"...Seriously, I Totally Respect Your Right To Listen to Crap..."

When it comes to perusing current music and current music performers, I make a concerted effort to avoid flipping the shit switch.

That device that our parents, and likely their parents and their parents, yada, yada, freely flicked in response to whatever music and music performers were current for us.

As in "why are you listening to that shit?".

At some early point in life, I seemed to grasp that my parents generation were never going to feel about John, Paul, George and Ringo they way they felt about Frank, Bing and Nat King.

And that was okay.

Different strokes and all that.

As the years went bob bob bobbin along and I graduated to the next, inevitable, tier of musical assessment, I always made it a point to point out that if I couldn't endorse and/or enjoy what my own kids were enjoying and/or endorsing, I could at least avoid the pitfall of parental poo pooing.

Which sustained me through, at least, a lot of early Madonna, let alone the brief and shining moments that were Vanilla Ice, Milli Vannilli and Adam Ant.

I suppose it didn't hurt that my work in broadcasting kept me relatively "hip" to any moment's "scene" and, accordingly, innoculated me from early onset old fart fogeyism.

That capacity for empathy has remained true, lo, these many years, right up to current, up to the minute, music.

And, seven decades in, I'm still able to resist cringe, grimace, pout or pucker when Gaga wails on about glory's edges, DeRulo persists in his belief that no lyric is complete without at least one mention of his own name and various and assorted "young recording artists" fill three plus minutes of air full of angst, regret and wistful reminiscence of the pain and heartache they have, thus far, experienced in this life, even when any of the said "artists" can count on one hand the number of years that have passed since they were in elementary school.

Hey, I can even listen to Christina Perri with the best of them, you know?

Even though, truth be told, I never really hear her anymore as much as I hear Dana Carvey singing "choppin broccoli".

So, there will be no "why are you listening to that shit?" from this stateroom on Noah's AARP.

Every now and again, though, I feel moved and/or inspired to contribute to young people's overall musical "education" by offering up something I think/hope they will find enjoyable and, with all due respect to their tastes, suggest as follows...

"....uh...say....when you get through listening to that shit....give this a try...."

I said I avoid flipping the switch.

I never said anything about not having my hand on it.