Hot August Night and Sounds of Silence for me
October 8, 2020 6:17 AM   Subscribe

Over on Twitter that Eric Alper asks a simple question:
What album did your parents introduce you to that you love?
posted by MartinWisse (161 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
The soundtrack to Godspell.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:21 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Meet the Beatles!, it was my mom's teenage soundtrack and the first non-kids music I fell in love with.
posted by signal at 6:24 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Gordon Lightfoot Summertime Dream
posted by NoMich at 6:25 AM on October 8, 2020


My Dad went to National Record Mart to buy me my first cassette tapes for my birthday. He must have gotten some help from the salesperson, because he came back with:

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Crosby, Stills & Nash
Santana - Santana
James Taylor - Sweet Baby James

Way to go Dad!
posted by hypnogogue at 6:25 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Roger Whittaker, New World In the Morning. 1971
posted by Harry Caul at 6:25 AM on October 8, 2020 [5 favorites]






So many! Nilsson's The Point
posted by sundrop at 6:29 AM on October 8, 2020 [10 favorites]


Louis Prima and Keely Smith “The Wildest Show in Tahoe”
Frank Sinatra and Count Basie “It Might as Well be Swing”

I also had a Disney greatest hits, and I recall how fascinated I was when I realized Prima was also King Louie.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:34 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


The album that my parents had that I liked the most AS A KID was Santana's Greatest Hits.

I think 2020 me, however, has finally learned to appreciate Fleetwood Mac.
posted by selfnoise at 6:35 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Honestly, though, the biggest adult influence on me as a kid was our band director playing "Stairway to Heaven" at every middle school dance. Which led to me getting the cassettes for every Led Zeppelin album.
posted by selfnoise at 6:36 AM on October 8, 2020


Alice's Restaurant.
posted by pangolin party at 6:38 AM on October 8, 2020 [9 favorites]


Dark Side of the Moon

I don't listen to it, and to them much anymore, but Pink Floyd was my first sincere musical love.
posted by SansPoint at 6:40 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Not sure which specific albums, but: Simon & Garfunkel and Ella Fitzgerald.
posted by wicked_sassy at 6:40 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]




I was the weird kid who had no idea about popular music because I loved my parents' music. Still weird.

The trifecta in our household:

Lucinda Williams
Stan Rogers
Steve Earle
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:44 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


It's odd, my mom has a near complete collection off the Beatles and Stones on LP, but what I learned to love groom then was classical music. So while not albums, Beethoven's fifth, Dvorak's New World Symphony and others. But there was one exception, the song we listened to every Thanksgiving: Alice's Restaurant (the revisited version, without the slur).

My mom had great musical taste. She was at the infamous Rolling Stones concert in Altamont (albeit in the back and didn't know about the kid getting killed). She doesn't really listen to any of that anymore. My dad loved folk, but my memory of his music is only the occasional John Prine tape.

They let me explore music as I wanted, but I do kind of wish my mom had put on the occasional Beatles LP.
posted by Hactar at 6:50 AM on October 8, 2020


One album: The three-album set of RCA Great Instrumental Hits (1976).

I fell in love with those albums, played the hell out of them, and some of that music is still getting rotation on my playlists.

Another album came not from my parents, but from my significantly older siblings: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Best thing they ever did for me.
posted by darkstar at 6:51 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


One night, my mom decided to put on How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All during dinner and I couldn't get a single sip of soup down for the entire half-hour runtime because I was laughing so hard.

(It says "album," not "music," Firesign totally counts)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:52 AM on October 8, 2020 [6 favorites]


The West Side Story soundtrack
Porgy and Bess
My discovery that music could tell stories, that songs could stream from characters.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:55 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Willie Nelson, Stardust
posted by miles per flower at 6:56 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


This Venture Brothers clip was so realistic for me I literally fell over laughing. (There was also a lot of BÖC.)
posted by cobaltnine at 7:00 AM on October 8, 2020 [5 favorites]


My dad forgot to send in the Columbia House postcard and ended up getting Too Fast for Love. It left an impression.
posted by zenon at 7:00 AM on October 8, 2020


Jean-Michel Jarre, Oxygène.
posted by ourobouros at 7:12 AM on October 8, 2020




I am formally introducing Slayer's Haunting the Chapel to my kid. She can now proclaim that to be her first album that her dear ol' dad introduced her to.
posted by NoMich at 7:16 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]




My father had way too strong an influence on my musical interests. He gave me ‘Ten’ and ‘Vs’ and Pearl Jam was then my favorite band all throughout H.S.
posted by Selena777 at 7:23 AM on October 8, 2020


For me it was Don McLean's American Pie on cassette. I can still remember the lyrics to every song.
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 7:26 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


I have no idea why my folks had a bunch of Astrud Gilberto albums, but I'm glad they did.
posted by phooky at 7:28 AM on October 8, 2020 [4 favorites]


Recording of Kismet.
posted by doctornemo at 7:28 AM on October 8, 2020


My parents were very non-musical, and seemed to have the uncanny ability to choose the single most lifeless, unremarkable album by any artist you could name. They pretty much only bought records in the period from 1965 to 1975, and it all skewed towards easy listening, Christmas albums, and a selection of very anaemic country and folk music. That's probably the result of only being able to afford the bargain-bin LPs.

On the positive side, there were some Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash records that somehow slipped into their collection, and I immediately gravitated towards those.
posted by pipeski at 7:29 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


As a child of the 50's/60's: all those comedy albums. Allan Sherman. Bob Newhart. The First Family. Nichols and May. And an obscure satire of the McCarthy trials whose references were over my head: The Investigator.
posted by kozad at 7:32 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


Chic's Greatest Hits (in about 1979?)

