Bumblebee's musical education continues apace

While my brain is sludgy and it hurts to work, I might as well catch up on my blogging.

Here is the wonderous footie poster mentioned in the post below, designed by artistes Hoon and Lozza:



Not something for the faint-hearted to hold up if surrounded by Bulldogs fans, but Bumblebee was unaware of these risks and no doubt brandished it proudly until it was surplanted by a GIANT INFLATABLE HAND. Ahem. Yes, yes, I know they're fun objects, but it was a TRUST issue, h'kay?

Now, when I was a kid I would have one ear glued to the pink cassette radio player (dead set ringer for the one in Muriel's wedding), hand poised on the 'record' button, desperately trying to catch new and groovy things to listen to when I wasn't listening to the radio. I'd end up with rough tapes full of the middle of songs, either because I would have tried to cut out the dratted DJ talking his way through the intro, or I'd have abandoned the radio for a loo break and had dashed back to press the button, and then I'd pressed the 'Stop' button just before the song came back from that false fade so many 80s bands loved, and I'd missed the end of the song.

Mind you, in those years I was listening to the local Townsville (Qld) station, and then whatever hick station in Orange (NSW), so these were never terribly cutting-edge sounds. Most of my thrills came from Kasey K (or whatever his name was) presenting the top 100 chartbusters on a saturday (?) night, and Molly with Countdown on a sunday night. I wasn't exposed to really good music until I got to Uni, and I wasted much of my BA catching up -- mostly in the uni bar, sitting near the juke box and going to lots of live shows.

What an embarrassment of riches my child has! He has just discovered that there is more to life than my CD and vinyl collection, and has taken to eating his breakfast to Jay and the Doctor on JJJ (I think he has a crush on Myf, along with every red-blooded Australian); lately he also discovered that I can download almost anything from iTunes (except Cold Chisel. I can't get any Cold Chisel. They're fighting the good fight, or else they have a dumb agent). We struck up a deal -- he gives me $1, I'll download a song for him. He gets $4 a week pocketmoney, so he thinks this is pretty cool.

So now I'll go to my computer and stuck to the keyboard will be notes like this:



For those without children, it says 'The White Stripes, Ickythump'. I think his music taste is developing quite nicely. [Later: check out Artie Fufkin's marvellous take on it here]

Last week he ran up the corridor and dragged me into the loungeroom, saying 'this one! something about flerrs!' It was Kenneth Bager's 'Fragment seven: Les Fleurs', which doesn't turn me on that much, but it made me sample the rest of the album (fragments from a space cadet) and I quite liked it. So we downloaded it and it's been our car music for the last week. Yay for Bumblebee.

So life isn't all discipline and snot. Sometimes we have a lovely time. Best Beloved isn't into music the way I am, so I'm glad Bumblebee has inherited my love of finding something new and fun to listen to, and it sure beats listening to 'Popcorn' on repeat for three hours, which was when I switched the radio on for him.