Crash the Generations

My 7-year-old son is learning to play Jake Bugg's "Lightning Bolt" on guitar at the YMCA. It's with no small pride that I learned he suggested that the class learn it -- and that his young hip teacher had to look it up first.

And I'm thrilled -- only secretly -- on those days he comes home from the Y requesting I play some awful autotuned pop-rap he heard after school, and load it onto the playlist for trips in the car. He likes music. I like music. We share what we like with one another.

"Just about everyone I know gets excited when they talk about sharing their favorite music with their kids," says Garland Jeffreys, writing on a new website devoted to that very topic. And he's right. The site was inspired by the new song, "Collide the Generations" that itself was inspired by the musical relationship between Jeffreys and his daughter. The song sounds like an exciting new take on "Gimmee Some Lovin" and the video -- consisting of photographs submitted by fans of their kids -- is pretty cool too.

Garland Jefferies has been around since I was a kid. I can remember ESCAPE ARTIST getting some play on WPLJ in the early 1980s but nothing much ever seemed to come of it. Further explorations of his soulful and gritty stuff only reveals how massively overlooked an artist he is. Play this one for your kids: