Music lessons

It was about a year ago when I first loaded music onto my nephew’s iPod. His mum didn’t (and still doesn’t) have iTunes so his only music was from my collection; which meant his Uncle Paul’s collection, too. We randomly loaded as much music on as would fit and I told him to let me know what he liked and didn’t like and the next time he came to visit we could be pickier about how to use his 8GB of space.

Well, much to my surprise, it was Billy Bragg and Aztec Camera for the win! So at his next visit, he got some Morrissey and Deacon Blue. OK, he pretty much wanted all of his Uncle Paul’s music.

Parker is now 13 years old and is very much a fan of 1980s British punk and rock – for better or worse. He also loves his Uncle Paul so very much – as evident by the fact that before his death, Paul was the only one allowed to call him by a nickname which, and since the funeral has become his preferred name. So that may have something to do with his love of the music.

Anyhow, this love for Paul and his music made it easy for me to know what to do with Paul’s old vinyl records. So this weekend I packed up the records and our record player and brought them to Parker. He seems pretty excited about Del Amitri and U2 and The Smiths and The Waterboys and, well, all of them, really. His mum points out that the excitement is the main reason he cleaned his room today – otherwise there wouldn’t have been room for the new turntable and LPs.

One thing that really made his smile was that included in a box of 45s was a handful of hand-written play lists from back when Paul would DJ at University of Edinburgh discos. He’ll enjoy that, I think.

Of course, now the kid just has another reason to hide away in his room. Which may or may not be a good thing.