I was in grade 9. For music, we had to critique a song and present it to the class.
I poured over my records. Knowing that my Partridge Family records were not cool, I asked my older sister if I could borrow one of hers. She looked through her albums and handed me Cream and Steppenwolf albums. After listening to the songs she suggested for the first time, I chose Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride". I did my analysis and felt prepared.
I stood before the class and explained the drug connotations.My classmates liked my selection, especially a boy called Sam.
He asked me if the class could hear "The Pusher" from the album as well. I said "Sure!"
Then I sat,stunned, while John Kay belted out, "Goddam the pusher" over and over again while Sam rocked to the music with his eyes closed. It seemed to be a long song.
The moment was redeemed after class though when Sam said to me,"Hey Rodunski, you're all right!"
last name changed to protect the naive
5 comments:
Carol, sounds like something I might do. I don't even let my children listen to the radio. Since I don't know, and can't hear, any of the words to any of the songs, I am not taking any chances. They can listen with my husband if he allows it.
The teacher didn't make you stop the record after the "GD" word got dropped a couple of times? There's been times I was listening to something I had never listen to before and my parents just happened to be near when the explicatives started to fly. Though I'll admit I probably listen to a lot of music that I probably shouldn't. I edit the bad words in my mind, though. Honest.
Another mental editor here. If it's just a stream of expletives, a song probably won't interest me to begin with. But if it's a decent song with just a few colorful bits of language, my brain knows to automatically bleep them out so I can enjoy the rest of the song.
I never had *bleep* problem in front of a school classroom, but my children have heard one or two choice words I didn't intend them to hear, thanks to my internal censor that told me, "You remember, don't you? It's not a bad song."
This incident is not so much a comment on lyrics but on the importance of acceptance from others. It was hard for me to resist at the time but it felt good to be considered cool for about 5 minutes.
We humans are such social creatures. Even the under-social among us need acceptance and validation from others. This has been much on my mind, lately.
Post a Comment