Never too old to just listen to the music

Posted 8/21/12

During the last train ride up from the city together with my son, he commented, “I don’t know how you do this trip.” I tend to agree with him with the exception of what lies at the end of the …

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Never too old to just listen to the music

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During the last train ride up from the city together with my son, he commented, “I don’t know how you do this trip.” I tend to agree with him with the exception of what lies at the end of the ride besides my home and my hammock, Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the premier concert venue in the northeast. You see, I live a short 20-minute ride from there, and I love live music. Growing up in Brooklyn, there were many venues for concerts, yet I never had the money to go, or all I could afford was the “nosebleed” section. The nice thing about Bethel Woods is the “nosebleed” section is on the lawn and not a bad way to spend the evening, under the stars listening to live music.

I like to think I have a good relationship with my kids, especially my son Thom. But when it comes to music, sometimes we are on a different page. I am sure my dad would have said the same thing about me and my generation. One thing I don’t get is that Thom and his friends love the Dave Mathews Band. Listening to them talk about his music is like a foreign language to me. I do see the same enthusiasm I had for my generation’s music, especially one of my favorite bands, Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN).

I missed the ’69 Woodstock concert—just barely. I had just turned 13 and my older brother Ken was going. We both pleaded with my parents to let me go with him, but alas I was not allowed, and he went with his friends. I recounted that story to Thom and the many others about the Woodstock concert, the times and especially the part CSN played to that story and in my life. So over this past 4th of July weekend, I bought us fifth row seats to CSN; it was a father-son concert, one that I won’t forget. We spent the following day talking about the concert, and here was my son, now a fan, talking about the stuff he had found on the Internet about them. He even showed me Crosby and Nash in an impromptu concert at Occupy Wall Street that was on YouTube. I smiled to myself, enjoying his new-found enthusiasm for a band of my generation.

We started talking about one of his favorite bands, the Zac Brown Band (ZBB). I knew I had heard of them but never really listened to their music. So accepting his challenge, over Labor Day weekend I attended my first ZBB concert and was blown away with his music. Here was a band that was fantastic live, producing one of the top 10 concerts I have seen at Bethel Woods. The following day, the roles were reversed as I was telling my son everything I knew and had found about ZBB on the Internet—then I noticed him smiling at me and I knew that smile- it was the same one I had when he was telling me about CSN. It seems that music can bind the generations as it did for us over this past summer. Who knows, maybe on our next train ride I will be telling him all I know about the Dave Mathews Band.

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