Pardon me while I glow for a while....
Oct. 25th, 2003 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kayreI just got home from seeing Peter Paul & Mary in concert.
I was born the year they became a trio; I was two when they had their first big hit. I was ten when they disbanded. Luckily, I had a sister ten years older than me, so I heard PP&M all through my childhood (not just at summer camp!). They have surely been more of a musical influence on me than any other group or individual. They've been touring together again occasionally since 1978, but the time and place was never right, though I did hear Paul live in 1978.
So, overall.. tonight was pretty incredible. My hands hurt from clapping, my face hurts from smiling-- the only reason I'm not hoarse from singing is that I have enough training to avoid that. Despite knowing that they're all in their sixties, it was a shock to see Mary limp out with a cane (she's having a knee replaced soon), but their various age-related jokes were incredibly funny. They did a bunch of their best-known songs, and a bunch more that haven't been big hits, and enough new material that I think we can expect a new album within the next year.
The most interesting of the new songs was one about Matthew Shepard, which directly attacks the role of Christianity in violence against homosexuals. It was quite well received, though I was dismayed to see a few people around me clearly asking neighbors who Matthew was.
It's going to be both difficult and easy to be a classical organist tomorrow morning. Difficult, because what I'm really going to want to do is take out my guitar and get people singing and clapping and laughing and maybe tearing up a bit; but easy because I can and do pour that same kind of passion into the music I do best. It's from folk like Peter, Paul & Mary that I've learned to do that, for the most part; few of my teachers ever talked about things like passion.
I was born the year they became a trio; I was two when they had their first big hit. I was ten when they disbanded. Luckily, I had a sister ten years older than me, so I heard PP&M all through my childhood (not just at summer camp!). They have surely been more of a musical influence on me than any other group or individual. They've been touring together again occasionally since 1978, but the time and place was never right, though I did hear Paul live in 1978.
So, overall.. tonight was pretty incredible. My hands hurt from clapping, my face hurts from smiling-- the only reason I'm not hoarse from singing is that I have enough training to avoid that. Despite knowing that they're all in their sixties, it was a shock to see Mary limp out with a cane (she's having a knee replaced soon), but their various age-related jokes were incredibly funny. They did a bunch of their best-known songs, and a bunch more that haven't been big hits, and enough new material that I think we can expect a new album within the next year.
The most interesting of the new songs was one about Matthew Shepard, which directly attacks the role of Christianity in violence against homosexuals. It was quite well received, though I was dismayed to see a few people around me clearly asking neighbors who Matthew was.
It's going to be both difficult and easy to be a classical organist tomorrow morning. Difficult, because what I'm really going to want to do is take out my guitar and get people singing and clapping and laughing and maybe tearing up a bit; but easy because I can and do pour that same kind of passion into the music I do best. It's from folk like Peter, Paul & Mary that I've learned to do that, for the most part; few of my teachers ever talked about things like passion.
