The Musical World of Dave and his Daughter

How does Dave and his daughter relate to music? Welcome to their rock world! And also meet Stephen Malkmus' 'Pink India'.

In the early hours of 5 September, while feeling a little depressed, I notice a message from The Daily Obsessive, who I later find out is Dave Nichols. He has read one of my music write-ups on Substack and wants me to do one on him. He’s not a performer, he admits, but that’s fine. A scientist from China or Nigeria could reach out to me and I’d happily write about them too. What makes this interesting is that while Dave isn’t a performer or musician, he does write about music.

When I look through his Substack, I see he writes about both music and films, which immediately catches my interest. I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember – it’s simply who I am. As for films, I’ve always wanted to see some of my work adapted for the screen, though I should admit I’m not much for watching visual stuff myself. My real pull has always been toward music and reading.

Dave points me to his piece, Friday Obsessive: Stephen Malkmus’ Pink India. It came out on 27 June, about two months back, and carries the subtitle On a most unusually addictive song.

This is my first time coming across Stephen Malkmus, which makes sense – America feels a world away from South Africa. It hits me that Dave’s piece is about music, and suddenly I want to hear Pink India and figure out who this Stephen Malkmus guy is.

Dave includes a photo of him in the post. The opening line reads: ‘The older you get, the more things sneak up on you.’ A line like that pulls you closer to Dave – especially if you’re older yourself. We older types like to think we move through the world differently, with a sense that we’re somehow a step ahead of the kids.

But then I realize Dave is older than me. In the next paragraph he mentions his 30-year school anniversary and notes he’s in his late 40s. He’s not trying to spell out his exact age – he’d rather frame himself as a man inching toward 50. Just as I’d want you to see me as someone edging toward 40.

Approaching a new decade in later life carries a certain awfulness. Not so much the aging itself, but the awareness that you haven’t yet reached an age you’re more likely to hit. It feels more certain I’ll reach 40 than 50 – whether that logic holds up is another debate altogether.

Anyway, this isn’t really about me or aging, so let’s move along. Dave cracks a joke that while he hasn’t reached the stage of scanning hometown obituaries to see who’s still alive, he does feel the weight of aging – just a little.

That thought lingers with me. I once had a neighbour, a man in his sixties, who confessed to struggling through nights and mornings when he lay in bed haunted by the fact that most of his friends were gone. Losing friends to death must be a heavy thing. I haven’t faced that myself, partly because I don’t have many friends. Still, I’ve felt pangs of sadness during the day when thinking of family and friends who’ve moved away from my area. It’s an unsettling feeling – one that carries the taste of loneliness.

In the following paragraph, Dave circles back to age, flat-out saying he’s 47. So I was probably wrong to think he was dodging the number. His piece is a form of personal writing – autobiographical, really – and that kind of writing only holds together when you’re willing to reveal private details. Without that, the writing falters. And even if it doesn’t, what’s the point of keeping everything locked away? If writing is an extension of thought, and thought is how you order your life and make sense of it, then surely you have to grapple with the private.

On the surface, disclosing your age doesn’t seem especially private. Nor does it feel like something to get philosophical over – unless you’re in the mode of saying: I’m 28. Where is my life going? From there, the mind races to what a 28-year-old should have achieved.

Before he mentions his real age, Dave tells us that technically he’s a registered nurse. I wonder why he qualifies it with ‘technically’. Does that mean he is a nurse or not? Curiosity stirs, but his point soon becomes clear: though he’s 47, he feels tucked into the body of an 85-year-old, taking his mental health and clarity seriously. That’s a lot of information – tucked in, if you’ll forgive the pun, wrapped in a run-on sentence. First, we had a man in his 40s. Then we learned he’s 47. Now we find his body feels like that of a very old man. Eighty-five is no small number, I like to think. Why that is, I cannot say, but it’s reassuring to see someone else taking mental health and clarity seriously.

It’s one of those things I dwell on. One of the biggest goals in life, I tell myself, is to keep the mind sane. Of course, that sounds utopian, but perhaps part of the reason is that we know there have been times when we have not been sane. I don’t want to push the sanity issue too far from my writing and analytical faculties, which I preserve by not labeling past deviations from the norm as outright insanity. Yet we can all agree that from time to time, we stray from the norm. The point is that by striving to maintain mental balance, we aim to avoid deviating too often – or at least in ways beyond our control.

