Did your parents' musical taste(s) leave an indelible mark on your own?

Not directly. I’d pick up various things to listen to from their album collection here and there, and certain albums were recurrent favorites they’d play. The influence was more in the fact that they *weren’t* ‘active’ music collectors or concert-goers but simply general appreciators, folks born in the 40s who just listened to things that struck their fancy, and who generally listened to top 40 radio when I was growing up. Never got a sense that I couldn’t or shouldn’t listen to certain music, and just let me find my halting way forward of my own volition.

As individual listeners, my dad’s always been an active country fan and he’s kinda great to take the temperature of the genre with — he happily enjoys more traditional country but equally rolls with what’s currently on the charts, it’s all part of the continuum. Generally speaking he listens to country radio only in the car, though.

Their copies of Songs About Fucking and Watashi Dake made a strong impression early on.

Actually, they weren't really big music fans and would sometimes say that musical aptitude was not something that ran in our family. They did occasionally put on tapes of Carnatic music (dubbed from friends) or take us to the odd performance; I still like that music a lot. This may have helped build an appreciation for drones, intricate rhythms, and improvisation. (In my 20s, my Dad actually took an interest in some of my free or avant jazz albums, which was the first time he showed any interest in anything non-Carnatic that I listened to.) We'd sometimes sing bhajans. They generally hate rock music, especially my Dad, who has a viscerally intense revulsion to it that I struggle to understand. He would attribute any number of moral failings or corruptive properties to the music or people who listened to it. He did like watching Lawrence Welk on TV. They thought spending much money on music was a bizarre waste, since you could just tape things off the radio, which probably did lead to me spending a lot of time listening to the radio and watching MuchMusic and discovering weird things through our two campus stations and CBC (which still played weird things then). They were willing to pay money for lessons but often strongly, sometimes aggressively, discouraged spending too much much time on playing or practising. They did favour learning classical over anything else, though, although they didn't have a strong appreciation for Western classical music themselves. They've softened on a lot of things more lately (and started singing regularly as part of a bhajan group in my Dad's retirement). Still, if they left an indelible mark when I was growing up, it was probably largely in terms of something to react against?

I'm somewhat amazed at how limited a role cultural reproduction has played for most of you (when it comes to music, at least).

Interesting that there are so few 'rebellious' cases, incidentally. Sund4r's appears to be the first. I was expecting a couple of classic narratives along the lines of 'I got into no wave/thrash/free jazz/etc. to piss off mom and dad'.

(also: lol)

2xp

Played a big role for me. My dad was a huge Dylan fan and that rubbed off. My mom had cool taste in the ‘80s, and a lot of good records — I listened to her R.E.M. tapes in middle school as part of becoming a fan myself, I think I even got into VU/Lou Reed via my mom.

I mean even the records I listened to a lot as a young kid — Prince, Madonna, MJ — my parents bought those, it’s not like I was going to Penguin Feather with my lunch money.

Cyndi Lauper, Talking Heads, Dire Straits — music that cool thirtysomethings listened to in the ‘80s.

i remember liking when my mom played her deee-lite albums on tape in the car when i was a toddler. so yes.

other than that my parents mostly just gave me stuff they had that they thought i would like based on what i had already expressed enthusiasm for. that meant disco compilations, donna summer and michael jackson albums + certain beethoven symphonies.

age 9 or 10 is around the time when i was basically finding whatever i wanted to listen to and the thought of getting ideas from my parents (or accepting unsolicited recommendations) seemed downright silly. mid-to-late teens is when i started surreptitiously fishing around in their collections out of curiosity.

No

Yes

Yes

Definitely. My dad was a huge trad jazz fan (and was actually writing a book about it before he was sidetracked by national service) but both my parents loved Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson. He gave me a great history of jazz book when I was about 11 or 12 where I must have first read the words "Miles Davies". They didn't have a lot of records but what they had were mostly golden. I especially remember them having Talking Book and looking at the, er, groovy looking dude on the cover. But more importantly they used to go to parties a lot and we kids would hang around going through the records which is where I first heard Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, Funkadelic, Sly, the Velvets and, most influential of all to me probably, Kraftwerk. My mum's cousin had it. His wife said - as I looked in bewilderment at the cover of Autobahn - "that's one of his weird ones". Thinking about it now, I'm wondering what the other weird ones were.

My mother never played music in the house, but had some records presumably left from a more free wheeling youth. I remember Carole King, Herb Alpert, and some more sleazy mood muzak for when she was getting it on.

Zero influence, whatsoever.

