Are You Becoming Your Parents...? (1 Viewer)

When I was growing up, the music that played in our house was my father's collection of pop jazz, such as Ray Conniff. The Dorsey Brothers, Percy Faith, Glenn Miller, etc.

I liked the Big Band stuff even as a kid, but Ray Conniff and that infernal sound of (mostly) male voices being used as a musical instrument drove me almost as nuts as Dad's dominating the sole t.v. in our home every Sunday for his cherished football games.

But now, I kind sorta like Ray Conniff and music of that ilk. No, I actually really like it now...to the point of seeking out the old albums I remember my father had, so that i can digitalize them and preserve them forever.

I suppose this just seeps unnoticed into one's subconscious over a long period of time and, after our parents pass on, becomes a symbol of their lives, which we finally appreciate, even cherish.

Had it not been for my father's regular playing of Grofe's GRAND CANYON, Rodger's VICTORY AT SEA and SOUTH PACIFIC, Shelley Berman, and all that Big Band and Broadway Cast stuff, my musical tastes today would be sigificantly narrower, and much less rich. Thanks, Dad. Didn't think I liked it then, but nor did I like history or asparagus or girls. As David Mamet said, "Things Change."

Dick said:

Had it not been for my father's regular playing of Grofe's GRAND CANYON, Rodger's VICTORY AT SEA and SOUTH PACIFIC, Shelley Berman, and all that Big Band and Broadway Cast stuff, my musical tastes today would be sigificantly narrower, and much less rich. Thanks, Dad. Didn't think I liked it then, but nor did I like history or asparagus or girls. As David Mamet said, "Things Change."

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Back in the days when such things as "Easy listening" stations actually EXISTED (before culture decided we were all much better off with "Light pop classic" stations in our stores and elevators), my parents tries letting me play the local Muzak station before bed. (The station had a call sign of ocean waves and ship bells at the quarter breaks, so it was the closest thing to those ocean-wave white noise devices.)
I was always too hyper for it to actually work, of course, and didn't know the old trick that if you turn a radio just low enough to fall out of attention to, it's a hypnotic sleep-lull (try it sometime), so I'd end up listening to the station for twenty or thirty minutes before turning it off and just getting some quiet.

You can guess what happened: Years later, I had to look up an old Mantovani number on iTunes just to find a specific musical reference, and all the old sentimentality came back. I'm now one of the few people I know with at least three, maybe more, easy-listening Mantovani tracks on his desktop iTunes and iPod, and looking for more songs locked away in my subconscious.
When they were everywhere, we wanted to kill them, but now that they're nowhere, it's...actually nice to have them back, once in a while.

"Snorrrrrre...Snurf...Snurk...Snort"...sorry, drifted off there EricJ.

Hmmm..."Mantovani"...I don't think I've even seen that name posted on the 'Net before...call Guinness! Actually, my mom was a big Nat King Cole fan, which I drifted off to on many a school night. To this day, Nat's dulcet crooning will put me under in record time.

I've always liked most of the music my parents enjoy; but then again, my tastes change with current music often.

A few months ago, I drove up to some friends house - both in their 80s, people I've known for years through business who are now retired. As I pulled up, the soundtrack for "Social Network" was playing, and they asked me if I had heard it, and told me the thought it was some of Reznors best work "Not quite Downward Spiral though". And I thought: this is the kind of listener I hope to be.

If I get there, and I can appreciate a little bit of everything; from Opera to Country to Rock, Rap, whatever.. I'm all good.
Right now, I'm really into Gangstagrass.. and managed to get my parents (who found it through "Justified") to grab some of the singles. So there is hope

Can't say I've been influenced by my parent's listening habits but have discovered it on my own. I remember when I was a teenager I was collecting both Glen Miller AND AC/DC records! I love old time radio and the WWII era so I love Big Band music. I love music from the 1930's through the 1980's. Don't care for opera, the old twangy country, or rap.

Am I becoming my parents? That ship sailed about 20 years ago.

