(Old Lemons Are Yellow guitarist/new dad Paul Kaufman has something extra to celebrate this weekend.)
This is the first Father’s Day that I’m actually a father! This prompted me to share some musical thoughts with all of you.
Last fall, my dad was visiting the new baby and us, and one evening we saw one of those PBS retrospective/fundraiser specials highlighting major musical performances that had been on the Ed Sullivan show. Lots of classic bands at their peak: Beatles, Stones, Sam and Dave, Sly Stone, Byrds, et al.
This footage had all been shot when I was 0-5 years old, and that era remains the bedrock of my musical upbringing. However, to my daughter, the January 1967 performance of Mick Jagger asking to spend some … time … together is as distant from her birth as a scratchy newsreel of flappers dancing the Charleston is to mine. So, 40 years from now, will I be watching a Justin Bieber documentary with our grandkids?
Actually, probably not. By then, I plan to be playing bass for the Jimi Hendrix Experience on my new Holodeck. I’ll get the Deluxe version so that I can go to the awesome after-party.
Chime in with your current Dad Day plans, favorite Father’s Day memories, or which version of a jet-pack you’d like instead of a necktie in the year 2525.
— Paul Kaufman
More by Paul Kaufman:
- Songs for the DIYper set
- Songs that were separated at birth?
- Seen any good shows lately?
- ‘Sesame Street’: Forty years ago today …
- Beatles: Rock Band … The missing buttons
- Nostradamus I’m Not Part 3: Punk rock sweeps America!
- Nostradamus I’m Not Part 2: The Cold War
- Nostradamus I’m Not Part 1: The Final Frontier
- Sucking in the ’60s
- London Calling
- El sabor de San Diego
PAUL -- your first?? Congrats, they get better and better.
The Ed Sullivan fundraisers brought back memories for me too. I think our children will have a different experience though.
My little girl, 5 yrs old, already listens to, and watches, everything from Medieval Chant, Swing, 50’s rock n roll, and, of course, bad punk, to Gorecki and Cage.
Information explosion and overload.
When my elder daughter was just shy of three years old, she was sleepless and inconsolable at around 3am Father’s Day morning.
Desperate for some way to distract her, I told her about a special holiday tradition: driving to the supermarket to see whether the Father’s Day Fairy had come to stock the cereal aisle with breakfast treats for all the good families in the world.
I loaded her into the car, and we drove about five blocks to the Safeway on Mission Street near Geneva.
And lo, it came to pass that the Father’s Day Fairy had in fact worked his magic: The shelves in the cereal aisle were full to overflowing with Froot Loops, Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms and every other breakfast brand known to dads and children alike.
And it was good.
I knew a guy in Maine who was his own father
Oedipus Garris
“I was King of the Thebans!”
Here’s a list of 100 songs (sort of) about fathers. I don’t know if fatherhood has inspired as many great songs as the ones about motherhood … This is a great song, though:
matthew, i love that story. good on you, papa.
my dad died 14 years ago. but right before he did he gave me a huge gift… he was really sick so he couldn’t speak, but he managed to say, “strong. (pointing at me) proud. (pointing at himself) love. (pointing at himself and then at me. then we hugged. he was gone a few weeks later. and never said another word after that day.
story: growing up, as i did, backstage at the met and in the sd opera house, i was blessed to hear some of our most treasured voices… but none compare to my fathers tenor. he had a bell like beautiful projecting voice. once told me that music is the key to a better world. because the deaf can hear it through the vibrations, the blind can see things behind their eyes in the sounds, babies, elderly, everyone in between feel something in music. to this day i can’t sit through any opera or symphony without seeing, in my heart, my father standing there, tears down his face, singing with all his heart, or listening so intently, and loving every second of it all. his passion for music and theater inspired me then, and it inspires me now.
happy fathers day, dad. i love you. for all the music you gave me. for all the everything.
Thanks for the stories. Here’s mine:
I woke this morning to find that my 6 year-old had stealthily crept in to the room at some point in the night and stuck to my nightstand a post-it, on which he had written this:
“Hapee Fodths Da”
I wish the same to all of you!
>>I woke this morning to find that my 6 year-old had stealthily crept in to the room at some point in the night
Simon: Are you sure it wasn’t the Father’s Day Fairy?? (Hint: Look for the pile of Apple Jacks.)
PS: Ava, wow. What a gift from your dad!
Simon: Are you sure it wasn’t the Father’s Day Fairy?? (Hint: Look for the pile of Apple Jacks.)
Matthew: I’m just Manx enough to believe in the Little People but also Manx enough to know that they trade in mayhem and not in sentiment. Anyway, in this instance the culprit was clear from his cheesy, expectant grin as he lurked in the hallway…
Thank you, Ava. What a beautiful story.
My Father was very smart, he was a member of the Engineering Code in New York City. He was Chairman of the Finance Committee for our home town. He was a Mechanical Engineer and traveled the world establishing safety standards for cryogenic vessals. When I started singing for a punk band he just shook his head, he came and visited me at the Mod’s house in San Diego, he left shaking his head, I don’t know where I am going with this……………………
O Youth and Beauty!!!
The presumptuousness of this sequence always makes me laff … How many of the kids pictured here ended up raising new brands of holy hell while their parents were off finding themselves in the ’70s? 🙂
My 15 year old on fathers day woke up complaining he was sore from some show he went to at SOMA. He listens to some shyte that is all just gutteral screams and other wierd sounds. Hmmm, must be akin to when my mom used to tell me to turn down my “wierd music”. Anyone else have kids that are “discovering their own independence” ? One only hopes that you have instilled only good things in them, but I then shudder when I remember what we did when we were “just hanging out having fun”.
On a totally random side tangent, I took a wee wee in Gay Dennys on El Cajon Blvd the other day. I probably haven’t been in there since ’86. Who made up that name ?
>>On a totally random side tangent, I took a wee wee in Gay Dennys on El Cajon Blvd the other day. I probably haven’t been in there since ‘86. Who made up that name ?
Mathias: Gay people, I think! Studio 9 and some other clubs were out that way … The crowd certainly had a lavender cast some of the time. The cross-pollination of dance-club and rock-band contingents was a huge part of the charm. (Anyone who missed it should read Kristen Tobiason’s piece on El Cajon Blvd. Denny’s.
I got a Facebook invite for a “Studio 9 reunion” last Saturday at Gay Denny’s. I thought of sharing here, but I didn’t want to crash — virtually — a private party.