Our Music, Our Kids’ Music

(If you click this link, you’ll have a great soundtrack for this post.)

One great thing about this summer has been talking with Clif, our seventeen year old, about music.

He is into music at a sweeping yet molecular level, such a mix of genres, artists, and moods. Nick Drake. Miles Davis. Kanye. Radiohead. Kendrick Lamar. Can. Talking Heads. Bonnaroo last month gave him the chance to see a bunch of bands: LCD Soundsystem, Vulfpeck, Tame Impala. (These links are all to these bands’ Bonnaroo sets—it’s Bonnaroo without having to Bonnaroo!)

(The kids in the photos here are the stars of Vulfpeck’s new video for their song “Back Pocket.” They Fred and Ginger their way through a totally earworm song. What a pair—totally made my day to watch them.)

Yesterday in the car, as we drove home to Nashville from our summer hangout in Grundy County, Clif told me he hopes Radiohead comes to Nashville soon. And he hopes they don’t play the Bridgestone Arena. “They’d love the Ryman. That would be the most incredible concert ever.” I wondered immediately what the Hatch Show Print poster for the show might look like.

I told him I’d totally go see Radiohead at the Ryman, hinting that I’d like to go with him. Maybe it was the fog of Chick-fil-a clouding my perception, but I think he didn’t completely reject the idea.

All this reminded me of this week’s New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten, “Searching for transcendence with Radiohead.” It begins, “I took my fourteen-year-old son to see Radiohead the other night.” Ha! What a turnabout. I want my seventeen-year-old son to take me to see Radiohead.

Anyway, it’s a great piece about how we carry the music of our youth with us, see it morph as time passes, yet never let go of it. It echoes back when our kids grow up, so great.