'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' Ray Conniff and the Ray Conniff Singers (1962 album, I grew up with it in the 1970s)
posted by dowcrag at 7:33 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My dad was a 1970s heavy metal /psychedelic rock guy so I was introduced to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Queen, and weird European imports (Budgie, Accept) early on. Although my tastes have changed a bit, I have a soft spot for two albums my dad bought me at different times out of the blue (not a birthday or other occasion, not with mom's input, but just because he wanted to) in my teenage years: Steve Vai "Passion and Warfare" and "Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe" (self titled), neither of which I had expressed any interest in but were surprisingly accurate for my tastes at the time. In both cases they were artists that appeared on other albums from his collection, but I didn't make that connection until later.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:34 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


A few years ago, I was listening to my Carol King's "Tapestry" (already mentioned above) through my crappy work headset, which made it sound like the dubbed-from-record cassette version my mom had and the fake sound degradation was a weird big memory trigger.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:44 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Cuba by the Gibson Brothers. Introducing me to that almost made up for all the Bob Dylan that was playing through most of my childhood.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:45 AM on October 8, 2020


My parents were not really into music all that much, but there are a few albums that my father played that I loved as a kid:

Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison
The Irish Rovers' Greatest Hits
Roger Miller's Golden Hits
"Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow, Right!" (sorry)
posted by briank at 7:46 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Jackson Browne, Running on Empty drifting up to my bedroom on a warm summer night.
posted by zerobyproxy at 7:46 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Marty Robbins's Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs.

One time I went to a heavy metal show with a couple friends, and while pregaming, two of us realized we'd both grown up with this album. We then drunkenly serenaded our other friend with El Paso, all decked out in black denim and yell-singing "a deeeep burning paaaaaaain in my siiiiiiiiii-IIIIIIIIII-i-i-IIIIIIIIIIIIDE!!" Other friend was baffled. It ruled. I love Marty Robbins.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:48 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here

Several Isao Tomita albums, but especially Firebird and The Planets
posted by Foosnark at 7:50 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


CCR was the sound of long car trips growing up, and I still love it.
posted by Zargon X at 7:50 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Jean Luc Ponty - Individual Choice
posted by etherist at 7:52 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


Tarkus - ELP
Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
On the threshold of a dream - Moody Blues
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
posted by nzero at 7:52 AM on October 8, 2020


Update on introducing, formally speaking, the Slayer album to my kid:

Her: No! What is this trash?!
Me: No, dear, it's thrash.
Her: IT'S TRASH!!


I believe I have laid a foundation.

(she only listens to classical music and hates everything else)
posted by NoMich at 7:56 AM on October 8, 2020 [9 favorites]


Stevie Wonder 'Songs in the Key of Life'
posted by sexyrobot at 7:57 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


Phil Harris* albums.

'Introduced' in the sense that 'they were in the house'.


*you know him from voicing Baloo in the original 'Jungle Book'.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:57 AM on October 8, 2020


Graceland!
posted by sucre at 8:07 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


Everything by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, particularly The Boys Won't Leave the Girls Alone.
posted by Redstart at 8:09 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My mother: Missa Luba. It's an adaptation of the Latin Mass song in the style of Congolese traditional music.

My father: Taj Mahal's double album Giant Step and De Ole Folks at Home. Although I definitely do remember hearing the first track as a kid, my father tended to favor the second album, and I still get chills with that first "woah boooooooys is ya riiiight" from "Linin' Track."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:11 AM on October 8, 2020 [5 favorites]


Graceland, Stan Rogers, The Indigo Girls' Rites of Passage.

My family's Canadian, but we moved to the US when I was in sixth grade, and I think my mom's always had a little anxiety about whether she's done enough to pass on our Canadian values and heritage - she asked me very anxiously a couple of years ago, "Did we play enough Stan Rogers for you when you were growing up?"

(Yes, she did.)
posted by Jeanne at 8:13 AM on October 8, 2020


Oh - and whenever we had a fancy dinner at the dining room table, Mom would ask Dad to pick out some nice music to listen to, and invariably he would go with Abbey Road. I am probably the only person alive who associates the song Come Together with steak and potatoes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:14 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


I mostly lucked out in the parents department. But musically, there was a void. They tended to just tune in easy listening radio (1960s version) and let the tranquil vibes ooze. Which I suppose left with me with a regard for melody that's indelible, but no particular albums made any impression at all ... except one.

At some point, somebody gave my dad Herb Alpert's What Now My Love? Which ended up becoming the official family party music. Maybe once a month after dessert on Sunday night. Even now Memories of Madrid touches an immediate chord. If there's a heaven, you know it's going to be on the jukebox.

Hot August Night and Sounds of Silence for me

that was my best friend's mom -- two blocks over. I remember being about twelve and torn between admitting being enraptured by side four of Hot August Night and being cool. One couldn't have both in 1972.
posted by philip-random at 8:16 AM on October 8, 2020


Bright Phoebus (and literally hundreds of great folk and folk-adjacent albums with less hipster cred)
posted by doubtfulpalace at 8:17 AM on October 8, 2020


My parents were not musical, and I never remember listening to any music in the house, but they did watch old movie musicals, so that's where my love of The Music Man comes from. Right here in River City.
posted by objectfox at 8:19 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Ah, you kids -- this'll date me.

My parents: The Music Man and Camelot (Original Cast)

My Mom: Bizet's Carmen (non-vocal)

My Dad: Prokofiev's Lt. Kije and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition

Also my Mom playing the radio in the late 1950s where I heard Glenn Miller's 'In the Mood' and especially A String if Pearls so often they were programmed deep in my psyche.
posted by Rash at 8:20 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Given the titles here, we were those parents. We had all sorts of music around but never promoted or prohibited any of it. In any case, he quickly developed his own tastes. But we did occasionally have a family "field trip" to Austin's Sixth Street. Lined with bars and dives, front doors open and live acts blasting music into the street. We would saunter along until he heard something he liked. We'd pay the cover, get him a Shirley Temple and soak it all in. A wholesome and fun-filled family outing...
posted by jim in austin at 8:21 AM on October 8, 2020 [4 favorites]


Just realized when I was a teenager and went and visited her for a few days my birth mom introduced me to Sting's Mercury Falling, which I've been listening to during the pandemic when the house is quiet.
posted by objectfox at 8:21 AM on October 8, 2020


Revolver; I started out with "Yellow Submarine," of course, and eventually made my way through the rest of the album. I remember being kind of creeped out by "Eleanor Rigby" and befuddled by "Tomorrow Never Knows," but I also loved "Taxman" right off the bat.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:24 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My mother: Missa Luba.

