It’s not a seriously celebrated holiday. Maybe you get a brunch, a sleep in, or a round of golf. The other dads in your life send messages to each other, and it can be traded for a ¼ cup of guilt to say “hey let’s do this thing I want to do.” That’s fine, no one really needs a lot. Definitely don’t need gifts. A good meal, a little sleep, and general respect from those we love. I’ll take that day any day of the year, but this Father’s Day, while not expecting anything, I got just what I wanted, without knowing I wanted it.
Being a late Gen Xer, the band Radiohead has a special place in my heart. Thom Yorke’s plaintive, synthy rock tracks powered me through hundreds of late nights and discman-plugged-into-the-tape-deck car rides avoiding pot holes to keep the CD from skipping. The song Fake Plastic Trees was always one of my favorites. Showing us a barely real world drowning under the weight of its own consumerism. The dystopian supermarket music video with Thom’s classic, half-mast, left eye watching us as he’s pushed through the aisles making us think and feel and regret and pine for something we can’t quite grasp. Long story short, my kind of bop.
Cut 30 years forward and today my 15 year old son Jack is about to play that song as the lead guitarist in the Mamaroneck chapter of School of Rock’s Radiohead tribute band. It’s odd hearing the soundtrack of your 20’s played by a rotating group of 10 kids ranging in age from 11-16, some holding their own, others a bit off key or significantly off rhythm, but giving it their all. No one would ever call Radiohead an easy cover. On the car ride to the Yonkers brewery where his band would play, I told Jack, “make sure you perform it, don’t just play it. The kids are good, but they tend to just stand there.” He did me the favor of sighing, “ok dad” even though I’d already said this to him between 10 and 57,000 times, but it was Father’s Day so he had to allow it. My wife and eldest child were off working at summer camp, so it was just me and the boy and I was enthralled, like America was the first time Radiohead performed on Conan in ‘93. Jack was playing on a bunch of tracks and his Johnny Greenwood riffs were solid. He was locked in for Subterranean Homesick Alien, went absolutely off on Jigsaw Falling Into Place, and rocked the solo on Paranoid Android which was a bit intense for this audience of suburban parents, younger sibs and somewhat confused grandparents.
As I watched my son strumming his red Telecaster performing the hell out of these songs, I was transported back to June 2001 on Randall’s Island watching the actual band on their Kid A tour with Erin, my future wife’s best friend. I could almost feel the sun on my face and the mushrooms coursing through my system. It sure didn’t seem like a quarter century ago. It seemed like 6 years ago, or three Fridays ago. Back then I had no kids, was kind of broke, newly in love and halfway through writing a screenplay about a drug fueled 1995 spring break. Today my minivan was parked outside and I was peering over two 1st generation Chinese grandparents sitting in metal chairs watching their 13 year old kid trying to keep tempo with my son as he started singing Fake Plastic Trees. It was the show’s finale, Jack’s time to shine on acoustic and lead vocals. He had 3.5 minutes to be his odd hero Thom Yorke. As he got into the first chorus “It wears me out, it wears me out,” I felt the tears coming. The kid wasn’t just performing the song like I had nagged him to. He was living it. Fresh off a high school breakup, he knows what what putting on a fake face is all about. He does it every day. They all do. Jack just wants to be who he is. A Magic The Gathering playing, Radiohead obsessed, Knicks loving, manga reading, 15 year old kid growing up in a fucked up America, surrounded by endless social media and AI slop threatening to destroy the very art he loves, before he gets a chance to make any of it. And I feel for him. I feel for all of them. This world we are handing off is a real shit show. As he got to the song’s climax, he closed his eyes, stomped the stage and slammed his hand across his strings. “She looks like the real thing, she tastes like the real thing, my fake plastic love, but I can’t help the feeling, I could blow through the ceiling If I just turn and run.” Right then I felt the entire crowd stop moving. He had them all. This was my Father’s Day gift. This moment right here. When the whole room held their breath, because Jack was taking it away from them. Here Dad, have some tears of pride/nostalgia/love/longing from seeing your complicated not so little guy absolutely slay this song dead in its tracks.
Within seconds of the song ending moms and dads I’d never met started patting me on the back. I tried to be gracious, but the stains on my cheeks made it all a bit awkward. They understood though. All of them mid Xer’s remembering what it was like when we first heard Radiohead, all of us stuck in a strange time loop sparked by visions of our children playing the songs we used to get high and make out to. The parents nodded with small, closed-lip smiles as if to say, “Yeah, if that was my kid I’d be a mess too.” 15 minutes later, in the car on the way to Vietnamese food, Jack told me he really didn’t remember what happened up there. That he just sort of blacked out, but the second it was done he felt a calm sweep over him. I wonder if that’s what Thom felt 25 years ago on Randall’s Island in front of those 15 thousand fans, plus me and Erin as we watched similarly awed with tears streaming down our faces.
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