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"You know what song I have stuck in my head now?" Lamppost Head asked us, a Cheshire Cat grin on his face.
We couldn't guess.
"'A Kick in the Head,'" said our grandson.
The title sounded vaguely familiar, but neither I nor Honey could quite place it. Which made him smile wider, because he knew something we didn't know. We had to google it.
"Dean Martin. Your earworm is a Dean Martin song?"
Lamppost Head just kept grinning.
"Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" is the proper title. He had heard not the 1960 Big Band version by Dean Martin, but a contemporary (but still Big Band) rendition by Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. You may remember Murphy as the young black singer who was raised in extreme poverty in West Virginia and Detroit, and went on to win "America's Got Talent."
It was only three weeks ago that the grandson's seedling interest in popular music was fertilized by a crash course from his grandparents in music of the '70s, and now he's found the Big Band sound with a new version of a song that was a hit when I was his age. What's next? Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass? The Andrews Sisters? Warren Zevon? Pavarotti? Piaf?
He likes Kenny G, Joni Mitchell, Foreigner, Jars of Clay, Carlos Santana. Decades and varied genres of popular music, jazz to ballads to dance tunes, he's soaking them up like a sponge at age 11.
I barely knew what music was before I went to college, where we sat on the floor all day getting our education from LP record albums: Jimi Hendrix, King Crimson, Traffic, Deep Purple, Buffalo Springfield, and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. We thought it was the greatest music ever created, and it was.
Our musical journey with Lamppost Head began recently when his school was scheduled for a three-day holiday, while his brother's school was to remain in session, and their teacher mother, Shark, had to work.
Three days with him at our house was an opportunity to take a day trip somewhere he would find fun and interesting. He chose to hike Honey's ancestral mountain land with us, but the
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland was on the list of possible destinations, and to our surprise he said he'd like to go there with us. Honey and I have never been, but recently decided we should go soon. (Neither we nor rock and roll are getting any younger.)
"If we're going to take him there, he'll enjoy it more if he knows more about the songs and musical groups," my wife wisely observed.
We debated what groups or singers we should introduce to him, and soon our dueling cellphones were calling up favorite songs to see which ones he liked. James Taylor, The Beach Boys and Joni Mitchell were joint choices. Bob Dylan, The Temptations? Later, we decided. I voted for Leon Russell and Steely Dan, but like Russia on the U.N. Security Council, Honey vetoed them ruthlessly. (What has Russia got against Steely Dan, some of you are asking yourselves.)
We already knew Lamppost Head loved the Bee Gees. Honey often plays a Bee Gees concert from the '80s that she recorded on our TV's DVR, and the grandson sings and dances along with it.
Honey dialed up her favorite Joni Mitchell song, and the refrain "Oh, I, could drink, a case of you, and still be on my feet, I would still be on my feet" became a persistent earworm for the boy.
Foreigner's singable tunes hit him right, Fleetwood Mac's, not so much. The Moody Blues didn't grab him, but the Electric Light Orchestra did. ELO's "I Can't Get It Out of My Head" was the next song that, you guessed it, our grandson couldn't get out of his head.
Along with the songs, we told the stories. He knew Don McLean's "American Pie" from the radio. He didn't know it was Buddy Holly on that plane, and the crash was the moment that "the music died."
We remember when Crosby, Stills and Nash added Young. We know that "Sounds of Silence" was first sung by Simon and Garfunkel, not Pentatonix, whose version is nevertheless amazing. Our musical tastes have diverged in recent years, but Honey and I lived the era when so much great music was created, and when everyone knew the same songs.
Lamppost Head has his own CD player in his room. We went through our CD collection and picked out albums to lend or give to him.
We haven't made it to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame yet, but we will go, and other grandsons now want to go, too. Most important is the new musical link joining our generations.
One of the CDs we gave Lamppost Head was an extra copy of Carlos Santana's jazzy Latin album "Supernatural." The boy often hears it when Honey picks him up from the bus, because I usually have it blasting when I'm working up on the roof.
"Every song on it would play except 'Maria,'" he reported sadly, to which I wish I had thought to reply "Ain't that a kick in the head?"