Really, Empress? Did they (and/or do you) also know its 'Sanctus' from the soundtrack of the 1968 British film ...if?
posted by Rash at 8:26 AM on October 8, 2020


My dad’s copy of the Beach Boys Endless Summer. That inner sleeve art is still bonkers to me.
posted by janepanic at 8:29 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My dad was into Beethoven, punk rock, and jazz standards when I was a kid. He bought me my first Clash and X albums, got me into the Residents, can be blamed for the fact that I can sing most of the Rodgers and Hart songbook. It's probably more of an interesting question to ask what he likes that I don't still enjoy. And the answer springs straight to mind: I can't fucking stand Van Morrison and for some unfathomable reason my dad spun "Moondance" constantly for a long chunk of the late 90s.
posted by potrzebie at 8:32 AM on October 8, 2020


My mother played Hot August Night all the time, and for me it was all about the drums at the end of the show. My stepfather only listens to classical music, which I didn’t get. My dad played a lot of banjo music, which didn’t exactly sink in. Our road trip music was an old cassette tape with “Sea chanties” scrawled on it and I have not, to date, become a collector of sea chanties. So it’s Neil all the way.
posted by kerf at 8:33 AM on October 8, 2020


Stevie Wonder 'Songs in the Key of Life'

Yes! This one too.
posted by thivaia at 8:41 AM on October 8, 2020


My parents had a huge collection of records from the 1960s, but we didn't really own a record player, so they just sat in the closet unplayed.

My dad didn't really listen to the radio when driving or listen to music at home - he listened to weather reports since he worked outdoors. My mom also didn't listen to music at home, only in the car, so she basically owned nearly 0 tapes or CDs.

My mom listened to 'mom music' in the car, light rock from the 1970s, 1980s and today!, so I still have a soft spot for some of that, at least the more rockin' numbers.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:44 AM on October 8, 2020


When I moved out of the house I raided my parent's record collection (small as it was). Sweet Baby James, Gord's Gold (vols 1 and 2), Alice's Restaurant, and Nashville Skyline* are probably the top 5 for me out of those. They're all sitting on a shelf in the next room over, right by the record player. Alice's Restaurant gets played every Thanksgiving, and I make my son listen to the whole damn song.

I sincerely hope that when he moves out he tries to steal the record from me.

(*Is Nashville Skyline the best Dylan album? No, but it's the only one where he looks happy on the cover. That's why it appealed to me as a kid. But my parents also had odd taste; Self Portrait was another favorite of theirs, and even though I love it, the album was widely panned. But why I love it is less about how good it is and more about how good the memories are of my parents playing these records for me.)
posted by caution live frogs at 8:48 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


My parents had a very small (<15) collection of old records, including the Beatles White Album, and the Doors Waiting For the Sun. They never played them, as by then my dad preferred either heavy metal or classical music and my mom liked pop country and 80s jazz. I assume they were from a more expansive era in their lives as the little collection also include a Cheech and Chong record.
posted by ananci at 8:53 AM on October 8, 2020


Oh, gosh. It would take me a whole dissertation to answer this
posted by eviemath at 9:09 AM on October 8, 2020


The Magic of Boney M. Unfortunately, the CD reissues aren't the same (in terms of track length) as the LP I grew up listening to.
posted by May Kasahara at 9:10 AM on October 8, 2020


I have fond memories of what little music my parents had, but I can't say any of it is in my apple music library. My library is completely devoid of starland vocal band, barry manilow and sons of the pioneers. Although there are many relations to the Sons of the Pioneers in there.

I could sing me some "Afternoon Delight" and "Mandy" back in the day though.
posted by domino at 9:10 AM on October 8, 2020


Ramsey Lewis, Hang On Ramsey!

I'd throw that on, pick up my pos strat copy, and try to 'sound good'. Learned 1/4/5 pentatonic improv when I was a wee lad with rock n roll stars in my eyes. You young'uns have it good. Can't tell you how many times I had to walk over to the turntable and flip the arm back to the groove to learn a riff. A lot.

I own and restored the 1972 Kenwood receiver and turntable just recently.

very strange for my white USAF officer dad to have. I was free to roam through his 50 or so albums. Bing Crosby, John Phillips Sousa, Sinatra, Tony Matolla, The Dukes of Dixieland, Benny Goodman...then Ramsey?

Also odd, the soundtrack to the classic blaxploitation film Shaft, Isaac Hayes. I really like that one.

When South Park debuted in 1997, I was bartending in a local restaurant/bar. Management was pretty slack while we were getting ready to close and doing sidework, so we'd flip the bar TV over to something fun. I'd never seen or heard of South Park. That night somebody picked Comedy Central. I was cashing the bar out around the corner, couldn't see the TV, but could vaguely hear it...someone was talking weird, then a deep gruff voice...my ears perked up, I listened more...then a bell rang, and I said aloud with absolute certainty, "that's Isaac Hayes". I went to the bar and it was...a cartoon? Yep. Chef. Mr. Hanky and the Christmas Poo.

Dang, Isaac, yer the man. You even got comic chops. Damn right, y'all.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:16 AM on October 8, 2020


Is Nashville Skyline the best Dylan album?

It's the best one for me. It speaks to me differently from his other work.

Girl from the North Country was used in Silver Linings Playbook during a learning-to-dance-and-connect scene.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:20 AM on October 8, 2020


further...in my home, it went without saying that listening to music was just another regular thing people do. My dad hated most of my music, and some of my choices, but he was the one who opened that door/box.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:24 AM on October 8, 2020


I'm perplexed, my parents seemed to have had an otherworldly aversion to sharing music with me that they had once purchased and regarded as meaningful. The only time I remember Dad taking out some of his vinyl to play for me was "Who put the Bomp". And only then since I was a tyke and the onomatopoeia got me to giggling.

And they had loads of good stuff! Never knew until I was older and dug through their vinyl for myself. (Dad had loads of Leadbelly and Mom's "Switched on Bach", just for starters...)

I was a guitarist/keyboardist. I listened to tons of classical & classic rock. Plenty of opportunities to initiate a "hey, check this out..." conversation. But, it never happened. As a parent now, I have to check myself since this feels like an area where I might try to overcompensate as a result?
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 9:26 AM on October 8, 2020


The original cast albums (78s) of Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and Fiorello!. We lived in Pennsylvania, but Mom and Dad had met, courted, and married in NYC, and loved to go to the musicals of the time.

