Music Memories #3

After interviewing my dad, I found that he had seen some bands that I would have never dreamed of him seeing. He saw the Doobie Brothers at the venue called Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1977. At the Oakland Coliseum, he saw multiple concerts at the Day on the Green festival from 1973 to 1978. He saw the Doobie Brothers, Santana, Pink Floyd, Chicago, Steve Miller Band, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Beach Boys, Steely Dan, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Eagles, Boston, Joe Walsh and many more. I would kill to See Pink Floyd or Crosby Stills Nash & Young back in the day. The thought that my dad went to those concerts makes me think of the many things that I don’t know about him. He said that he accompanied by multiple friends varying with the different years that he went.

It was about an hour drive to the stadium and they would bring food and blankets and other extra curricular items to make the day more enjoyable. I laughed as my dad told me of the intelligent ways that he would smuggle in alcohol. He would take a cardboard box, put the bottles inside, then get another box of the same size, cut off the top, then fold the flaps of the first box over the second and put the sandwiches and blankets in. He was successful with every attempt.

His favorite bands then were Steve Miller, Fleetwood Mac, Doobie Brothers. Styx, Boston, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Peter Frampton, BeeGees, Linda Ronstadt, Crosby Stills Nash and young, James Taylor, Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen and many more. He says that he still likes those bands, but he is also open to newer music heard on the radio and played by my siblings and I. He said that if it weren’t for us, he would just listen to classic rock all day long. I do have to say that I wouldn’t mind that. He has always been a radio guy, not attaining many records in his day. However he did get some albums and would string together his favorite songs on a cassette tape to play in the car. It was a big deal back then to have a cassette player in one’s car. He would listen to the radio in the car wherever he would go having a car since he was 16.

His listening to music has declined, he says, in the past 15 years because he has been working out of the home in his own office. He would always listen to music on his way to and from his work. I do have to say that if I did not do this essay, I would not have realized how much my dad and I have in common in what we listen to. I love classic rock, but I also love a vast myriad of other music including reggae, Indie music, rap, and experimental.

I also interviewed my mom, and compared to my dad, we had nothing in common. She was into 50s music that I don’t like so much. She never went to many concerts due to her conservative Roman Catholic parents, thus she never broadened her horizon of music appreciation. Though I wish I could have seen the bands that my dad went to, I’m glad that I was born in this era where I appreciate music of all shapes and sized.