The following is the first in a series of profiles on the sons and daughters of friends of mine who have decided, at least for the time being, to follow their hearts and try to play music professionally -- a decision that, I'd like to think, had at least a little to do with their parents' (and my generation's) inherent love of music and the eclectic styles that made up the soundtrack of our lives.
Name: Adam Intrator
Hometown: McKinney, Texas
Now Based: Savannah, Georgia
Band: Triathalon
Instrument(s): Vocals, Guitar (Squier Telecaster in all-white)
Genre: Indie Rock
Background
David Intrator and I go way back, although we never realized it until years later. A native Syracusan, I went to high school at Christian Brothers Academy in Dewitt, a small affluent suburb east of the city. Dave went to Jamesville-Dewitt, whose middle school was directly across Randall Road from CBA, and whose high school was just northeast of there. It wasn’t until we both landed jobs in the cable TV industry, however, and had been at those jobs for nearly 20 years that our paths 
finally crossed. I was working for a DC-based trade association and David was doing marketing and programming for a Dallas-based cable company, when one day we found ourselves on a subway train in New York and started making small talk. One thing led to another, and before you know it we realized we’d gone to school across the street from one another.
And while Dave and I shared more than a few laughs, drinks and friends as industry colleagues, it wasn’t until my recent bout with cancer, and the subsequent Desert Island Jukebox series I did on my favorite ‘60s pop singles, and my relationship with them, that he and I started getting down to brass tacks and really getting to know one another. (And if you don’t think you can get to know a man by the music he holds dear, you really haven’t been paying attention.) Dave became a most frequent, fervent and eloquent commenter on my blog (and FaceBook page), and he continues to this day to regularly share songs and celebrate the history of American music via his own FaceBook page.
That experience bonded us, as did our mutual love of long-lost hits and obscure 45s. And that led David to one day share a video of his son and his son’s band, both which I thought were not just good, but terrific. And it was that one video by Triathalon (and how it touched me) that triggered my idea for this Musical DNA series and my profiles of a few of my friends’ sons and daughters who – just maybe, spurred by their parents’ deep love and abiding passion for music – have sought to carve out careers for themselves making music and earning a living doing it.
Probably all the Green Day my dad played really loud when my mom would be out of the house. He also really got me into Al Green.
Do you buy music, and if so, how?
Probably the Beach Boys in the 1960's somewhere in California – without all the screaming girls, of course. Something about being able to hear those harmonies live just sounds life changing to me.
Underrated is the key. I would say Toro y Moi, who’s from Columbia, SC. Personally, I don't feel he gets enough credit for paving the way for many of the sounds popular today in music. He's an incredibly talented musician who constantly reinvents himself.
I would say as a working musician, having better hospitality on the road would be a real treat. Not saying people I've stayed with in the past haven't been hospitable. But if I could travel everyday and go to sleep on a nice bed, that would make all the difference. But couches are nice too.
My Take
If anything, history has taught us that music is a dynamic, progressive and constantly evolving force. What’s more, each generation’s music is part-reflection of its life and times and part-amalgam of all it’s absorbed along the way. That’s why the concept of musical genres today is becoming almost anachronistic. The walls between styles continue to crumble, and do so little by little with each passing year and with each new bold fusion of influences and each new unlikely mash-up of musical silos.
As we aging Boomers continue to want to label things, if pressed I would call Triathalon’s music, for lack of a better description, lo-fi/indie/surf/pop/rock. The band’s music is both accessible and challenging – and, perhaps not incongruously, all at the same time. For all Triathalon’s catchy surf-hooks and melodic, almost hypnotic Beach Boy-influenced powers of seduction, the band still regularly (and often unexpectedly) dives into – no pun intended – rolling waves of uncharted waters. Sublte shifts in rhythm, occasional visits from alien and random notes and riffs, and whimsical side trips down unlit roads of melodic surf-like fancy and imagination are commonplace. And they leave the listener not so much – again, no pun intended – lost at sea, but on his or her toes and actively engaged in the act of anticipating what's next.
Adam’s falsetto vocals often waft above much of the band’s whimsy, hooks and groove-filled joyous noise and yet at the same time very much tie everything together, in a style reflective of Gregg Alexander (as the New Radicals) in his stunning 1998 pop masterpiece, Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too.
And yet, for all Adam’s vocal prowess and all his band’s readily apparent abilities as harmonizers, I listen and still can’t help but feel that -- at least on some of the band's more celebratory and uptempo songs -- much like so much of the great ‘60s era surf music whose DNA they share, so many times Triathalon 
would soar to even higher heights if they’d consider exploring and perhaps even incorporating more complex and more ambitious harmonies.
That said, I love this band. I truly do. And I have often found myself, especially on cold winter mornings with the wind howling and summer but a distant memory, drinking coffee, banging away at the keyboard, and listening out of one ear as Triathalon and Adam Intrator take me to a warmer place and gentler time with their slightly-but-deliciously off-kilter blend of evocative melody, mood and lo-fi magic.
