Niedziela 18 Cze 2006, 15:18

(In honour of father's day, even if it was invented by Hallmark.)

Me and my dad get on pretty well. We have a similar sense of humour, we enjoy some of the same TV shows and, relevantly to this journal, some of the same music. When I was about 7 or so, while pretending to the outside world to be a simple Spice Girls lover like the majority of girls my age, secretly I was a fan of Elkie Brooks and Art Garfunkel after repeated listenings to them in the car (though thinking back on it, I think this might have had more to do with the fact that those seemed to be the sole two tapes that lived in the vehicle, and I had to like them else go insane on long journeys.)

For a while after that the idea of liking the same music as either of my parents was too vehement to contemplate, so musically my father and I passed one another by. Then, a few years ago when I started getting into music properly, ie hunting down stuff I really liked rather than making do with the Top 40, we started up a cautious musical friendship again. I confessed to liking BBC Radio 2 far more than Radio 1, not only because the presenters actually seem like nice people rather than obnoxious twats, but because the blend of music is more interesting. I started bringing CDs of mine to listen to in the car- while The White Stripes were soon banned (he objected to their cover of I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself), Eels were accepted with little complaint. Likewise, I banished Pink Floyd to where I couldn't hear them (Dark Side of the Moon gave me a headache then, but I promise to listen to it again now my ears are not so delicate), but I liked Johnny Cash enough such that I went with my dad to see Walk the Line went it came out.

Later still, we went to some gigs together. Last Summer we went to see R.E.M., even though due to a load of complications it involved going to a whole different country. (Just Wales admittedly, but shh…) Having had a passing interest in Loudon Wainwright III's stuff, after watching a documentary on my great loveRufus Wainwright my dad agreed to come with me to see the man himself perform. We then saw a couple of his own musical loves, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris (with Mark Knopfler) which were great, even if I felt a bit self conscious being apparently the only young girl there and therefore not a hardcore fan of the past few decades.

Admittedly, to a large extent my charts still don't reflect this musical sharing- while I like to blame this on not having any more room for music on my PC, I know that really it's down to my own rubbishness. I'd like to point out that I'm not always so lax- after borrowing his Nick Drake- A Treasury (I was fed up of seeing his name mentioned in articles about Elliott Smith without having heard anything by him) I promptly went out and bought the three proper Drake albums. So, I'm sure at some stage in the near future some Dylan and Cash will pop up on my charts. I hope so, anyway…

I'm struggling to think of a way of ending this journal entry without sounding horribly sentimental. I'll just leave it by saying that without my dad, I'd probably have a much narrower appreciation of music. Who knows, without his country/folk interference I might have grown up never to like a bunch of stuff I love now, but instead be a fanatical MCR fan- a most terrible thought indeed.

Thankyou father.