Old Skool

Warren and I have reached the point where we absolutely cannot listen to the Ramones one more time. I have an unusually high tolerance for listening to the same thing over and over again. (I spent the entire three months I lived in Isreal listening to Joni Mitchell's Blue. In the Peace Corps, I listened to Blue and the Counting Crows' August and Everything After for two years.)

Satchel and Jiro, however, have only just begun. We went from total silence in the backseat until "Blitzkreig Bop" or "Sheena" came on, to special requests for "Spider-man" and "The KKK Took My Baby Away," to putting "Rock N Roll Radio" on repeat. As Satchel calls out requests from the backseat, I scramble to fill them, hitting "Scan" as quickly as I can.

While it takes Jiro a second or two to figure out of I am playing his favorite song, Satchel can tell each song by the first bar. Even the ones we hardly listen to. "That's Rock N Roll High School!" he complains from the back.

Last week I promised Warren that when he came home from Missouri on Friday night that I would have the boys hooked on something new. I have an entire CD case filled with Kid music that I collected in their first years of life. I have all of the classics like "Schoolhouse Rock" and "Free to Be You and Me." I have Mister Rogers, the Muppets, and millions of mixes. I have the cool kid music from the cool adult bands--They Might be Giants, The Bottle Let Me Down, Greasy Kid Music. I have quirky stuff like Music for Aardvarks and Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang. I have world music, folk music...slow songs, fast songs...

But none of it compares to the Ramones.

When Warren came home on Friday, I told him to sit down. "I failed," I said. "I couldn't get them off of the Ramones." I resolved to try again. "Give me one more week."

They don't want kid music I told myself. They want to rock.

Yesterday I went through Warren's CDs. If they like the Ramones, then maybe they'll like the Beatles I thought. Afterall, the Ramones did name themselves after the Beatles. There's four guys with similar haircuts in both both bands. It could work...

I tried the White Album, Sargeant Pepper, and Naked.

EEEEEEEEEH (that's the sound of a buzzer)

Ok, what about the Sex Pistols?

"What's a Sex Pistol?" Satchel asked?

"Uhh...let's find something else!"

The Rolling Stones? The only CD Warren had was something called "Circus" and it tanked bigtime.

The Clash?

EEEEEEEEEH

Bob Marley?

EEEEEEEEEH

"Can we listen to 'Rock N Roll Radio?'" Satchel pleaded from the backseat.

I went back to my music collection. Joni Mitchell...no way...Tracy Chapman...doubt it...oooh what's this..."Hey, I know. Let's listen to The Flat Mountain Girls," I said. "This is the music I that was playing when you were born," I told him.

"Ok!" he enthusiastically agreed. "Then we can play the Flat Mountain Boys," he said.

The Flat Mountain Girls are a now defunct old time band that an old college friend of mine headed up in Portland, Oregon. While pregnant with Satchel, I inexplicably got hooked on their rendition of the song that asks, "Are you washed, washed in the blood, the soul cleansing blood of the lamb?"

We actually made it through a few songs, mostly due to Satchel's incessant questioning (i.e. "Where is the Flat Mountain?"), but Jiro was busy grunting and pointing from his seat. He was trying to tell me that everytime we hit a bump, it skipped.

Dammit.

This morning I woke up with new resolve. I need something they can sing along too. I looked through my CDs one more time. Where were the Indigo Girls? (Warren would love it if they got hooked on that! Ha!) Where was August and Everything After? (He'd hate that too.) Where was all that vintage Queen? (I could already see Satchel and Jiro banging their heads singing, "We will, we will rock YOU!")

All of my brilliant ideas are on cassette tape. I have no cassette player in my car (or anywhere else in my house). Should I hit half.com and try to get some used Cds? Then, suddenly, I found myself on the brink of exisitential crisis. I haven't even fully caught up with CD technology and it is essentially outdated.

I'll admit it, I fear the iPod.

I think I'm a new version of those people clinging to vinyl I thought.

But you know what, it's OKAY to be old school.

I mean Old Skool.

It rhymes with COOL.

"Who wants to hear the Ramones?" I asked as we pulled out of the driveway.