The Hippies are Old, But the Music is Still Young - Crosby and Nash in KC

[Elspode]

I didn't know if the tears were welling up because of my lost youth, or the lost hope of my generation. In the company of 1000-odd of my aged counterculture peers and my lifelong friend and bandmate Jill, tonight I sat in Kansas City's venerable Uptown Theater, experiencing a gamut of emotion as I watched and heard David Crosby and Graham Nash rewind time and tug at my heart strings for some two hours.

Jill says it is nostalgia, becoming suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed by a flood of memories of past times and places. She says it happens to her 77 year old father all the time when he hears an old song or sees an old movie. She, too, had the same goose bumps and unbidden tears that repeatedly assailed me tonight as this pair of consumate artists and their remarkable backing band (which included David Crosby's son on keyboards) gave forth both familiar and less familiar music in impeccable style. I'm not so sure.

As I sat enfolded in sonic beauty, examining my feelings, I could only come up with the sense that I was listening to the soundtrack of a simpler, more earnest, less cynical time - a time when there was still hope. A time when it was cool to love your fellow beings and sing out loudly that you could, indeed, teach your children well, and live in a very, very fine house with two cats in the yard. I think the upwelling of tears was a bittersweet mixture of joy and sadness, jubilation and sorrow, lost years and disappointment in myself and my fellow beings. I think I felt like we should have done better.

But it *was* a bittersweet mix, after all, and the sweet was sweet indeed. Seeing the 50 and 60 something attendees standing and singing with one voice was such a throwback to my youth. In these wrinkled faces and graying pates, I saw echoes of concerts past. Many of us who still had hair had lots of it. There were jean jackets and bell bottoms, concert t-shirts and gratuitious dangling jewelry. I saw a guy who was at least my age wearing a white T with a huge peace sign on it, and I saw grandmothers who still had the gumption and the asses to wear denim that could have only been painted on. To a person, there was the strongest feeling of Deja Vu you can imagine (especially when Crosby launched into "Deja Vu"). To a person, there was a smile, eye contact, a common invisible energetic thread of memory running through the audience.

I'm doing a very bad job of trying to explain a *very* complex set of emotions and experiences, here, so perhaps I should just say that it was a totally kickass concert. Highlights? "Critical Mass/Wind on the Water". "Almost Cut My Hair". "Wooden Ships". An incredible rendition of "Cathedral".

And, of course, "Teach Your Children".

Crosby and Nash, along with their usual compatriots Stephen Stills and Neil Young have never been shy about expressing their hatred of war and their feelings about all things pollitic. It is perhaps even more profound that I saw this pair in the wake of an historic election, the outcome of which was clearly palatable to them. Well, mostly palatable. David Crosby did complain that, with the departure of the current administration, most of his best stage jokes are now useless. And he did note, in his usual, frank, inimitable style, that "the new guy is going to be handed a bucket of shit and asked to make biscuits."

Between Obama's acceptance speech Tuesday night and the energy that was present at the Uptown tonight, I felt, for the first time in a long time, that perhaps there was still hope that fine pastry could perhaps be made from feces.

[Shawnee123]

Between Obama's acceptance speech Tuesday night and the energy that was present at the Uptown tonight, I felt, for the first time in a long time, that perhaps there was still hope that fine pastry could perhaps be made from feces.

Sweet!