Disappointment

13 February 2020

Disappointment. Oh well. Sometimes losing is a plus.  Tried to get some Dead and Company tickets yesterday, thanks to Ticketmaster’s system snafu it didn’t happen.  In the end I could have gotten some billets in my range, but the mature adult in me decided that buying four tickets at the cost of two round trip tickets to Europe, just didn’t make sense.  This was especially true given the hearing loss I have suffered over the years.  Growing old, maturing, damn this is just not the route I thought I would follow.

Instead I bought four tickets to a folk concert celebrating the life and music of the late, great Stan Rogers.  So mid-June you will be able to find me at the Aeolian Hall in London Ontario Canada. At $140 for the four tickets this show was a relative bargain.  And even though the seats are close to the stage, fifth row on the aisle, I think that the sound will not exacerbate my tinnitus. And if any of the performers, Stan’s wife, son, friends, etc., sing White Squall my youngest will just be over the moon.

Personally, I find it interesting how attracted my youngest son is to folk music, and particularly to Canadian folk music.  The lad has been exposed to so many types of music, electronic, pop, folk, hard rock, grinding metal noise and more.  Even Fado. But for whatever reason he has been drawn to the songs of Stan Rogers. When we go to folk concerts, he is always among the youngest of the patrons there.

I wonder why folk music, a new folk music, hasn’t taken on with the current members of the aggregate under 35s.  There are good performers out there, Mandolin Orange, Joshua Radin, Jason Isbell and the Avett Brothers. But when you go to these performers concerts the audience is clearly 45+. It is an absolute sin that Richard Shindell and John Gorka aren’t better know and filling 1500-3000 seat halls.

My suspicion is that with our interconnected/over connected world the attention span required to sit and absorb a folk song has disappeared.  The songs these people are singing are mostly about human relationships, not the get back to the farm ethos of the late 60s. Maybe the fact that there is no time we have a moment to be separated from an ever-intruding demands of media has rendered soulful contemplation of human relationships obsolete.

Not seeing Dead and Company disappoints me.  Having a wonderful category music fading away disappoints me. I guess I will close with a link to a wonderful song that shows what folk music today can be. This is Richard Shindell singing Reunion Hill.  Give it a listen and savor it. 

And writing a blog post at the Friendship Circle Biggby in Lansing is a close second to the East Lansing Public Library for a writing space.