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Yes We Can Can
and Yes they certainly can in Stephen Walkers' documentary "Young @ Heart," a film that explores the last months of rehearsal as the Young at Heart Chorus, a group of aging adults (in their 70s and 80s) who belt out their youth to such rock icons as The Ramones, The Clash, James Brown, and Sonic Youth, prepare for their concert in Northampton, Massachusetts. The film opens with Eillen Hall (90+) assertively walloping the audience with her delivery of The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go," confident in the lyrics and decisive in her delivery.
The film shows the chorus rehearsing, trying to wrap themselves around such numbers as The Pointer Sisters' "Yes We Can Can," mastering the "71 cans." Lyrics don't always come easy to members of the chorus, evident in Stan Goldman's struggle to master two lines of James Brown's "I Feel Good." When performance time comes, he still insists on feeling "nice, like sugar and rice." Musical triumphs do happen though. Throughout the film, the chorus wrestles with the oddness of Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia." However, when concert time comes, the chorus sings with a certain mania, embodying the song's essence as they tell us that "Schizophrenia is taking me home."
Yet all is not triumphant for the chorus members; death is inevitable. Right before the chorus is about to travel to a local prison to perform prior to their big concert at the Academy, the group learns that Joe Benoit, one of their members, has died. When they sing "Forever Young," the camera holds a shot steady on one of the prisoner's faces, brilliantly capturing a youth that will age quickly in prison; this holds a sharp contrast with the aged voices singing with all the youthful spirit the prisoner has perhaps lost.
Right before the chorus' sold out concert they've been rehearsing for, death again intrudes. A duet between Fred Knittle (fond of reminding folks how he has gone "from continent to continent until I became incontinent") and Bob Salvini is reduced to a solo due to Bob's death. Sitting bravely in a chair, set apart from the rest of the chorus, Fred's haunting rendition of Coldplay's "Fix You," punctuated with the sound of his oxygen clicking between his vocals, is a reminder that age does have its limits.
The film includes MTV like music videos of the chorus acting anything but sedated in The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated." If they are on a "road to nowhere," I want to join them in their "golden years." Even though some of the chorus attests to being culture vultures, listing only to classical music and preferably opera, they take hold of some punk classics and make them personal anthems, a reminder of how music transcends all generations. Even after the film ends, "The Young at Heart" are "staying alive" for they have songs to sing "before they sleep."
