MCR Rawks!

My daughter turned 16 last week, and one of the gifts we got her was a ticket to see one of her favorite bands, My Chemical Romance, who by coincidence are playing here in town this Thursday. It’s the Y101 “Snow Ball”, which features Sparta and Say Anything in addition to MCR. She was pretty darn jazzed about the opportunity to see Gerard and the boys in MCR play songs from their new CD The Black Parade. However, since I’m not quite ready yet to turn her loose in a crowd of several thousand for a show of this nature, I got TWO tickets. Though this particular bill is not one I would have chosen to see, and I hate the Coliseum, I’m looking forward to it. Compared to similar bands, I think MCR is pretty good. They have a way with melody and infectious hooks, and they have ambitions above and beyond their genre (most often they’re labeled Screamo). I also like the only song I’ve heard by Say Anything. I wonder sometimes if it’s embarrassing to my kids that I enjoy some of their music. I don’t think they mind. There’s a huge amount of stuff I listen to that they will have nothing to do with, though my son is more flexible. He likes a lot of classic rock, The Who, U2, Pink Floyd…he just chose “I Wanna Be Sedated” for his new ringtone, which I think is a riot. Of course he likes new stuff also. The daughter, on the other hand, sticks mostly to current rock, pretty hard stuff usually, like MCR, System of a Down, Evanescence, the Used. I remember my parents being pretty flexible about the music I liked, even though there were occassional comments like “It sounds like just noise to me.” In general they were open to being exposed to the music my sibs and I listened to. There seems to be a thin boundary between being a (moderately) cool, involved parent, and being nosy. I don’t want to invade my kids’ territory, I just want to stay in touch.