Music Hath Testicles To Sooth The Savage Teats.

First of all, I apologize for the title. It just came out that way. And it made me laugh.

Okay. On to business. My daughter has developed a deep disdain for Justin Beiber. I know some folks may agree but she is 11 and a half. There isn't a whole lot to compare it to.  And, truth is, when it comes to mindless hooks, he isn't a horrible thing. It's music. Regardless of your definition.

I blame myself. For years I cringed at my husband's fixation with the band Journey. I came from a different era. He came from the loins of a now soft rock disc jockey in Texas. I was a former lyric soprano, who, as it turns out, was really an alto forced into lyric soprano servitude by a wayward choir mistress in church who couldn't keep it out of the rafters, never really being able to hit the notes without hurting something. He was a dreamy Donny Osmond-like tenor.

It made sense that I would rebel and be drawn to overly emotional music like punk and lyric whores like My Chemical Romance. That I would love the drama of rock operas like "American Idiot" and loved blasting Bad Brains when embracing my anger trying to find parking in downtown Boston. Adored quirky jumping notes when Regina Spektor sang about my old home, lower Manhattan. Sang along with pride about assholes hurting female mojo with 1960's girl groups.

A lot of times I was running with the outcry and the music was secondary. Or, I would reach out for the other side of the same high. I loved the pure sensation of pianists like Lucavidi Eunadi and George Winston. And I looked down on  simple things, all of those love songs about not getting love or getting dumped by love or loving you in very unhealthy way that insinuates stalker tendencies aka unrequited love, or finding out your love is a douche bag or riding the high of first loving feelings aka it won't last love or all the things love can do to you that, come to think of it, don't always turn out well because love almost inevitably became complicated but feels really great all the same.

Its country music that turned me. I had been raised with a father who loved blue grass and country (he played guitar in a band when he was younger). He liked that twangy Hank Williams Sr. old school country. It wasn't until after his death when I got into  his reel to reel tapes that I found out that he loved a lot of the same stuff that I began to seek out after I heard the "Our Brother Where Art Thou" sound track. It was a life changer. It was the first time that I began to get past the not always pleasant nasal qualities and the old fashioned-ness to it and started to hear the musicianship involved. The olde timey gueetar players had chops. A steel string gueetar didn't ruin a song. It was just different. I began to appreciate classical anything more. To put aside the bigotry and admire the skill. To relax the fuck up and open the mind.

Dad and his friend Gibson

Recently, I have been spending a lot of time with the husband's "Journey Complete" songbook. I can play some of the simpler ones badly on the piano. I've been spending more time on with the notes and can admire the sheer quantity of music, the catchy hooks. It is mostly love songs and I am trying but my inner romantic has a knee jerk gag reflex. I often want to yell at Steve Perry, "Buck it up, Son! Being a wimp will only drive her away!" But, you know, it has its place. It took talent to write.

I have learned to love them, subtly. My far more romantic husband is a love song kind of man. I am a stand up comic with anger issues. Together we give the world balance but I have grown to appreciate and, yes, embrace the appeal of a good song of about love and frustration.

My husband and I always recognized the importance of having music around our child. We sang to her. He played the guitar for her, the one that we bought just before she was born so that we would be able to always have songs in her life. There is often the radio or some other form of music playing, especially when her dad and I are together working in the kitchen. We got an electric piano (it looks real...but its not!) and we find her fingering out notes to songs on it on her own. She plays drums in band at school and is pretty darned good, I must say. For Christmas,we got her a guitar after she started showing interest for my crappy ukulele and her dad's guitar.  There has not been a time in her life without the importance of music being prevelant.

I guess the Justin Beiber thing is  a sign for what is coming. Opinions formed to impress others maybe? Narrowness for things that we don't want to like because it may make us look uncool.  I too have caught myself  listening to a little Justin, bouncing along until I realized who it was. Then I acted like I got caught watching porn. Maybe I should purchase some Beiber music and immerse ourselves in some therapy to open our minds. Or I could just buy some Elvis and show her what a pure soul untouched by industry is. DOH! Okay. Babysteps. You get my drift, though, right? Any music that touches you can be good music. Teaching my kid to listen to it with blinders on to certain styles will just kill an opportunity to love something basic and lovely.

Oh Beiber.