A generation apart, mi’ Mum and I both got to re-live the same period of our youth, simultaneously, whilst watching the same band. Would that be something paradoxical? I don’t know if that’s right, but it was cool anyway.
Growing up we only had two tapes in our car, ‘The Animals’ which was Dad’s jam, and Mum’s ageing copy of ‘The definitive Simon and Garfunkel’ which never had a case. The equitable nature of my parent’s marriage meant that Simon and Garfunkel was essentially the soundtrack of my youth, and certainly linked to every childhood memory I have of family holidays, sat in the back of Dad’s red Citreon BX, eating something Mum had packed for us in tin foil, trying not to touch the actual food having had to stop at another one of France’s unfathomable roadside long-drop loos, and trying to revive one’s nostrils afterwards by squirting coconut Soltan on them.
Good times.
Anyway, so I bought Mum tickets to see ‘The Simon and Garfunkel Story’ for Christmas because, well, it’s part of our history, and it was everything I hoped it would be – all the classics, top band with cracking blokes as ‘Arty’ and Paul, and the whole back story of how the duo came to be. Mum re-lived the music from the first time round, and I got the chance to get down with my bad ’60s self in a slightly ‘recycled’ kind of a way…
Unexpectedly, it also reawakened my occasionally reoccurring ‘militant repressed hippy’ tendency. I get this every once in a while when I slip into my philosophical ‘what’s this all about’ mode. I found myself saying things like ‘this was real music, about things that actually mattered’ and ‘music these days just doesn’t bring people together like it used to’, to random strangers in the ice cream queue. Which is pretty embarrassing. It probably isn’t that true either, my musical knowledge doesn’t greatly extend beyond ‘The wheels on the bus’ anymore, and I had had a couple of large glasses of wine by this point, but still – I was feeling it, and kinda stand by it.
I do however also have a bit of a romance with the 60’s and 70’s. It felt like lots was changing in the world, and that most people had a view about that – which I greatly respect, and everything seemed culturally less ego-centric, and more of the music was about ‘something’, and lyrics were heartbreakingly poetic, and didn’t rhyme with ‘booty’, and critically, ‘Adele’ hadn’t been dumped yet.
It was a classic night anyway, in the company of my lovely Mum, the show was fantastic, if you get the chance to, go see it, it will knock your socks off!