The music your parents listen to

Like most people, much of my early interest in music came from what my parents played. Often, it was only heard while we were driving around. I can remember thinking there was something dark and compelling about Blue Monday when I first heard it on a Now compilation as a young kid in an old Vauxhall. That was a false dawn though, because most of my childhood was spent singing along to things like Lionel Richie and the Eagles. Not to mention Phil Collins.
We did get to hear some slightly hipper records now and again, such as a Fleetwood Mac mixtape and the albums of Michael Jackson, but - who am I kidding - most of the time I was happy to sing along to the INXS tape my Mum liked.
Years later, my Dad's obsession with Pink Floyd's Meddle was at first scorned, before I listened to it and saw what he was talking about. Unfortunately, I didn't share his interest in Supertramp.
My Dad has always taken music more seriously, but my memories as a child in North Wales are of my Mum's tapes played against a backdrop of the weak sunshine and white houses of Trearddur Bay. And I wonder whether it was her endless pile of Now compilations that eventually led something to click, led me towards what is now almost a pathological obsession with music.
It took years to get over my interest in naff, clunky pop. I suspect that as a teenager at boarding school, I couldn't always tell the difference between a good record and a bad one. I would listen to Atlantic 252 every day - often for hours a day - but don't recall in retrospect losing my affection for the dreadful records of Shaggy until I was about 14. I remember as a teenager thinking for a few weeks that Jon Secada's Just Another Day was in some way a fairly profound lament. Maybe it is still now and I won't admit it, or maybe in those formative years, my brain still working itself out, I didn't know what I was on about.
Things changed after my Mum bought me a rave compilation for Christmas. Much of that now seems gauche, but at the time it felt revolutionary. When you're used to listening to Charles and Eddie on the radio, The Orb's Assassin does rather stand out.
I still have some tapes from my parents' collections - ones that I snatched on trips back home. They never listened to them anyway. And so old, chewed up cassettes from people like Joan Baez, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen do still get airplay in the house once in a while.
I might as a teenager have scoffed at their taste, but they were right more often than I realised.