Thursday, November 09, 2006

Education, Dad Style

In exchange for not having to make the kids’ lunches, I do the junior high car pool in the mornings.

I have an irrational thing against spreading peanut butter on bread, it’s better if I don’t go into it, trust me. I just don’t like to spread stuff, OK? It bugs.

As a part of my duties, I’ve taken it upon myself to educate these children of the 00’s on what good music sounds like. Or at least, what the music I like sounds like. I usually go with a theme. Last time I did “member of the band died of drug overdose or suicide” (Sex Pistols, Joy Division, The Who, you get the idea.) I also sometimes have a whole car pool trip featuring just one artist/per day. Though the folks with larger oeuvres get more than one day.

Anyway, today was The Police, one of my all time favorite bands. Though Sting by himself ends up grating on me a bit, I love The Police with all the fibers of my being that aren’t dedicated to loving other things, like Mac OS X, Photoshop and the way my wife looks at me askew sometimes.

Again, anyway… The Police.

I usually hit play on the iPod and say, in the most condescending way possible I’m sure all the junior high kids in the car pool would agree, “So here we have Band X, and they were great during time period Y, until they Sold Out/OD’ed on heroin/let Yoko into John’s life/etc.”

So we were listening to The Police and I realized, “Man, those guys were MESSED UP.” And I never, ever realized this as a boy/young man/grumpy balding old guy until now. I know, I know. I’m slow on the uptake and should have been playing closer attention, and everyone has known this kind of stuff for aeons, but it was a simpler time for me, way back in the dark days of the 80s. I had just discovered girls AND video arcades. And lyrics will pretty much always take a back seat to those things when you are as easily distracted as I am.

Back to my point, Sting, Summers and Copeland wrote some screwed up stuff. To wit:

“Every Breath You Take” That dude’s a STALKER, man! I know, I know, it sounds very romantic and very John Cusack in “Say Anything,” but I’m thinking that the guy in the song *knows* where she lives and has a web-cam on her 24/7. Spooky.

“Don’t Stand So Close to Me” Pedophile! Even grosser knowing that Sting was a teacher.

“Can’t Stand Losing You” Perhaps too easy a target, since it’s all right there in the title. But, jeez man, get some meds to deal with that obsessive stuff, OK? Get a hobby, like the rest of us did after our girlfriends broke up with us. Yes, mine was collecting Beanie Babies and playing Dungeons & Dragons, if you *must* know.

“Roxanne” OK, this one is too easy, really. But yeah, pretty messed up to be in love with a hooker, who I’m guessing probably doesn’t look like Julia Roberts

“Message in a Bottle” While not overtly creepy, it is a bit disconcerting to realize that by the end of the song he’s actually singing about how we are all pretty much lonely losers. (See above about me and the Beanie Babies).

And those are just the big “hits” from the days of yore. Delve deeper into the discography and you have psychotic gems like “Mother” off of Synchronicity. That one is totally icky. And the last track off Synchronicity, “Murder by Numbers” is no happy joy song either, I might add. “Be My Girl Sally” from their first album Outlandos d’Amour? Catchy little tune about a man’s love affair with his sex doll. Awesome.

So that’s what I do for America’s youth, my friends. I introduced them to all the tormented and psychologically twisted songs/artists from my past. I seem to have an iPod full of them.

Jon scribbled this mess on 11/09/06 at 11:39 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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