I'm somewhat amazed at how limited a role cultural reproduction has played for most of you (when it comes to music, at least).

you don't need to reproduce any culture when you've got a TV

Of course , how could it not? In heavy rotation were queens greatest, the Sat night fever soundtrack, marley’s uprising and exodus

you don't need to reproduce any culture when you've got a TV

There's usually a modicum of rivalry between cultural strands acquired via mass media, the family unit and one's social environment, all of which overlap to varying degrees. But yeah, I take your point.

Interesting thread anyways, thanks for starting it pomenitul.

My pleasure! And thank you all for your answers.

I have respect for pomentful because he nominated 新しい日の誕生 in the ambient pool even though it’s not ambient

Rateyourmusic begs to differ. I've got a host of ambient black blocs standing right behind me, waiting to strike.

indelible, yes, applicable to 95% of what I listen to, no

you don't need to reproduce any culture when you've got a TV

― j.

I know what to do and I do so
My clean machine's dream is a colourful gun

I've mentioned some of this stuff before, but:

- My dad was into 1950s music, but he liked doo-wop more than rock 'n' roll; I'm pretty sure his favorite song of all time was the Moonglows' "The Ten Commandments of Love". I have an appreciation for doo-wop, but it's nothing I listen to regularly.
- My mom liked the Beatles (who I hate) and the Rolling Stones (who I like) and when I was a teenager, we connected over some newer stuff that we both liked, like Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, New Order's Substance, and Iggy Pop's Blah-Blah-Blah. She liked Iggy's voice. She hated Brian Johnson's voice, though, so I was not allowed to listen to AC/DC in the house. Also, she once told me "Jazz is music for people who think they're smart" and I've never really gotten over that, honestly. It cracks me up every time I think about it.

I mostly learned about music from the radio until I was about 13, and then older kids. There were two brothers who lived across the street who I wasn't supposed to hang around with and they had an amazing record collection - all the typical hard rock stuff (Kiss, Led Zeppelin, etc.) but a ton of Zappa, some Residents, some Beefheart, etc. and that was a big influence early on. There was another older kid further down the block whose mom was my mom's best friend, and from him I learned about Hüsker Dü and the Replacements and a bunch of other stuff I liked better.

My dad loved to listen to music - I definitely got that up from him. He usually had music on in the house via a big reel-to-reel machine. However he was primarily into classical and opera neither of which I enjoy. He bought a few Beatles records, some Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens and Crosby, Stills & Nash though I never heard him actually listen to them. I don't remember anything he listened to in the car besides NPR. I have a soft spot for singer-songwriters so maybe I that influenced me (or it was just the early 70s radio).

<3 Sund4r's post

his mum did like stairway to heaven though!

my parents only had classical music records, and my father played opera and smoked cigars when as kids we were conscripted to separate and bag marigold seeds for his horticultural experiments

I think about that a lot, it is a great memory

My parents both loved to sing, and singalongs with their family and friends at our home were an indelible part of my youth. They sang tin pan alley, broadway musicals, 40s and 50s country and western, folk revival, but very little rock n' roll, though my Mom liked Elvis. Dad had a reel to reel that played constantly - opera, Bing Crosby, West Side Story, Petula Clark, Mahalia Jackson... I grew up to be a professional musician and vocalist. These days, among my musical projects, I regularly play at retirement homes and assisted living facilities, and make use of the repertoire I learned as a kid from my parents.

This is an interesting thread. My boring answer is basically "not much really". My father apparently liked jazz and hard rock before I was born and a very small number of LPs stored next to the stereo hinted at the same. Though these were part of a broader collection of mostly middle-of-road record club issues, the sort of things -- Neil Diamond, Mrs Miller, Johnny Mathis -- that have dominated charity store stock for some decades now and which, on reflection, seem a bit 'old' for either parent. Absolutely no classical though. Regardless, no-one ever seemed to listen to any of it.

My mother had definitely liked the Beatles and the Carpenters, but she didn't seem to have accrued many recordings, such that she didn't inflict her tastes on others either. I remember rock radio being on in the background in the '80s but they seemed to have become fairly passive listeners by the time they were parents.

My Dad was a big fan of Moby Grape's first album which is probably his lone contribution that I wouldn't have necessarily gotten elsewhere.

And Van Morrison was my Dad's favorite, which I rebelled against to some degree early on, but ultimately came around.

When I was seventeen, I once came home from a friend's house after a heavy bong session and my parents were drinking wine and dancing around the kitchen to the Parliaments. And the first song I remember hearing is the 1961 studio version of "Night Train" by James Brown, when I was about four. So, I'd say yes, my parents have pretty decent taste and that certainly impacted my own.

