So the wife and I will be bringing a Lil Grinder home in a few weeks. If posting suddenly takes a nosedive, now you'll know why. We've been spending all our free time assembling baby furniture (I have a truly impressive collection of allen wrenches now), rearranging our finances and generally doing all that responsible first time parent shit. But there are more important, more pressing troubles now facing us that could potentially shatter our marriage and impede the kid's growth.
How do you talk to your kid about grindcore?
Should I go the chronological route? Start them off with Siege, work up through Scum? Will they react the same way I did or just roll their eyes at music that's decades old?
How about dive straight into the deep end with The Inalienable Dreamless? Or is that something you have to work up to?
Maybe I should ease them in with punk and then wean them over with stuff that vaguely resembles traditional song structure like Nasum or more recent Pig Destroyer (NOT Book Burner).
Can a kid be suspended for singing "Cheerleader Corpses" at the school talent show?
Do Insect Warfare make onesies?
These are the kinds of things I have to consider now. I'm responsible for a little person's all import musical development. This is a heavy responsibility. Otherwise my kid could grow up to get heartagram tattoos and listen to Disturbed like their uncle. Ewwwwwww. You only get one chance to raise kids right.
If anybody has good advice on making sure your kids grow up with good musical taste, I'm all ears.
I'm preparing as best I can. At least I know I'll have the most bad ass diaper bag in the daddy play group.
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| My patch obsession is almost as bad as my sticker obsession. |
16 comments:
This is honestly something that I think about a lot, since I imagine myself being a dad in the less-distant-than-I-think future. I always imagine my kid reacting best to the energetic, fun, chaotic punk side of grindcore, and I see bands like Siege and Wormrot as great places to start. Nirvana (Nevermind came out when I was 2) and early Black Sabbath were some of the earliest bands I can remember hearing, and a lot what I liked in them was the energy and the nastiness of the riffs and guitar tone. Iron Lung seems like another great one, since Sexless//No Sex has a great sound and some catchy sing-along parts (unfortunately, I don't think that a gang vocal of "Sexless! No sex!" should start replacing "Wheels on the Bus" on your car rides any time soon). His Hero is Gone, Rudimentary Peni and Holy Mountain Sleep (no kid has the attention for Dopesmoker; I could barely get my girlfriend's nephew to sit through half of My Neighbor Totoro as a three-year old) would be nice, less extreme bands to play after you're done with a runthrough of The Inalienable Dreamless (and I think once your child's old enough, playing up the sci-fi elements of that record is a great way to keep your child interested in it as something "cool"). I feel like playing "traditional" punk like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols would just lead to your kid growing up to be an asshole, so I would probably stay away from those. And most Pig Destroyer seems almost too scary for a very young kid (although if your child doesn't have one of these shirts to grow into, there's something wrong): http://www.indiemerch.com/pigdestroyer/category/134
congrats! My wife just popped out a little one tuesday. Our older daughter was exposed to whatever I was listening to(which i believe was a lot of prowler in the yard and world extermination). I never changed the music for her. Started her out on some baby einstein bach then beethoven. Now she's almost 5 and likes stravinsky mainly bc of fantasia.
Oh yeah, and congratulations! Also: Baby Grindstein. Grindcore bands cover timeless children's songs/pen their own. Kind of like an extreme music version of the Yo Gabba Gabba soundtrack. I would kind of love to make this a real thing.
Congratulations! You should keep us posted on how this goes. I've always wondered the same thing. The problem with showing kids great stuff is that when their teenage rebellion comes around, they might do so by getting really into whatever bad music is popular at the time...
I was raised by Mormons and rebelled.
A girl I know was raised by total fuckin' metal heads. They brought her to Megadeth and Morbid Angel concerts all the time. Unfortunately, they were also totally irresponsible assholes. She told me all of this right before telling me she had just bought tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.
Maybe you'll be able to indoctrinate your kid as long as you're not an asshole.
My 5 year old daughter is a nervous nelly and gets scared very easily. She doesn't much like the extreme metal I'm constantly playing around her. She did warm up to Iron Man though because I told her it was Iron Man himself saying "I am Iron Man". She also likes Ozzy because I just read the Wizard of Oz to her.
