Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Belle and Sebastian at Radio City Music Hall. The audience at Radio City was a pretty typical group of twenty-something hipsters, or so I thought. As I suspected we all road the F train home together to Brooklyn. I ran into another couple on the train from the neighborhood. We had a lovely post-concert chat. They spoke about their kids, whose ages span middle school to college.
A humiliating image of the author, her brother, and the hippy tents at the 20th Woodstock Reunion in 1989
I egotistically thought it was odd they were Belle and Sebastian fans at their age, until it dawned on me that Belle and Sebastian formed in 1996! Those twenty-something hipsters on the F train with me were actually in their forties! It was then that I realized I was in college in 1996 and now I’m not! It’s 2015 and apparently I have three elementary age kids. How did that happen?! Help! I’m on the F train, surrounded by aging Hipster Zombies and one must have bitten me because I drink single origin coffee, drive a Volvo, and am now on the other side of the clog trend where I can’t wear them because they make my feet hurt. I’m an Aging Hipster Zombie, too!
My husband remarked recently that every kid with a Nirvana T-shirt today, is a Doors T-shirt of yesterday. I shuddered. When you heard Break on Through on the oldies station in 1987, what did you think? I bet you didn’t think, “Gee that’s current.” Now, if you hear Smells Like Teen Spirit, do you say ” Gosh, I love the Alternative Oldies station. Takes me back to 1991?” Well, you should! When I was 13, I went to the twentieth anniversary of Woodstock in August of 1989 and I thought it was a ridiculously ancient ritual. Well, Nirvana is older today than Woodstock was then! More to the point, I went to Lollapalooza 1992. I missed the 20th reunion for Lollapalooza! The invitation must have gotten lost in the mail because Lollapalooza was created before I had email!
Well, for dinosaurs, Belle and Sebastian rocked it. We were treated to such 1996 oldies as If You’re Feeling Sinister and The State I am In. I enjoyed the video projections. Perfect Couples was performed along with a particularly well-choreographed video projection, and the live dancers were a lot of fun during Dear Catastrophe Waitress. It was refreshing to see actual modern dance at an Indie Pop concert and it was in keeping with their new album title, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. Happy almost 20 year anniversary, Belle and Sebastian!