"Your" music was probably at one time "my" music

By Kay H. Wilson

Darlin' daughter and I were driving down the street one day and I was patiently listening to "her" music station (thump, thump, thump — if the rear bumper ain't rattlin', it ain't music, she once told me).

When I started singing along with "When Doves Cry" the look of total horror on her face was priceless. That was "her" music — how did I know that song?

Well, darlin', because someone of "my" era recorded it first 40 years ago. "Oh," she said, looking for all the world like I had stolen something from her.

Another time hubby and I went on a trip with a couple and their grown daughter and her husband. Should we each bring one CD of our "own" music to listen to? Oh, no, friend says, we'll all like the same things.

OK, so I brought my own Springsteen, Dylan and Prine anyway. At one point, I was driving and figured I could listen to "my" music so I cranked up some old Boss. My co-pilot (no, it wasn't god) allowed as how I needed to listen to some newer music. A half hour or so later he was driving and listening to "his" music when we both began singing along with a new rendition of a song that was 30 years old.

"Oh, you mean like that new music?" I asked in a sweetly sarcastic way.

The point being, it is all music. I don't hang out with musicians as much as I did in my youth, but I remember that musicians really get that.

It used to surprise me that a solid rock musician knew all the words to an obscure country song or would tell me they listened to country or gospel growing up and that influenced them. It doesn't surprise me anymore. Bach begat gospel, jazz, rap, country and rock.

Not that you're gonna catch me listening to Bach or Lil Wayne — either one — anytime soon.

Yours in hope and cynicism,

The Compassionate Curmudgeon

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