I also listened to a lot of the same music my parents liked (1950s and 1960s pop/rock/R&B [especially Motown and The Beach Boys], showtunes and a little classical music) growing up. Movie musicals coming out on video and the Oldies Radio format made it easy to hear music I would never have heard of otherwise. The only then-current pop artist I remember listening to very much was Michael Jackson.At the end of the 1990s, I had to do something to counter my sisters' taste for boy bands and auto-tuned teens (even the thickest slices of 1970s cheese had more flavor than any of them), so I went back to the oldies and started looking for the deep cuts. Then, I found a Frank Sinatra tape (from the Capitol years) on the floor of the car that used to be my grandmother's, and the fact that he could make such great music without studio tricks impressed me (auto-tune was becoming more and more popular). After that, I developed a taste for pre-rock pop music and jazz.Now the music of the 1980s and 1990s is being called "oldies." I have trouble applying that label to anything recorded after the day Nixon resigned.

MatthewA said:

Am I becoming my parents? That ship sailed about 20 years ago.

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When I first read the title of this post that is exactly what I thought too.

My parent are still with me, thankfully, but I can't see myself getting into their music much when they do go. My mom is a major Duran Duran fan, which is tolerable but not typically my cup of tea. My dad is a huge Pantra fan and is big into Lady Gaga, its amusing, but one of those things that I will look back on instead of listening in on...

Definitely not! My dad was a dyed-in-the-wool classical music snob. My mom liked calm music in 3/4 time like Ann Murray and little else.

i have to admit I've grown to like the music my parents liked. Growing up, there was a lot of Elvis played in the house, but usually at one in the morning when dad was pissed up and everyone else was trying to sleep. So I grew up with a big hate on for anything Elvis. Now though, I can listen to the worst of Elvis, and really love it. Same with Willie Nelson and other country singers from the outlaw era.

Though "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", the first song on the drunk Elvis album (As I called it, it was some RCA compilation boxset that I actually tried to scratch up so it would become unplayable) Dad would play still sends a pang in my brain when I hear that opening piano riff.

My parents' tastes in music are really old school and not too elegant. I remember my mom used to say that someday I will grow older and stop loving that "noise" that I enjoyed when I was a teenager. I'm an adult now and yeah, my preferences have changed a lot but mostly in terms of quality. Basically, I love the same "noise" in a better quality these days

I can’t say I’ve become my parents in terms of taste in genres. My parents always just listened to country music. However, I suppose I have become them in a way in that I no longer listen to music that is oriented toward young people. I am fortunate that I got into singers like Sinatra and Nat Cole while I was in high school (I was in high school the first time I saw Sinatra live in concert circa 1974). My love of soundtracks helped get me into classical music.

However, like most people my age, I also gravitated to pop/rock, what today would be called “classic rock”. I used to be a huge fan of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, et al. Now, I hardly listen to any sort of “rock” music at all. Music aimed at youth, or music about the problems and angst of youth no longer interests me. I guess I’ve become a sort of musical snob. When people ask me what I listen to, I usually say “classical and Sinatra”.

I carpool with two people with different tastes than me. We are also three different age groups. One of us just turned 65. I’m in the middle at 57, and third one is probably mid-40’s. As each one of us drives, we choose our own music. My radio is usually on Sirius Symphony Hall. The other two play rock or classic rock (none of us play hip-hop, thankfully). For some reason, it just seems “wrong” for the 65 year old guy to be playing AC/DC. I can see how one may have liked screaming vocals in one’s youth; but it seems sort of immature in a 65 year old that his tastes did not mature along with the rest of him. This is where I feel particularly snobbish. Just as certain music and TV shows and movies interested us as a child (itsy bitsy spider, Capt. Kangaroo), it seems that things that targeted us as young adults should likewise seem like something we’ve outgrown. It just seems “wrong” for old people to play air guitar while listening to the Allman Bros.

Again, I know this sounds elitist and snobbish. I have not consciously made a decision to move on from the music of my youth. It simply does not speak to me anymore. Has anybody else here gone through something like this?

