family music

when i was growing up, there were cassettes my parents and i could listen to in the car during road trips and even when we were just running in-town errands. my favorite during our drive from cincinnati to denver was chaka khan's i feel for you album. then a few years later, it was anita baker's rapture. we learned all the songs and sang along to them in unison and three-part harmony, with me squeezing in the space between the driver and front passenger seats to join the chorus. my parents even let me take my mixtapes and prince albums out of my walkman and play them in the car stereo.

with all the advances in car technology, vehicles are now four-wheel entertainment centers with dvd, mp3 and cd players giving everyone in the car the ability to have their own space even though they're heading to the same destination. it's basically taking the impersonal traveling experience of public transportation (particularly buses, planes and subways) and bringing it into your own personal mode of transportation.

this saddens me. has this personal-listening-station design of new cars brought the days of singalongs during road trips to an end? or has the content in music changed so much that it's now impossible to find a musical common ground on which parents and their children can stand? personally speaking, if i were growing up now, i'm sure my parents would still let me play my cds and mix cd's no matter what their content. they did let me play my prince stuff, after all--and that was before he washed his mouth out with soap. but there are several parents who would not do the same. they'd rather ride in silence while their children listen to their mp3 players or play video games in the backseat only to say "bye" or "have a nice time" before they get out of the car.