“Don’t you have a device to listen to music on?” the IT guy asked, looking puzzled. Of course I do. And I also have a CD player in the car and one at home because I can’t figure out how to put the music on the device(s).

“Hey, don’t rush me,” I muttered.

Even my high-tech husband agrees that it’s too early to completely abandon CDs. Plus, how would you present your friends with a mix? I’m still holding on to the greeting card, and I’m going to hang on to the mix CD, too. (Though I did get a book in the mail the other day that was published in 1931 and when I opened it I was reminded of the scene in the book Super Sad True Love Story where the protagonist gets yelled at on a plane for opening a stinky, musty book.)

This weekend I sat down at the (still somewhat functional) laptop and made a mix. Nothing fancy, it’s just songs I heard and liked. Some are really cheesy, and not even ironic Hall & Oates cheesy, but, rather, rock-out-in-traffic-with-no-one-else-in-the-car cheesy. Someone asked me for the list, so I tried cutting and pasting it from iTunes to WordPress, but even that eluded me. I think this is pretty close, though. If you want a copy, let me know and I’ll burn you one.

But you have to promise to make a mix, too.

I’m only a little ashamed to admit to you that I’ve been known to skulk around Anthropologie long after I’m done shopping so I can Shazam the store’s entire playlist. Hey, I’m in my mid-forties. I’m busy and I’m not particularly hip. I’ve got to find my music where I can.

Like in the hairdresser’s chair. I ran back to the office one day a few weeks ago to ask our music editor at New Times about this song I’d just heard.

“Oh yeah,” Jason said when I blurted out some lyrics. “That’s Fun.”

(Technically it’s “fun.” but that’s hard to make work in writing.)

Turns out, the frontman for Fun is a local guy, Nate Ruess, who’s made it on a scale no one from Arizona — not the Gin Blossoms or Jimmy Eat World or The Refreshments — has ever made it before. Fun’s big song, “We Are Young,” hit number one on the charts after it was in a Super Bowl ad and on an episode of Glee. The band has been everywhere all year.  

Who knew? Apparently everyone but me. Luckily Jason had an extra copy of the album “Some Nights,” which I stuck in my car’s CD player. That was early April; I haven’t taken it out since, although sometimes we listen to Fun’s first album, “Aim and Ignite,” to mix things up.

Fun is catchy and poppy and, well, fun. Ray really hates it (not surprising, for a guy who listens to Lamb of God) but both my girls adore it. Particularly Annabelle, who was immediately taken by the fact that Ruess writes a lot about his parents.

“That guy’s from Phoenix,” I told her. That’s all she needed to hear. She was fascinated, obsessed, hanging on every word. (Including the word fuck, which we decided she’ll just ignore.) And so when I heard Fun was coming to town, I knew that I had to get tickets. It had to be Annabelle’s first concert.

My first concert was Rick Springfield at the Arizona State Fair. He was pretty huge at the time, it was the Working Class Dog tour and all, but still. “Jessie’s Girl”? Nothing compared to Fun. I hope this is a night she remembers, for a lot of reasons.  

Like Annabelle, I’m totally in love with this band — and this guy. Their music — particularly the second album, which feels like a seamless anthem — is wonderful. You just don’t hear a young indie rock star sing so passionately about missing his mom, or about how he’s lived his whole life under the shadows of his father’s (specifics are never mentioned) illness.

We both love the song The Gambler, from Fun’s first album. An example of the lyrics:

It was the winter of ’86, and all the fields had frozen over.
So we moved to Arizona to save our only son
and now he’s turning to a man, although he thinks just like his mother,
he believes we’re all just lovers he sees hope in everyone.

And even though she moved away,
we always get calls from our daughter.
She has eyes just like her father’s
they are blue when skies are grey
And just like him, she never stops,
Never takes the day for granted,
works for everything that’s handed to her,
Never once complains.

It’s just lovely, but I didn’t realize til I was in the audience at Mesa Center for the Arts late last month that it’s more than that. After years of working really hard (he was half of the Phoenix-based band The Format before moving to New York City to start Fun) Ruess has finally made it – made it huge, Fun’s big hit will be played at every wedding and bar mitzvah for the next 20 years — and this was the first time he’d come home to play a big show.

Home.  He stood on the stage and the teenage girls (and Annabelle) screamed, but more than that, you could feel that this guy was home. He was clearly singing to his parents (somewhere in the balcony, it appeared), to his longtime fans, and to his hometown.

I’m not used to that. Several times during the show, Ruess addressed Phoenix — and I waited to be chastized. For SB1070, a crazy governor, a disgusting sheriff. Goodness knows we deserve it. But that’s apparently not what this guy’s about. He’s about love and family.

And he happens to be from Phoenix. 

How lucky, I thought, that I brought Annabelle. Don’t get me wrong, I want my kid to be cynical and to challenge her world, but I also want her to be happy in a way I never was, growing up in Phoenix. Maybe Nate Ruess wasn’t particularly happy at the time, either, but at least he has fond memories of growing up here.

I don’t. I spent my childhood dreaming about moving away. That didn’t happen, and in a lot of ways I’m glad — like Ruess, I’m convinced it’s all about family — but still, I have regrets. Two days after the Fun concert, I went on a rare solo trip to New York City. I saw friends, did cool work-related things, shopped, saw art, and mostly walked all over the city. It was magic, the New York I always figured I’d experience full-time as a grown up.

“If I lived here, it’s not like I’d be seeing a Broadway show and walking from the Lower East Side to the West Village and drinking at The Carlyle all in one week, right?” I asked my best friend, who moved to Manhattan after college and (pretty much) stayed.