I can still hear, ♪ The name's La Guardia... ♫
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:30 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


For a long time my uncle only had three tapes in his car: Boney M - Nightflight To Venus, Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night, and Mr. Mister - Welcome To The Real World.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:33 AM on October 8, 2020


"Flaming Pie" by Paul McCartney
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:37 AM on October 8, 2020


Thanks to my folks, I still know every single word on the Carpenters' 1969-1973.
posted by vverse23 at 9:44 AM on October 8, 2020


Led Zeppelin IV
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:48 AM on October 8, 2020


My guardian/aunt co-owned an R&B record store from 1972-1975, so that'd be a long list. But the one that stands out is Be Altitude: Respect Yourself by The Staple Singers. I was about 3 when I first heard it.
posted by droplet at 9:59 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


From my dad: Dave Brubeck's Take Five and Trio with Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris. From my mom: KVIL in the car, specifically Do the Hustle. Every time I hear that song it takes me back to cruising in my moms cars, the mustard Toyota, or the blue station wagon. Good times!
posted by shmurley at 10:07 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


My dad loved Big Band music, but the albums they had that had the most impact on me were all Broadway cast albums: Camelot, West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, My Fair Lady... I listened to them over and over again as a kid.
posted by suelac at 10:07 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


The soundtrack of my childhood was the local classical radio station, which my parents had on pretty much all the time. Of the albums they had, what has stuck with me is Rodrigo, especially Concierto de Aranjuez (I had classical Spanish guitar music at my wedding), Peter, Paul and Mary, and Françoise Hardy. Still most beloved by me and my sister, was Harry Belafonte's Christmas album.
posted by gudrun at 10:14 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


None, but with a catch. My parents owned like four 8-track cassettes that were on constant rotation in the car and they were greatest-hits albums by:

- Neil Diamond
- Anne Murray
- Kenny Rogers
- The Four Seasons

It's taken me well into middle-age to recover an appreciation for The Four Seasons (mostly after catching Jersey Boys a couple of years ago). I can sort of like Neil Diamond's writing. The other two are still strictly verboten.
posted by jquinby at 10:17 AM on October 8, 2020


Liege & Lief, which we used to play at breakfast on vacation at my uncle’s cottage on the Cape. Chelsea Girl, which I heard before I heard the Velvets because I was named for it.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:22 AM on October 8, 2020 [7 favorites]


I can sort of like Neil Diamond's writing. The other two are still strictly verboten.
How can you not like Neil Diamond's writing:

Shilo, when I was young
I used to call you name
When no one else would come
Shilo, you always came
And we'd play

Just imagine young Diamond running around yelling "Shiloh!" at people, and them giving him weird looks until he finally finds the one.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:27 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My dad: Every Beach Boys album ever

My mom: Evita OST, with Madonna
posted by Kitchen Witch at 10:28 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My dad was (and still is) a huge Huey Lewis fan, so "Sports". I still have a very soft spot for it. He and I were just talking about that over the phone while I was walking my dog last night.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:34 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


You know how you always see mother-daughter pairs at the Carole King musical? That.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:34 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My dad was having kind of an early midlife crisis and bought a big stereo at radio shack. He put on CCR's Chronicle so loud that I had a literal out of body experience. It was good shit and remains good shit.

Also Graceland a few years later.
posted by klanawa at 10:44 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Blood, Sweat & Tears' eponymous album. My parents played a lot of music overall, but I remember my mom being really happy she found a tape of this album, and we listened to it on a road trip. Don't remember the exact year, but those songs have been in my head for decades.
posted by phong3d at 10:55 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My parents had the typical PEaches and Herb and Grand Funk Live.

The two albums I stole from them, when I finally got a rekkid player in my 40s, were Loggins and Messina's "Sittin' In" and Santana's "Abraxas".

Oye como va, indeed!
posted by notsnot at 10:56 AM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Harry Belafonte Live at Carnegie Hall was magical for my sister and I. "Mama Look a Boo Boo" was hilarious to us. We would run around faster and faster to "Hava Nagila." Cry through "Shenandoah." And then giggle through the closer "Matilda" where Harry pokes fun at his music director and makes him solo.

Different mood, but same atmosphere of a live recording, Peter, Paul, and Mary In Concert. Definitely more crying during that one, but lord, I love all of those songs.
posted by gladly at 10:57 AM on October 8, 2020


WAY TOO MANY. I can not even begin to come up with an actual list. Basically "pop/rock/alternative/indie music circa 1960 - 1998": David Byrne, David Sylvian, David Bowie, David Gilmour, possibly all the Daves, Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Rolling Stones, The Who, Roky Erickson, Robyn Hitchcock, Letters to Cleo, Smashing Pumpkins, Powderfinger, Psychedelic Furs, Love & Rockets, The The, Violent Femmes, Pixies.

"But Lonnrot," you say, "Those are artists. Which albums?"

YES. THE ANSWER IS YES. ALL OF THEM.

I was raised by music nerds. By 1999 - 2002, I was finally old enough to fully explore on my own and start introducing my parents to artists I was enjoying - Sigur Ros, Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow, Orbital, Saul Williams, Bonobo, Kruder & Dorfmeister, dZihan & Kamien, KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails, Curve, Slowdive. Through the POWER OF THE INTERNET, I would even start digging up artists from the Before Time that we got into but had never heard of or explored beyond singles before. Gift shopping for my father is still a game of finding an album he doesn't yet own but would probably enjoy.

Browsing his massive music collection is one of my fondest youthful memories. Picking one album out of that mess is impossible. Even excluding all the classical and jazz I'm deliberately setting aside because it does not quite fit the "album" format. I have no idea how to pick one thing. Having access to such a wealth of music was itself an enormous positive influence on me.
posted by Lonnrot at 11:06 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


Records that my folks played for me that are still in heavy rotation today: the North American mono version of Rubber Soul, Crosby Stills Nash (& Young)'s first 2 records, Pet Sounds, Bitches Brew.
posted by montbrarian at 11:08 AM on October 8, 2020


If I must deign to pick only one, then:

David Sylvian's Secrets of the Beehive. Still one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard. I love putting it on on cool, rainy Autumn days and losing myself in the richly soothing melancholic beauty of it.
posted by Lonnrot at 11:15 AM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


How can you not like Neil Diamond's writing
    Cracklin' Rose you're a store-bought woman

'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' Ray Conniff and the Ray Conniff Singers (1962 album, I grew up with it in the 1970s)

Me too, dowcrag - Christmas now unimaginable without it.
posted by Rash at 11:18 AM on October 8, 2020


Fairly non-musical parents, especially my dad:

Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 albums (sibs and I loved 'beat it' and would play on repeat with improvised 'dancing')

Billy Joel's greatest hits (the only cassette we agreed on - still know all the words).