Dave closes the paragraph by telling us he does three things to safeguard his mental health and clarity: he takes a ‘litany of supplements’, stays active, and keeps his brain sharp through outlets like Substack.

It’s a meta moment, if you will. You’re reading a Substack newsletter, and the author is talking about reading, or perhaps writing, Substack pieces. Even more meta if the person who’s read that author is going to write their own Substack piece in response and post it on Substack. The point, I suppose, is that a few people rely on Substack for their sanity. Dave is one of them. Perhaps I am too. My broader point would be this: if we’re seeking sanity on Substack, we have to accept the kind of sanity Substack can offer. There may be some circularity in that thought, but that’s something we can address later, if needed.

Should we dive into how Substack keeps us sane? Maybe not. Here’s Dave’s next line – and paragraph, if you will. He’s still focused on mental health and clarity, but now he introduces what is perhaps the fourth thing that aids sanity: music.

In the next paragraph, he introduces us to his unnamed nine-year-old daughter. It’s amusing when he describes himself as her unpaid Uber driver. Of course, we’re still talking about music. While he half-complains about being an unpaid chauffeur, he consoles himself with the fact that he controls the music on their long drives. When a song she likes comes on, she says ‘than one,’ but he’s the one in charge of the playlist. There’s a hint of bullying here – that is, unless you think my observation is too harsh.

We also learn that there was a time when the daughter didn’t request songs at all. At some point, she began demanding them. In response, Dave made what he calls ‘a terrific decision’: no baby songs, nothing that sounded like it came from the Barney show. I can’t say I’d want to be Dave’s daughter at that moment, I think to myself.

It’s a very mundane point I’m about to make. But here we see that music mattered to Dave and his daughter. He knew she would, or was going to, listen to music, so he developed a sort of program for her.

This started when she was just two months old, long before she could talk or choose songs for herself. I don’t think Dave makes this explicit, or separates the ages clearly – that’s just me being picky. My point, if there is one, is that Dave could have given a fully chronological account of how his daughter’s interaction with music evolved. We do get a chronology, but it begins when she’s already demanding songs.

Still, the timeline technically starts at two months. Her brain was still developing then. I don’t want to overstate this, but brains do continue developing, don’t they? I doubt that observation detracts from Dave’s point. At two months, her brain would have been more sensitive, I imagine. No wonder Dave started her slow and soft, with George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.

Who’s George Harrison? This is the first time I’ve heard of him. From two months old, Dave jumps ahead to when his daughter was four. By then, she had developed a taste for rock or pop. This means that somewhere between two months and four years, she had started listening to these genres. Who introduced her to them, I wonder. Either way, she had moved beyond what you might call ‘slow and soft’ music. Here, I’m using ‘slow and soft’ in a slightly different sense than before.

Dave’s line is:
‘I mixed in rock when, as a four-year-old, she wondered if she was a “rock” or “pop” fan’.

There’s some ambiguity here – something seems omitted. How could she wonder whether she was a rock or pop fan if she hadn’t already been exposed to both? If she was already listening to rock before Dave mixed it in, then when he did, he was already late to the party.

But let’s move on. Dave thinks it was a legitimate question for his daughter to ask whether she was a rock or pop person. He adds that he probably ‘responded with a four-minute lesson on the corporate drudgery that creates marketable “genres”, a lesson that probably sailed over her little head’.

This perhaps reveals something about Dave’s character. He likes to ‘lecture,’ if you will. But that often comes with age differences, doesn’t it? A few days before I started this piece, a young guy I know saw me watching TV poker and asked if I wanted to play. My response ended up being some sort of lecture. With Dave, though, the daughter hadn’t asked for one.

This raises the question: when is it okay to ‘lecture’? Perhaps I’m siding with Dave, but is there really another side? Maybe one could take issue with his phrase ‘over her little head.’

Still, his answer reflects a certain cynicism about how corporates deliver music. That brings us back to our recurring subjects: age, music, and sanity. Growing older teaches you that maintaining sanity often involves some level of cynicism — and that cynicism can extend to how music is consumed.

