Yesterday my daughter and I took her mom (and my wife) to Boston, where she will undergo a transplant over the next three weeks. We had a nice trip down, spent some time saying goodbye at the hospital, and then began our return trip. It was very pleasant, until my daughter said “Can we listen to music?” Those of you who have 14 year olds may understand why I cringed on the inside.
My daughter listens to Mariah Carey. Lovely voice, but she has 13 albums, and a couple of songs does me. I’m not hating, honest; it’s just not my cuppa. So, when she went for the radio instead of putting in a CD I didn’t know whether to breathe a sigh of relief, or go for the earplugs. She usually aims for pop radio, and that means Lil Mix and One Direction. Ad nauseum. Not only do these stations play music that gets on my last nerve, they balance music and advertising in a way that seems to favor the latter at the expense of the former. About twelve ads into the first commercial break, she starts scrolling up the dial and then she did it; she stopped on …
Black Sabbath – “Snowblind”
And she says to me “I love electric guitar.”
Wha!?!?!?! We listened to ZZ Top’s “La Grange,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” some Offspring, and a bunch of stuff I didn’t recognize. Finally, they played some ads (why does pop radio give you two songs between ads, but AOR stations give you about ten?) and she started up the dial again.
And then she stopped on a station that played Elwood’s Blues Show. The song that was playing when she stopped dialing was Luther Anderson’s cover of Hound Dog Taylor’s “Give Me Back My Wig.” OMG! She was interested in who Hound Dog Taylor was, and how Chicago blues are different from Mississippi blues, St. Louis blues and Indianapolis blues! Holy smokes.
We listened to Sue Foley’s “New Used Car” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_jUmILVQa0, and you should, too), some Carlos Santana, and maybe eight more blues songs before we got home.
She and I are going to both enjoy driving together, and now that i know we can find music we both like maybe I won’t get quite so grumpy over the stuff I don’t care for (as long as we get to mix it up a bit). Also, I need to remind myself to watch “The Blues Brothers Movie” with her.