I'm not sure I like them exactly, but they're the only music in a fairly unmusical childhood.
posted by esoteric things at 11:28 AM on October 8, 2020


Carmina Burana - the Eugene Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra version (Dad called it 'medieval draft dodger music'. He wasn't wrong.)
Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.
The Limeliters/Womenfolk/early New Christie Minstrels. (No Kingston Trio, though.)
Tom Lehrer
posted by jlkr at 11:28 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Really, Empress? Did they (and/or do you) also know its 'Sanctus' from the soundtrack of the 1968 British film ...if?

I believe If took Sanctus from the Missa Luba; it was definitely on the album.

I've thought of a few more -

* The neighbors introduced me to Tea For The Tillerman.

* Occasionally Mom would also listen to Steely Dan's Aja.

* Many of the musical influences I got from Dad were more individual songs (like ZZ Top's La Grange). But my father was the first one to get into the soundtrack for Stop Making Sense, and went apeshit over it. After a very memorable evening blasting it while making pierogis with the Tea-for-the-Tillerman neighbors, fueled by about 3 bottles of Polish krupnik, it's become a touchstone for both families.

* Then there was the night my parents had a date night and went out to see Purple Rain, and the way I remember it is that on their way home they bought the soundtrack and immediately called to my brother and I when they walked in the door - "Kids? We have something you need to hear."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:31 AM on October 8, 2020 [4 favorites]


David Sylvian's Secrets of the Beehive

Thanks for the pointer, Lonnrot - incredible record! Often until now confused with The Spirit of the Beehive in my mind.
posted by Rash at 11:31 AM on October 8, 2020


There is one both my parents played. Simon and Garfunkel, ' Bridge over troubled water'
They both sang along and it's were I first remember harmony. My grandmother was a music teacher and played symphonies or radio stuff, I remember her whistling before age 3. I also remember summer of 70', coming home from picking plums and on the radio, my sisters and parents yelling
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains
Lie la lie, lie la la la lie la lie, lie la lie
posted by clavdivs at 11:39 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. I had every song memorized before age 5 because my mom would play the tape in the car so often. My parents would have me sing Tom Petty songs as a party trick and everyone got a kick that I misheard "Runnin' Down a Dream" as "Runnin' Down the Drain." That album still makes me feel warm and safe.

My parents also liked to play Original Broadway Cast Recordings on CD as we all cleaned the house on Saturday. They went through a RENT phase when I was eleven and it was...extremely educational and also got me to start swearing casually when adults weren't around. I can't say that I love it as much as I am Stockholm-syndromed by it and will automatically sing the next verse in any song if you sing the preceding verse, but I did see the live show three times, so.

As a teen I also stole albums from my dad and he'd quietly ask me to return them until finally giving up and buying a second copy. Tori Amos (!), Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, R.E.M., Pink Floyd.
posted by castlebravo at 11:45 AM on October 8, 2020


Joni Mitchell, Blue.
(Well, and all the other ones.)
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:45 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


So many, but the one that comes to mind first for some reason is Beggars Banquet
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 11:52 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Another oldster here. Most of those listed I either had, or listened to my kids playing them.
So- another vote for Allan Sherman & Bob Newhart, and adding Bill Cosby, maybe Why Is There Air?
posted by MtDewd at 11:52 AM on October 8, 2020


My mom was the parent who went out of her way to expose me to a lot of things, and some of it I loved and some sort of rolled off me, but my dad has this way of only recommending a thing once in a while, usually when I exactly what my life called for. I remember coming home from college and making some deliberately vague, miserable allusion to late night shifts and my love life not working out and my dad, after a pause, saying, "You know what you need? You need Tom Waits."

Holy shit was he right. It was either "The Heart of Saturday Night" or "Heartattack and Vine," probably both.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 11:58 AM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Zero albums. My dad really wanted me to love the Beach Boys and Bill Haley. My mom loved the (early) Beatles but never tried to push them on me. My stepdad loved country & western. When I was a tween my dad trying to push Christian rock on me - Amy Grant, Petra. I listened to them for a bit but don't love them. So I find the concept of this sort of parental transfer of taste to be alien and unpalatable. What is music if not an expression of individuality, of rebellion? Of finding one's self in the sounds of a song that speaks to you in a way that no person can? A parent is categorically incapable of shepherding a child through that process - it has to be done alone. To like Abbey Road because your mom liked it is just indoctrination.

All of the music I loved I got through radio, MTV and the crate of records my aunt left in the basement.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:02 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


I am so jealous of all of you. I grew up in a nearly music-less house.
I can only remember two albums being played -- a comedy record based on the JFK White House (it was gentle and funny and must have been pre-November '63) and the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem In Person at Carnegie Hall (h/t to Redstart above).
Somehow I still became a DJ in college, and a music writer and concert reviewer in my 20s, and while I learned to love a lot of music, the latter one stuck with me. I have a good amount of Irish folk in my collection, including that Carnegie Hall record.
posted by martin q blank at 12:05 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


That would be The First Family by Vaughn Meader. I've never heard it, but know it well from copies in the Comedy & Spoken Word section of used vinyl stores. My understanding is, like Allan Sherman, that sort of comedy was deemed no longer amusing, after the assassination.
posted by Rash at 12:14 PM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


My parents never listened to music, although we always had a stereo at home. As a kid I remember loving the record we had of the Sound of Music Soundtrack and they must have bought that so that's what I'll go with.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:28 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


The original cast recordings of Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma, and West Side Story.
posted by Oyéah at 12:50 PM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


LOL I just realized that my dad introduced me to many other albums (Grateful Dead, the Doors, etc) but I was only receptive to surf music and musicals so that's what stuck

In return I introduced my dad to Aqua and the Spice Girls, and boy howdy does he love them both to this day (same, dad, same)
posted by Kitchen Witch at 12:51 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


I had a cassette of The Cars, in the car, and I guess I played it a lot. One of my kids called me in wonder because she heard that album for the first time as an adult and knew all the words, and didn't know why.
posted by Oyéah at 12:55 PM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


What is music if not an expression of individuality, of rebellion? Of finding one's self in the sounds of a song that speaks to you in a way that no person can? A parent is categorically incapable of shepherding a child through that process - it has to be done alone. To like Abbey Road because your mom liked it is just indoctrination.

