Father and Son

I know you’re not supposed to live your dreams through your children … apparently.  But there is one vision I have for Ted which I find hard to shake, the idea that he will have excellent taste in music.

Taste is obviously individual, so by excellent taste in music, I mean music that I like.  Rather than enjoying only my current tastes in music, I have always had a vision that he would educate me and challenge each other to develop our musical tastes.  At four month’s old, this might be a lot to expect. 

Having watched any real chance of becoming a musician pass me by (I say “real” because I still harbour a dream), I now have to turn my ambitions to my heir.  Perhaps we could be like the Mystery Jets where the song writing is done by father and son.

I recently started reading Washington Square by Henry James and came across this exchange:

“my dear Austin … do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?”

“Good for what?” asked the Doctor.  “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.”

From this assertion Mrs Penniman saw no reason to dissent; she possibly reflected that her own great use in the world was owing to her aptitude for many things.

“of course I wish Catherine to be good,” the Doctor said next day; “but she won’t be any the less virtuous for not being a fool.  I am not afraid of her being wicked; she will never have the salt of malice in her character.  She is as good as good bread, as the French say; but six years hence I don’t want to have to compare her to good bread and butter.”

Of course the Doctor comes across as incredibly conceited, but I adore his core faith that his daughter will be good.  I believe this is a kind tribute to the girl’s mother’s (who passed away shortly after her birth).  It is soured by the Doctor’s belief that intelligence is fundamental to a person’s overall “worth”.

I am similar.  I have no doubt that with Bianca’s parenting, Ted will be an outstanding young man  However, when it comes to the idea of his musical tastes, surely I’m allowed some fun?

I had hoped that the songs Bianca and I would sing to Ted would be sufficiently interesting to build his interests.  I remember hearing Kelli Scarr saying that she sings “helpless” by Neil Young to her baby boy.  I didn’t even know about Neil Young until I was 20.

What to sing to your child is a tricky one and whilst struggling to think of something “cool” to sing, I have to resort to a tried and tested song to soothe Ted in the hope of sending him to sleep.  The current favourite songs that seem to work (or have worked at least once) with helping Ted to sleep are:

-          Hey Jude (sung as “Hey Ted”) – The Beatles

-          Sloop John B – Beach Boys

-         We All Stand Together – Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus - great for duets with Bianca

-          Bad Romance – Lady Gaga – shocking I know, but the shock of the “RAR” seems to settle

More embarrassingly is the mix of made up songs to nursery rhyme tunes based around “Teddy Boy, go to sleep”.  We haven’t progressed to the genius levels of Kimya Dawson who recorded an excellent album for her daughter ("Pee Pee in the Potty" being a favourite).

There has been some positive signs though, Ted seemed to enjoy hearing the ukulele or electric guitar.  When he didn’t scream I wanted to gush “he’s going to be a guitar player too!”  In reality he was probably just curious about the strange person and even stranger sound being projected at him.

I am aiming to influence, not brain wash, but being a control freak my natural tendency is to brain wash.  I appreciate that any child with Bianca or my genes will happily rebel against any direction we set for them.  As such, I need to try and foster the environment from which great taste in music will emanate.

My taste in music has little to do with my parents, but this may be their genius!  Their taste was squarely middle-of-the-road, and whilst this has provided me with a fascination with 80s music such as Dire Straits, Genesis etc, I can remember feeling exposed as other kids began talking about The Smiths, U2 and REM (hardly niche acts - but that was as edgy as Lowestoft got).

I’m now beginning to freak out slightly more about the lack of control I have over this.  The overriding fear is that Ted will sit Bianca and I down one day and announce that he likes house music or R&B (and not the cool edgy stuff, but disposable chart stuff).  I feel a desire to make some mix cds in preparation for such an emergency.

But should this be my real fear?  Should I not be more scared by the idea that he becomes intensely interested in music and ditches everything to “make it” in a band?  Clearly this is acceptable if he becomes successful, but as a parent you quickly play the percentages and want the best for your child.  Would it be more scary to have Ted pass through education with a solid professional career ahead of him, for him to turn around and pursue music?   Financially it is definitely scarier. 

Ultimately, what will always scare me is that I cannot control how Ted grows up.  I can only influence it.  But I can’t even control the way I influence him…

The First Time

As I spend more and more time travelling across the country on the train, I have been trying to find different ways for my ipod to keep me entertained and I took the spectacularly nerdy decision to work my way through entire back catalogues of artists.

It is rare these days to even listen to an album from start to finish.  I believe shuffle a cardinal sin.  A truly great album should have had the track listing agonised over.  There are plenty of examples of bands leaving off great tunes as they didn’t “fit” with the album (“hold me thrill me kiss me” was written for Achtung Baby, essentially a dark album about divorce).  I believe in the sanctity of the album creation.

Working through a back catalogue is fascinating as you can chart the evolution of the band.  I predominantly buy the first album of a band, viewing anything later as no longer fresh, but this is also because bands are under so much pressure to deliver immediately.  We rarely get bands making it super big on their 4^th or 5^th album.

