It Has Discovered Rock & Roll Snobbery

I'm trying to work and the manchild explodes through the front door bouncing up and down like a pile driver and says "Dude, you gotta download Black Dog and Paradise City! They're like my favorite songs! What you don't know Black Dog?" it makes a derisive snort. "Jeez, didn't you used to run a record store? They're my favorite band I love that band gunsnrosesnledzeppelin ilovethatbandilove--"

I have to say I've had Led Zepp on the brain since I heard them on Pandora after years and years of strenuously avoiding them like the freakin' plague. All those bands from my very very early youth, the days before I could drive, before I could even ride a full sized ten-speed, way back when, the day whereof you speak when you say back in the day. That time. I loved those bands then. I liked the Doors and Led Zepp and Diamond Dogs from Bowie. I was into it. But after three hundred years of listening to the Doors played by tired old afternoon drive DJs I got sort of disgusted with it and started listening to jazz.

I still can't stomach the Doors but a deep and abiding love of Zepp has returned in full blossom. I just downloaded Houses of the Holy and yes I got black dog for my burgeoning head banger but I'm a little tried by his insistence that I'm a sad, disentigrating relic of musical taste and my love of bands like the Tin Hat Trio is blanched into oblivious white out in the stunning glare of his brilliant and pure love of Led Zeppelin.

But I'm not complaining, I'm just grumbling a little while I wait for his taste to to unfold fully enough to finally realize that my CD collection displays the burnished and weathered taste of an aficionado, a lifelong lover of music. I am encouraged by a couple of things.

a) Me. I have exquisite taste. Really, just check out my favorite Pandora station.

b) He takes drum lessons from one of the most talented heavy metal drummers in Chicago, a veteran of Chicago grindcore and math-metal bands all the way back to Ministry, a guy who can play 6/4 on the toms and 2/2 on the bass drum and not freak out. This guy has Roon play along to Clutch and the Talking Heads and is just a musical genius and having my kid in there getting an earful about the hypnotic effects of rhythm from this guy makes me fnorkin' joyous. And it means that by the time he gets it into his head to start a band and the other kids start to notice him, he'll have magnificent cred.

c) Him. He can swing from Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band swing jazz to Rob Zombie to Me First and the Gimme Gimmes doing Science Fiction Double Feature without skipping a beat.

d) He can do complicated math in his head. Nothing spells good tidings for musicians that a deep love for math.

Hopefully he'll break out and start a band and go platinum on iTunes and support me for the rest of his life. Hopefully he'll do that before he sneers at my music again because if not, I may just kill him.