Dad, ca. 1960's-1980's

Dad's music was about as different from Mom's as it could possibly be. They found common ground in The Beatles, and maybe Van Morrison, but that was about it. Mom quit listening to The Beatles somewhere around Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Yellow Submarine. While she didn't find the psychedelic sound of the late 60's very appealing, my dad wholly embraced it. The local radio station was one of the best in the country, and the only one that played Rock N' Roll in the region at the time.

Some of my earlier memories are of Dad driving me along the backroads in the green Ford, listening to The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. Later, after my parents divorced, he moved a photo of Stevie Nicks from our garage to his house. Years later I would recognize her from the cover of Bella Donna. I swear, someday I will take my dad to see Stevie Nicks in concert.

In high school, he gave me several classic rock albums, including Dark Side of the Moon, The Best of Bowie, and The Best of Van Halen. When thumbed through the CDs at the store, he picked up a copy of Back in Black and said, "This is the album that killed disco." I walked out of the store with it and played it over and over.

Dad is still around, playing his Gibson, listening to his vast music collection, laughing at Coast to Coast, and watching sci-fi. But that's a story for another day, and several David Bowie albums. 

Mom, ca. 1970's

About ten years ago, I found the remnants of my Mom's record collection. It contained about a dozen or so worn sleeves containing scratched and even warped vinyls. These had been out in the garage, and in the same box was an album containing photos of my mother that I had never seen before. She had long hair and somewhat folksy seventies clothing. I never knew buttercup looked good on her, as all I had seen her wear were the jewel tones and neons from the eighties.

She was kind of a misfit from her generation. Her senior prom theme was Purple Haze in '69, but she wasn't a member of the counterculture. She embodied the spirit of rebellion without ever actually rebelling against the establishment. Her rebellion consisted of wearing jeans in college, and drinking sloe gin fizzes with her Massachusetts roommate and dropping a bottle of JD at her first party. By dropping it, I don't mean throwing it back. I mean she was so nervous that it slipped from her hand and shattered on the ground.

But her music collection has always been fascinating to me. It contains some of the most poignant songs on heartbreak ever written, as well as some of the greatest female singer-songwriters ever to live. The piano also played a prominent role in her music collection, which wasn't very surprising. She had played piano since she was a very young girl, but she quit when she left home. I once asked her about playing the piano, and all she really mentioned that the music teacher would cut her nails to the quick so she couldn't hear them clicking on the keys. I never played the piano.

But she sang, and so did I. She sang to me as a child in her mezzo-soprano voice, and in church. Mostly she sang songs from the hymnal. She also listened to the sappy soft rock station in the car as background noise turned at the lowest volume audibly possible. It drove me nuts, listening to the gentle hums and whines of 1980's pop singers and never audibly recognizing them.

I think the 1970's were her decade.