my father's playlist

It started with a simple Gchat conversation. I saw my dad online, and started “singing” Ween to him. “Push th’ Little Daisies,” to be precise, which was prominently featured in an episode of Beavis and Butthead that I think we watched together once, the two of us cracking up in the basement of the house on Howard Avenue. He didn’t really remember it, and that’s okay, I remember it well enough for both of us.

What he did say was this: By the way, All Things Considered is doing something this week called something like “My Father’s Playlist.” I can think of at least two songs you could write about for them.

My dad loves music. It’s kind of funny, given that, to the best of my knowledge, he never really played any instruments seriously. There might have been a brief flirtation with a clarinet, and every once in a while he dances with a harmonica or, more recently, a bodhrán, but for the most part his infatuation with music is expressed via stereo speakers turned up just a little too loud for comfort. A trait, might I add, I have inherited from him.

I hadn’t really thought about it, before the above exchange, but there are a lot of memories of growing up, memories of him, that are inextricably tied to sound. Driving along the Beltline in Madison, helping him run an errand for work, his face all squinched up as he made me howl with laughter while he sang along to Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home.” Dancing around the living room to the Dead’s ”Casey Jones.” Listening to The Band while we drove up the mountains in Colorado.

The standout track, the defining one, is Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” That whole album is pretty tremendous, and despite not having listened to it in years I can still probably sing it front to back, but that song in particular captured the imagination of the old man and me. We choreographed a dance to it, with hats as props. Somewhere, lost in the garage or in some forgotten box in a basement is a scratched out VHS tapes that captures those minutes for posterity, both of us giddy and goofy and enjoying the hell out of each other.

Being a parent is hard. Being a good parent is damn near impossible, when you think about all the variables involved. I don’t think I appreciated just how much until I became one myself. You give up on any notion of perfection pretty quick, and just hope that at the end of the 18 years in which you are charged with sheltering and nurturing and growing that you come through with a minimum of scrapes and broken bones, that somehow, amazingly, you and the life you created have some common ground, are still speaking.

But there are perfect moments. On the back of a motorcycle, riding along the Mississippi. The first plane ride, on a 747 bound for Phoenix. At the top of a hill in Spring Green, craning through a telescope for a fleeting view of a comet. Picking cotton on the side of a dusty Mississippi road. We’re going on an adventure, Gandalf. Dancing around the living room, tipping our hats at one another and making faces, singing at the top of our lungs.

String those moments together, pin them up on your wall, stand back and smile. Look at what you made, and maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good.

Turn the music up, Dad. I feel like dancing.




The playlist:

Bob Seger - Betty Lou’s Getting Out Tonight
The Grateful Dead - Casey Jones
The Band - Up on Cripple Creek
John Fogerty - Centerfield
Dan Fogelberg - Run for the Roses
Tom Petty - Free Falling
Jackson Browne - Running on Empty
Bruce Springsteen - Glory Days
The Traveling Wilburys - The End of the Line
Warren Zevon - Tenderness on the Block
Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al