Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Rocker girl

We don't have Hannah Montana at our house. Sure, we do listen to a couple of Miley Cyrus songs we've downloaded, but for the most part, the girls aren't into the teen phenomena. No Jonas Brothers, no High School Musical, no Hilary Duff. That music, says Leah, is for kids.

Nope, what the small ones in the household are into is David Bowie (thanks to Leah's obsession with the movie Labyrinth), K.T. Tunstall, Nickelback, Elton John, and ABBA. On Christmas day, they ended up watching Mama Mia! with the grown-up daughters of my friend Shell. (Fortunately, the whole who's-my-dad? portion of the movie seems to have gone over their heads.) Since then, it's been all Dancing Queen all the time at my place. Well, that and a mixed CD of Canadian rock that I made for Alissa, and liked so much that I made me a copy too: 54-40, State of Shock, Tom Cochrane, Barenaked Ladies, Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Colin James, Cowboy Junkies, Big Sugar, etc., etc. You should hear them singing along.

Thursday evening we were heading into Stittsville to go grocery shopping. The radio played AC/DC and then Def Leppard. I was in a contemplative mood, and it brought back memories of concerts gone by. Memories of the good times spent with friends at concerts in Detroit when I was in high school. I remember taking the tunnel bus over from Windsor to Detroit, running the gauntlet of guys trying to sell you weed and scalped tickets, and then up through the parking garage to Joe Louis Arena or Cobo Hall to see AC/DC, or Rush, or Styx, or Alice Cooper, or Bob Seger, or Iggy Pop, or Blue Oyster Cult, or the J. Geils Band. Sneaking mickies of rye past security at the door. Chartering a schoolbus to take the entire senior class out to the Pontiac Silverdome to see the Stones once, and the Who another time. Buying concert teeshirts, and holding Bic lighters up during power ballads (nowadays they just hold their cellphones open. It's the end of an era, I tell ya.) Yeah, those were good times.

The final chords of Pour Some Sugar On Me were playing. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see what the girls were doing. Rae was gazing aimlessly out the window. But Leah, my Leah, was playing air guitar. The tradition lives on.

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:05 PM

    Love it.

    Grace is hugely into Depeche Mode right now, which cracks me up.

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  2. long live the air guitar...
    I LOVE Pour Some Sugar On Me.

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  3. Anonymous2:09 PM

    Mine was always into "the oldies" too when she was young. Because really it was the best music ever and that's all rocker mom ever played, right? She's branched out as the teens crept up, but she still has all the good stuff on her iPod as well. WhoooOOO!!

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  4. this is great!
    we never really got into "kids"music at our house. i did buy a bunch of the rock-a-bye! cd's (the cure, zeppelin, pink floyd, green day) and they were great. so relaxing. now in the car we listen to the clash and ramones (trying to keep it clean at this tender age). i had a real problem wrapping my head around the music I want them to listen to vs. what's out here now for them (high school musical, hannah montana, little slutty looking girls singing bad music) but i guess ultimately it's their choice. i'm just going to do some aggressive marketing towards my musical taste.
    oh, and gracie said just couldn't this song out of her head, and she started humming "Denis' by Blondie :)

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  5. LOL speedy is mamma mia obsessed. we borrowed it from my mom for a few days and she must have watched it 5 times and then asked me to download her the music.

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  6. I'm holding up my Bic lighter right now.

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  7. I've had to explain to my CUs that the Crazy Frog music isn't original to the Frog ...

    And, from the just-to-make-you-feel-old department, my Colombia House CD collection (that tends to only grow when CBC screws around with its programming), CU-2 has inherited my CD collection and finds the music trendy! ahahahahahah (includes a lot of stuff from the 80s and early 90s).

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  8. Thanks for the Detroit concert memories. I remember how packed the tunnel busses would be. And now you can't sneak anything into a concert because they practically strip search you!

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