Clergy Family Confidential

You can always tell when PBS is having a fundraising drive because they’ve got great programming interrupted by yapping. This is of course why God invented the clicker. After the kids went to sleep last night I found some footage they were airing of Jimi Hendrix playing the 1970 Monterey Pop Festival. For a $120 donation I could have had the CD/DVD combo but I preferred to watch it in installments via the clicker.

The snippets I saw were classic Hendrix — he was coaxing inimitable sounds out of his left-handed guitar. There’s not much more you can say about it — it’s simply guitar virtuosity. Yes, it’s Eric Clapton whose nickname is God — the height of heresy. But Hendrix at least sits at Clapton’s right hand.

The highlight for me was his version of Bob Dylan’s “Like a rolling stone.” Stunning.

But it also makes me wonder how to impart the appreciation of good music to Ben and Zack. My father probably thought the same thing — he was a symphony orchestra conductor — while I was listening to Kiss and AC/DC. But the songs they like, “Cotton-eyed Joe” and ”Bad Day,” aren’t exactly enduring classics. 

I guess all you can do is play decent music around the house and hope some of it rubs off. We forced them to watch enough Baby Mozart videos — some of this better take!