Considerations: even wrapped in football, rap is not my thing

I spent the half -time of this year's Super Bowl to like Kendrick Lamar's music. I failed. The show was one of the biggest musicals of the year in New Orlean, the birthplace jazz, blues and rock'n'roll, but none of the greatest music in this city was part of the half -time show. I couldn't overcome my disappointment.

If my grandmother was still alive, she would say: “Now you understand how I felt about rock'n'roll.”

I loved my gram and I know that she loved me, but that didn't mean that we had to love each other. The same applies to the music of my children and grandchildren. My son Ryan played guitar in several “garage rock” bands in his current hometown of Portland. I failed to like his music.

My taste was influenced by the Records Gram and my parents played on their 78 rpm consoles – Glen Miller, The Dorsey Brothers and Benny Goodman, melodies by Rogers and Hammerstein, The Gershwins and Songs by Cole Porter.

Gram's favorite was Lawrence. After getting a TV, she never missed a show. Sometimes I wrote to her with her.

She had crying with pleasure while his band played numbers, brought back the wonderful memories of her youth. I understood their joy. But I was never much interested in the Work show or music.

My parents had some records that liked me more, especially recordings from their favorite musicals. I listened so often that I learned all the words. These old musicals are still among my favorites. Every now and then they become “revived” in a new version of an old Broadway show. Here in Sonoma, our own wonderful Broadway theater group, transcendence, revives some and brings me the joy of joy when I see your shows.

But despite the strong influence of these songs from my youth “Evolved” after I received my first transistor radio and discovered stations that played rock'n'roll.

I would sneak this little radio into my bed because the signals from radio stations with little power consumption in the Bay Area came better after dark. So I discovered rhythm and blues and its subgenre, “Doo-Wop” rock.

Bill Haley and the comets already had their hit “Rock around the clock”, the rock and roll brought into the musical stream, and Elvis was just around the corner. Lawrence Welk did not play this music, but Elvis came to the Ed Sullivan Show on the Ed Sullivan Show from 1956 when I was a newcomer to the Sonoma Valley High School.

New hits came out almost every week. They were on radio stations of the top 40, which we allow as loud and as often as our parents, not that they or gram have ever become fans.

Some musicians, such as Fats Domino, whose musical skills and taste were improved in his hometown of New Orleans, even took old mainstream melodies such as “Blueberry Hill” and “My Blue Heaven” and transformed them into rock'n'roll hits. But that didn't impress grams. She knew what she liked and stayed with it.

As long as his repetitions lasted on television, she saw Lawrence Welcome. Occasionally I watched her with her. I miss these moments, even though I preferred the American band stand, which she could not stand and not see.

I don't think I will ever like rap, even if it is wrapped in a football game. But I can still love my music while these generations that have followed them, even if their children and grandchildren, some new and probably annoying, solid, solidly discover that they will try to like and likely to fail.