The Waist-Down-Music-Monk Gets Taken to School

 May 30, 2023

   One of the things I enjoy about visiting my kids and grandkids is listening to their music. Last Saturday in Issaquah, my son-in-law, Mike, humored me with the "Tom Petty Radio Station" on Spotify when we were in the back yard and I must say, I totally enjoyed it up to a point (the beginning of the second rotation). So then I asked Mike and Deena to play me some of their favorite tunes and that's when the enlightenment began. Or, to put it another way, Dang! These young, whippersnapper songwriters and singers are really pushing the form and stretching things into the outer-limits-zone, especially to an old Waist-Down-Music kind of guy.

The Waist-Down-Music-Monk of Issaquah

is taken to school

Two Samples of My Issaquah Kin's Musical Taste

Dress sexy at my funeral my good wife
For the first time in your life
Wear your blouse undone to here
And your skirt split up to there

Oh dress sexy at my funeral my good wife
For the first time in your life
Dress sexy at my funeral my good wife
Wink at the minister
Blow kisses to my grieving brothers

—Bill Callahan

I ran down the road, pants down to my knees
Screaming "please come help me, that Canadian shaman gave a little too much to me!"
And I'm writing a novel because it's never been done before

First house that I saw I wrote house up on the door
And told the people who lived there they had to get out "cause my reality is realer than yours"
And there's no time for the present
And there's a black dog on the bed

I went to the backyard to burn my only clothes
And the dog ran out and said "you can't turn nothing into nothing is with me no more"
Well I'm no doctor but that monkey might be right
And if he is I'll be walking him my whole life

—Father John Misty

   I actually really enjoyed these two songs. And, as a matter of fact, I enjoyed most of their songs and it may have something to do with how old people reacted to the Beatles and the Stones when I was growing up. I swore to myself I would never say this:

"You call THAT music?!"

—Adults of a certain persuasion, responding to my music when I was growing up in Kingman, Arizona