My Life Time Sound Track

Last week Russ called me and asked if he should accept tickets for the Simon and Garfunkel story at DPAC for tonight. I don’t usually like to go to shows on week nights. Hell, I don’t really like to go to anything on any nights, preferring to be home in my flannel nightgown with Shay. But Simon and Garfunkel are the sound track of my life so I said yes.

Since we were given these fabulous Row B tickets we thought we should look up what the show was as neither of us had heard a thing about it. We didn’t find much information so my enthusiasm was low.

We arrived at the theatre and realized we were clearly bringing down the age average. As others came in to find their seats I saw more and more people I knew, including more than half our row. How is it that everyone knew about this show except us?

It was a bare bones production. Two young men played Simon and Garfunkel. They looked and sounded the parts telling the story of Art and Paul in words and music. They had a back up band of a guitar player, bass, key boards and drums. The bass player was a young Asian guy who was clearly having the time of his life.

As “Simon and Garfunkel” worked their way through their catalog of sounds I was reliving my childhood. The first and I think only song I ever learned to play on the recorder in third grade was “The sound of silence.” “Bridge over Troubled water” came out just as I got my own “Realistic” stereo from Radio Shack and I played it non-stop.

After they broke up I still followed both Art and Paul dedicatedly. Grafunkel’s “Fate for breakfast” album was the only cassette tape we had in our Volvo station wagon in London in 1979. I would drive through Surrey singing “Bright eyes” board out of my mind because I was an 18 year old stuck with my 13 and 8 year old sisters.

Then, when I got our of college Paul Simon came out with perhaps the greatest album of my whole life,”Graceland.” And I went to see him at Radio City Music Hall with my college friends Suzanne and Hugh. Walking home to their apartment they shared we sang,”Diamonds on the soles of our shoes.”

The “Simon and Garfunkel Story” is not exactly the same as seeing the real Art and Paul, but it was a very fun way to relive so many decades of my early years. It was worth going out on a Monday night, and I figure if all those old people who were there with me could do it, so could I.