First Song
When I was telling friends that Birdie was going to arrive, I tried a number of different joke lines. With my radio station friends and a few other music fans, I eventually settled on some variation of "So I have a question for you: what's the perfect song to play when M and I bring a new baby home from the hospital?"
Most people immediately made squeeing noises (which is impressive over texting) and never answered the question effectively. As it happens, we had a lot on our minds in the hospital and on the way home, and we ended up not actually playing any music at all as we drove home, not even the radio.
The first song ended up being more or less an accident. Early on M was trying to get Birdie to sleep, or at least to stop screaming, and she dialed up a Simon & Garfunkel playlist on her phone. Not being my phone, it's not clear to me if it played the first song on her playlist or if it was a random selection, but the first song that M played for Birdie was Bleeker Street.
I don't know think that M actually played it at Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., but if you want to think so it does make it better. The next several songs were whatever over Simon & Garfunkel songs were on that playlist.
The other big artist from M's phone that got played a bunch for Birdie early on was Cat Stevens, who I'm actually not terribly familiar with but who M likes a lot. I know she played her the only song I recognize, which is If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out, which I know because of Harold and Maude.
As for me, the first thing I recall playing for Birdie was The Beatles. This isn't because I obsessively love the Beatles like some of my friends do, but because I read an article about Blackbird and clearly needed to listen to it and was holding Birdie at the time, so that led to this:
And then the article was actually about efforts to save native languages and featured this version of Blackbird sung in Mi'kmaq, so I played that for her.
And since I was on YouTube, I had to play her the best YouTube music video ever, which gets suggested to me EVERY SINGLE TIME I open YouTube. I probably play it at least of 1/4 of the time. That of course, is Prince and company killing While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
Birdie was mostly unimpressed by these, but there's plenty of time for her to hear all the music we like. I feel a tiny bit sorry for her though, because she's going to have a lot of trouble rebelling by playing music I dislike, because there's really not very much music that I dislike with any intensity.
Anyway, for the curious, here the one response I recall right now from the the initial question "what's the perfect song to play when M and I bring a new baby home from the hospital?" was from my big brother Phil, of house concert fame, who suggested Matthew Sweet's "I've Been Waiting".
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Most people immediately made squeeing noises (which is impressive over texting) and never answered the question effectively. As it happens, we had a lot on our minds in the hospital and on the way home, and we ended up not actually playing any music at all as we drove home, not even the radio.
The first song ended up being more or less an accident. Early on M was trying to get Birdie to sleep, or at least to stop screaming, and she dialed up a Simon & Garfunkel playlist on her phone. Not being my phone, it's not clear to me if it played the first song on her playlist or if it was a random selection, but the first song that M played for Birdie was Bleeker Street.
Click to viewI don't know think that M actually played it at Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., but if you want to think so it does make it better. The next several songs were whatever over Simon & Garfunkel songs were on that playlist.
The other big artist from M's phone that got played a bunch for Birdie early on was Cat Stevens, who I'm actually not terribly familiar with but who M likes a lot. I know she played her the only song I recognize, which is If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out, which I know because of Harold and Maude.
As for me, the first thing I recall playing for Birdie was The Beatles. This isn't because I obsessively love the Beatles like some of my friends do, but because I read an article about Blackbird and clearly needed to listen to it and was holding Birdie at the time, so that led to this:
And then the article was actually about efforts to save native languages and featured this version of Blackbird sung in Mi'kmaq, so I played that for her.
And since I was on YouTube, I had to play her the best YouTube music video ever, which gets suggested to me EVERY SINGLE TIME I open YouTube. I probably play it at least of 1/4 of the time. That of course, is Prince and company killing While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
Birdie was mostly unimpressed by these, but there's plenty of time for her to hear all the music we like. I feel a tiny bit sorry for her though, because she's going to have a lot of trouble rebelling by playing music I dislike, because there's really not very much music that I dislike with any intensity.
Anyway, for the curious, here the one response I recall right now from the the initial question "what's the perfect song to play when M and I bring a new baby home from the hospital?" was from my big brother Phil, of house concert fame, who suggested Matthew Sweet's "I've Been Waiting".
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