Dark Nate
I swear we're not raising a hipster. We don't dress Nate in Ramones shirts or take him to Shellac concerts or anything like that. If anything we're trying to give him as normal and unaffected a childhood as possible. When he leaves the house in 18 years (and he IS going away to college, because that's the first step toward independence every kid needs), he's going to know how to balance a checkbook and fix a clogged sink first and to list the works of Dario Argento second. Personally, my main goal is to keep Nate from becoming one of those weirdo art kids with the bogus-precocious vocabulary, the not-quite-all-there personality, and the idea that life is a constant performance, and they're the main attraction.*
I say this because we want Nate's childhood to be childish. We play all sorts of kid music for him, though we're avoiding the day-glo groups and performers of current years. Burl Ives is a favorite of his. So's a Folkways collection of children's music Mike gave me a few years back (Nate loves Leadbelly's "Ha Ha This A-Way" "Ha ha!" he says when he wants to hear it, pointing at the stereo. "HA HA!"). Mr. Rogers is much beloved by all. Sometimes we'll sing our favorite songs to him before he goes to sleep. Mike has a slew of Tin Pan Alley and folk tunes learned from her grandmother. I have a few hymns and folk tunes as well, but he's taken to my renditions of Phil Ochs' "Pleasures of the Harbor" and Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (it amuses me that most of my tunes are about, directly or indirectly, disasters, murder, ghosts, or whoremongering). Maybe we're raising Nate to be a 19th century hipster.
Naturally, we play our own stuff as well. Daddy can only hear "Sow Took the Measles" so often before it turns into "Daddy Takes a Life." But we don't sit Nate down and say, "This is Tom Waits' Swordfish Trombones," Nate. It's seminal. Now let's listen to some Captain Beefheart." What he hears of ours he mostly overhears in the car or at home.
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me though that he's begun to sing along to some of our pop/rock/unclassifiable stuff. He likes Spoon, for instance, and starts clapping and dancing whenever Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga comes on. Mike used to dance to it with him when he was a baby, so there you go. The gentleness of Iron and Wine seems suited for kidling ears, if not all his lyrics. ("We were born to dum-de-dum each other, one way or another! Come on, Nate! Clap along!"
What surprised us, however, was when he started clamoring for Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "I See a Darkness." This is a song about, as near as I can tell, two buddies, one of whom is worried about the growing evil inside him and begging for his friend's help. What kills us is when Nate anticipates the bridge by cheerfully yelling, "Dark! Dark!" before Oldham drones/moans "And that I see a DARKNESS... And that I see a DARKNESS..." What he gets out of it, I don't know. But good for him, it's a tremendous song.
Maybe I'll hire Oldham to play at Nate's second birthday party. The kids will LOVE him! Does he make balloon animals?
*Yes, I mean you and your kid. Of course I do. Better respond in the comments section with a long diatribe. I'll read every word of it and be properly admonished. Sure I will.
I say this because we want Nate's childhood to be childish. We play all sorts of kid music for him, though we're avoiding the day-glo groups and performers of current years. Burl Ives is a favorite of his. So's a Folkways collection of children's music Mike gave me a few years back (Nate loves Leadbelly's "Ha Ha This A-Way" "Ha ha!" he says when he wants to hear it, pointing at the stereo. "HA HA!"). Mr. Rogers is much beloved by all. Sometimes we'll sing our favorite songs to him before he goes to sleep. Mike has a slew of Tin Pan Alley and folk tunes learned from her grandmother. I have a few hymns and folk tunes as well, but he's taken to my renditions of Phil Ochs' "Pleasures of the Harbor" and Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (it amuses me that most of my tunes are about, directly or indirectly, disasters, murder, ghosts, or whoremongering). Maybe we're raising Nate to be a 19th century hipster.
Naturally, we play our own stuff as well. Daddy can only hear "Sow Took the Measles" so often before it turns into "Daddy Takes a Life." But we don't sit Nate down and say, "This is Tom Waits' Swordfish Trombones," Nate. It's seminal. Now let's listen to some Captain Beefheart." What he hears of ours he mostly overhears in the car or at home.
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me though that he's begun to sing along to some of our pop/rock/unclassifiable stuff. He likes Spoon, for instance, and starts clapping and dancing whenever Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga comes on. Mike used to dance to it with him when he was a baby, so there you go. The gentleness of Iron and Wine seems suited for kidling ears, if not all his lyrics. ("We were born to dum-de-dum each other, one way or another! Come on, Nate! Clap along!"
What surprised us, however, was when he started clamoring for Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "I See a Darkness." This is a song about, as near as I can tell, two buddies, one of whom is worried about the growing evil inside him and begging for his friend's help. What kills us is when Nate anticipates the bridge by cheerfully yelling, "Dark! Dark!" before Oldham drones/moans "And that I see a DARKNESS... And that I see a DARKNESS..." What he gets out of it, I don't know. But good for him, it's a tremendous song.
Maybe I'll hire Oldham to play at Nate's second birthday party. The kids will LOVE him! Does he make balloon animals?
Click to view*Yes, I mean you and your kid. Of course I do. Better respond in the comments section with a long diatribe. I'll read every word of it and be properly admonished. Sure I will.