Unleashing My Inner 1950s Tightass
or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Rock and Roll

I’m going to let you in on a guilty little secret of mine: sometimes, while listening to old rock and roll from the 1950s, I like to pretend I’m an uptight middle-aged parent hearing the music for the first time.  It’s shocking! Simply shocking!  I get into a huff and forbid my imaginary teenaged children to bring this sort of rubbish into the house.  Why don’t you ever listen to those Gene Autry records I bought you for Christmas? 

The more innocent the music, the more fun this game is.   For example, I recently played this game with Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go.” Below is a video for those of you unfamiliar with the song, followed by the lyrics and a transcript of my uptight inner monologue.

Riding along in my automobile
My baby beside me at the wheel
I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile
My curiosity running wild
Cruisin’ and playin' the radio
With no particular place to go

Curiosity running wild?

Riding along in my automobile
I's anxious to tell her the way I feel
So I told her softly and sincere
and she leaned and whispered in my ear
Cuddlin' more and drivin' slow
With no particular place to go

Uh oh.  I don’t like where this is heading.  This is why we need the church committee to organize more teen nights.  Idle hands are the devil’s playground…

No particular place to go
So we parked way out on the Kokomo
The night was young and the moon was gold
So we both decided to take a stroll
Can you image the way I felt
I couldn't unfasten her safety belt!

Well, thank God for that.  Who knows what kind of trouble they could have gotten into if she was able to unbuckle her safety belt!  Wait, he is talking about her seat belt, isn’t he?

Riding along in my calaboose
Still trying to get her belt a-loose
all the way home I held a grudge
for the safety belt that wouldn't budge
Crusin' and playing the radio
with no particular place to go

Okay, you may think I’m just a square, but I’m not so square that I can’t figure out what going on here!  You know what he’s singing about, don’t you?  I will NOT tolerate that sort of filthy music in my house, do you understand? Now DON’T you “Aw shucks” me, mister, I’m serious.  I don’t care what they listen to in the malt shop, this is my house.  Is this how you spend your allowance? That’s it. You’re grounded.

Sometimes it’s hard to turn this mindset off, and when I start listening to something else I find myself being shocked by music I’ve heard hundreds of times.

Trent Reznor wants to WHAT me like an animal?  What’s happening to popular music?  What ever happened to just wanting to hold my hand?

If I allow the game to continue, I start to blame music for all kinds of things.  Well, of COURSE teen pregnancy is going to be an issue when girls are dressing up like Brittany Spears and singing about how “all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to If U Seek Amy.”  Of COURSE kids are going to be sexually active if they’re listening to music with sexually explicit lyrics.  See what happened?  We let Elvis get away with waving his pelvis around like a deranged pervert and now civilization is collapsing around our ears.

It’s around this point that I usually shake it off and come back to reality.  I immediately spot the error in my 1950s parental logic: Life in the 1950s was not like a Coronet Instructional Film.  Just because the kids were sporting poodle skirts and crew cuts doesn’t mean they weren’t getting busy when mom and dad were away.  Better have you naked by the end of this song, baby.  Kids are going to have sex regardless of what they’re listening to, and determining when sex is appropriate is not a new dilemma.  Only after marriage? College? High school? Is 15 too young? 16? How do you stop them when they’re 14 and their hormones are raging?

My head starts spinning, and suddenly I'm glad I’m not a parent with teenaged children who has to think about these things.  I can just play one while listening to my iPod.