Bonding musically

Slampo put me in the Way Back Machine with his latest post about taking his daughter and friends to the Green Day concert last week at the Toyota Center.

My kid, also a girl, is older, and now no longer requires a parent to accompany her to such events. In fact, about 4 or 5 years ago, I casually asked her how a concert in Austin was and she mentioned, equally casually, about what a blast it was "crowd surfing." That immediately led to me recite anything and everything I've ever read about closed-head injuries that occur during crowd surfing. She says she doesn't do that anymore. No sure I believe her, but what are you gonna do?

But long before that, I took her to a few concerts. They weren't concerts of her choosing, unlike Slampo's trip to Green Day. They were concerts I chose. That was a good thing since at this stage in her development she was into The Backstreet Boys. I figured, I need to show her the ropes, sow the seeds of a proper rock education.

I ended up taking her to see Jethro Tull one night at The Woodlands. There was a symmetry to the selection, as Jethro Tull was the first or the second concert I ever saw, at the old Sam Houston Coliseum . (The other "first or second" concert I saw, also at The Coliseum, was Chicago; for the life of me, I can't remember which one was first and which was second.)

I vividly remember thinking, "Wow," while watching Ian Anderson with one foot on top of a speaker, leaning out over the first two rows of the crowd, swinging his hair and blowing his flute in the smoky old hall.

Jethro Tull wasn't quite that dramatic 25 years later, with the daughter, then around 7 or 8 years old. To begin with, we were about half a mile away from the stage, and, unfortunately, Ian Anderson's voice was pretty well shot, either from the ravages of age or the heavy touring schedule. The kid just sort of looked at me like I was insane when I asked what she thought. Better to do like Slampo did; take the kid to the concert of his or her choosing.

The kid was a bit more receptive to the next concert outing. REM, again at The Woodlands (where else, in those days?). Michael Stipe wore a knit stocking cap on his balding head and it was real hot and I thought, weird. Then, in the following weeks, I noticed all sorts of people were wearing knit stocking caps, anywhere and everywhere. And they still are! Fashion, sheesh. Music-wise, at least the kid was familiar with the music, as it was about all I ever played for a certain period of time. She was a captive audience, at least every-other weekend while traveling in the car.

REM was the last concert I took her to. In the blink of an eye, seemingly, she was old enough not to require parental accompaniment to concerts, and before I knew it, I was hearing about "crowd surfing."

Still, even if the daddy/daughter concert going only reached the grand total of two, it scored me a certain amount of "cool points." It wasn't but a couple months ago that she mentioned me taking her to the REM concert, which, really, I hadn't thought of in many years. Then, sort of out of the blue, she mentioned meeting some friends in a bar recently and looking over the juke box selection with a male friend with whom I have not had the pleasure of acquainting myself. They noticed a couple of tunes by The Eels and the kid mentioned, "Oh, my dad likes them." The guy said really? And she said that she told him, "Yeah, he's cool."

Old but still cool? I can live with that.