Music That Dad Likes

Thanks to my Dad's small, yet potent record collection, I knew the music of Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. And, many others.

Growing up in South Paris, Maine in the late 1970s (or the late 1900s in modern parlance,) there were a wealth of media inputs for kids: Sesame Street, PicturePages, Slim Goodbody, and the flood of other products and media directed towards young people.

So, I have always mused on the fact that some of the first output our generation exhibited in our childhood was exercising whatever control we could over this media. If parents didn’t allow shows, we read books. If parents didn’t allow movies, we played music. As we got older, this began to happen on our own devices: Walkman cassette players, clock radios with an AM/FM radio dial, and then boomboxes. And it was around this output of exercising autonomy that so many of our first memories are clustered.

I think often about the emerging characteristic of Generation X that we are collectors of objects and organizers of things. It should be no surprise that in 1979, I began to inform my parents that part of their record collection had thusly become mine.

It should also be no surprise that many of these albums were pieces representative of the decade: “Saturday Night Fever” Soundtrack, John Lennon & Yoko Ono “Double Fantasy,” Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Band On The Run,” Cat Stevens’ “Teaser and the Fire Cat,“ and even the soundtrack for the Barbra Streisand film “The Main Event.“ To answer your curiosity, sure, go ahead and Google it.

The one somewhat anachronistic album of the bunch pre-dated those times by greater than a decade, but was still the freshest and coolest thing I had ever heard. If I knew what the term “hip” was at that point, I am sure I would have used it to describe the master work called “Equinox” by the inimitable Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66.

As a four year old, I was obviously still understanding the idea of personal-versus-shared possessions and what owning something actually meant, but somehow I knew that “Equinox” belonged to my Dad specifically.

There were train tracks that ran through our backyard. On the every-once-in-a-while occasion that a train would come through, it would inevitably cause any record on the record player to skip. I treated it as a minor inconvenience, and an opportunity to start the record from the beginning. Needless to say, this offered lots of opportunities for repetition.

I’ve reflected back upon the influence that “Equinox” and Sergio Mendes have imprinted regularly throughout my life and career.

The cover art with the sleek suits and stylish dresses gave me my first exposure to that kind of 60s mod pop sensibility and style.

Their impeccable vocal blend and playful interplay, along with their abilities and range from traditional Bossa Nova and Samba to modern Pop hits, became a benchmark for me in my view of vocal groups, and this era of Jazz/Pop.

It was the appreciation of this music that caused me to explore adjacent artists, styles, and genres. I learned that the A&M in the logo stood for Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, which set off a spiderweb of connections and understandings about relationships in music.

The Space Age Bachelor Pad and Pazz/Jop between the late 50s and the late 60s became the core of my lounge music DJ sets at the very beginning of my DJ career.

It was these gig opportunities that allowed me to consider pursuing my DJ career further.

It was truly this album that has served as one of the legs on the table of my appreciation and understanding of music at large.

My heart was understandably broken when I recently learned of the passing of this titan of music and culture, Sergio Mendes. A life richly lived. So rich, that he had oodles of creativity and joy to share with the world. Thank you for your generosity of spirit and sound, Mestre.

And, of course, thanks Dad for “sharing” your record collection. I’m not sure if I gave you much of a choice, but I appreciate you being gracious about it. It has truly changed my life.