A few years back I was visiting and my mom and I were driving somewhere, listening to NPR, and they used part of "Daydream Nation" as interlude music...and my mom said, "You used to listen to this song, right? It's Sonic Youth."

She's almost 70! Lol.

Listening to Sade, Anita Baker, and Basia in my parents' car, in addition to the local top 40 station (Mom knew pop acts well into the mid '90s), had an incalculable effect on my tastes. They also dug Santana, the Beatles, Herb Alpert, Stevie Wonder, etc.

My Mom was president of the Hoboken, NJ Frank Sinatra fanclub for a bit when she was young, Dad was going to NYC jazz clubs. They are pretty open-minded about all kinds of music now.

They thought spending much money on music was a bizarre waste

The rest of the world does seem to have caught up with my parents here tbf.

She's almost 70! Lol.

So is Kim Gordon

touché

My folks had music in the house - lots of Elton John, Carpenters - but it didn't seem to ever be the cause of much jouissance. But as I've got closer to my old man as we've both got older we've bonded over lots of music and it turns how he's got a really good voice. We've had a few, ah, late nights with Van Morrison and Frank Sinatra and one session where we saw the sun up listening over and over to Terry Callier. He's since become Uncle Terry and he'll frequent text me to say he's listening to him.

She's almost 70! Lol.

So is Kim Gordon

― stan by me (morrisp), Sunday, July 14, 2019 9:06 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

fair enough, but if you knew much more about my mom, you'd find it as remarkable as i do.

I hear you

my Dad was huge into ELP and Todd Rundgren which definitely shaped my tastes for a long time. it was weird getting online and hearing people talk about ELP as being over the top and pompous, as someone who loved them from the age of 5 I thought that was the whole point. It wasn't until someone informed me of King Crimson that I realized there was an entire scene of this stuff.

he's also a great piano player - when we were over at his house he'd play all the time, usually stuff from the musicians he liked (though obviously I didn't recognize any of it). when I finally got into Todd it was surreal hearing all these melodies I remembered as a kid

another thing...my parents were from Akron and both had a copy of Devo's greatest hits...that definitely changed my life

my dad is very into classical music and I would often wake up to the sound of him playing piano. there was a lot of romantic piano music (schumann his first love), bach piano transcriptions, the occasional bit of faure or ravel or grainger, and he has been involved in a lot of choirs over the years. I wasn't too opposed to that stuff and often pretty interested, albeit selectively, and I think I developed a p good 'feel' for it and a modest grounding: there are dozens of pieces I know well but can't name, I took piano lessons, sung in choirs, did a bit of theory, got dragged to concerts etc. at the same time his open disdain for most pop music had the effect you'd expect, I remember him saying with some disgust when it came on the tv that flat beat by mr oizo wasn't music and ofc that cemented in my mind that it was a powerful work of genius.

it was quite hard to get overlap with my mum, who wasn't as musical, but liked some classical music and also quite a bit of 60s&70s folksy/singer-songwriter stuff (baez, dylan, judy collins &c.), so in the car we'd often get an odd array of compromise stuff: trad british folk music, the beach boys, nina simone, tubular bells, the proclaimers. I think it helped give me an early appreciation that there were v different ways of enjoying music & made me p open. I still chat to my dad about music quite a bit and swap recommendations

I'm oddly fond of the notion that x song/composition 'isn't music' because it implies an endearingly confident and wide-eyed sense of what music is.

Ime, it usually indicates an uninterestingly simple and traditional sense of what music is. Dunno about ogmor's Dad, though. Sounds like he might have had a sophisticated and more well-developed conception.

So weird to see people whose parents listened to rock music. My dad was strictly of the lush Mantovani/101 Strings type (with an occasional uptempo foray into Herb Alpert.) Of course I loathed that music as a teenager, but it's amazing how hearing a bit of it now induces a hazy sort of melancholy.

Mom never even turned on the radio much, but she sang around the house a lot. Hits included: "Danny Boy," vintage country like "El Paso" and "He'll Have To Go", and "Music Music Music" by Teresa Brewer. I went on to appreciate and listen to more 50s pop music than she probably ever did.

my folks always liked music but it was 50/60s stuff, mum liked shirley bassey, barbra streisand. Easy listening singers. My dad didnt like those 2 but he probably enjoys those type of singers in general. Celine, Subo along with the usual old C&W and irish country stuff all scottish dads seemed to love.
They did get a CD player in 87 and always bought me until then pop 7" singles and then CD albums then a year later my own cd stereo.

