The other night I happened to discover the Animals… yes the original 1960’s pop band were playing not far away, so I thought it might be interesting to check them out.  I was pretty apprehensive that it would not be the ‘real’ band, I knew that Eric Burden, their singer and frontman, was not with the band.  However, they had the original drummer and one of the keyboard players who joined after Alan Price left in the 60’s.  The audience was made up mainly of people with grey hair and memories of seeing the band on Top of the Pops, back in the day, but they had all arrived prepared to have fun, and there were however a few relative youngsters. 

The band launched into a series of songs including predictable old favourites like ‘We’ve got to get out of this place’ and ending with the ‘House of the rising sun’.  They sounded great and the audience had a great time, singing along with them.  The band enjoyed it and a good time was had by all. 

The interesting thing is, here were a bunch of guys, one of whom had been in the same band for over 50 years, they had done the whole rock and rock thing, and here they were, old to enough to be collecting their pensions doing the same old thing and playing the very same songs.  There are two ways of looking at this.  If you don’t make a change you’ll stay in exactly the same place as you are today (although the world will change around you!)  The other side of that coin is that if you are happy there, then why not?

Resources:

1. The Animals.. a potted history

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