Herb Sundays: Saturdays and Sundays

Driving around with dad, '80s and '90s. - SV4

Herb Sundays: Saturdays and Sundays (Apple, Spotify). Art by Cina.

Note: I realize Father's Day, Mother's Day, and many holidays are complicated and tend to interrogate parts of our lives and unearth loss in unexpected ways. My post is about my dad, but it's also about sharing music together with people you love. It could easily apply to any parental figure, familial or otherwise, an older sibling, a friend, a mentor, or someone you help shape too.

As a kid, Saturdays and often Sundays were for adventures. Adventures were shorthand for time with my dad, just driving around and doing things. In a suburban milieu, that could mean just going to (fill in the fast food chain we would delightedly hit), the park/playground, hopefully, the toy store (the Toys 'R' Us era was eye-watering in its scale and beauty) or with any luck, the video arcade, etc. Sometimes, my sister would join, or maybe he'd pick me and a friend up from a sleepover. The only constant was music. 

Unlike other dads who played the soul-crushing classical stations or ‘80s/’90s NPR with their bone-dry vocal room delivery, our car tended to be a mad dash between 5 radio stations (pop, hip-hop/R&B, country, oldies, etc.) peppered in with periodic cassettes and eventually CDs. The unspoken goal for my dad and me, by proxy, was a feverish desire to find new tunes or revisit classic tunes, pure dopamine. Radio sufficed for discovery, or maybe we’d sprinkle in something my dad saw on MTV or VH1 a week before, which we’d jam or hit the record store to find. This playlist is a composite of some favorites that still elicit emotion for me.

Dad with my sister and I. Per usual I’m usually annoyed about something.

My family has always seen music as this all-important thing. My dad, born in Detroit, can recall hearing the Four Tops at a college party for the first time, literally stopping him in his tracks. The fun was and is still about trying to find new music, and we text each other links almost daily. Just like how adventures were about listening to a new album, trying to spot future singles, and panning for gold. Was there a song as good as the single that promoted its purchase? Sometimes, we found one or two better. I am still only beginning to share my favorite music with my 3-year-old son, interspersing our own adventures with a dash of his music and my music. I’m excited to share more.

Because of these family moments, I've always asked a lot of music. I ask it to renew me, or like a scent, to fully remind me of my life in ways words or images can't. That sequence of sounds can be the differentiator of your whole day. I leaned on the music and continued to lean very hard against the stuff, trusting in its strength. 

This post was inspired by Herb 110: Cina Rocks by Michael Cina and Reilly Brennan’s (Herb 58) Lite Beach playlist, a Kmart-era soft rock/pop magnum opus for his mother.

---