The Soundtrack of Their Lives
Won't you take me to Funkytown ...
won't you take me to Funkytown ...
won't you take me to Funkytown ...
won't you take me to Funkytown...
Lipps Inc. are blaring from the radio in the kitchen. I am grooving along with my best embarrassing-mother dance, with thoughts of junior-high dances in my head, when my eight-year-old interrupts my visions of ripped sweatshirts, bangles, and dangerous amounts of ozone-depleting hair spray.
"Hey! That's the song from Shrek," he casually comments.
"Excuse me, but that song is not from Shrek. Okay, it is, but it did actually have a previous life in 1980," I want to explain. But I don't. For my son, this song is from Shrek and I am just a middle-aged mother without a clue.
I am beginning to suspect that my contemporaries are making all the new films, such as the two Shrek movies. That would be the others born in the late '60s and early '70s, the others who also watched The Monkees sing "I'm a Believer" on television and rocked out to "What I Like About You" by the Romantics at their high-school dances. When my boys watch the cat on Shrek sing "These Boots Were Made for Walking," they are not wondering what ever happened to Nancy Sinatra. Instead, they inform me that someone (yes, Jessica Simpson) has just made a cover of that song. For them, "I'm on My Way" is Shrek's theme song. For me, I am reminded of the first time I saw the Proclaimers play live as a new band in a small bar in San Diego--almost ten years before my boys were even a twinkle in their father's eye.
Obviously our frames of reference for the soundtracks of our lives differ. But I can hardly blame Shrek for all of it. Some of it is, well, my own fault. I have always been an avid radio listener. The first pop song my older son recognized was the Rembrandts' "Just the Way It Is Baby." This was not due to my extreme fondness for the group or their music, but rather for these very appropriate lines:
That's just the way it is,
Baby, that's just the way it is,
Baby, that's just the way it is, Baby.
I found myself often singing this to my toddler son whenever things were not quite going his way. A liberal translation of C'est la vie, if you will.
My younger son discovered his own first favorite with "We Will Rock You" by Queen. My first thought when I heard him singing it was, "Has his Uncle Michael been slipping him music on the sly?" (That would be my cool older brother Michael, known in his time for his collection of eight-tracks including Queen, Supertramp, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, and Yes.) But no, it was four-year-old Hannah from preschool who had introduced this mind-numbing song to my grateful son, leaving me no recourse but to have a serious talk with her father-and to reminisce about '70s rock.
Luckily for me, my boys did not get stuck on the Rembrandts and Queen, but expanded their repertoire to include classic tunes like "Greased Lightnin'" by John Travolta from the movie Grease. I know, I know, the lyrics are horrible, but you must agree the refrain is catchy. Our family loyalty to this particular song started out innocently enough. We have always had family game night on Fridays and for some reason, we also started the tradition of dancing around the kitchen whilst making dinner before game playing. What better CD to dance to than a collection of the '70s greatest hits? Soon enough, my boys were fast-forwarding over great songs like "My Sharona" by The Knack and "One Step Beyond" by Madness. They only wanted to hear "Greased Lightnin'" and they only wanted to see me do my John Travolta moves, arms swinging out in our tiny kitchen while my husband ducked as he tried to prepare dinner.
Something about the '70s stuck. Now, whether that was because of my own fond memories of a disco childhood or it was just my boys' appreciation for good music pure and simple, I will never know. In any case, the next band invasion arrived with capital letters: ABBA! One night I got tired of dancing yet again to "Greased Lightnin'" and--despite my boys' protests--popped the ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits CD in the player. They were transfixed. A few seconds of Agnetha and Anni-Frid harmonizing was enough to put an end to our wild dancing on the kitchen floor. Ladies and gentlemen, it was time for the "ABBA SHOW!" I loved ABBA as a child and loved movies like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding as an adult (what is it about Australians and ABBA?). I was happy to be part of the audience for the many ABBA shows my boys performed. Mostly these shows involved them playing a few favorites, like "Money Money Money" and "Waterloo" whilst wearing dark sunglasses and jumping around the living room with flashlights. My husband and I sat dutifully in the chairs provided for the fans and clapped at appropriate times.
Sure enough, the '70s gave way to the '80s--and not just to songs from the Shrek soundtrack. One summer afternoon, my older son had a whim to arrange all of our old LPs, including our vast collection of singles, in alphabetical order. Ah, the treasure trove of music! He thought the Specials looked interesting and after one spin on the turntable, he was hooked. He and his brother began listening to "Ghost Town" endlessly: This town is coming like a ghost town, All the clubs are being closed down. Their former mod father beamed, while I tried to explain lyrics from "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" ( I go out on Friday night and I come home on Saturday morning...) and "If You Have a Racist Friend" to them. They soon claimed other lyrics for themselves, namely the lines from "Tell Me Why." They skipped the more thoughtful proclamations such as We don't need no British movement, Nor the Ku Klux Klan. Instead, they got stuck on the lines Tell me why tell me why tell me why. No longer would they ever simply ask me the question, "Why?" They had to imitate these repeating lines instead. Again and again and again.
I could distract them, however. We reduced our daily dose of the Specials to only occasional listening in the car. No Raffi for us--no, sir, we listened over and over again to "Ghost Town." In return for the favor of occasionally listening to other music than the Specials, I found hilarious sites online where they could listen to spoof songs about Star Wars (which you may remember they love even more than the Specials). One was the Star Wars theme spoof folder on SoundAmerica.com. Our family favorite became "Star Wars Cantina" to the tune of "Copacabana" by Barry Manilow:
His name was Yoda
he was a muppet ...
At the Star Wars, Star Wars Cantina
the weirdest creatures you've ever seen-a
At the Star Wars, Star Wars Cantina
music and blasters and old Jedi masters. .
Admit it! Everyone secretly likes at least one Barry Manilow song, whether it is "Mandy," "Can't Smile Without You," or "I Write the Songs." Only now, if I hear certain Barry Manilow tunes, I think of Star Wars instead of remembering hearing him on the radio in my mother's avocado-green Monte Carlo.
I know what you are thinking. That my boys must have made it to the '90s at some point. But nope, no '90s in sight at present. Maybe they will skip the decade of their births and jump right into contemporary hits. There are a few songs on the radio they like and recognize now. Otherwise they seem to have a retrograde tendency. The movie we borrow from the library most frequently is The Yellow Submarine with the Beatles, made in 1968. This is a true family film, with plenty of sly references to mind-altering substances to make my husband and me smile at the '60s influences while at the same time, plenty of colorful animation to entertain the kids. And, of course, good music: "Yellow Submarine," "All Together Now," "All You Need is Love," and more. When my boys tire of playing Beatles' songs on our old LPs, there is always another '60s tune to fill the time, namely our favorite summer sing-along, "Vacation" by Connie Francis. This classic, which peaked on the Billboard charts with a whopping position # 9 in 1962, is our summer standard and actually helped my boys learn to spell.
V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N in the summer sun
Put away the books, we're out of school
The weather's warm but we'll play it cool
We're on vacation, havin' lots of fun
V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N in the summer sun
Sometimes I wonder which of all these songs my boys will remember from their childhood. Will it be the new ones from the radio or will it be the old ones from our record collection? The '70s or the '90s? Will their tastes diverge radically from their parents'? Hard to tell, although there are some good signs of a pleasant musical future in our household. My older boy recently went to a musical performance put on by the local junior high. The theme was "Oldies but Goodies" and the students sang songs from the 1980s. My boy was confused. He knew most of the songs. For him they were not oldies, but quite simply goodies. That's my boy!