OK boomer.

"Music is an expression of individuality"

Literally four sentences later:

"All of the music I loved I got through radio, MTV and the crate of records my aunt left in the basement."

Why can the music some stranger played on the radio be something you discover and learn to love but the music played by your parents cannot be?

Plenty of music my parents played was and is terrible, but sometimes their and my own tastes overlapped. Simon & Garfunkel are no better or worse for me having discovered them because my dad liked to play The sound of Silence than had I discovered it through some radio show.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:58 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Fragile, Aqualung, and John Barleycorn Must Die. Mom had a better record collection than dad. I listened to these incessantly while doing my fifth grade science fair project.

Once while in college, years before I existed, my mom fell off her bike and scraped her head. In keeping with head wounds of any severity, she was covered in blood by the time she walked back to her dorm with her bike. Her roommate helped her get cleaned up, but not before taking several photos of my mother posed next to the Brain Salad Surgery LP. Like you do.
posted by hototogisu at 1:19 PM on October 8, 2020


I had a John Prine album that I loved and although I don’t really remember it explicitly, it must have been from my parents.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:23 PM on October 8, 2020


So much! Kind of Blue, Night at the Opera, Graceland, Dark Side of the Moon, classical records...

Also in my middle-age I now love all my parents' jazz fusion records, which I looked down on as a teenager.

I still can't stand the New Age stuff though, sorry guys
posted by swift at 1:31 PM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Arg. My parents (well, ok, my mom) played a ton of records when I was kid, but it was about 99% broadway cast recordings, and I just can’t with show tunes. So, within that remaining 1%, it’s probably something like Nat King Cole, but I wouldn’t be able to say which actual record.

I’ll send the question out to my kids and see if they liked anything.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:40 PM on October 8, 2020


Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs
Agree with Sokka! Maybe my dad's most listened to album. Undoubtedly one of the greatest C&W albums ever and definitely the greatest cowboy album ever.
posted by Grumpy old geek at 1:42 PM on October 8, 2020


Ok...My daughter responded. She couldn’t narrow it down to just one, so she gave me these three: Sheryl Crow: Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette: Jagged Little Pill, Beatles: Revolver.

I’m kinda proud about Revolver.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:45 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Is this chatfilter post a donation reward?
posted by Kwine at 1:56 PM on October 8, 2020


Do singles count? Ian Dury's Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick makes me feel like a kid again.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:01 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


OK boomer.

LOL you are older than me, eat dirt. Not to mention that anyone whose parents introduced them is by definition not a boomer.

But the question posed by the thread is "what music did you parents introduce you to that you love" and that's the question I answered. It's just, like, my opinion, man. I'm not going to hate on you for liking what your dad liked, that's cool. But for me the journey of musical discovery was solitary and, as a musician and composer, intensely personal and formative, so that's how I see the world. The only other musician in my family was my grandfather who was an abusive alcoholic. I did not bond with him.

I mean, not to turn this into a therapy session, but I kind of wish that I had bonded with my parents over music or some form of art? I would feel less alone in this world. Anyhow, this post gave me The Feels so I expressed them, kindly refrain from dumping on me (or anyone else!) with misused epithets.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:05 PM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


Songs Of The Humpback Whale
National Geographic ‎– Vol. 155, No. 1
Jan 1979
posted by sophrontic at 2:12 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


* introduced them to the Beatles
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:17 PM on October 8, 2020


My parents introduced me to nothing which I allowed anywhere near my head or my heart, just junk about Jesus and/or Leviticus and/or the rest of those dopes. My oldest brother brought in Johnny Cash "The Fabulous Johnny Cash" and that got in and got in deep and it is still deep in my heart. He left it when he left home, fast as he could get out the door, joined the US army.

However. I certainly had no idea at the time but my record collection -- maybe 25 LPs -- they became my younger brothers records when I left. He's told me it was really sweet, got in on him and aimed him toward his love of music, which is deep and broad and great. He took spring break from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, went to San Diego, heard John Klemmer live from some open door on the beach and he decided to learn to play the sax.

Damned if he didn't buy a sax when he got back to Flagstaff, and got lessons, and began to play with people, lots of live music of all kinds, at least 15 years in a Deadhead cover band that got pretty big in a small way there in SD, he's played the rest of his life and is playing today, in Balboa Park, busking with his sax, a flute, a guitar, no telling what all he'll take, different every time he goes. He can play lots of instruments, pretty much anything he turns his hand to.

One time took his sax to get repaired in some shop and ended up getting close with the repair man, got a small job with him, then apprenticed with him, and stayed with him for years, and upon the mans death my younger brother was given all of his tools and that is his way of making money. He's good at it. He's just a very, very cool guy, I did well drawing him as a brother, that's for sure.

So not a story about parents so much as brothers
posted by dancestoblue at 2:54 PM on October 8, 2020 [4 favorites]


Sergeant Pepper. I was 3 years old. Hardly surprising I grew up so weird.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 3:00 PM on October 8, 2020


Is it possible that I'm the first person to say Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man??? Maybe my parents were just unusually cool. (Runners-up are David Byrne's Rei Momo and Tracy Chapman's self-titled.)
posted by babelfish at 3:34 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

We had all their records, but that was my mom's favorite.
And now it's one of mine.
posted by freakazoid at 3:52 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


My parents didn't listen to albums. That's what radio was for, they said.
posted by SPrintF at 4:08 PM on October 8, 2020


Dad had lots of old 30s-50s piano jazz, early gospel, country, folk and a little blues. Mom liked the Beatles and some Motown, but never bought records.

I dig more of Dad's music now, but as a kid, I was only really into a few of his records: Vangelis' Chariots of Fire soundtrack, Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion, and a bit of Mississippi John Hurt.
posted by p3t3 at 4:12 PM on October 8, 2020


I never liked anything my mom put on the phonograph. Her record collection ranged from Strauss waltzes through Roger Williams. My dadʻs closest approach to any music at all was a strangely atonal whistling of unrecognizable melodies (or notes, for that matter), plus a one-time grunted a-cappella rendition of Mairzy Doats.

