My parents are lunatic fundamentalists who would prefer not to be exposed to anything or anybody outside their creepy little world. I know this, but sometimes they still amaze me.
Mom has started watching “American Idol”, which gives us something to talk about when I call to make sure she’s not dead yet. Last week’s AI theme was Elton John; the performances were pretty abysmal, and I commented to Mom that Elton John songs are hard to sing. She said that she had never heard of Elton John and hadn’t recognized any of the songs on the show. I was a bit stunned and offered, “How about the songs from the Lion King? You’ve heard those, right?” At least she knew that LK was a movie, but no, she’d never heard the songs.
The only AI contestants that Mom likes are the 2 white guys. The black singers make her uneasy. I guess if you’ve managed to miss 40 years of Elton John, you probably missed the whole black music thing too.
For many years I’ve sung with a symphony chorus. Mom has noted several times that she hates classical music. That’s a pretty big paintbrush ya got there, Mom.
My brother is a jazz pianist. Mom knows he plays piano, but I doubt that she could name the genre. She once said, “I hate jazz music. It sounds like they’re just making it up.” (I actually had to leave the room to keep from exploding with laughter.)
What does Mom like? Well, she goes to Branson once a year with her sister. For a week they see three shows a day. Once Mom overheard me listening to Arthur Rubenstein playing Chopin. “They have much better pianists at Branson,” she informed me. “They can play a lot faster than that too.”
Email the whole incident to a fellow co-worker, calling the boss all sorts of nasty names…then when big boss goes to fire you, say “Gotchya!”
On the serious side, that does suck. I don’t know any legallities of it but is there a company policy on it?
How do other co-workers feel about her denial?
Buy your mom some Liberace albums (I’m sure some are still in the catalog.) Be sure to find the ones that mix his butchering of the classics with butchering of popular songs, as well.
Roy Clark is a fine musician as well as a Branson legend. He can fiddle really fast, too.
I think Mom will be getting Elton John’s “Greatest Hits” for Mother’s Day. I can’t wait to hear her evaluation. When I gave her Willie Nelson’s “Stardust”, her comment was, “How can such a pretty voice come out of such an ugly face?”
How old is your Mom? As a 47-year-old, I can tell you it was physically impossible to get through the 1970s without being bombarded by Elton John, even if you were a deaf-mute living in a cave in the North Pole.
I was just thinking about this today. Mom and Dad certainly aren’t fundamentalists – in fact, Dad’s a lightly practicing conservative Jew, Mom a liberal Lutheran. However, they’ve got a huge disconnect when it comes to modern technology and contemporary popular culture, especially when it comes to music. Anything after 1955 is … well, kind of hazy.
“elmwood, do you know anything about this band that I heard some people your age talk about? It’s named something like Iron Zeppelin.”
Mom’s up-to-speed on television and movie actors, but not with television shows and movies themselves. Thus, when mentioning what che watched the night before, she’ll say “I saw a re-run of Alan Alda on FX, and then watched Jim Carey on HBO.”
My mother’s 82, and until her recent illness, was usually more up on pop culture than I was (she worked in a high school for 30 years, that probably helped). She watched Sex and the City and The Daily Show, read the paper every day . . . She liked The Beatles before my sister and I did!
Of course, she’s also a left-wing feminist heathen . . .
Every generation has its music. Your mother’s 84, so she probably considers popular music to have hit its apex around 1940. Like Eve, I’m a child of the seventies, so we’ll always consider Elton John, the BeeGees, and Fleetwood Mac as major musical acts regardless of whether or not we personally liked them. But a 21 year old is probably as ignorant of Elton John as your mother is. We’ll get our revenge in 2030 when they mention Britney Spears and get a blank look from some teenager.
I think that 20-somethings know who Elton John is, due to Lion King, Candle in the Wind, and now American Idol. I’ll check with our college interns when they come in later.
Something tells me the “blank stare” will come much sooner than 2030. She’ll be remembered for her money, her quickie marriage, and her dimwittedness, but not her music. I’ll bet.
It’s probably better to discover she doesn’t know who Elton John is rather than discover her head banging and playing air piano to Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting.