Before preschool, Dave introduced his daughter to movie soundtracks, especially those from Quentin Tarantino films. He considers Tarantino’s work an underrated way ‘for anyone to expand their music horizons.’ I’m not entirely convinced that any soundtrack alone could expand someone’s musical horizons, but since Tarantino is known for making highly violent films, why would Dave push his daughter in that direction? Perhaps that’s not really a fair question, since what’s being discussed is listening to the soundtracks, not watching the movies themselves.

Still, it would be fascinating to hear Dave’s take on Tarantino’s films in relation to their violence. A question naturally arises: does Dave have an issue with his daughter actually watching the films?

Anyway, featured prominently in Death Proof is Band Smith’s ‘Baby, It’s You’ – a song Dave says was their ‘first “jam” leaving the parking lot’.

If Tarantino expanded his daughter’s musical horizons, the last few years, he writes, ‘have been an explosion of just about every corner of the music world (as I know it)’. She contributes to their Spotify favorites, which sounds very nice – that she has a say. Dave adds that she alternates between country music, wades into classic rock like Fleetwood Mac and The Band, explores her working violin music, and, of course, listens to Metallica.

What Dave is really saying is that his daughter experiences both good and bad country music. For him, Tyler Childers is good country, though he doesn’t give examples of what he considers bad. I wonder why she listens to classic rock when, in my view, a nine-year-old should be leaning more toward modern rock.

Dave believes he has done a good job modeling his daughter’s musical tastes. He says that her ‘musical tastes are one of my proudest accomplishments as a Dad’. Yet, if asked whether she likes his music – ‘Dad’s music’ – Dave notes she would deny it, though a minute later he might catch her singing along to a favorite jam. There’s a playful dynamic here: she may not fully embrace his tastes, but she’s deeply engaged, her latest interest from him being ‘Wondering Why’ by the Red Clay Strays.

Dave also observes that, except for Slade, she would have discovered many of these tastes on her own. He calls her a brilliant kid, with ‘the kind of musical brain that I didn’t have until my late teens’. Which makes me wonder why he would feel the need to model her musical tastes if she could independently discover so much herself.

We’ll let that slide. Beyond listening to music, Dave mentions his daughter playing the violin – at the moment, ‘starting to break down the structures and learn notes, something I’m clueless about’.

It takes over six hundred words before Dave even begins talking about Stephen Malkmus and Pink India. But before we get to that, let’s address Dave’s final paragraphs leading up to the topic.

He notes that the hundreds of hours he’s spent in the truck with his daughter, listening to Spotify and all, have ‘helped shape her Synaptic Plasticity, the gateways for memory, attention, and problem-solving (along with being a great therapy for ADHD kids)’. Beyond that, he believes this has also helped her ‘apply this learning to her actual playing’.

As of June, two of his daughter’s favorites were Courtney Barnett and Led Zeppelin – two artists you wouldn’t immediately think have much in common, Dave writes. Of course, these might just be her current favorites at the time.

Here, Dave highlights two things: that different artists can share commonalities, and that he and his daughter share commonalities as well. Reading his piece, I realize he has shaped his daughter’s tastes to align with his own. There’s an echo-chamber effect at work. In a way – and I hope I’m not venturing into something too complex to fully express – he begins to see himself reflected in her musical preferences. The funny part is that her tastes are not entirely hers, but partly inherited from Dad.

It’s not only music that she has absorbed from her father. According to Dave, she shares his neurodivergent brain. I may have digressed earlier, but the point he raises here is that, like him, she can request the same song for days on end.

Dave’s list of two of his daughter’s current favorites grows by one as he notes their present favorite: the ‘quirky and haunting’ Pink India from Stephen Malkmus’s self-titled solo debut album from 2001.

As I finish writing the paragraph above, I realize I’ve been listening to The Game’s ‘Coastline Killaz’ on repeat the entire evening.

‘I’m from the land where the sun don’t set.’ That’s one of The Game’s lyrics. It’s a song that touches on age and sharpness. Snoop Dogg features on the track, asserting that he’s still the real deal after decades in the Hip Hop game. Having stayed on point, he believes he’s still sharp as a dagger, while the new school cats stagger and chatter.

Let’s bring Pierre Bourdieu into the mix. The French sociologist had much to say about taste. Two ideas seem relevant here. First, he argues that legitimate art classifies; taste in music becomes an infallible way to affirm class. Rock may not carry the prestige of classical music, but it has its own legitimacy. For Dave and his daughter, rock is their legitimate art, and through it they affirm their shared identity.

