MY DADDY DON'T ROCK 'N' ROLL
Slow down -- you move too fast

So I was a real square when it came to music. While I was went through my early adolescence humming “The Sound of Silence,” the 80s wave of music mega-stars completely passed me by: my friends bought records like Document, Thriller, and The Unforgettable Fire; I added to my father’s collection by spending my allowance on re-issued copies of Sgt. Pepper. I knew more about the Paul McCartney death hoax than I did about Michael Jackson’s nose job.

I didn’t buy my first CD until my sophomore year in college. I was tired of being ridiculed by my friends, many of whom had music collections featuring punk and alternative bands that I had barely heard of. Wanting finally to be musically hip, I wandered down to the now-defunct Kemp Mill Records on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C., and picked up a copy of Belly’s debut CD, Star. I was the first kid in my dorm to own that CD, which brought me a small measure of cool. Maybe I wasn’t such a square after all.

That first CD spurred me into making up for lost time. I wanted to be the hippest music guy on the planet, so I began pouring through Rolling Stone and Spin, searching out new bands that none of my friends had ever heard of. I bought CDs by punk bands like Operation Ivy, obscure British bands like The Dentists and The Mighty Lemon Drops, and plain crazy bands like Too Much Joy. I became a disciple of regional bands like The Connells. I owned a copy of the Barenaked Ladies’ debut album Gordon before anybody. And I knew hip music trivia, like the fact that the drummer for Cracker used to be the drummer for The Pixies.

But I stopped caring much about music after college. Trying to earn a paycheck didn’t leave much time to read the record mags or stay up late listening to the “underground” radio shows, trying to find obscure new bands. Besides, I had amassed a couple hundred CDs in my short-lived career as a musical hipster and felt a snobby, “insider’s” connection to my music: nobody but me owns every note ever recorded by Jesus Jones or The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The other day, I perused my CD collection and realized that I haven’t bought a new CD in five years. Five years! During some points in my musical hipster life, I didn’t go five days without buying a new CD. But no bands out there really grab me anymore. The boys from Blink 182 sound hopelessly adolescent, Jewel doesn’t hold a candle to Juliana Hatfield, and the constant screaming from Limp Bizkit sounds like, well, noise. The realization hit me hard: musically, I have become my father.

Worse, my future children will be doomed the same way I was doomed. They’ll grow up listening to The Connells and the early sounds of Barenaked Ladies on old CDs that skip on nearly every track. Meanwhile, whatever’s the rage in hip new music will pass my children by. But here’s the thing: at least the music I listened to when I was a kid—-dad’s vinyl albums by Simon and Garfunkel and The Beatles—-was revolutionary and generation-defining. Okay, maybe not my generation, but at least someone’s. My kids will be stuck listening to fringe bands that were relatively obscure to start with, and will be absolutely unknown before long. For my kids’ sake, I should head out to the used CD store immediately and pick up every copy of Born in the U.S.A. or Synchronicity or Green that I can find. That way, if my kids are stuck listening to the music of my generation, at least it’ll be the seminal stuff.

In the end, I shouldn’t be so hard on dear old dad; growing up with his music didn’t cause any permanent damage. In fact, I own a Simon and Garfunkel box set as well as that Beatles greatest hits CD, testament to the staying power of my father’s music. And whenever I hear an old tune on the radio, it’s fun to sing along and relive a childhood memory or two. Still, every now and then, I try to get my dad to listen to some of the music of my generation, even though my CD collection is still a bit left of center. He likes the early stuff by Barenaked Ladies and doesn’t mind The Connells. To him, the rest of it is still noise. Sometimes I wonder whether he’s right.