Inevitable music gentrification

There I am in the Pizza Hut with Oldest Boy, when I hear “Kill the Poor” over the stereo. “Hey, you’re listening to the Dead Kennedys!” I say.

The pizza guy blinks. “Yeah, no one else has recognised it yet.”

“That’s cool. I went to see them in Salt Lake in ’85. Jello Biafra stage dived on my head.”

“Wow,” says Pizza Man, who may or may not be stoned.

“Who are the Dead Kennedys?” asked Oldest Boy back in the car.

“Are you kidding? Have I never played you any DK’s at all?” I asked. “What kind of father am I?”

It only took a second to dial the iPod to the appropriate folder, not counting the time it took to ignore the irony. Soon we were jamming down the road to “Religious Vomit”. I was explaining how the Dead Kennedys were able to meld British punk into an genuinely American brand of thrash infused with leftist political sensibilities and extremely tight musicianship.

And I thought: Is this an odd situation? My introduction to the Kennedys was not family friendly. I think it was at Chad Smith’s house. I was listening to this grotty obscure punk stuff that no one was listening to, and I felt cool. My son’s introduction to the DK’s was from his Dad’s car stereo. Not particularly counter-culture or transgressive.

I suppose it’s like high school, when you hoped the normal people wouldn’t find out about your music because that was what made you different. But everyone did anyway, which is why alternative music became the new mainstream in 1991, and everybody became hip, which was not cool.

But these things have a way of traveling in cycles. Oldest Boy will find his own sound with its own forbidden allure. And when he does, he’d better tell me about it, unless it sucks.