Damn you, Gibbs’s
For Dylan’s birthday, Jake and Airika bought him 2 CDs: the “Rock-a-Bye Baby! Metallica” lullabies, and “Kids Bop - 80s”. I appreciate their thoughtfulness (even though I just now realized that I forgot to send them a thank you….), but I also single-handedly blame them for making me suffer through some of the worst travesties known to mankind - turning classic 80s tunes into kid-friendly cheer-fests.
Granted, Toni Basil’s “Mickey” is already a cheer-y song, so I can let that one slide. But “Footloose”? “Livin’ on a Prayer”? “Kokomo” (which sucked ass just as a Beach Boys tune, but I digress…)? I could easily just skip over these particularly offensive songs, but that would mean suffering the wrath of the 2-year-old Lester Bangs in the backseat. The kid loves - LOVES - the Kids Bop version of “Wake me up (Before you go-go)”, to the extent that now every time we get in the car, start up the engine and begin rockin’ out to mommy’s Ryan Adams CD of the week, he incessantly babbles, “go-go! go-go! go-go!” until I eject “Love Is Hell” and insert the Kids Bop take on the Wham! classic. When it’s over, he cries out for “Mickey” (which in his 2-year-old voice sounds more like “Mih-eeee”)!
I’ve tried to get him to sing along to my stuff; he used to (before the KB CD entered our lives) climb into the car and recite his version of Ryan Adams’ “1,2,3,4” intro to “Beautiful Sorta”. The first time he danced was to Death Cab for Cutie. I was several months pregnant with him when I saw U2 the last time. And those lullaby CDs (we have The Cure and U2, in addition to the Metallica) have been in heavy rotation since he was born. I want my kid to rock! We don’t expose him to the evils of such kiddie/family faves as those ‘tards The Wiggles (why don’t they just call themselves 4 douche-y-lookin’ dudes in primary-colored T-shirts who sing and dance with Australian accents and convincingly fool American parents into thinking we’re totally not gay?), I refuse to invest one penny (or spare one of my limit-of-eight library DVDs) on the Diddle-Bops (or whatever the fuck they’re called), and there’s no way in hell I will ever let him listen to anything resembling Mickey Mouse Club-type kid-catering, soulless trash like the Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana.
But he wants to listen to some poorly trained “professional vocalist” destroy “Karma Chameleon” (admittedly, George O’Dowd’s weakest contribution to the annals of cross-dressing pop star lyricists), or defile Bow-Wow-Wow’s finest hour of “I Want Candy” with bratty chants of “Give me what I want!” interspersed with references to sweater-wrapped hotties. And that’s fine. For now. In the coming years, I hope to instill in him the value and necessity of appreciating the “original artists” without the girls’ choir harmonizing in the background.
So, yeah. Thanks a TON, Jake and Airika. Really. The thank-you card is in the mail (and just remember that you two will have a kid someday. And I will be waiting…).