David_B_K said:

I carpool with two people with different tastes than me. We are also three different age groups. One of us just turned 65. I’m in the middle at 57, and third one is probably mid-40’s. As each one of us drives, we choose our own music. My radio is usually on Sirius Symphony Hall. The other two play rock or classic rock (none of us play hip-hop, thankfully). For some reason, it just seems “wrong” for the 65 year old guy to be playing AC/DC. I can see how one may have liked screaming vocals in one’s youth; but it seems sort of immature in a 65 year old that his tastes did not mature along with the rest of him. This is where I feel particularly snobbish. Just as certain music and TV shows and movies interested us as a child (itsy bitsy spider, Capt. Kangaroo), it seems that things that targeted us as young adults should likewise seem like something we’ve outgrown. It just seems “wrong” for old people to play air guitar while listening to the Allman Bros.

Again, I know this sounds elitist and snobbish. I have not consciously made a decision to move on from the music of my youth. It simply does not speak to me anymore. Has anybody else here gone through something like this?

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I would if we had anything to REPLACE it. As it is, I keep coming across vintage MTV videos from the glorious birth-of-MTV 80's, and enjoy nice, commercial pop music free of sociopathically narcissistic black girls, and pop singers vocoding every last bit of organic humanity out of their singing voices.
(If I wanted a singer to sound like a computer voice-synthesis, I'd listen to Hatsune Miku....Oh, wait, I already do. )

And what's wrong with Captain Kangaroo, may I ask? I finally found that bit with the clown routine to Feuerfest Polka on YouTube, but I'm still trying to track down that episode where they went to Curacao.

Ejanss said:

And what's wrong with Captain Kangaroo, may I ask? I finally found that bit with the clown routine to Feuerfest Polka on YouTube, but I'm still trying to track down that episode where they went to Curacao.

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I daresay, I'd feel a twinge of nostalgia if I heard the Captain's theme music again. Certain things that I have left behind may hold a nostalgic appeal for me without being something I'd actively listen to or watch today.

David_B_K said:

I daresay, I'd feel a twinge of nostalgia if I heard the Captain's theme music again. Certain things that I have left behind may hold a nostalgic appeal for me without being something I'd actively listen to or watch today.

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My parents had great taste in music, so I've always loved what they listened to (in terms of their record collection). However, the radios in our house and in the car were always tuned to easy listening or musak stations. I was 6 or 7 years old when I got my first portable AM radio, and that was the first time I realized there were any other music stations!I developed my own musical tastes as a teen in the 1980's, but strangely, I'm really not nostalgic for that music at all and I rarely listen to it. Once in a (great) while, I'll listen to Purple Rain or something, but that's it. I heard that stuff enough back then. I'm sick of it. However, I do pretty much hate all of "today's music". Does that mean I'm becoming my parents? ;-)

My mother was a classically trained pianist who inexplicably never,ever played at home; and my dad seemed to have no interest in music whatsoever. When I was 10 in 1958, I asked for a record player for Christmas. What music I could pilfer from others and joining the school band established my tastes. I'm not becoming my parents, but I so wish they could have discovered and enjoyed then what I found later.

I guess I've always been. I absorbed their tastes as a kid. My dad was the "country" part of it liking Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Little Jimmy Dickens, etc. My mom liked that, too, but not as much as the likes of Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis as well as big band. I just always thought it was good music!

No. I haven't become my parents when it comes to music. I listen to different types of music from Classical to Rock, Country and even some Rap and EDM. One of my favorite singers is Loreena Mckennitt, but I can listen to Daft Punk, Queen or Shirley Bassey's Bond themes just as easily. The main thing is that what I listen to interests me, even if other people think little of it. What I'm trying to avoid becoming is the guy who shakes his fist and complains that "they don't make 'em like they used to".

Edwin-S said:

What I'm trying to avoid becoming is the guy who shakes his fist and complains that "they don't make 'em like they used to".

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I enjoy new movies, comics, TV shows, books, etc. but somehow I couldn't stave off the bitter-old-man-attitude when it comes to new mainstream music. I'll still dig a song from a small or indie rock band that I'll hear on satellite today but nearly everything that I hear on the radio just sounds so terrible to me.