Miss Manners: Obscene Rock and Roll Music, With Its Gospel of Easy Sexuality and Relaxed Morality

[delphi]

Source

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My friend’s son wants to go to a concert, and she is not sure if he is too young at age 6. What do you think?

GENTLE READER: When Miss Manners hears the word “concert,” she thinks of the symphony, and if little Wolfgang wants to go, why not take him?

The only prerequisite is that she first teach him concert manners, including sitting quietly and not clapping between symphonic movements.

Wait — is it possible that Miss Manners’s definition of a concert is somewhat narrow? Could little Wolfgang be thinking of something with a bit more noise, obscenity, sex and possibly violence?

In that case, it would not be a good idea to teach him how the audience behaves. The best way to is to keep him home until he is old enough to drive himself there.

Comments

[delphi]

There are a lot of good reasons not to take a six-year-old to a concert, particularly the noise level. But I am now convinced that once, on some terrible night, Miss Manners bought tickets to what she thought was a Rachmaninoff concert and saw Rammstein instead.

[busaikko]

Interesting how there's nothing between Genteel Classical Concert and Death Metal Moshpit.

[ambyr]

Yeah, I thought that was weird. He's six--isn't it more likely that he wants to go see Raffi or something?

[delphi]

I would suspect the letter writer/mother probably wouldn't have as much of an issue if it were The Wiggles or something else aimed exclusively at small children. But my job exposes me to a lot of what kids are listening to (in my country, at least), and in the 6-8 range, for the most part it's either classic rock/classic rap like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Run DMC, or Disney Channel fare like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, or at the outside, something like Bruno Mars or LMFAO.

[torachan]

Lots of little kids like the music their parents like. A preschool aged boy I used to babysit for loved for me to put on his folks' Offspring and Oingo Boingo albums, and I had friends who were really into jpop whose kids (at the time, ages 4-10ish) were, too. So it really depends.

I've often seen kids at concerts when I go. A couple years ago I went to see X Japan and a friend of a friend had her preteen son with her, who she said had been going to concerts with her since he was under five (whether he had started off being a fan or was just dragged along, I don't know, but he was definitely into them when I saw him).

Anyway, I think if it was Raffi there wouldn't have even been a question to write in about, so more likely the kid did want to go see a real band/artist. (And I think the answer was ridiculous.)

[likeaduck]

Whoa, Miss Manners, what happened to teaching manners and not morals?