Mom's music has the power to shame teens

If parents ever grow tired of their children's music tastes - whether it's screeching metal, pornographic rap, bubbly pop songs with inane lyrics - the sure way to change those preferences is to start listening.

I tend to turn up the music in my car to a volume probably best described as "too loud," as I've noticed that if I get out of the car, close the doors and walk away, most people could still name whatever tune happens to be playing.

So when I was dropping off my two boys at school the other day, and on the CD player was "The Very Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions," my 14-year-old son begged me to turn down the music. During that split second when the door was open, someone might actually hear what his mother was listening to.

His insistence would have made someone think I was blasting Barry Manilow or singing along with the Jackson 5 or even playing that other Elvis.

Back in the day, Elvis Costello was anti-establishment and hip, recording the kind of music that would elicit the classic parent complaints - "I don't understand the words" or "he doesn't even have a good voice."

The people I knew in the 1980s who listened to Elvis Costello styled their hair so that most of it either fell across their faces or stuck up straight in a mohawk, and their wardrobes were basically black. Among them were a few well-pierced and strangely dressed young men who my parents didn't care to see cross our threshold.

But despite the past counterculture following of Elvis Costello and his music, if your mother likes it, it's not fit for the average middle-school kid.

My suggestion that I be the disc jockey for my son's next dance has been soundly rejected. "You wouldn't know what to play," was one of many reasons cited.

Despite what I had previously perceived had been a comfortable mother-teenage son relationship, I realized during the last dance that I had officially become an embarrassing presence.

I had to pick my son and a few other boys up before the dance was over. I was a few minutes early and took a seat in the corner of the gym, behind a row of the chaperoning parents.

Just before we had to leave, my son came over and by turns, begged, pleaded, ordered and then pretty much physically pushed me out of the room. He wanted to dance one last time - but it could not even be considered with his mother in the vicinity, even when she was hidden behind a wall of parents whose kids obviously didn't mind their presence. It was an unexpected turn of events in our mother-son relationship.

Every parent probably believes they're going to be the exception on these matters. Their children will share their cultural interests, appreciate their artistic sensibilities, embrace their example of good taste, share their musical passions.

I figured the same for myself, as long as I never repeated my mother's most grating habit, which was to hum along to pop songs in the car when she didn't know the words. (She only ever expressed a fondness for Pat Boone, whose music was largely absent from the airwaves during my adolescence.)

But no matter how we long to believe the coolness of today's parents far outstrips that of past generations, there will always be a coolness gap.

And as long as that's the natural order of things, we may as well crank up the gangster rap, sing along, and watch the kids develop a sudden appreciation for the music of Pat Boone.

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com