Bourdieu also links the music you consume to broader social outcomes, such as success in the job market. At this moment, I’m less concerned with Dave and his daughter’s financial prospects than with the familial bond music creates. The Quentin Tarantino soundtracks, the Spotify playlists, the road trips, the ‘lectures’ – all these moments aren’t about money but about having something in common to talk about. Music, in this sense, is a medium for connection. That it serves a familial purpose does not, however, negate Bourdieu’s point that art legitimates class differences.

Clark and Lonsdale note a link between music preferences and self-esteem. Whatever else can be said about Dave’s love of rock, it’s fair to say it benefits his self-esteem. This holds for any genre one is passionate about. Here, though, the focus is rock; other types of music simply don’t resonate with Dave. Extending this observation, other families in the US might be bonding over rock, while others might center around Hip Hop.

Finally, we arrive at Stephen Malkmus. A Google search reveals the Malkmus in question isn’t the young man in Dave’s post, but an older version of him.

Born Stephen Joseph Malkmus in 1966, Wikipedia notes that he ‘is an American musician best known as the primary songwriter, lead singer and guitarist of the indie rock band Pavement’. His first solo project came out in 2001, a self-titled album recorded with the Jicks, following Pavement’s dissolution two years earlier. According to Josh Terry’s 2014 piece, Malkmus originally wanted the solo album credited to the Jicks under the working title Swedish Reggae, but Matador Records refused.

After noting that ‘Pink India’ is their current favourite, Dave embeds a YouTube link to the video. Beneath it, there are about two paragraphs, followed by excerpts from the song’s lyrics. In the first paragraph, he writes that if a reader instantly knows what the song is about, they’re a ‘staggeringly insightful genius’. This suggests that Malkmus is probably an enigmatic songwriter – a mind not be easily deciphered.

Dave adds that, like most of the songs Malkmus and Pavement have created, the lyrics are ‘complex and intriguing, belonging to one of the best songwriters of his generation’. In the second paragraph, he elaborates on Malkmus as a writer’s dream, ‘evidenced in his metaphorical, sometimes bizarre and jumbled language, a rich but somehow effortless poetic depth that could spin a hundred stories’.

What surprises me is that for a man who values sanity, Dave marvels at Malkmus’ bizarre and jumbled language. But isn’t that, in a way, the point of being sane – to recognize when things are not as they usually are?

***

It takes me about five days to return to this piece after life gets in the way – my way of saying I’m back. When I left off, I was mulling whether one purpose of being sane is to recognize when things are insane.

I’m listening to Walking On The Moon by The Police as I write this. It’s a Thursday afternoon here in South Africa, September 11, a day marked by memory in the United States. What’s more, it’s just hours after Charlie Kirk, an American conservative, was reportedly assassinated.

From what I gather about Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s Art as Therapy, ‘art helps us deal with the limits of our understanding, confront dissonance, and see both order and disorder in the world’.

Turning to the lyrics Dave quotes: two verses. The first verse mentions ‘a billion flies on a horse’s tail’ and ‘Punjabi’s finest, bring me your wine list’. The reference to Punjabi evokes India. The second verse addresses tension growing in Afghanistan, with mention of a person having ‘had a crap gin and tonic’.

After presenting these verses, Dave admits he doesn’t have ‘f-cing’ clue what any of the songs by Stephen Malkmus or Pavement mean. But that doesn’t matter, he says, because he knows he’s hearing ‘something incredible’. I have a feeling he’s exaggerating a little.

At this point, Dave mentions his wife – the first time in the piece. He talks about the innate stubbornness of his brilliant wife’s idea that he must take time to absorb ideas. Naturally, he resists at first, but he eventually folds, or ‘comes around’, accepting what he initially didn’t want to accommodate. He gives examples, ‘such as finding faith or finally wearing those new jeans I bought a year ago’. The jeans part makes me smile – in fact, it makes me laugh a bit.

And DMX’s playing on my YouTube when I write this. (‘Ya’ll gonna make me lose my cool’!).

