Old Records Never Die by Eric Spitznagel

the second time that day.
    I know it was my own fault, for leaving it on the eighties station, but it felt like the universe was making fun of me.

Four
    W hen Charlie, my baby boy, was just a week old, he was perched like an inchworm on my stomach, as I softly sang to him what I hoped was becoming his favorite lullaby.
    Normalize the signal and you’re banging on freon
    Paleolithic eon
    For the nine months leading up to Charlie’s birth, friends and family members—both with kids and otherwise—told me repeatedly about all the terrible children’s music I’d be forced to endure in the coming years. And they always said it with a smirk, like they could barely suppress their schadenfreude at the inevitability of my musical suffering. They’d tell me about Thomas, the anthropomorphic and underachieving British train engine; and
VeggieTales
, with their not-in-any-way subtle proselytizing; and
Yo Gabba Gabba!
, whose name sounds like the frightened last words of somebody having a stroke. Well you know what? Fuck them.
    Long before I had unprotected sex with my wife, I wasdetermined to never, ever learn the lyrics to songs like “Toot Toot, Chugga Chugga, Big Red Car,” unless it’s performed by Iggy Pop and the “big red car” is a metaphor for Iggy’s penis.
    I don’t believe in children’s music. It’s unnecessary. Because every artist has at least one baby-appropriate song. Take the Pixies. Obviously you shouldn’t play “Wave of Mutilation” or “You Fucking Die” for a newborn. But what about “Where Is My Mind?” It’s only creepy because you associate it with
Fight Club
. Or that time you bought hash from that albino guy in Bucktown and got way higher than you should have. But in the right context, the lyrics are innocuous and sweetly poetic, like something from a Shel Silverstein book. “I was swimming in the Caribbean / Animals were hiding behind the rocks.” Adorable!
    About five minutes into listening to Soul Coughing’s
Ruby Vroom
for the first time, in a Chicago apartment across the street from the bar that blows up in
The Untouchables
, and I’d made up my mind about “Sugar Free Jazz.” I knew instantly that I’d be singing it to my child someday. There’s just something about the melody that sounds like a children’s song. I may’ve been stoned, and almost two decades away from reproducing. But I could see it all so clearly. This was the song.
    I announced this to everybody. Which always made people uncomfortable. Usually because when you’re listening to music in your early twenties, you’re not also having a discussion about babies. Girls, unsurprisingly, never responded positively to this unsolicited piece of information.
    My future wife—who, in the late nineties, was just a girlfriend who stuck around longer than the others—was more tolerant when I made these proclamations, although she also wasn’t afraid of making fun of me.
    I remember one night in particular—I was smoking cigarettesout the window of her studio apartment, while wearing a single rubber, yellow dishwashing glove because it was frigid outside. As I smoked, I told her how I’d be singing “Sugar Free Jazz” to my infant child someday—boy or girl, it didn’t matter.
    â€œSo you’re going to show off for your baby?” she asked.
    â€œWhat? No. It’s a sweet song.”
    â€œYou’re like the delusional old guy in that Randy Newman song,” she said.
    I knew what she meant. All Randy Newman songs are essentially about delusional old guys. But she was referring specifically to the delusional old guy in “Memo to My Son,” with the narrator who chastises an infant for not being more impressed with his father’s knowledge.
    Wait’ll you learn how to talk, baby
    I’ll show you how smart I am.
    It was just accurate enough to