First up was U2.  Judge me if you must, but they are the band that have had the single biggest impact on my musical taste.  I have welcomed listening again to the punk influence of Boy maturing into the intelligent anger of War.  The evolution into super group with the bad hair cuts but anthems of October and Unforgettable Fire (with a pretentious, but electric live album on the way) before Joshua Tree which catapulted the band in the US and helped create U2’s caricature.  The jarring industrial sound of Achtung Baby is an incredible relief after the sensibilities of Rattle and Hum.

But the most important of all their records will always be Zooropa.  It will likely always be my favourite record.  I bought it blind having heard about Bono’s duet with Frank Sinatra (on I’ve Got You Under My Skin – incredible).  I didn’t realise that this song would only be a b-side on the release of Stay (Faraway So Close). 

On the same day I bought Zooropa, I bought Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke.  As I read the book and listened to the album on loop I was transformed into another world.  I had never heard anything like this, it was what the future sounded like.  I believe it is still what the future should sound like.  The unique guitar sound on Numb, the intensity of Stay, the humour and filth of Lemon (particularly for a teenage boy).  The First Time became intensely personal, and The Wanderer introduced me to Johnny Cash for which I shall be eternally grateful.

And to think that the album was recorded in a short time (by U2’s standards) whilst they were in the middle of a 2 year world tour staggers me.  It is a great album to listen to at night, which is probably reflective of the time it was recorded.

I must admit I’m a little disappointed by the more recent U2 albums which seem to try and recall the techniques of Joshua Tree (and to a certain extent the ballads of Achtung Baby), but that’s because in my mind I’ve already heard the perfect record.  But maybe the band was right, as the “logical” step from Zooropa was Passengers, which I enjoyed but only as it made me feel avant garde at the time (I appreciate the irony) – Larry Mullen Jr described the band as having “disappeared up its own arse”.

It’s probably a brave/stupid thing to broadcast my passion for this discography, and I do sorely wish Bono wouldn’t make it so easy for people to poke fun at him, but I can’t deny my roots (I also feel enormously uncool to describe an album released in 1994 as my roots).  I have compounded the issue by being a real geek about the band, reading books, collecting CDs, recording live shows, calling at Edge’s guitar technician during soundchecks ("Dallas").  But being a nerd about music is important to me and these train journeys afford me the time to revel in it.

Targeted advertising and the errors of a 17 year old

I had a Saturday job working at Boots when I was 17, and would occasionally work the perfume counter.  This led to me building a decent “nose” for detecting perfumes.  I refined this skill, thinking that it would be a useful technique for chatting up girls.  If I knew their fragrance, maybe I could make guesses about their personality.  It wasn’ t useful.  It was creepy.  Rather than thinking this a skill, it appeared that I’d raided their dressing table.

Effectively, all I was doing (honestly) was experimenting with targeted marketing…

The ultimate end point for marketing effectiveness is to target the individual, the “market of one”.  As I penned thoughts on this during my degree in 2000, I had no concept of how close we would get in such a short time frame. 

Although we’re not at the extremes of the Minority Report, with Tom Cruise being welcomed personally by a computer upon walking into GAP, tools such as Facebook advertising and retargeted display allow us to get pretty darned close.

Whilst I’m loathe to use this as a form of therapy … I must admit being in a moral dilemma as to where I position myself on the issue.  As a professional, I want to target potential car buyers as well as I can, and with little wastage on those who are not in the market (aside from the “brand building” usefulness).  As an individual though, I hear complaints from friends who deem targeted advertising a form of intrusion. 

This may upset some, but my instinct is that more targeted advertising allows the user to have access to better content and services.  We give little thought to the fact that adverts are paying for the TV programme we enjoy watching, and we often find ourselves enjoying the advertising itself – usually because it speaks to us as a demographic.

All advertising is targeted, it is a waste otherwise.  But how targeted does it have to be before it becomes a violation of information we have shared in good faith with friends, or shopping we have been doing in private?

Amazon’s recommendation engine is now part and parcel of how we purchase media on the internet, and yet this is an ever growing monolith of data and rules designed to extract the maximum spend from you.

I suspect the answer lies, as ever, in common sense.  Targeted advertising can work if it is subtle and helpful, or more significantly, not blatantly obvious and a pain in the backside.  How many of us have been recommended books on Amazon that are wildly inappropriate for us, but linked to an embarrassing book we’ve bought for a friend?  Only recently I had a play on the ScrewFix website for a new extractor fan for my bathroom.  I soon got bored of being served targeted adverts on extractor fans!

Whilst I would like to think advertisers will regulate themselves, I think the reality is that the media platforms will have to take firm stances on this.  At the moment, Facebook and Twitter have strict rules on some elements of advertising (eg not allowing dating ads to be served unless someone has stated “single” in their profile), but will they be tempted from this when public companies and quarterly targets are under pressure?  These sites (Google included) are in a precarious position, whilst they are enormous machines, they are the creation of a public who has craved their services.  As soon as this trust is breached, the sites could lose market share very quickly.

You could argue that Facebook is already at tipping point, particularly as the fastest growing segment is aged over 50.  How long before credible independent republics of social network are created?

As a marketeer, I will always try to improve the effectiveness of our marketing spend, but it is short sighted to “spam” our potential customers.  We owe it to deliver a consistently good user experience, and I believe advertising should play along these lines.  In fact, I’m hoping that we can be cleverer with targeting and use it to build a relationship with consumers … it will take discipline to not make the same mistakes I did as a 17 year old – that definitely wasn’t effective.