Luckily my momʻs younger sister once sat my 10-yr-old ass down and played dixieland on her phonograph, over and over, until I could correctly identify the solo instruments.... Much much later on, after I had been making a happy living for over a decade of my adult life playing the piano, she asked me if I ever heard John Tesh. But I still love her despite.

Now that I think of it, my dad just could have been whistling a Morton Feldman score.
posted by Droll Lord at 4:14 PM on October 8, 2020


Simon & Garfunkel - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme. I like the rest of the S&G catalog, but nothing else compares.
posted by libraryhead at 4:35 PM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


And now, having read the whole thread, I also have to contribute John Denver's Greatest Hits. On 8-track.
posted by libraryhead at 4:46 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Too many to mention, my parents are rad as hell, but the one that immediately leaps to mind is After the Goldrush.
posted by saladin at 5:13 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


I’m gonna take take this in the reverse direction. At an age where my kids were introducing new music to me, I introduced Deerhoof to them. Not my proudest moment, but I did privately gloat.
posted by sjswitzer at 5:21 PM on October 8, 2020


My father and I talked about classical music until the end of his life, so it's a little unfair for me to choose The Tijuana Brass, but it was always a great occasion when he brought the latest one home. My mother never got any credit, but she had the Broadway original cast albums (including "Hair") and the Fred Astaire albums. I laughed at her for that, thinking Fred Astaire was the dorkiest singer ever, but eventually I learned better.
posted by acrasis at 5:24 PM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


My parents divorced when I was 3. I lived with mom, and dad lived with records. By the time I was ten, I had heard enough to know: Beatles, Kinks, Love, Byrds (yes!), Stones and most jazz (eh, OK I guess), Beach Boys, Van Morrison, Zeppelin (no!), Sun Ra, Zappa, and Beefheart (wtf?). But it wasn’t until the early 80s, when I was 12 or so, when he played me for the first time (both on the same day), R.E.M’s Murmur and Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady, that I was like “OK, I’m good, this is mine.”
posted by otters walk among us at 5:28 PM on October 8, 2020


My dad is a huge music nerd with wide-ranging taste and a massive record collection that deeply shaped my tastes. Some of the albums here are ones he hand-picked to play for me starting when I was in middle school, some are ones I found in my own later.

The Ramones-Rocket to Russia
Richard and Linda Thompson-Shoot Out the Lights
Laura Nyro-The First Songs
The Flying Burrito Brothers-The Gilded Palace of Sin (I loved the suits on the album cover for years before realizing what the leaves were)
Los Lobos-Kiko

I also have the cover of Frank Zappa’s We’re Only in it For the Money forever burned into my head because young me thought the expressions and dresses were hilarious, even though I remember very little of the music.
posted by ActionPopulated at 5:47 PM on October 8, 2020


Chuck Berry. It all started with Chuck Berry.
posted by panama joe at 6:41 PM on October 8, 2020


Gloria Estafan's Mi Tierra.

Favorite track: Ayer

edit to change to a proper link.
posted by Groundhog Week at 6:42 PM on October 8, 2020


The records I remember from my mom’s collection: Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, and Chuck Mangione’s Feels So Good. We went to see Mangione at Ravinia near Chicago, which must have been an incredible splurge for my mom... it was the only concert we went to.

For my own kids the answers would likely be Beatles (Abbey Road, Revolver, Sgt Pepper), Fleetwood Mac Rumours, maybe Joni Mitchell. I had on a CD of a Bonnie Raitt concert from 1972 the other day and my older one was like “whooooo is that??” Makes a mama proud.

We have a family tradition of occasional Musical Education moments when I play them something related to conversation that arises at dinner. That ranges allll over the map. I’m curious to learn what has stuck, somewhere down the line!
posted by Sublimity at 6:51 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


The Big Chill soundtrack ingrained Motown into my soul.
posted by gnutron at 6:57 PM on October 8, 2020


I am way too old for my parents to have introduced me to anything "popular," though I did come out of childhood with a love of classical music. But soundtracks... well, Maurice Jarre's score to Doctor Zhivago started something I haven't been able to shake 50+ years later.
posted by lhauser at 7:08 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


Day for Night by The Tragically Hip

Electronic by Electronic

Frantic City by Teenage Head

Man. So many rides in a rusty red Ford Escort listening to these cassettes and/or CFNY or eventually 97x
posted by glaucon at 7:17 PM on October 8, 2020


My mum wasn't much for music and my dad had very few things that weren't classical, but I still have a soft spot for Billy Joel's The Stranger (a great Karaoke song for non-singers like me in later years) and Al Stewart's The Year of the Cat from his collection
posted by Sparx at 8:52 PM on October 8, 2020


My mom gets credit for Steeleye Span (Parcel of Rogues, Please to See The King), my dad gets to claim Blood Sweat & Tears (Child Is Father to the Man), but Mannheim Steamroller (one of the Christmas albums, not sure which one?) has to be blamed on both of them.

Neither of my parents, however, can come close to the impact on me of the, well, I guess you'd call it a mixtape, labeled "Mostly Silly Songs" that my Aunt put together when I was really little and got played to death on every long road trip anywhere when my brother and I were kids. To this day I still know by heart all the words to: "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor", "Gimme Dat Ding", "Harry the Hairy Ape", "The Monster Mash", "(Nothing But) Flowers", "The Eggplant that Ate Chicago", "Along Came Jones" and a bunch of other weird goofy songs. Pretty sure that giving me that tape - thus ensuring my mom would be forced to listen to it about 8000 times - was the most diabolically effective prank her older sister ever devised for her.
posted by mstokes650 at 10:08 PM on October 8, 2020 [3 favorites]


My mother went relegous nutjob and most music was a sin so nothing on that side. Of course divorce. My father was an engineer/nerd and it was NPR and classical. He was also a pirate and mostly taped things from the library.

The records he did have were a bit just wonderful. He had George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Tom Lehrer albums... oh! that sense of humor that you can't just show in polite company.

The Clockwork Orange soundtrack (Walter Carlos now Wendy Carlos), that early Moog synth stuff. Virgil Fox playing the organ. (the only time my landlord came by and told me to turn it down... I was playing Virgil Fox at window shaking volume just because who can't just love loud organs on a saturday afternoon?)