My only advice is to expose him/her to the good stuff and let him/her make up his/her own mind. Kids tend to do that no matter what you do. I try to remember that episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Lisa start hanging out together because she happens to like a monster truck rally. But when she wants to do something girly with him he complains, revealing that he wasn't really interested in who she was, just that he wanted to mold her into what he wants her to be.
Don't be Homer!
Congratulations! My almost 3 yr old still likes her nursery rhymes, but also likes the crap on the radio. Sometimes she does not mind the grind but when the f bombs start dropping that is when you have to stop it unless you don't mind your toddler repeating the words. The way I look at it, kids don't really continue liking the music they listen to when they were 7, if that was the case I'd still be listening to Michael Jackson.
You need to learn to like those nursery rhymes at one point unless you want to listen to your kid whining and crying.
I hate The Beatles, probably because my dad spent like 10 years tryin' to make me like those fuckers, so my advice is (and my plan if i become a dad) is to not be pushy about it, just casually listenin' some Brutal Truth and wearing some Cripple Bastards merch till my kiddo starts doing the right questions, and then acting like "this is not music for kids" so he/she starts listening to it as something taboo.
Congratulations, dude!!!!
Seriously, I think the best way is just to listen to your stuff and and not make a big deal about it. It will make your kid curious once they figure out that this is something Dad likes.
My dad (possibly intentionally?) passively got me way into all kinds of 70s proto metal/Southern rock/etc just by having a cool vinyl collection. This eventually turned into days when he'd get home from work, maybe have a few beers, and then dance all over the living room with toddler-me while jamming ZZ Top.
Obviously, as I got older I got into different, new music that I found on my own. But, because he was so laid-back about the stuff he liked, and because we had such fun with it, anything in his record collection has a special place in my heart.
/Bill
congrats man! my oldest is 10, and listens to a wide variety of good music- never once and so-called kids music, but also not a lot of metal. true story- a few weeks ago i went to see Misanthropic Noise..she eagerly asked me what concert i was going to. when i played her a MN song, she laughed hysterically the whole way through it and said "That's not even a SONG!" kids like blatant melody and rhythm, so good luck indoctrinating but don't get your hopes up until he/she is a teen.
i live in absolute terror of coming home to whatever taylor swift analog is shitting up the airwaves in about 15 years.
I totally dig some Tay Swifty.
Srs. Don't hate me.
/Bill
bill, my friend. we're all your friends and family here. we're here to support you during your tough time. but this is an intervention...
i have an eleven year old son and my approach with him to music is the same as religion. i let him know what i like - what i don't and the world is his to choose. he got his first ipod for christmas and thus far he's only wanted bad religion's suffer and misfits walk among us. he thinks grind is noise and screaming. but i remember a time in my life when i wasn't into either. who knows? he really likes video game soundtracks more than anything else. anything zelda, castlevania. he's got his own style, knows what he likes and really that's the best outcome, something he can build upon, imo.
congrats andrew btw
My baby sister (3.5 years old) seems to like grind alot and for quite a while (does funny dances and roaring noises for it too), but she only does so when I am around, so I think she only likes grind because I like it and am there.
Ohh and congratulations!
Congrats, I am a new dad myself about 5 weeks ago. Right now my little guy is listening to funk and hip hop but I plan on slowly working in the hard stuff when he's a little bit older. Because right now I want calm relaxing stuff for him so he can sleep easy.
I'm way down the road myself, now, having sons of 16,19 and 21. Two of them are like me - lovers and explorers of music. I've always encouraged them to follow their own tastes like myself and to value music which is sincere and challenging. The youngest is big on 80s punk, post punk and hardcore, the middle one a huge hiphop fan (and he listens to the good underground stuff). Neither of them is big on what I listen to, though they enjoy it when I play it. That's cool - I wouldn't want them copying their father's taste. What's important to me is that they appreciate music from the heart, that they follow their own paths and not vapid fashion, that they think for themselves.
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