Kids love trains. There are no trains on Mars, but kids there love them all the more for that: mysterious mechanical, sometimes friendly, monsters that only exist in stories. My protagonist sisters, Cas and Ori, are past this stage of childhood, but they remember. So does their dad.
Excerpt:
Next came a shuffle beat, brass and woodwinds playing a woo-woo sound, and a smooth voice singing a song about a train and a boogie. This one had been a favorite of Ori’s when she was little. The girls bounced in their seats to the walking bass line.
-- from Food: Generation Mars, Book Four
Choo, Choo, Ch’boogie, by Louis Jordan, was a favorite of one of my daughters when she was little. We put it on her child’s MP3 player, and she would play it over and over, bouncing and singing along.
Recorded in 1946, the song was written by three guys who, up until then, had only written country songs, one of whom would go on to produce “Rock Around the Clock” for Bill Haley and the Comets. I’m not sure what those three gentlemen had in mind, but Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five laid it over a shuffle boogie beat that gets under your skin and goes straight to your feet, placing it squarely in the category of jump blues.
I love this early jump blues sound, still hanging on to the four-on-the-floor kick drum from swing, overlaid with shuffling almost-triplet eighth notes on the snare and piano. That combination is magical. Jordan would rerecord this years later with a much more rock and roll emphasis on the 2nd and 4th beats, but that version doesn’t have the same mojo as this first. To me at least, and what am I doing right now? Is this a music blog?
I’m stalling, avoiding what I set out to write about.
Look, a lot of my writing reflects my own wistfulness as my kids grow up. To be a parent is to live in the bittersweet. I love who my kids are becoming, but I also miss who they’ve been. And I miss who I’ve been with them. Am I as good of a dad to these new people as I was to their younger selves? Did I do all I could then to help them get to where they are? Am I doing enough now? Time is so short. Is there still enough to teach them how to change their own oil? To write a check? Are those skills even necessary to learn anymore? What skills are necessary? What effect will AI have on their future? What about the erosion of democracy? How do I advise them? How do I teach them how to build a happy life? I digress. All. The. Time.
Give me a sec…
Ok, I just like the idea of a dad remembering bouncing, singing toddlers as he puts together a playlist for his now older daughters to listen to as they embark on a great and dangerous adventure.
I also like the idea of sitting in a rocket waiting for launch, listening to an old-timey song about sitting in a station waiting for a train.
Food: Generation Mars, Book Four is available at https://www.amazon.com/Food-Generation-Mars-Book-Four/dp/1733731083