Son of a Son of a Finally Getting Around to It

Album: Ivan Neville, If My Ancestors Could See Me Now, 1988

Best Track: "Not Just Another Girl"

Lasting Memory: Probably more than any other, this album's presence in my cassette case prompted me to pursue the project of listening to every album in my music collection.

By the quirk of the English alphabet, Ivan Neville's If My Ancestors Could See Me Now would always wind up smack dab in the middle of a line up of records, whether the records were filed by artist's first name, artist's last name, or album title's first word. So it was with my collection. And I just never pulled If My Ancestors out and listened to it. Ever.

Conspicuous by its neglect, this album has long made me feel a little guilty about having so much music I could be enjoying but was intentionally relegating to the status of taking up physical space.

I should also mention that If My Ancestors has been playing the role of unheard nag for more than 20 years now. I either purchased this cassette, or received it as a gift, in 1988, and I don't think I've given it a spin since then. I've always meant to play it, but, "Hey, is that Dire Straits? I haven't heard Making Movies since last week."

And so it went, and went, until I finally set the goal of just starting from the beginning and listening to every record I owned from Aerosmith to Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. That was most likely in 1991, and achieving the goal also involved doing nothing but driving around the backroads of the United States and creating my own American myth.

I'm still fantasizing about going mobile, but I'm finally well into working through my music, and what is this blog if not a form of self-mythologizing?

Plus, I have at last gotten around to listening to If My Ancetors.

It wasn't worth a 20-year wait. At the the same time, it didn't warrant all the self-castigation.

The songs on the album, recorded by the son of Aaron Neville, range from the one should-have-been-a-hit "Not Just Another Girl" to the nice-but-forgettable "After All This Time" to the should-never-be-heard-by-anyone "Out in the Streets."

Maybe I'll pull If My Ancestors out again in 2018.

Up Next: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pack Up the Plantation LIVE!, 1985