Child #1 had a birthday (in the middle of exams this week), and amongst other things, his gifts included what has now become routine – a wadge of second hand CDs, sourced online, filling out his catalogue. Someone can be proud of their children for many things, but his growing ability behind a drum kit, and the fact that, when quizzed who is favourite band are, on many given days he might say Jimmy Eat World, reassure me that, as a parent, we’ve gotten some things alright.
He is – I am convinced – the foremost expert in the land on something a little more niche: the oeuvre of alt rockers Switchfoot, and it began with the discovery on our shelves of their best-known album The Beautiful Letdown, including the reworking of their best-known song: Dare You To Move. I thought about some of the other awesome tracks Switchfoot have recorded, but its hard to get past it.1
The Beautiful Letdown has had so many plays, we are genuinely on our third copy of the disc – the first being my own, from twenty-something years ago. We – he – now possesses everything they’ve committed to plastic. So in honour of birthday week, it had to be Switchfoot.
It didn’t start there though. It started with Colin Buchanan, then Semisonic, as mentioned previously. It progressed through a short-lived family room routine, dancing around to the absolutely sensational Gregory Porter jam, Liquid Spirit, then later into a mini-U2 obsession and finally indoctrination with John Mayer and Jimmy Eat World. Been trying to get him into The Gaslight Anthem just this week.
They say your children are the distillation of your best and worst traits. If one of my worst is early-century soft rock, then its absolutely true.
- I have a soft spot many of their tracks, including Ammunition off the same album, and from much later, the re-recording of their album track Won’t Let You Go featuring Lauren Daigle. ↩︎