It was actually my cousins who occasionally came on a visit from far away that brought things like Prince and Michael Jackson, and school friends who introduced me the wide world of music.
posted by zengargoyle at 10:58 PM on October 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Beatles: '1967-1970'; John Prine's eponymous 1st album; Rolling Stones: 'Hot Rocks'; Dylan's 'Blood On The Tracks'; 'Band On The Run'; 'Sounds Of Silence'.
-This is the stuff that a young WV child of freaky parents was listening to, and absorbing, very deeply.
posted by frodisaur at 11:06 PM on October 8, 2020


My parents had the typical Peaches
(jaw drops) parents typically have what?!
and Herb
ohhhhhhhh! as you were

(for me it was a back-to-back cassette of the Association & the Turtles, along with the Mamas & the Papas, Buddy Holly, & endless amounts of 50s & 60s oldies radio from my dad.

Mom owned copies of Revolver & Tapestry like everyone was supposed to, then one day announced that she didn't like music, never had, & started playing nothing but NPR & powwow dance songs in the car; she does still like to sing Sound of Music tracks & I got her to listen to Nirvana's Nevermind once & she liked it fine

this did not leave me with a deep & abiding love for powwow dance songs & I'm just now realizing I need to study up on native music theory & listen again with more patience & appreciation than I had as a shitty teenager)
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:00 AM on October 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


My amazing stepdad, who had no musical ear whatsoever and no idea what I was into, randomly came home one day having bought the soundtrack to Weird Al's UHF for me. I liked Weird Al, and had seen the movie and thought it was funny, but that recording made me an enthusiastic, lifelong fan, and it was a random, no-occasion gift, just because my stepdad and I shared a really odd sense of humor. (Again, no ear and little musical taste, even though I also discovered Sgt. Pepper in his record collection...but not the Beatles version, instead he had the Peter Frampton acid fever dream version...which even today, I'm like, whaaaa? why??)

He also took me to see Ghostbusters when I was 12 or so--somehow we were the only two people in our house who wanted to see it--and we sat near the front in a completely packed theater, and laughed as hard as I ever have in my life. It was a joy; he was a joy.... He died from esophageal cancer a few years later, in his early 50s (I was 21), and I still miss him very much. Thanks for this post, these are two of my favorite memories.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:02 AM on October 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


I'm a boomer, and my millennial kids have thanked me for introducing them, in the aughts, to:
Animal Collective, "Sung Tongs"
Joanna Newsom, "Milk-Eyed Mender"
X-ray Specs, "Germ-free Adolescence"
posted by JimDe at 8:14 AM on October 9, 2020


Many, but this one immediatly came to mind:

Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar - West Meets East (1961)


It is really good.
posted by elmono at 2:24 PM on October 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


My parents had some records but didn't really play them for some reason, mostly we listend to tapes. In addition to Neil Diamond and Simon and Garfunkel my parents had a lot of Alan Price tapes. I remember Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear, The Jarrow Song (Between Today and Yesterday) and Don't Stop the Carnival ((A Price On His Head) the youtube video I found has Jimmy Saville on it, so I won't link) being my favourites as a young child and I still have a fondness for them today.

I'm glad of this post. I have strong Covid blues tonight and this is helping.
posted by antiwiggle at 3:43 PM on October 9, 2020


Wow, y'all had such cool young parents.

My Greatest/Silent Gen parents had Muzak on the radio all the time during the day, so you wouldn't think they'd be the greatest source of info on what to listen to. But someone, probably my mom, brought along her show-tune soundtrack LPs from the fifties when she got married. So I learned the scores to "My Fair Lady," "West Side Story," "The Music Man," and other classics pretty young. And my dad was a great Mills Brothers fan.

Another great source of musical knowledge was my godmother (my dad's sister), who worked for a small record press in Scranton, PA. One day she brought along "Portrait of Mary O'Dowd" as a gift... and thus began my lifelong love for Irish trad and mournful keening folktunes.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 6:33 PM on October 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Kristofferson, lots of jazz, John Lennon.
posted by PHINC at 9:21 PM on October 9, 2020


Switched on Bach!

Still wonderful, and also now a moment in queer history, had only I known it!
posted by less of course at 10:03 AM on October 10, 2020


I'm another Hot August Night kid, from a very early age. Our neighbour had a couple of influential records, too: Hooked On Classics and an album from The Barron Knights that featured the song Little White Bum.
posted by Foaf at 1:04 PM on October 10, 2020


My mom gave me her old, worn copy of "Songs in the Key of Life" by Stevie Wonder

First album i ever owned, actually. Lovingly worn down double LP + 1 she had kept around since the 70s.

The funny thing was i didn't even own a record player at the time. I was what, i don't know... eight years old? Then a few weeks later, just by chance, me and my dad stopped by a garage sale out walking around the neighborhood. They had one of those junky JC Penney particle board and plastic turntable/tape deck/radio combo stereos, with some cardboard-box-adjacent speakers. The entire thing weighed so little i could carry it myself in a milk crate. I think it was maybe $10, and i begged my dad for the cash to buy it.

I probably listened to that album 1000 times. It blew my mind. I very much credit that, and the huge stack of albums i was given later that year with kick starting my love for music. I started piano classes within a year or so, and eventually went on to music school.

That same copy of Songs in the Key of Life is still in my storage unit, stacked up with a number of important albums i gathered over the years. A few have actually survived all the way since back then(including 3 runs at homelessness, somehow) but i will seriously like, NEVER get rid of that album. It doesn't even sound great anymore objectively, but it just sounds right. I know where every skip, scratch, and warble is in that thing. It's been played on high-brow hifis and the junkiest crosleys. I've shown more than one person i loved those songs for the first time with it.

My mom, to this day, is shocked i still have it.


I could write about so much funk, jazz, soul, and r&b here. Shit, i could have written a diatribe about Prince. But no, it's gotta be Stevie, for sure. Even during the surreality of covid, and the collapse of western society my life looped back to this damn record when i ended up crashing with a new friend. She herself had just discovered this album, and was elated to listen to it and loud and talk about it for hours.

Funny how life works like that.
posted by emptythought at 4:17 AM on October 12, 2020


^ What a terrific story, and what a masterpiece of an album. If you haven’t, be sure to check out Stevie’s two new songs, released a couple of days ago—he’s still got it, and he’s as socially engaged as ever.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:25 AM on October 15, 2020


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