Father's Day: The Soundtrack

Although my mom also had a great influence on my current music tastes (I can directly trace my love of Gordon Lightfoot to a mother-daughter road trip to Alberta when I was 14 or 15, but don't tell her because I fought her tooth and nail to listen to anything other that GL) it was really my dad who taught me to just love music for music.

I grew up without the idea that I wouldn't listen to something simply because it was uncool but because I had listened to it once and I didn't like it. As a result, while my classmates were hip-hop or rock or country or metal fans, I was just a music fan. I listened to everything as evidenced by a mix-tape (remember those?) I made in grade 10 which had Collective Soul, House of Pain, Nat King Cole, and the Dubliners on it. I was nothing if not eclectic.

For my dad, these are songs currently on my mp3 player because he made me listen to them ;) (I was going to do a little write up about each singer/group but they all ended up sounding the same way "my dad used to put these tapes on continues loops and blast them through the house" so instead, some have comments but most don't.)

Doug and the Slugs:

I chose Who Knows How (to Make Love Stay) simply because of the

'Drunk Musicians Fund' Fundraiser at the end. Their videos always made me laugh.

Leonard Cohen: My very first non-symphony concert was Leonard Cohen's Democracy Tour.

 

Sunday morning memory: Dad was cooking a fry up in his underwear

while belting out the words to this song.

Billy Joel:

1930's music (specifically, anything from Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective):

Irish Folk Music (the whole lot of 'em but that's an entire post by itself):

I really wanted to find the version that is track #1 on the Dublin Millennium Songs

sung by multiple Irish artists but I couldn't so you get the Dubliners instead.

Nat King Cole:

I know I already said Irish Folk Music, but I remember both my dad and my stepdad singing this song when I was young (in particular, I remember my stepdad playing it on the guitar when we were camping):

Happy Father's Day!