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Thursday, April 03, 2008
QIDRECHINNA (I AM DESTINED TO LOVE)
Abdel Gadir Salim
Blues in Khartoum
Institute Du Monde Afrique : 1999
[Buy It]
YA WANNA BUY A BUNNY?
Spike Jones and His City Slickers
1949
Available on : Greatest Hits!!!
RCA : 1999
[Buy It]
PINBALL WIZARD
Elton John
Tommy: The Soundtrack
Universal : 1975
[Buy It]
VALENTINE AND GARUDA
Frank Black and the Catholics
Black Letter Days
Spin Art : 2002
[Buy It]
YOU'RE THE REASON OUR KIDS ARE UGLY
Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn
1978
Available on : The Definitive Selection
MCA Nashville : 2005
[Buy It]
SEE THE BIG MAN CRY
Charlie Louvin
1965
Available on : Greatest Hits
Import : 2004
[Buy It]
When I was seven, I went through my parents' records and played all of them. It was a pretty standard mid-seventies set: Beatles, Beach Boys, Supremes, James Taylor, Carole King, West Side Story, maybe one or two Jimi Hendrix records. I remember sitting cross-legged in the living room and listening to Smokey Robinson.
I am using this memory as a shield against sentimentality.
Today is my older son's seventh birthday. Last week, my younger son turned four. My wife and I will throw them parties, take pictures, wish they had fewer toys: the usual. It's strange to have kids, especially kids who are becoming people, and it is also the most natural thing in the world.
I am using this truism as a shield against sentimentality.
There are few memories that still survive from 1973, when I turned four; even 1976, when I turned seven, is mostly a blur of Jimmy Carter's gigantic teeth and TV commercials celebrating the bicentennial, principally through low rates on car loans. Still, I remember clearly the first time I heard Jim Croce's "One Less Set of Footsteps," when I was the age of my younger son, and how frightened I was. I also remember hearing the Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster" in 1975, when it was all over the radio, and trying to get the blinds on one of the front windows to move in sync with the guitar part. So I don't want to underestimate the degree to which my sons, even if they're not identifying themselves by the music they like, are identifying music that they like. My younger son seems, so far, to favor soundtrack music and classical music, neither of which made a tremendous impression on my older son when he was that age. When we watch movies, my younger son will start humming the score and say, "I like this music." Later on, he will hum it again. My older son prefers songs with simple melodies and complicated lyrics. He repeats the lyrics to himself later. The earliest examples of this, which date from when he was two or even younger, are Ian Dury's "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll," Captain Beefheart's "Tropical Hot Dog Night," Frank Black's "Valentine and Garuda," and the Rolling Stones "Let It Bleed." I'd be playing them at home or in the car and he'd perk up, and ask me what they were, and smile, and laugh, and ask for them again. There are enough exceptions, of course, that these cease to be rules. The younger one got completely hooked on the Hives' "Tick Tick Boom." The older one loves Buddy Holly. The younger one has, for the last twenty nights in a row, forced me to put him to bed with a copy of "Born in the U.S.A." playing in an old cassette machine that is very similar to the one I had in 1976. The older one, at three, choreographed a modern dance set to Elton John's version of "Pinball Wizard." He later taught it to the younger one, who added a few flourishes of his own. Both of them worship Michael Jackson and AC/DC and Spike Jones, which only means that they are part of the human race. And both of them are obsessed to the point of joy with "Qidrechinna," a song by the Sudanese pop singer Abdel Gadir Salim.
Soon they will get older, will cease to experience that joy, or else they will conceal that joy from me and my wife. That day's not too far off. Until then, they're little, and their appetite for the world is large, and so I'm going to wish them a happy birthday by posting a quartet of songs that they love, and then a pair of songs that they don't know. Both are country songs, because it's a genre they don't particularly like, and I am a sadist. I am using sadism as a shield against sentimentality. One of them is Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty's "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly," which distills the chaos of domestic bliss into low comedy. Besides that, all of our kids took after your part of our family anyway.
Oh they did, huh? What about the one's that's bald?
Well, I guess you might say they took after me. I am using low comedy as a shield against sentimentality.
The other is Charlie Louvin's "See the Big Man Cry," in which a man spies on his estranged wife and the child who does not even know him. Many married men have imagined circumstances that would separate them from their wives--falling in love with others, losing the war of attrition against boredom and self-hatred. But being separated from children is an atrocity, and Louvin mines it for maximum horror: I followed them to the pet shop window the little boy stopped to see
He looked up at her said if I had a daddy he'd buy that puppy for me
See the big man cry mama that's what I heard him say
See the big man cry mama he looks like his heart will break I am using horror as a shield against sentimentality.
I am not, as you will notice, posting Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle," though I will admit that Verities and Balderdash, the album on which the song originally appeared, was one of the records in my parents' collection, and that I probably took it out and played it once or twice. I am not posting it because, well, I am still holding the shield against sentimentality, though it's quaking a little bit when I think of my sons, littler than I ever remember being, dancing around the living room to "Pinball Wizard."Labels: ben, country, rock
posted by Ben
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