In a nearby thread, my close personal friend E Pluribus Gergely mentioned his regret over having missed The Specials‘ show in Philadelphia in June 2019. It was a rare show I didn’t regret missing, and better yet, I took my oldest son to the show with me. It was our first show together where he could be among the drinking-age crowd. Thinking about this made me realize that many of us are probably old enough now to have a great concert experience or two with our kids. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard stories direct from a few of you. And perhaps we were all once young enough to have had a cool (or not-so-cool, as I know is the case with Townsman andyr) experience of being taken to a real-life concert by our parents. Share away!
I was uplifted by the Specials’ show, and my son loved it, too, which raised my spirits even higher. He’d already developed a taste for third-generation ska, which I try not to be too didactic over, so it was important to get him closer to the real thing. Was this the full-blown reunited Specials I promised I’d hold out the rest of my life to see, at least a reunited Specials involving both Terry Hall and Jerry Dammers? No. (How does a guy like Dammers pay his bills after all these years seemingly doing almost nothing? What do I know about the daily lives of Dammers, Tom Verlaine, et al. That’s a topic for another day…)
