Words of wisdom from Ben Folds
by chuckofish
I have been listening to old mixes that I unearthed while putting away CDs and DVDs one day. They are wonderful and always set one to remembering what was going on when such and such a song was popular. You know. Anyway, I was playing a mix that daughter #1 made when she was preparing to drive to Indianapolis for a January internship her senior year at DePauw back in 2007. Remember Shania Twain? Rascal Flats? And then ol’ Ben Folds came on and his song Cooler Than You, which was always a favorite of mine. You remember the chorus:
Make me feel tiny if it makes you feel tall
‘Cause there’s always someone cooler than you
Yeah, you’re the s**t
But you won’t be it for long
Because there’s always someone cooler than you
I do appreciate my children introducing me to all kinds of new music. I shudder to think that I could be one of those people who is still listening exclusively to Beatles tunes or Motown medleys.
It is fun to go to estate sales and see the LP collections that people who must be the same generation as my parents leave behind and that clearly their children do not want. They all have the same records that my parents had!
Harry Belafonte!
Tijuana Brass!
Show Tunes!
The Kingston Trio!
I’m sure they thought they were pretty cool back in the day, forward-thinking and not shackled to ol’ Blue Eyes and those other crooners. Then their children started bringing home Bob Dylan and the Kinks and Joni Mitchell…Sometimes it’s hard to keep an open mind, but my parents tried, and I try, and I’m sure my kids will too when the time comes. But you know, there’s always someone cooler than you.
P.S. I still have all my parents’ old records. Will my children want them? Will they even have a record player?
dual personalities 
Well I for one know that I’ve stashed a large percentage of Dad’s folk/blues collection in my room, and that Christmas wouldn’t be a Chamberlin Christmas without extensive listening in our collection of classical vinyl. Plus, vinyl is pretty cool right now – my apartment in college had a record player, and everyone loved it. We had a CSNY record that got way more play than MP3’s whenever people came over. Although I did get too lazy to move all of it here to State College, so maybe that doesn’t bode well for the future…
My son, Chris, has a record play in his room at college, too, and has mined our collection of vinyl. I just wish I had some place to put it all. Most of ours is out at our camp.
So what’s wrong with a playlist of Motown every now and then? And I don’t even need to worry about who’s cooler than I (everyone is) because i already know i don’t have any vinyl and i don’t even have a cool blog.
The Harry Belafonte album cover is my favorite.
I am so in the mood for a little Tijuana Brass!
I goes both ways ya know…! My itunes library is pretty Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits/Gordon Lightfoot/Hal Ketchum-heavy these days. We are allowed to pick up the music of our parents too! 🙂
And that is music to my ears.