I think i borrowed 2 albums out of my dads collection - rolling stones through the past darkly and bob dylan. That was the only interesting stuff he had.

My dad bought the lewis capaldi CD the other week :(

Yes, I hated nearly all of it and was uninterested in music until I began discovering it for myself. They listened to mostly soft rock, late 50's/early 60's folk and country music.

Suffice to say I got into techno/IDM, alternative, metal and classics like Queen/Pink Floyd pretty aggressively, which in total was pretty much the opposite of what they listened to.

Three artists really stuck out to my young ears from those early listening years (when I was 2-5): The Charlie Daniel's Band's The Devil Went Down to Georgia, anything by Pete Seeger, and anything by Johnny Cash, who would eventually be the first artist I would see perform live.

my mum was 19 when she had me in 1988 and some of my earliest memories are of her and my step-dad going out to gigs and clubs. They spent the 90s going to see acts like Underworld and Faithless. They were already too young to really be enjoying The Heritage Canon of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Queen etc so it was never really present when I was growing up, so I never really had that exposure and so not only am I not familiar but that stuff doesn't interest me - it just seemed so ancient when I was growing up and now I live in a world where I can listen to anything at time via Spotify and Youtube, so why would I bother? People find it strange when I tell them that for all I love music, I don't love *that kind* of music, and act as if my parents failed me by not indoctrinating me into the history of rock. My step-dad's three obsessions were New Order, The Blue Nile and David Bowie. I adore the former two (although it took a bit of time to really get into The Blue Nile, probably too sophisticated and calm for childhood ears brought up on dance music). But I cannot stand Bowie at all.

When they did listen to music not designed for going out, it was very Britpop indie, lots of Oasis and The Verve type stuff. They weren't really into pop and had a rockist perspective which I didn't really shake off until I was in my late teens, basically when I was old enough to legally buy alcopops and dance to Girls Aloud in a public space. They had some terrible music in their voluminous collection and I retaliated by consuming some even worse music - lots of over-earnest singer-songwriter stuff that was both Terribly Authentic but Not Rock. It's hard to rebel and find your own voice when your parents are actually quite cool.

my brother is three years younger than me and hit his teens at the peak of nu-metal's commercial breakthrough so he had a ready-made sonic identity designed to piss off the whole family.

one way that I'm VERY like my parents - I have zero recollection of them ever going to the cinema or watching a movie at home, they were just always playing music if the soaps weren't on. My own cinematic knowledge is terrible - I've seen Disney movies from 1992-1999ish and anything else I've ever watched has been mostly social situations of peer pressure. I haven't been in a cinema in nine years and I'm not curious to repeat the experience at all, and it is very rare I watch an entire movie in one sitting. For them and for me, it's just a lot more fun to enjoy music. They might be a pair of bastards but I'm a lot more like them than I want to admit.

My mom would've been That Creepy Lady With Elvis Decorations All Over The House if left to her own devices and now every time I hear his voice I want to vomit so maybe

My dad in particular influenced me in that he bought a lot of music, was in classical music club and would buy LPs on his lunch break, so a few new records in rotation every month. Drilled holes in the floor and ran speaker wire under the house to play the hifi in the kitchen, the living room, his office. As teens in the 50s, my Dad had been into modern jazz, my Mom into the R'n'B of the DC area, but when they met in the 60s they bonded over folk. This developed into a fandom of Fleetwood Mac, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, The Chieftains.

I've realized the two records they played that have affected my lifetime listening the most were things my Mom especially loved: Music of the Ozarks (https://www.discogs.com/Various-Music-Of-The-Ozarks/release/2754062) which had songs she remembered as a little kid in Arkansas, and the Donna Summer comp Walk Away, which she'd use to power calisthenics.

Yes. It made me realize indie snobs have nothing on northern soul fans. Lol. My dad listened exclusively to NS. I never heard chart pop until I turned ten-ish and discovered music. But happy I heard all that NS growing up.

My parents only like classical music and within the classical music their fave is baroque and in that drawer their god is Johann Sebastian Bach. #2 is probably Mozart (quite experimental, not baroque!). #3 maybe Händel.

