Barracuda

Jude this morning asked if we could listen to the song about the fish on our way to his daycare.  If you know me and my family, you’ll know that we see Phish often, so I asked him which song.  No dad, the song about the barracuda.  Wait, what?  Heart’s “Barracuda?”  Yeah dad, he says.  I open You Tube and of course the first link is to an audio stream of the song.  When the Wilson sisters finally get to its name sake in the lyrics, he goes “Yeah, there it is.” 

I’m impressed.  But, I shouldn’t be.  We’ve never really played the typical “children’s” music for him when he was growing up.  Instead, to satisfy his growing passion for music we played Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”, the 70’s theme from the Spider-man cartoon, and, of course, selections from the Phish catalog.  So, I shouldn’t be shocked when he asked for Ann and Nancy Wilson’s blistering 1977 chart-topper.  He must have heard it in the car on the radio.  Little sponge.  Good for you man.  Know what you like and grab it.

Hopefully this will blossom.  I would love it if he were able to respect music on all levels.  He seems to like the drums, and drumming.  He loves to sit in my lap while I play guitar…and deaden the strings.  And, mostly, I hope that he takes a page out of Sara’s and my book regarding live music.  We love music.  And, while we love many forms of music, we don’t like them all, but appreciate the skill regardless of the genre.  Imagine my surprise when we figured out that we’d been sitting in the Gospel tent at NOLA’s Jazz Fest for over an hour.  I’m not into Gospel, but that’s some powerful music.  But, I digress.  In short, I think that music made for children is, mostly, oversimplified crap.  There are exceptions of course, but there’s plenty of good music, both classic and modern, that a kid can wrap his brain around.  You can argue it, but between Rossini, Beethoven, CSNY, the Beatles, They Might Be Giants, Zeppelin, and many others, you can build an incredible, kid-friendly play list.

And, it’s rubbing off.  The other day, I caught Johanna walking over to where my guitar stand is, and gently plucking the strings.  With names like Jude and Johanna they better love music, and it’s just frigging awesome watching their eyes open up and enjoy something of quality without any bias or opinion or back knowledge.  Just absolutely awesome.