Pilfering from the past seems to be what we like to do musically these days. Remixed or just regurgitated, we don’t seem to mind.
I couldn’t be called a concert going glutton but in the last few years even I have found myself groovin-and-a-movin to Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen and now the Pointer Sisters who are still apparently doing it for themselves. Although, in the Sisters case, not for that long and with a fifteen minute break in the middle for them to have a cup of English Breakfast and a lie down.
When I looked around the crowd I wondered two things:
ONE: Why did everyone but us look like they were from a Hamilton School reunion from the class of ’51?
TWO: What made us all spend $120 to watch one original sister, her daughter and her granddaughter (I’m not joking) insert the word AUUUCKLAAAND into a show that was so clearly on its final outing?
Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time. I was On Fi-ya! with two sensational sisters of my own being So Excited, being Romeo and Juliet, requesting a Slow Hand at the top of my voice even though He’s So Shy.
Perhaps the point is simple as that Slow Hand request. We live in the digital future but it would seem we’ve no plans to let go our analogue past. Like the wedges in my shoe collection, why can’t the seventies and eighties be the gift that keeps on giving for as long as we all shall live? How delicious to stir up the memories of those slower simpler days pre everything: pre kids, pre the really big breakups, pre wealth protection and pre nups, just rocking on your heels because you’re a bit wasted, drinking screw drivers and gimlets with no one in the room saying haven’t we met before?
What’s not to like about that?