You may ask yourself...

My buddy John and I got tickets to see David Byrne. Actually, John got one for his birthday. When his daughter Annie found out I also liked Byrne she got me one too. Byrne was touring in support of a new CD, “Everything that happens will happen today.”

The venue was a large field adjacent to the Shelburne Museum. (The museum is a village of 18th and 19th century buildings moved to the site for their historical or architectural significance.) A pamphlet that came with the tickets said to bring beach chairs rather than standard models so that views of the stage, set up at the bottom of a gentle slope, would be unobstructed. We found a likely spot not too far from the stage and set up the required chairs. Mine was a borrowed wooden version that, folded differently, doubled as a backpack frame.

The concert started on time as the crowd continued to trickle in. Folks either sat, mostly in compliance with the “chair rule,” or stood at the edges as a Higher Ground (promoter,) announcer had suggested. As the concert continued and got livelier folks started to rise up out of their seats to dance, applaud, or (and this may be just me,) restore circulation to their lower extremities.

David Byrne is a veteran performer who honed his chops in the 70’s as front man for Talking Heads. His fan base includes a healthy dose of baby boomers including early ones like myself who are – let’s just admit it – not as spry as we once were. (Byrne himself is in his late fifties but still seems pretty spry.)

It had been raining the previous week and the ground was soft. The wooden chair I was in sank to its seat leaving me on the ground, albeit with a backrest. This made getting up a challenge involving rolling over onto my knees and bolting upright from there. Looking around, I saw that I wasn’t alone in that. Think: adults in sort of a septuagenarian parody of Woodstock. You know - rolling around on the ground.

Nor was the soft ground/low chair problem the only source of Woodstock reference. There was the pretty twenty-something skipping through the crowd arms extended as though attempting to take flight. There were also blankets, beer coolers, snow fence barriers, porta-potties and the sweet smell of marijuana; all enough to put one in nostalgic overload.

In short, the evening was a blast. The music was great, enhanced by a bit of effective theater provided by a small cast of dancers, and the mood of the crowd was upbeat and celebratory. Of course, there is the problem of “Burnin’ down the house” still running through my brain a week later. As Annie told me in an e-mail though, “It could be so much worse.”