Good music never gets old. Good musicians don’t either. And my music-obsessed heart will always beat just a little faster for a band with a good horn section.
So, when I got the opportunity to see Lighthouse on Saturday night at the Elora Legion, I was good to go.
The Carpenter was going for the beer. He insisted he didn’t know Lighthouse, and also insisted that it would be best if I stopped singing Sunny Days as proof that he did, because my singing was doing nothing to support his willingness to attend the show.
But if it’s one thing the Carpenter appreciates, it’s live music. Also, his Riverfest Elora pals. So, I stopped singing (out loud, anyway) and off we went.
Am I ever glad we did. He was too. Talk about a flashback in time. A musical trip down memory lane.
Admittedly, I was a child in the heyday of Lighthouse’s fame, but their music reminds me of how fortunate I was to be a child of the 1970s, of how innocent and simple childhood was back then, and how important music has been as the soundtrack to my life.
I knew so many Lighthouse songs, and not just the tunes, but the lyrics. Pretty Lady, and One Fine Morning, transported me back to hot summer sun in the backyard of my childhood home.
The smell of coconut tanning oil (because why use SPF when you could literally fry your skin to a tan?), the chlorine of the pool, the fresh cut grass all enjoyed under the radiant heat of a cloudless July sky.
The persistent hum of cicadas vibrated through the neighbourhood, seemingly to get louder with the heat of the afternoon.
The static over the AM airwaves of the battery-powered transistor radio crackled and popped as we turned the large dial, watching the orange bar slide back and forth across the numbered line until it eventually hovered over 1050 CHUM, and voila, the top 40 sounds of a Toronto summer played on.
When Lighthouse played Remember the Times, I remembered, alright.
My beach towel stretched out on the weaved fabric lounger, I was lazily daydreaming about my upcoming nuptials to Shawn Cassidy (What? Did you see the Hardy Boys? Da-do-run-run me all the way to Shawn, baby).
I didn’t have a care in the world beyond whether my water-wings would hold their air and if the 20-minute rule of no swimming after lunch had passed, so I could turn into the floating mermaid I was destined to be.
Life was simple. I had no clue how fortunate I was.
When the band played Sunny Days, you know I sang along, hand over heart, happy present for it all.
I couldn’t take my eyes off that band and all the moving parts it takes to bring their classic songs together. Musicianship like that is ageless. Music is timeless.
Lighthouse has endured more incarnations and revolving musicians than most bands could survive. Yet they did. Their music endured because we needed it too. Because it’s great. Because it’s our collective memory of simpler times, for those who remember.
Clearly, I need a horn section every morning when I wake up.
