What will be the soundtrack to their lives?

How will I ever explain to the boys the importance of having the entire collection of The Chemical Brothers discography, or why Husker Du's "New Day Rising" is something to be honored?

Will they understand it? Or will they look at me with rolled eyes and a sigh usually reserved for adults when they attempt to get hip with youth?

I think about this quite a bit. Music, punk rock, and all that came with it was pretty much the foundation on what I built my adolescence on. The trickle-down effect into my adult life is certainly noticeable. While there has been obvious (and necessary) temperance in my zeal towards living with a punk rock heart, it still pounds within me. The naive edge is gone and has been replaced with a somewhat wiser world view, but it is part of my grain.

So, I wonder, what will my boys grain be?

I have far too many CDs in my house right now. As I write this, Fugazi's entire work sits next to Firehose, and Leftfield is hanging out with Led Zeppelin. My music collection is not a vast one compared to others, but it's healthy enough and lives like a secret treasure in two wooden cabinets handmade in India. Finn and Lachlan sometimes lie on the floor in front of them.

I look forward to the day when I can begin to pull out some of this music for them. For example, the anticipation of explaining the brilliance of Pulp's "Common People" is a thing I look forward to greatly. However, will it all be lost on them? I can remember looking through my father's music collection when I was young. I was drawn in by his LPs, but somehow his Boz Scaggs, ELO, and gospel stuff never took hold.

Will it be the same with my children? Will they look at these musical touchstones of my life as mere dinosaurs? Relics of the past that have no relevance to them now? Or will some of it seep into their conciousness resulting in a "Yeah Dad, this stuff rocks!!" confirmation.

I suppose it doesn't really matter though if they get into Mudhoney, The Verve, or Death Cab for Cutie. I just want them to find music as important as I did. Who knows what songs and styles will sing to this generation's soul? It could be radically different than what I was into, and perhaps it will be just as confounding to me as my love of punk rock was to my parents, but I just hope that the sirens of music are strong enough to pull my boys into shore. It happened to me, and it was music that guided me through life many times. More times than I probably realize.

So yeah, forget the genre, I simply desire music to be a part of who they become and I hope to be one of the aural navigators that leads them there.

It would be cool if they got into Naked Raygun though, and they better like The Pogues no matter what.