"Inappropriate" songs.

Kerouac

Kerouac

weird musical dildo
I just received an email from a parent that was upset about me teaching their teenager a Green Day song, because, "We don't agree with their lifestyle and we don't want our daughter participating in anything that they sing or play." This particular song was Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) because it's a simple, four chord, acoustic strum along. I'd understand if we were playing a song with vulgarity, but because of their "lifestyle"? They go on to say that they don't expect her to learn Christian music only, but I have the feeling that going forward I will have to thoroughly vet all song choices.

Any thoughts/experiences?
 
Sounds fucking ridiculous. Also, seems like a solid song choice for a beginner level student to play along with and gain a feeling of accomplishment.

People suck.
 
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Time for some songs by Living Sacrifice! (Christian death/groove metal, not something some would expect)
(their new release, Ghost Thief, is pretty damn good)

 
They have issues with Time of your Life? Oh myyyy. Maybe next week teach her that good old Gospel favorite, Sunday Morning Coming Down :embarrassed:
 
They are paying the tuition for their kid, so thats how it goes. They should have specified that they didn't want certain kinds of music taught. I personally think its silly in this case but they are the customer. You can choose to take their money or not.

And by keeping even something like this from their kid now you can be sure the kid will become a massive Cannibal Corpse fan once the kid leaves the house :embarrassed:
 
Tig said:
Time for some songs by Living Sacrifice! (Christian death/groove metal, not something some would expect)
(their new release, Ghost Thief, is pretty damn good)

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Sounds JUST like a four chord acoustic strum-along. :wink:
 
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Mark Wein said:
They are paying the tuition for their kid, so thats how it goes. They should have specified that they didn't want certain kinds of music taught. I personally think its silly in this case but they are the customer. You can choose to take their money or not.

And by keeping even something like this from their kid now you can be sure the kid will become a massive Cannibal Corpse fan once the kid leaves the house :embarrassed:
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This is the first song she's learned. Last week was her third lesson and up to that point nothing was said, other than "She loves to sing in church." Yeah, so do a lot of Green Day fans! I was completely blindsided, especially with the lifestyle comment.
 
Mark Wein said:
I end up needing to tach quite a bit of Contemporary Christian music these days. Just think of it as watered-down U2 songs from the early 2000s :tongue:
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I have another student that plays in a teen praise band. Those are not some friendly guitar keys! :eek: Capo city.
 
Mark Wein said:
I end up needing to tach quite a bit of Contemporary Christian music these days. Just think of it as watered-down U2 songs from the early 2000s :tongue:
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I was actually thinking about stuff like this the other day, wondering how often you guys end up having to defer song choices to the parents and things. I know my bandmates that run the schools of rock here have this kind of thing crop up occasionally. It's part of why I've never considered teaching.
 
Kerouac said:
This is the first song she's learned. Last week was her third lesson and up to that point nothing was said, other than "She loves to sing in church." Yeah, so do a lot of Green Day fans! I was completely blindsided, especially with the lifestyle comment.
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Yeah....I think its stupid too but thats what they want and its not like they are asking you to not do your job, just do it with different music.
 
Jeremy said:
I was actually thinking about stuff like this the other day, wondering how often you guys end up having to defer song choices to the parents and things. I know my bandmates that run the schools of rock here have this kind of thing crop up occasionally. It's part of why I've never considered teaching.
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It really doesn't come up that often but occasionally I'll run a song by a parent before we learn it.
 
I can understand both sides of the equation. If she stays on as a pupil probably what you will have to do is come up with a list of say ten songs that you would like her to be able to work on and submit the list to her Mom and see what sticks. It will be hard to guess what is appropriate since everyone has different 'filters', half of which make no sense logically to anyone else.
 
Kerouac said:
I have another student that plays in a teen praise band. Those are not some friendly guitar keys! :eek: Capo city.
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That was my life for a couple of years in college. Luckily our piano player was kickass and would move the songs to guitar-friendly keys. :)
 
I remember being in a music store and a woman was buying the guitar music book for the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik for her daughter. The salesman was thoughtful enough to point out it had some vulgarity to it which the mother originally brushed off. But when the salesman suggest she read the lyrics in the book, it was a good five minutes of...."oh my!"..."oh dear!'..."goodness!"..."oh!"...etc. Despite being flustered, she bought it anyway.
 
Get her doing some Gungor tunes. Great stuff and not the usual sound for church band stuff (which Mark nailed - watered down U2 - I play it a lot and that is exactly what it is).
 
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