The Musical Curse of Being a Parent

This is going to be a rant about my kids – I am the proud parent of three kids – a soon to be 14-year-old girl and two boys who are 8 and 9.  As most people know, when a child becomes a teenager, your parents become uncool.  This has become especially apparent with my daughter.  My daughter with questionable music taste thinks my preference in music is uncool!

I mean, come on! It is not like I listen to Muzak.  I listen to hard rocking, outrageously fun Celtic Rock and Punk, how can this be uncool??  I am opening a door to her to enjoy something that will set her apart from her friends in being on the cutting edge, going beyond DKM and Flogging Molly, exposing to her to bands that for the most part have not been mainstreamed and don’t play sickly sweet songs.

I was driving my daughter and her friends to the mall last Sunday, and the entire way she was giving me dirty looks for blasting my music. I have even been informed that one of her friends stated I have scarred her for life.  Heh, I guess I don’t have to drive that friend anyplace ever again!  As a kid, the closest I ever got to listen to rock music with my dad driving was Billy Joel (and that was only the Innocent Man album!) and maybe some doo-wop.  Not really cutting-edge there, Dad!

Meanwhile, my middle boy is quickly falling into his older sister’s musical taste is becoming a lost cause to me.  So far the youngest thinks my music is cool still – a few weeks ago we were rocking out Animal by The Mudmen and laughing at The Moose by Ceann talking about how much fun it would be to get a moose head and decking it out like in the song.  I pray I can continue to warp mold his musical taste.

My wife and I have invested good money for her to learn to play the flute.  I still get shivers when I hear her play “Oops, I Did It Again” on her flute when she gets tired of playing her school band music.  I think the only way my daughter would think my music was cool would be if Glee covered it – I shudder and cringe at the mere thought of that.

Perhaps it is best that she thinks my music is uncool.

Calls for Help

One could say the curse and blessing of most Celtic Rock/Punk bands is that they don’t have many signings with major record labels.  The blessing is the bands can make the music they want to make it – they don’t have a studio suit telling them how or what to do.  The curse is it makes the bands work harder to get their music out.   The mission I want for this blog is to help bands find their audience and when I hear the calls for assistance, I want to help get the word out.

This past week, I have have heard of two calls for help.  The first, posted by Shite n Onions on Friday 06-24-11, for helping The Radiators from Space.  Phil Chevron of Pogues fame is working on a project to pay tribute to Irish rock bands from 60’s.  More information can be found here.

The second call for help is a project being done by Brian Halloran, brother of Patrick Halloran of Ceann who passed away in February.  Brian is wanting to record the material that Pat had not had a chance to record.  Scythian, Icewagon Flu and others will be recording the songs.  More informatoin can be found here.

Both of these projects have various incentives depending on how much you contribute in addition to knowing you helped some great projects.  Slainte!