Grandpa Steve and Grandma Sue have been far beyond invaluable to our entire family for more than two years with transporting Brian to and from Root Elementary School and The Goddard School. Reports from all three parties indicate that they all have really enjoyed this arrangement. This responsibility will be ending in literally one week as Wake County Schools go on summer break and Brian will be returning in the fall as a full-time Kindergartner! As much fun as it has been over these two years, I’m sure Steve and Sue will be glad to have their Monday through Thursday afternoon schedule back! And even though he probably won’t admit it, being at Goddard all day for the summer will be a good break for Brian.
That is a bunch of back-story leading up to this post. I actually did the Root to Goddard leg this afternoon and Brian immediately opens his backpack after he gets his seatbelt on. While navigating out of the parking lot, Brian hands me a jewel case with a CD inside and says “this is my CD from Grandpa Steve!” I ask him if he’d like me to play it in the van on the way to school and he proceeds to tell me that I can’t do that because it’s a CD. In 5-year-old world in this point in history, CD’s are things that are played on CD players in classrooms. It blew his mind that the van could not only play a CD, but that we have a CD changer hidden behind the navigation screen. I find that part a bit funny as the van can play AM, FM, XM, DVD, Auxiliary Video through RCA jacks in the back, Auxiliary Audio through a mini-jack in the front, yet it was surprising that this 30-year-old technology was playable in the van. Guess it would be like me and my generation trying to fathom playing vinyl on a turntable in a car.
That aside, I start playing the disk, and it’s one of the many songs that Brian has been singing for a while. It turns out the entire disk is of Brian’s favorite songs from the many drives he had with Steve and Sue. He would tell us about his favorites when he saw us, but would never have the artist or title. We could guess some of them. We had to ask for help from the source a few times. This was really a sweet gesture as their regularly scheduled daily interactions will be coming to an end soon and provides a bit of a time-capsule of this very important time in all of our lives. I also think it is invaluable to Brian, who loves music, to get a bit more diversity in his listening options. Although I’d only call a handful of the tracks favorites of mine, the rest are valuable for being socially and culturally literate about music over the last 40 or so years. I would have never been able to come up with a collection like this, but I could also not imagine it any other way.
Alison and I have very diverse and eclectic tastes in music, so Kendall and Brian do get a good variety, but a lot of popular and mainstream music isn’t even on our radar (I learn about most of it from songs played during breaks at the Carolina Hurricanes hockey games along with Shazam). Our tastes are more along the lines of The Black Keys, Nirvana, Animal Collective, The Cure, Foster the People, Pearl Jam, Pavement, Depeche Mode, Grouplove, The Smashing Pumpkins, Arcade Fire, U2, The Killers, Stone Temple Pilots, Grizzly Bear, REM, Death Cab For Cutie, Soundgarden, Modest Mouse, The Smiths, Silversun Pickups, Alice in Chains, Vampire Weekend, The Police, Green Day, Beach House, New Order, Bush, Shins, Pretenders, Offspring, Flaming Lips, The Clash, or Morrissey. But we may throw in a little Japanese or Electronica just to keep it interesting. In the end, we appreciate everything Steve and Sue have done for us, but we also appreciate the extra cultural literacy they’ve given Brian!
Without further ado, here is the “Brian’s Music” mix-CD:
| Track Number | Song Title | Artist |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Call Me Maybe | Carly Rae Jepsen |
| 2 | See You Later Alligator | Little Feat |
| 3 | Moves Like Jagger | Maroon 5 Feat. Christina Aguilera |
| 4 | Y-Tu-Conga | Gloria Estefan |
| 5 | Brighter Than The Sun | Colbie Caillat |
| 6 | Cupid Shuffle | Cupid |
| 7 | Disturbia | Rihanna |
| 8 | Fly On The Wall | Miley Cyrus |
| 9 | Havana | Jesse Cook |
| 10 | It’s Only Money | Jeff Healey |
| 11 | Jungle Love | The Time |
| 12 | Rolling In The Deep | Adele |
| 13 | Rubber Biscuit | The Blues Brothers |
| 14 | Santo Domingo | Rodrigo Y Gabriela |
| 15 | She Works Hard For The Money | Donna Summer |
| 16 | Squat That Rabbit | Taj Mahal |
| 17 | Tequila | Brooks & Dunn |
| 18 | Thunderstruck | AC/DC |
| 19 | How You Like Me Now | The Heavy |
One Comment
Join the conversation and post a comment.
I guess you could say that Grandpa Roger and Grandma Cheryl are stuck back in the music of the 1940 – 1970’s, but we did buy Adele’s album on iTunes recently. That was great of Steve and Sue to compile the CD for Brian.