Tom Dunne: An Indie Music Guide to Raising Children

When my daughter and I bonded over a Harry Styles song, it gave me an idea for a great new book 

Harry Styles' song As It Was is a favourite of both Tom Dunne and his daughter. 

Odd moment local: The car, a drive home in early April. A song comes on the radio. “Excellent,” I think, and reach to turn it up. My hand touches that of my 15-year-old, also reaching for the dial. She looks at me askew.

“You turning that up?” she asks. 

“I am,” I answer. “Are you?” “Yep.” The song is Harry Styles’ As it Was. “I love it,” she says. “Me too,” I add, sheepishly. She asks me if I know a particular part of the melody and sings it to me. “Amazing,” she adds.

I decide to pull over. This is too great a moment not to be marked dramatically. I leave the car badly parked on the kerb, the driver’s door open, the traffic behind me beeping furiously in the evening rain. “Dad,” she cries, “WTF?” I’m a bit annoyed about the language, but given the circumstance – the abandoned car, the traffic, the beeping – perfectly understandable in the situation.

“My job is done,” I shout back, “you are raised. Anything more would be superfluous. Music has raised you, particularly indie music, circa 1980. You have learned from the masters. Go forth and, oh wait, DO NOT MULTIPLY! Okay, absolutely no multiplication, but form a band or something. My work here is done.” I pick up the car later. Three different parking fines. Going with the moment comes at a cost. But it was a point I had to make. 

How else will I launch my new book, An Indie Music Guide to Raising Children, without a few apocryphal tales for the interview circuit?

So, a quick taster...

Part 1: Bands and what you can learn from them

• The Bay City Rollers: Life is a rollercoaster. Be careful what you wish for.
• ABBA: Work place relationships are bad news.
• Fleetwood Mac: That said, they can also be highly advantageous.
• The Blue Nile: Some men are sensitive, gentle souls despite everything people say.
• Amy Winehouse : That said, best to assume they aren’t.
• Bowie:We are each different, unique and beautiful.
• Boyzone: Unless you join the Borg.
• Westlife: There is a reason the Borg are so successful.
• The Go-Betweens: See The Blue Nile, with bells on.

Okay, catch your breath here. This is a lot to take in, the distilled wisdom of a life and all that. I can see already its very genre and era specific, but lets carry on for a while...

 Life Lessons, continued

• Sex Pistols: A single moment of purity can change the world.
• Billy Bragg: You don’t need a beautiful voice if you can rhyme ‘Space hardware’ with ‘Wish you Care.’ Amy Winehouse : That said, should you have a voice, things get easier.
• Brian Wilson: There are people in this world who seem to struggle with so much but who are capable of incandescent, illuminating beauty.
• Daniel O’Donnell: You aren’t meant to understand everything.
• My guide will also deal heavily in off the cuff quotes from the great songs of our age. These are useful at social gatherings, pub debates and on first dates. Any fool can quote from the Leaving Cert Syllabus, but it takes a right fool to embroider their conversation with pop culture quotes.
• The Smiths: Heavy words are lightly thrown.
• Elvis Costello: There are some things you can’t cover up with lipstick and powder.
• Elvis Costello: She said that she was working for the ABC news, that was as much of the Alphabet as she knew how to use.
• Elvis Costello: Till I step on the brakes to get out of your clutches.
• Elvis Costello: Is it worth it, a new winter coat and shoes for the wife, and a bicycle on the boys birthday.

As you can see, there is a Costello fixation all editors will struggle to remove from the finished book, but there is also:

• The Jam: The public gets what the public wants.
• John Lennon: A working class hero is something to be.
• The Beatles: And in the end ,the love you take, is equal to the love you make.

I will let them find Bob themselves. That, I believe, is inevitable.

It is random, a bit hotchpotch and what can I say, in our village growing up, female voices were fewer and we were impoverished even further as a result. But now and again, someone would write something like, Love Will Tear Us Apart, and our little bruised hearts pulled through somehow.