Motörhead Mama/Plasmatics Papa

As we suggested in our introduction, Introducing the folks, music played a big part in our thought process in naming this blog.

I noticed, in searching for alternative parenting discussion that veered away from the expected hippie-dippie path, that most alternative parenting discussions find themselves in seem to identify as "punk", to one extent or another.

Before I step too far away from the point, by the way, may I note that while I am, at this point, as guilty as anyone of using hippie as a pejorative, I think a parenting plan that uses the kinds of philosophy Abbie Hoffman and others might have advocated, is very much in line with what I am interested in pursuing. It just seems the people who carry on that image are so fucking precious. They might as well be a bunch of boring religious conservative frankly.

And, for a whole number of reasons, but starting with the fact that Heavy Metal Homesteader played such a role in forming the idea that we need to create a discussion of parenting from our own version of the debate, I'd like to find more parenting discussions that identify as "heavy metal", but so far I haven't had much luck.

Not to mention that I started my days of the teenage version of rebellion, that self-conscious kind of rebellion, with heavy metal. I'm quite sure my basic nature was always rebellious. I can't recall a time my thought-process didn't include a strong inclination to question the hell out of everything.


Perhaps this would be as good a time as any to note that both of us are very eclectic in what music we listen to. We both listen to classical and I have recently expanded the realm of instrumental music that Rae listens to to include movie scores. We both like country, to one degree or another, although Kim is only recently coming out of that closet. We both like hip hop, but I'm much more stuck in my time - being somewhere in the early-to-mid-'90s. I think Brian Wilson is among the world's musical giants. Rae loves Lady Gaga.

And, of course, we both think Alice Cooper is the bee's knees!

Limiting you musical appreciation is just one more way to limit your brain.

But the real problem with identifying this blog by musical style is finding that spot where those two ideas meet.

Motörhead lives there. The Plasmatics hit it at their peak.

It's like the best of both worlds coming together.

Perhaps the word just becomes "headbanging", although that has become too closely associated and branded as "metal", I suspect.

Or perhaps, we come full circle to The MC5 and The Stooges and the same kind of Yippie approach to non-conformity that grew up from the hippie ideas.


As such, Rae's idea of choosing the reference to Mama Weer All Crazee Now seemed was perfect. It doesn't make a direct reference to a musical style, but it evokes Slade and The Runaways, another pair of bands that fit somewhere in that unusual middle zone. Heck, even Quiet Riot feels a little more somewhere in between than they were slotted at back in the day.

Our entire question in reaching out to the world has been not comfortably finding a place, so it seems obvious we should not find a comfortable style of music, one that the general public has no real name for nor any quick, simple associates to make with it. Something that continually dances around the edges of the mainstream to the extent that it has familiar touchstones, but doesn't have its own lifestyle or champions.

I think that's where we are. I'm looking forward to examining it, now that I've gotten to point in a direction and said there.

To move this toward Conan and how she lives and behaves, which I expect to be a bigger part of this blog all the time, right now he's absconded with my phone, which means Rae can't call me, so she can listen to Attention Deficit Domination by Hank 3 in the bedroom. Clearly she's doing all she can to join our world.

We went to Motörhead, as well as The Meat Puppets, Roky Erickson, The Baseball Project and Peelander-Z in the last month she was in utero, so she might just come by it naturally. I'll be back soon, and bring my wonderful spouse with me.