenny Rodgers, with the 12″ extended mix of It’s My Life by Talk Talk. Not all that way out, but I was still a little taken aback.