|
|
We Don't Know Just How, But Peter, Paul and Mary (Chautauqua Institution, 7-28-06) Are MagicJul 30 '06 (Updated Apr 01 '07) Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Music
The Bottom Line Peter, Paul and Mary are exhilarating in concert. An experience everyone should have.
Friday night, I had the pleasure of attending one of the most glorious concerts I have ever seen. The occasion: the day after Mom's birthday. The venue: the Chautauqua Institute, a gated community about an hour's drive away from where I live. The main event: Peter (Yarrow), Paul (Stookey) and Mary (Travers) in the amphitheater. We arrived an hour and a half early, but the line still stretched in front of us when we got there. The queue was as impressive as the one at last year's Green Day concert but vastly more orderly, largely due to the fact that the vast majority of heads sported gray hair or none at all. But the age of the audience has never been a deterrent to my determination to enjoy a concert. I've just decided at this point that most of the truly great music in our society is at least 30 years old. Given the activism of the evening, it might have been energizing to see a few more fresh young faces. But once the concert began, there was no time to sit around glancing at my fellow concert-goers. All eyes were glued upon the stage. The concert started promptly, only a minute or two after the announced starting time. This surprised me, as did the fact that the audience started becoming vocally impatient as soon as the minute hands on their watches ticked from 8:15 to 8:16. But the trio was accommodating, coming right out and launching into a song with no announcement or opening act. Halfway into their first number, Peter stopped abruptly and asked the sound crew to adjust the system, setting a tone of informality and levity that helped make this concert such an enjoyable standout. Once the song was over, we were treated to quite a bit of banter amongst the three, much of which seemed unrehearsed. Throughout the concert, they talked almost as much as they sang, but we didn't mind because what they had to say was so relevant, affectionate and funny. It's refreshing to see a friendship so unadulterated and enduring and a musical group so unaffected and generous. Their music has always been folk in the truest sense of the word, more about the people they hope to inspire than about themselves. Though they joked continuously about their advancing years and diminishing faculties - with Paul at one point apparently completely forgetting what it was he was about to say, though that may have just been for comic effect - their voices were as strong as ever and their spirits as joyful. As I expected, this was one of the most interactive concerts I have ever enjoyed. There were invitations to sing, or at least clap, along on all but a handful of songs. Most notably, Mary had a love song all to herself, and the three harmonized gorgeously on The Kid, a ballad about individuality and imagination that I first heard on the Art Garfunkel / Buddy Mondlock / Maia Sharp collaboration Everything Waits to Be Noticed, and It's Magic, a song from their 2004 album In These Times, perfectly summed up the experience of listening to this incredible trio sing: "It's magic, and you don't want to know / just how it's done; it would ruin the show." There was plenty of political commentary, of course, but not of the raging variety so common to many activists. There can be no doubting the conviction of any of these troubadours, but they seek to unite, not divide. They've been helping to bring about social change for 45 years with their sometimes challenging songs of peace and love. That the music is still so timely today is a testament to their talent and to the fact that we still have a long way to go. At least the audience was united in singing out those old familiar (and sometimes new but easily learned) strains, from the pleading Don't Laugh at Me and the wistful Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Blowin' in the Wind and defiant Have You Been to Jail for Justice? to the jubilant Light One Candle (accompanied by an impromptu, ever-increasing flurry of waving glow lights and cell phones), If I Had a Hammer and This Land is Your Land. There was the fanciful, too, most notably the essential Puff the Magic Dragon, which they've been trying to make a bit more optimistic lately by singing the last chorus in the present tense. The song has always been much more of a downer than I would like, and while the slight alteration seems a tad tacked-on, it's more in keeping with Peter, Paul and Mary's spirit. You work hard to bring joy into the world, something comes along to seemingly destroy your efforts forever, you mope... but then you brush yourself off again and keep going. It's all you can do, really, as Paul accentuated in one of his solo numbers urging everyone to start a revolution just by smiling at a few strangers on the street. There are a lot of big problems in the world, and we may have big problems of our own, but we can ease both just a little if we concentrate our efforts on making someone's day a bit brighter. This point also came across in the Garden Song, a simple classic about so much more than horticulture. While it was marvelous to watch the three of them up on stage together (along with bassist Richard Kniss and Paul Prestopino, who played several instruments and performed a solo), still so fond of one another after all these years that they peppered their remarks with compliments and gentle jabs at one another and even shared a few hugs and kisses, it was also nice to see them in isolation to get a better sense of who they are as individuals. This occurred after the intermission, and the whole second portion of the show seemed like a bonus to me because for the length of Light One