I can hear music

on Dec 18 in General by

Tara from Sticky Fingers recently blogged about her induction to music as a child. Which set me thinking:

I don’t really remember a great deal of music being played in our house. Certainly for a long time I believed that I didn’t like music (until I discovered that it was actually just that I didn’t like 80′s music).

This musical absence is strange considering that my dad was a member of a band and was also friends with some fairly successful folk musicians. Some of whom had even been on Top of the Pops (as a member of the Dubliners).

My dads band was called Black Cauldron and basically played ceilidh music. His accordion was an ever present brooding menace in the house, with cats, dogs, and children diving for cover every time picked it up. The accordion is a noble ensemble instrument, but solo it can be a little grating. Especially when it’s playing the same jig over and over again.

Twenty five years form now Amy and Evan may well be writing on their holo-blogs about me torturing them with the ukulele – but to be honest the amount I practice I’ll be surprised if they even remember I own one.

I think I was about 15 before I really started to appreciate music, and back then it was a friend who got me into it rather than my parents. Deacon Blue were a big favourite, as was Meatloaf and Richard Marx (oh the shame). These days I’m pretty well entrenched in my Geek Rock (Barenaked Ladies, they Might Be Giants, Ben Folds), although my dad must have had some influence on me because I like a bit of folk too (although more singer/songwriter folk than finger-in-your-ear folk).

Music plays a bigger part in my kids lives than I think it did mine. Possibly because they have somehow wrestled control of every form of media from our grasp. Amy is pretty heavily into High School Musical and Hannah Montana, but I’ve also indoctrinated her with They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies’ kids stuff too. As the younger brother Evan is pretty much forced to like whatever Amy likes, at least for the time being.

At the moment however the entire family are particularly enjoying a bunch of Eric Herman CD’s I recently won in a contest over at A Family Runs Through It. We’ve been aware of Eric for a while due to his excellent Elephant song video on youtube which is one of our Kids all time favorites, have a look – I guarantee that any pre-school kid will love it:

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