"I'm 50 and hubby of 32 years is 55. Just returned from the Austin City Limits Festival . . . What I loved in Austin was being about 30 years older than everyone else in the first three rows at the Noah and the Whale concert. The young twenty-something next to me screeched, "Oh, my god! He's so cute" when the lead singer took the stage. I know most of the words to their songs (better than the young 'uns surrounding me). Noah I found on my own but our adult kids love to share their music and new finds with us."
Yesterday, I said that Wednesday night's Noah & The Whale show "was a concert you could have taken your mother too without fear of embarrassment." NPR has now confirmed this. And yes, I'm aware of the irony that I'm older than both the commenter and her husband.
Here's another letter from someone my own age:
I'm 59 and find I'm often one of the oldest, if not the oldest, attendee at indie rock concerts. Whenever I drag my friends, they have a good time. So I don't understand why there aren't more of us boomers at these concerts. Who cares if we're the oldest ones in the crowd? The young people are great. I ran into one of my daughter's friends at a recent Alt-J concert. He thought I was one cool dude to be there. LOL!And there was another letter from someone even further down the road than I:
I'm 70 and way into indie music. My daughter and her husband, now in their early 30's, are pretty much imprinted with the music they liked in high school. My daughter did turn me on to Radiohead and Tori Amos back then, but when they go to concerts, it's Modest Mouse, Garbage, Sting and she'd rather listen to the Beatles and REM - with NIN the big generation bridger - I liked them first - but I don't think she's listened to Hesitation Marks yet. My biggest conversion success has been Arcade Fire and MMJ. I'll just have to take it slowly with them when it comes to Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, Deerhunter... & the Rolling Stones. =)
Chris Rock does a routine about "that one guy you always see in the club who's waaaaay too old to be there." I may be that dude, but at least I'm apparently not the only one. And I'm pretty confident that I have better taste in music than the young 'uns lapping up the formulaic folk-pop at the Noah & The Whale concert.
I like it when we see shows together for many reasons, but, as you are sixteen months older than me, it does ensure that I'm never the oldest person there. I will never forget talking to a young man at an Arcade Fire show ( 2010 at that amphitheater way out in in Alpharetta). He said he wondered what happened when you got older, and if people still went to see live music. I was happy to reassure him that, yes, we do.
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