She and her boyfriend looked at each other and shrugged. New York is their playground. That’s how they live. But they are in finance and I am in journalism and anyhow, as I wrote in a Facebook status update as I waited to board the plane at JFK, “Goodbye New York. I love you madly, but my heart is in Phoenix.”

It’s true, even though I started to cry after I wrote it. I don’t want Annabelle to live her life like that. I don’t think she will. Already she’s surpassed me in so many ways, maturity-wise.

Plus, she’s got Fun. Thank you, Nate Ruess, for loving Phoenix and not being afraid to say so. Thank you for making it big even though you’re from this podunk place and thank you to your parents, who must be pretty fucking amazing people to have raised a son with such a voice. A line from one of your songs is stuck in my head, and I hope it stays there, a reminder that geography doesn’t matter so much as what’s inside:

May your path be the sound of your feet upon the ground. Carry on.

Which would have been just fine, except today was the day that I had seats for the Dan Zanes concert. Front row center, purchased last October, right when the went on sale. Four tickets — one for each member of the family.

If you haven’t heard of Dan Zanes, you should — as long as your kid isn’t pre-prepubescent. In fact, even if you don’t have kids at all, you’ll like Dan Zanes. He makes the coolest kid music. So cool, I have to admit, that neither of me kids (nor my husband) likes him very much.

Who knew? We’ve had his videos and CDs for years, listened to him on the kids channel on satellite radio, even saw him in concert once already and had a blast. For me, it was a given. Who wouldn’t want to go a Dan Zanes concert?

Annabelle, that’s who. When she protested that that’s music for babies and reminded me it was several years since the last time we saw Dan Zanes and she was just a little girl then, I pointed out (perhaps not very kindly) that she does still enjoy Sesame Street.

She stood her ground — and I stood mine. Damn it, we were going to have a good time. In a rare moment of complete parental agreement, Ray and I decided we’d all go. He was an exceedingly good sport; til we got there.

And when we got there, and took our front row seats, even I had to admit something:

The parents like this music better than the kids do.

Pretty much to a person. Maybe it was because I was focused on the audience rather than the music, but I didn’t see one happy looking kid. Annabelle was right — she was way older than most of the other kids. And the toddlers all looked the way my kids looked. Like they were just putting up with it.

“Where are the characters?” Sophie wanted to know, before she put her hands over her ears and left them there.

The parents, on the other hand, they were in heaven. And who can blame them? When you listen to bands with names like The Wiggles and Ralph’s World all day,  you can use a break in the form of truly good music — great voices, hip performers, a variety of instruments. They even brought in a teenaged Latin jazz band to accompany Dan Zanes (who plays the harmonica, the Jew Harp, and a variety of stringed instruments, accompanied by horns, drums and an upright bass) and the kids just looked bored.

I stand by my taste, and I adore Dan Zanes. I enjoyed watching him perform today, sort of. Sophie and I stayed in the front row (she thought maybe he’d invite her on stage, a pleasure apparently reserved only for the kid of the owner of Fairytale Brownies, which had provided the band with a case or two of treats) while Annabelle and Ray slunk away a few rows. When Sophie and I got up to go to the bathroom, Ray caught my eye.

“Let’s go,” he mouthed.

The show wasn’t even half over. Annabelle was doodling on her program. Sophie tugged my hand. Ray was halfway to the exit. A song ended, another began. “House Party”. One of my favorites. Hadn’t we had about a million dance parties in the kitchen to this one? Maybe, a million years ago.

Sophie broke away and followed Ray. I stopped for one last look, and felt something tug on my dress. It was Annabelle.

“Let’s dance, Mommy,” she said, taking my hand and swinging it. We stood side by side, watching the band. I looked around at the bored kids and the exuberant parents and smiled down at Annabelle. What a kid — little or not.

“Let’s go,” I said. She didn’t look back.

They were selling tee shirts in the lobby. “Anyone want one?” I asked halfheartedly.

“Let’s not memorialize this day,” Ray said.

I know I’ll never forget it.

The song “Be Like You” — don’t worry, it’s from their kids album — is just wonderful. I’ll give you the lyrics and a video — the video’s made by some random dad who liked the song and taped his kids doing stuff mentioned in it. Check it out for the song and I promise, you’ll want to make a video just like it with your favorite kids. The song makes me think of both my girls, particularly Sophie.

Here are the lyrics:

BE LIKE YOU

You with your big blue eyes
You with your big surprise
You with your “I don’t know”s
You with your mismatched clothes

Chasin the kitty cat
Tiptoe and pitter pat
Hiding ‘neath the kitchen chair
Sleepin with a teddy bear

You sittin at the breakfast table wearing two different shoes
I, I wish that I could be like you

And when we’re jumpin on the bed
Jump jump jumpin up and down
It seems like such great bliss
Makes me wonder if
A grownup like me could ever feel like this

You with your funny smile
You with your certain style
You when you play pretend
You know you’re my best friend

You sing a bit off key
You say “Hey look at me!”
How I wish that this could last
But you’re growing up so fast

And I love your silly expressions
And your different point of view
And I, I wish that I could be like you

And when we’re walking down the street
Walk walk walkin hand in hand
We’re having so much fun and when the day is done
I tell you I’m so glad you’re my son

la la la la la la
la la la la la la

la la la la la la
la la la la la la

c’mon boys!

la la la la la
la la la la la la

You’re quite extraordinary and it’s absolutely true that I,
I wish that I could be like you
I wish that I could be like you

I wish that I could be like you.

And — bonus, in case you’ve actually made it this far into the post — here’s another “…Be Like You” song among my personal faves, so I thought I’d toss it in.

(With thanks to Bridget for the suggestion.)