The Beat/ Special Edition - The son also criticizes
By Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., February 9, 2001) --Willie is an avid concertgoer. He has seen Bob Dylan three times and Bruce Springsteen twice. He’s seen Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Patti Smith, Ray Charles, Soul Coughing, Luna, Natalie Merchant and Melissa Etheridge. His taste runs from jazz - he’s seen Sonny Rollins, Hamiet Bluiett, Dave Douglas and the late Lester Bowie - to swing - he’s seen Duke Robillard and the Love Dogs - to blues and roots-rock - he’s seen Guy Davis, Tarbox Ramblers and Los Lobos. He likes folk-rock - he’s seen The Nields several times, and last fall he caught a show by Ani DiFranco - and he is also a fan of new-country and bluegrass - he likes Stacey Earle and Del McCoury.

Willie is a well-traveled concertgoer, too, having seen shows at venues throughout New England and New York, including the Fleet Center in Boston, the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, the Mullins Center in Amherst, and Albany’s Pepsi Arena and Palace Theater. In New York City, he has trolled such cutting-edge nightclubs as the Knitting Factory, Tonic and Makor. Here in the Berkshires, he was often seen at the late, lamented Studio in Pittsfield, and in the summer he goes to Tanglewood and the annual Berkshire Mountain Music Festival. Nowadays he counts Club Helsinki in Great Barrington as his favorite hangout.

There’s just one other thing about Willie you’ve got to know. Willie is seven years old.

Now before you run to the telephone to sic the Department of Youth Services on Willie’s parents, relax. He’s in good hands - his father is a music critic.

In fact, Willie has become something of a critic himself. He has strong opinions about what he likes and what he doesn’t like, opinions that don’t always coincide with those of his critic/father (although the two agree a lot on what they don’t like, including Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and Britney Spears).

All this music-going has inspired Willie to pick up various instruments, including saxophone, guitar, mandolin trumpet and drums. Whenever he’s near a piano, he settles himself down and does a pretty good parody of Philip Glass (whose music he has listened to on CD and who he’s looking forward to seeing this summer at Mass MoCA). He’s even jammed with several pros, including a few of the world’s top klezmer musicians, and he once played Kenny Aronoff’s drum kit on the stage of the Palace Theatre in Albany.

Cynics may suggest that Willie has been unduly pushed or overinfluenced toward music by an overinvolved father. It’s not true. Willie came to his interest in and love of music on his own, although it certainly was made accessible to him at an early age in a household overflowing with all things musical.

At age three, Willie showed a strong curiosity about the CD player, and taught himself to use it by spying on his dad, who was in no hurry to have Willie messing with the tools of his trade. Nothing bad ever happened to the player, and Eminem’s CD remains hidden far out of reach, at least until he’s 14, or maybe 18.

Early on, Willie’s tastes were eclectic, and he went through the typical progression of children’s music, from Raffi to David Grover to the Banana Slug String Band to Trout Fishing in America. But Willie quickly grew interested in the music to which his dad was listening, which included a wide range of styles and genres, from Dylan to Dave Douglas, from the Beastie Boys to David Bowie.

Just as quickly, Willie grew curious about where his dad was going all the time. So his dad started bringing him along to concerts whenever he could. At first, Willie’s concertgoing jaunts were limited to family-friendly fare such as children’s concerts, matinees, or daytime, outdoor festivals. But at some point it became clear to Willie and his parents that this wouldn’t suffice. Besides, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen don’t play morning shows, and the Boss typically only comes around once or twice a decade. So it was with some minor trepidation that Willie’s dad began taking him along to nighttime shows at clubs, theaters and arenas. At first, Willie’s mom and his older sister, Anna, would come along, too, providing a bit of insurance. Should he want to leave early, his mommy could take him and Anna out of the concert, and his father could stay to the end and then meet back up with them.

It quickly became clear that this backup plan was unnecessary, as Willie is pretty much a stickler for staying until the end of the show (sometimes to the chagrin of his father, who often gets antsy about two-thirds of the way through a concert).

It also became apparent that Anna does not share Willie’s love of rock concerts - more evidence, by the way, that this sort of thing cannot be imposed on an unwilling child. Anna enjoyed seeing Bob Dylan the one time she came along, but the arena was too big, too crowded and too noisy. Not even the thrill of hearing him sing her favorite Dylan song, “Everything Is Broken,” could make her want to repeat the experience - at least not for now. You might see her come out for The Nields, and she connected in a deeply profound way with Patti Smith (and vice-versa, but that’s a story for another column), but otherwise, she’s happy to stay home with her mother and listen to Jess Klein on CD.

Part of insuring that sharing concerts with Willie remains an enjoyable experience for all involved means knowing to which concerts not to bring him. For all his love of music and sophistication about different styles, Willie is still a seven-year-old, even if an intellectually and emotionally precocious one.

So, for example, he’s just not ready for the lyric-heavy singer-songwriter thing. He would sooner sit through a classical symphony, which at least has more variety of rhythm, dynamics and instrumentation than your typical, guitar-strumming confessional folksinger.

(And yes, for those of you who until now were wondering, Willie’s musical exposure has indeed included exposure to the “classics,” live and on record, without, however, the typical propaganda that usually comes along with such exposure, i.e., he is not taught that one brand of music is “better” than the other. The only hierarchies in Willie’s musical world are what’s good, i.e., what he likes, and what’s not, i.e., what he doesn’t. And with rare exception, cf. Eminem, that’s up to him to decide.)

Venues count, too. In spite of his abnormal interest in the world of grown-up music, Willie is in many ways a normal seven-year-old boy, which means it’s difficult for him to sit in any one place for any extended period of time. So places where he can get up and move around are preferred. Settings where he can multitask - draw pictures or play cards or talk to people while the music is happening - are also good.

Then, of course, there are the snacks. For a long time, this wasn’t an issue. It took a while for Willie to catch on that most music venues offer food and drink to go along with the music. In fact, his willingness to sit through an entire concert without asking for any refreshments once caught the eye of a journalist who was so smitten by the sight of the then-five-year-old absorbed in Billy Joel’s music that she wrote a profile of him for her upstate New York newspaper.

Eventually, however, Willie noticed the popcorn and the soda being dispensed at the arenas, or the orange soda they have at Helsinki, and now snacks have become part of the concertgoing experience (which, for those of you who still aren’t convinced that this child is not being neglected, never includes a nightclub that allows smoking - his father avoids those anyway). Truth is, at his age, snacks are a part of the everday landscape and he is always hungry. So refreshments have become part of the concertgoing ritual. It was never in the plan to raise Willie as a miniature rock critic, an obsessive who studies the Billboard charts and who helps his father out by remembering which songs are on which albums. Sometimes, even, Willie knows more than his dad; at the Fleet Center, Willie immediately identified the one obscure song the Boss played, a tune his father probably wouldn’t otherwise have figured out (for the record, it was “Murder Incorporated”).

But as every parent knows, you can’t plan how your children turn out; it just happens. That Willie shares a strong interest in what happens to be the subject of his father’s work is a blessing; that it strengthens the bond between father and son along the way is the icing on the cake.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Feb. 15, 2001. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]