This Sunday I will taking my 5 year old daughter to Punk Island 2011. Part of the Make Music New York Festival held on Tuesday the 21st, Punk Island will be a collection of 70 + acts spread across 8 stages for 6 hours on Governor's Island. Since Governor's Island isn't open to the public on Tuesdays, the organizers of Make Music New York decided to hold Punk Island on Sunday instead.
A couple of weeks ago I started to describe the event to Caelyn. I told her it was a bunch of loud, noisy punk bands. That was as far as I got before she interrupted me by yelling, "I wanna go! Can we go?" As my plan was to ask her if she was interested in going, I told her yes. She was upset however, when I told her she would not be allowed in the pit. I have to draw the line somewhere. =-)
Many of my Facebook posts revolve around Caelyn and her reaction to music. This is, in part, because I find it amusing. There is something intrinsically funny to me about a 5 year old running around in circles screaming Ramones at the top of her lungs when they come on or having to stop everything and dance every time something loud, hard and fast is played.
Music is a major part of Caelyn's life. Her love for it is very strong. I, of course, am the enabler or pusher in this case if you will. I have something playing almost all the time.
Music has been a strong love of mine for as long as I can remember. I still have the first album (actually it was a cassette) I ever bought with my own money. It was Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' I love Rock n Roll. I bought it from a place called Rat Records in the Village section of Houston.
It is a great thrill of mine to see Caelyn have the same passion and love for music that I do. I particularly like that her favorite type of music is as she puts it, the loud, noisy kind.
Ironically it was my wife, who is much more James Taylor than Johhny Rotten, who noticed our daughter's love of loud music. She noticed that as a baby, Caelyn would be in a better mood whenever guitar heavy songs were played. When she pointed this out to me, I pulled out countless cds, some mine, some Kerry's and played them to watch Caelyn's reactions. Sure enough, guitar driven music was what she responded to.
I have already mentioned in another post how The Distillers helped her through colic. We would use White Stripes to calm her late at night when she woke up coughing and confused. There was nothing like 'Blue Orchid" to bring her around when she would start to lose it during those late night hours.
As she has gotten older, she still prefers the noise. Particularly, played live. It could be a full scale, large stage show or just some band set up on a sidewalk and she will want to see them. She loves live music.
Last summer we took her to many smaller concerts around NYC. Mostly they were kid friendly rock bands that actually did rock. Then over Labor Day Weekend we took to RevGen 2010.
RevGen is a Christian music festival in southern NJ consisting of mostly metal, hard rock and hardcore bands. We figured it would be a good venue to see how she did with tens of thousands of people around. Plus there was some pretty good bands playing. She had a great time though my shoulders were a bit sore from all the time she spent on them. Click here to see video of Caelyn jammin to Fireflight's Desperate.
So this Sunday should be fun. She won't know any of the bands. She doesn't need to. All she needs to know is she will be seeing music performed all day long and she is happy and excited.
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