Not Good. Not Tonight.

It’s a good tradition.  It kind of reminds me of hanging out with my closest friends.  Late night etiquette requires that I pick a song, and then you pick a song and then he picks a song and we round-robin so that everyone regularly has a chance to dazzle everyone else with something new and distinct.  We all try to listen politely but everyone is anxious and everyone is scheming about their next opportunity to play something jaw-dropping. 

The younger daughter and I pulled into my office after dinner last night.  This room has some reasonably good speakers and at least two chairs.  Soon we had her sister in as well and my wife’s confirmation that she would join soon.   The previous night, we did the same and I tried to only play female artists.  We did some odd, old Motown like the Flirtations, predictable favorites like Janis, and Joni and Tina Turner.  But tonight, I disregarded the gender filter.

My younger daughter, as anyone who has read this blog more than once or twice knows, is obsessed with the bullet-proof-Boy Scouts:  BTS.  I can now recognize a few of the members.   She played one solo tune by the band leader RM, which was genuinely impressive.  I’d been oafish last night, when I made snarky comment about her favorite guy Suga and his lip-synching. Not good.  Not tonight.  She found an early video of a “battle” he participated in before he blew-up, and, pared down, rough, I liked this, as well. 

Her older sister, who used to be more passionate about music seems to have been into the same band now “1975,” for nearly two years, which would have been unheard of when I was that age.  What do I know?  I guess she’s busy.  We saw some 1975 videos that were tricky and topical in a way I found a bit predictable, but I held my tongue and said the songs were catchy.  My wife, pulled up some classics;  the first lady, Peng Li Yuan singing patriotic songs with the army band back in the 90s.  We sampled the songs that shook her world in the 80s’ when music from Taiwan, like Deng Lijun and Hong Kong, like Xiang Fei, first entered China.  It’s the second time during such a session that she played the latter’s “A Handful of Fire” from the CCTV's chunjie special in 1987, and though it is goofy, of course, by any objective standard, it isn’t hard to imagine how this bourgeoise poison would have been radical at the time and separated parents from kids in a heartbeat.

And me?  Well, I started out with that clip of The Who performing “A Quick One” on the set of the Rolling Stone’s Rock and Roll Circus special and soon I was flailing away, imitating Keith’s rolls and Pete’s windmills, at turns.  The Kinks, The Small Faces, Jimi, and lots and lots of Beatles.  We even had time for two Rutles clips.  They’ve all seen them before but that was long ago, when they didn’t have songs of their own for me to consider. 

Sunday, 01/13/19