Dave thinks there’s a psychological model that explains his natural stubbornness: the Transtheoretical Model, or Stages of Change Model. He says this model describes five stages ‘people move through when adopting new behaviors or attitudes’. He lists the stages: Precontemplation (which he brackets as ‘a bit of an existential stage’), Contemplation, Preparation, and Maintenance. Unfortunate for Dave – if it is indeed unfortunate – he says that ‘coming around’ means he never completes the full cycle. He circles between the second and third stages.

We then learn that Dave has spent thirty years contemplating Malkmus’ lyrics. This has left an impression on him. He finds echoes of Malkmus’ dreamy ideals in his own writing. He admits he’s not entirely sure of this, but I take it to mean that, even if he doesn’t fully understand Malkmus’ songs, he senses that the lyrics convey ‘dreamy ideals’.

Sometimes it’s best to search things up, or ‘leave it to Grok’, he writes. Grok is a recent invention, isn’t it? According to my old friend Wikipedia, Grok is a chatbot introduced in November 2023 by – and I laugh as I write this – the king of all billionaires, Mr. Elon Musk!

Dave then inserts a quotation from what I think to be Grok. It explains ‘Pink India’. I’ll paste Dave’s own paste below:

The song tells the story of Mortimer, a fictional or composite character from Stoke-on-Trent, England, described as "one of its rooks" in the empire’s chess-like maneuvers. The lyrics paint Mortimer as an "impotent tea-bag spazz" and "pride of the vicar caste," suggesting a bumbling, privileged figure sent to Asia to prove himself ("Determined to be a man"). This could be a nod to historical figures like Mortimer Durand, a British official who delineated Afghanistan’s northern border during the Great Game, though the song takes creative liberties.

Here's what Dave takes from this answer: it explains the title for him, with it ‘Pink India’ being ‘a reference to the coloring of Britain’s territories on maps, which at one time included India’. He goes on to write that the ‘Great Game’ speaks to the Britain and Russia claiming Central Asia in the 19^th century.

Having neglected pasting the song’s first verse, Dave does so now, saying that Mortimer is aptly described here, ‘a fun send-up that also points to the over-masculine urge to seize a man’s manifest destiny’.

We can say many things here, but my curiosity makes me wonder why Americans would be interested in British and Asian affairs. Anyway, I pause my YouTube to play Pink India. The song starts with a guitar. I also open the song’s lyrics.

‘The was once an empire chase’. Not that hard to fathom. This speaks to empire and colonialism. But that’s just me. Dave then writes about the first verse also pointing out ‘to the over-masculine urge to seize man’s manifest destiny’. Dave then inserts the song’s second verse, which he believes Malkmus ‘does better than anyone’. This makes me ask myself: who else but Malkmus to do a Malkmus verse? But, then I start thinking that maybe there’s some covers of the song. For Dave, the verse adds ‘context to the song’s main character’.

Dave then praises Malkmus’ guitar playing. That’s when he’s playing alone or with Pavement. He compares those billion flies to ‘the plight of Indians under a British thumb’, afterwards pointing out the absurdity of Mortimer wanting the wine list.

The story gets darker, Dave writes, reaching its darkest point when it talks about tension growing in Afghanistan, the song however ending with a sardonic chorus that sees Mortimer talking about having had a crap gin and tonic.

There’s a half an absurd smile that half forms on me as I read Dave’s line that what sends Mortimer over the urge is the fact that he cannot ‘get a proper drink in a colonial outpost’.

Then a few lines after, Dave talks about checking out the album if you enjoyed the review. His recommendation is that you go back to Pavement’s catalogue or ‘jump ahead to Malkmus’ work with The Jicks’.

Dave’s last line (which brings a smile onto my face) is: ‘Just dot wait 30 years to figure out what the songs mean’.

This then means that Dave knows more about the meanings of Malkmus’ music than he thinks he does. Anyway, this makes me think that while rock might not be as prestigious as classical music, at least it deals with topics such as these: colonialism.

As I write this last lines, Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ is playing. It was really cool learning about Dave and his leaning towards rock. It was learning how Dave and daughter interact with music. And it’s cool learning about Malkmus and Pink India without really having to spend a lot of time. Dave has listened to the song for us so we can save ourselves the next thirty years!

***

Notes:

1. I originally published this piece on Substack Notes as ‘The Musical World of Dave and his Daughter - Part 1’.