Candle, introduced as "this last song," I thought the concert was only an hour long, presumably because Mary's stamina still wasn't up to peak condition. So I was very happy to learn there was still quite a bit of concert left. In fact, I think what came after the break was longer than what preceded it. First up was Peter, who related the fact that he had come to Chautauqua often as a child and studied violin under a virtuoso who was in residence at the time. I had no idea the group had such a personal connection to the community, and it added a greater sense of intimacy. Peter's regard for the Institute stems from more than just nostalgia, though; he praised those who people the town, whether living there or just visiting, for their "intelligent, gentle, inquisitive" spirits and dedicated the song Stewball to Chautauqua, where the prevailing sense of peace and artistry makes it a microcosm of just the world Peter, Paul and Mary hope to create with their activism. Following Stewball was a medley of This Little Light of Mine, Down By the Riverside and a somewhat Dylanesque drone about immigration whose lyrics were funny and biting when I caught them, though unfortunately the acoustics left a bit to be desired, which is probably unavoidable in an amphitheater. We were only about 20 rows from the front, so we could see quite well and usually had no trouble hearing, but some of the spoken words didn't quite reach our ears. Paul came next, just as enthusiastic and hilarious as Peter. After his revolution song, he took a few moments to insist that everyone in the audience join in on the next number, no matter what our perceptions were of our own vocal abilities. After a couple practice rounds, we launched into The Building Block, which he led with irrepressible Gospel-flavored furor. It was nice to have a song like this to remind us that Jesus himself was a massive catalyst for social change and that there's absolutely no reason activism and Christianity should be mutually exclusive. Mary only took one song for herself, which she dedicated to the husband who stood by her so faithfully during her recent battle with leukemia. The affection that flowed toward the stage for this iconic trio was palpable throughout the concert, but there was a sense that everyone's thoughts were especially with Mary, who in spite of her crutch and shorn locks - "It took me 45 years to change my hairstyle!" she quipped - was vibrant and passionate as ever. She related to us some of the details of her ordeal, from all those days in the hospital that prompted her to advise those in a similar situation to be nice to the nurses and have friends bring you decent food to the fateful phone call, a year after her successful bone marrow transplant, to her donor. While she spoke glowingly of the woman whose generosity saved her life, she noted that in the required interim before she could contact her benefactor, she was haunted by visions of wrestling with herself a la Dr. Strangelove. Mary is a lifelong and very deliberate Democrat; what if her donor was just as staunchly Republican? With this kind of set-up, it came as little surprise to me that her donor was, indeed, a Republican, which she divulged following "a long, pregnant pause" after Mary shared her alarming fantasy. "Well," Mary said, "I thought to myself, 'It's about time those guys did something good for me!'" This was all in good fun, of course, and it sounds as though she is very much looking forward to meeting this woman, also a mother named Mary, when she does a concert in Chicago in three weeks. There was opportunity to before and after the concert to support leukemia research by buying a button, much like Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong bracelets. Not only did I bite on that offer, I also got a concert t-shirt, a stuffed Puff and an exhaustive boxed set, much like Simon and Garfunkel's Old Friends, containing more than 80 tracks, a booklet and a bonus DVD with rare live performances. I could have gotten it cheaper somewhere else, of course - in fact, I could have almost bought another t-shirt with the money I would have saved - but I was too caught up in the moment to worry about such things, especially when it recently came to my attention that the only album we had of theirs on CD was the Christmas album. And as much as I love vinyl, it doesn't do me much good when I'm riding in the car. I want those voices ringing in my ears as often as possible over the next few days while I try to figure out how I can do something with my life that will make a fraction of the impact they have made. By the time the concert began to wind down, to the dulcet strains of Leavin' on a Jet Plane, I was irrefutably aware of the following: Although Peter, Paul and Mary are hovering perilously close to the dreaded age of 70 so pitifully described in Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends, I don't see wistful obsolescence in any of their futures. I predict that all three will remain vital for the rest of their lives, which I hope will stretch well into the 21st century. If you ever have a chance to see them live, don't miss it. It's a couple of the most joyful hours you are ever likely to experience.  |
| Read all comments (2)|Write your own comment |
|
Ads by Google
|
by George_Chabot
![Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast Reviews](http://di2.shopping.com/images/pi/95/a4/8a/2006752046-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p11.ef91fdaea27ac384979c&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120603173326&r=2)
![Irony Is a Dead Scene [EP] by The Dillinger Escape Plan Reviews](http://di1.shopping.com/images/pi/6b/71/9f/2005398205-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p24.724d6297444a99972949&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120603173327&r=4)
