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Trying to get your parents to like your music
I was just reading a blog posting by a millennial young woman, Bessie, whose parents are good friends of mine from Walker Church. Alice and Don B., the parents, are both musicians of great talent and heart. The first time I met them was in 1986 or 1987 at our then pastor Bryan Peterson’s cabin in Sandstone, MN, when they came to a church planning retreat to check us out, and pitch their music. We loved their music and they must have liked us, because they’re still around. So the writer was talking in this blog about how she loved punk music as a teenager and young adult, and her mostly ineffective attempts to get dad Don to like it. Bessie’s a full-fledged adult now, but still has a fondness for the weird music of her youth, as you do.
When I was a teenager I was enamored of Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, folk music, including Peter, Paul and Mary, and Buffy St. Marie, Judy Collins, and Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Cat Stevens. And yes, I still like a lot of that music. I think I did try to get my parents to like this music. When I was younger, I had liked their music, which was almost exclusively from the Grand Ol’ Opry, so it didn’t seem that much of a stretch. They could tolerate Peter, Paul and Mary. They thought Simon and Garfunkel were effeminate (probably thought they were gay, but they never talked about that to me. They assumed or hoped I was completely…