I love Bach too - especially the Goldberg variations which btw was not part of their huge Bach collection - but besides that they did not give me a lot of inspiration concerning the music I listen o this day. Maybe listening to all that baroque music in my youth influenced my music taste in that way that I was craving for rougher music with harder edges like for example Sonic Youth.

my dad has always been a huge rock fan and perhaps more than anything an accumulator of music (now that used CDs are practically free he buys tons and tons of them, often of artists he doesn't even listen to, I think as long as he has some passing familiarity with the name he'll buy it; I see En Vogue and Mariah Carey discs in his office and I know he's not sitting around bumping those).

when I was growing up though, he had a sizable vinyl collection but the real boon for me were his cassettes since that was my primary medium for consuming music. he used to tape a lot of full albums off the radio and that was my first means of exposure to a lot of stuff. he's always been a pretty broad rock listener but he does have a particular affinity for rootsier types and that influenced a lot of my earliest classic rock listening as well -- his Mount Rushmore is probably Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Van Morrison, and Dylan. even today, he's hugely into Jason Isbell, so I guess old habits die hard.

Drilled holes in the floor and ran speaker wire under the house to play the hifi in the kitchen, the living room, his office

that's a GOOD DAD

Good thread idea Pom!

Easy answer is no, it didn't. Though in a way I think all of our parents' tastes leave marks, making you either go with it or go against the grain. My parents' lp collection consisted of Creedence, Simon & Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac, Beatles, Stones, Dire Straits ('Brothers in Arms' was the most sold lp in the world, remember?!), Abba, 60s etc. My mum was a big Roy Orbison and Fats Domino fan. Oh, and The Dubliners lol. Otherwise it was mostly 60s and 70s radio. But it was always on. And I appreciate how many music I got to know through them. It was having the radio on at all times that kind of made me find out my very first likes and dislikes, and steering through that on my own - I vividly remember my mum hating Minnie Riperton's 'Loving You' while I *loved* it, so strange and beautiful and wonderful. And that that was *ok*, that people have different tastes? As obvious as that sounds. She had the Oh Superman 7" that she loved to bits, there was that.

It wasn't until I literally found an lp suitcase full of Tangerine Dream and Schulze and Can and Richard Wahnfried and Miles lp's at my uncle's (my dad's brother) that it felt like stumbling upon a magical portal.

Since my mother died last year, I've seen quite a dramatic shift in his music listening habits. Before it was anything goes. Now, he's completely - and exclusively - tuned to classical music. He can't stomach anything else really. Quite something to witness.

My belated condolences, LBI.

I do find classical music more comforting than other genres, for whatever reason.

Neil Diamond

thanks j.! He was majorly into hifi, though avoided snake oil.

Thank you <3

I mentioned it that for all my life - and the question at hand sort of implies it - that our parents' taste in music seems "fixed" most of the time. A life-altering experience like the death of your loved one can do that, of course, but I was still surprised to see this first (ever) major shift in my dad's musical preferences. If you beg for sounds of comfort or solace, it will make you look for it far and wide. And yet I think it is of a deep beauty that this made him go way beyond his former musical preference and explore this 'terra nova'. He's not just listening to it, he wants to know about it, reads up on things, goes to concerts. That may sound basic but believe me, for my dad this is a big transformation. If anything I'm glad for it.

Perhaps it's something for a different thread, but the radical change in musical taste of a parent is something to behold.

(xp to pom)

That's genuinely heartwarming. I'm sure he'll draw sustenance from it for many years to come!

The most notable difference between us, perhaps, is that neither of them has much patience for extreme dissonance and avant-garde gestures.
Anyhow, I'm especially curious about those for whom the exact opposite happened.

― pomenitul, Saturday, July 13, 2019 4:02 PM

I'd say Ash Ra Tempel is pretty avant garde.

My mother had quite a big influence. But it was a very delayed influence, I didn't get into most of the stuff until a decade later, but the memories of hearing it were surely important.
She played Blue Nile, REM, Talk Talk, Tango-era Fleetwood Mac, Portishead. I never got massively into Pet Shop Boys or Annie Lennox but I'm considering buying them someday. The only one that wasn't delayed was Radiohead, I picked that up immediately and it was then that I realized music was worth actively seeking out and treating as important.
There was loads of stuff I'll probably never have a great deal of enthusiasm for (Simply Red, Phil Collins, Mike And The Mechanics) and sadly the only new bands she seems to like are Coldplay inspired.

Dad mostly likes hit singles from his youth and very seldom appreciates anything else. Several years ago my dad put on a "blues classics that inspired The Rolling Stones" compilation and he was hilariously narrow minded about it, he just kept skipping the tracks and saying "shite" to each track. As if he thought The Rolling Stones were idiots for liking these blues songs.

my parent's copy of CCR's Chronicle taught me so much about simplicity and how to arrange music