On A Concert

 Last Saturday The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I went to a concert.

My "music era" spans my middle school through a year or so after high school, perhaps 8 years if I think about it that way.  It was arguably a magical and unique time in music, with the leftovers of the sixties merging into the end of the mid and late 70's and onto the 80's, a combination of folk rock, disco, hair rock, and the incipient rise of New Wave.  Musically, it was an amazing era, with bands that have managed to have their influence felt even today from the height of their popularity years ago.

My interest faded after that, a combination of college and different listening habit and changing interests. It is not that I have not found songs since then that I have enjoyed, but rather that they are one-offs at this point.  Seldom if ever do I seek out anything after that because of the performer or group, only the song.

Conveniently, the year of my graduation seems to have marked a watershed in the music movement as well; after that it was never the same as before.

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This is only the fifth concert I have ever been to.  Only once have I seen a performer at the height of their popularity (Billy Joel in the late 1980's).  The others have all been what are effectively retro tours, smaller venues or groups touring en masse as a sort of "era music".  This concert was no different:  three performances, one solo performer and two bands.

The makeup of those groups as I remember them is gone, indeed has mostly been gone for years now.  The solo performer had a completely different backup band than years ago.  Of the two bands, one had only a single original member (fortunately the vocalist), the other the lead guitar player and the vocalist.  The rest is filled out by musicians which were either older or younger, but definitely not from the original band.

The sets themselves were a combination of older things and some more recent numbers, at least to my ears.  The first two performances were eight songs each, a reasonable length of time that hit most of their "greatest hits".  The last performance was almost twice that - a bit long for my taste, but having a catalog of 40 years, they had a great deal to pull from.

For all that most of the originals were not there, the performances were enjoyable.  The musicianship was what one would expect from people that do this for a living, and - especially from the younger musicians - there were moments of pure joy in their performances that warmed the heart, the true joy of someone doing something the love and in some measure, realizing a lifelong dream.

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The crowd that had assembled (the venue was quite full) was by and large filled with individuals of my age and older - although there was more than a smattering of younger folks there as well (comforting to know that young folk recognize the classics for what they are).  It was not quite a "retirement" crowd, but definitively leaning more in that direction.  Which makes sense - the oldest performers there were in their late '60's; add 5 years on to the upper end of that (this seems reasonable) and gets an average age spread of something like 20 years.

There were occasional bouts of cheering and clapping, but none of the nonsense that takes place at more "popular" concerts - either because people are much better controlled or perhaps simply too old to engage in shenanigans. And the world outside with its politics, social movements, and all of the reasons that people argue was happily not mentioned at all. Just a large group of people, listening and singing along to the songs of their youth.

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Observing my near neighbors and those around me, or those that passed me by on main access ways, gave me an interesting thought exercise.

I was surrounded by people who - for the most part - were grey (or bald) of head, in various body conditions that did not suggest their early twenties, armed in some cases with walking aides or wheelchairs or scooters.  Glasses were everywhere; if there were hearing aides, they had been removed (even with earplugs, the concert was plenty loud).

Almost half a century ago none of that was true.

Every person that surrounded me at the concert was at one time just as young as I was once upon a time, undoubtedly full of the hopes and dreams of youth.  Undoubtedly their years with this music were different in ways from my own but similar in that in fact this was soundtrack of their lives. This music was a backdrop to what for many is a formative period of life.

40 to 50 years later, the youth is fled, the things that filled our time at that period of our lives washed away by the years of adulthood and responsibility that came after, the hard times and the good times that taught us life was a great deal more than what was contained in the songs:  Love was never as good, heartache never as lasting, adventure never as long as what the music promised.

Yet the music remains.

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Will I likely go to more concerts?  Hard to say.  Most of the bands that I remember are now on the end of their touring lives (and actual lives) and while I remain in awe at men in their late 60's that can still rock, the attraction of seeing this on a regular basis with that age or older holds little interest to me.  

In attending, I also realized that for all of the joy and wonder of watching a live show, it fails to recapture the magic of the music itself. Listening to a song from 40 years ago as I heard it at that time can take me back to a moment or a feeling; listening to it much later is simply a re-listening, not a remembering.

And perhaps, that in the end is the reason why concerts like this are items of interest but not intense desire to me:  unlike meeting people from my youth or doing something that I remember, these are simply an amped-up version of a memory, a transitory fleeing set of musical chords from a past that has moved beyond our ability to grasp.  

We can, briefly, perhaps relive it.  But even if, passing through those concert doors, we are somehow briefly teenagers or young adults again, it swiftly disappears as soon as the last chord is played.  

It is only we, among all living beings, that perhaps hearken to a past we can never truly recover.