It’s been a long time since we’ve been to the Chanhassen Dinner Theater, but we attended a concert there last weekend. In addition to the main stage play productions, there is a smaller venue, the Fireside Theater, where concert series are performed.
At the end of December, we were scheduled to go to the Christmas on the Prairie concert in the Fireside Theater, but a winter storm caused Chanhassen to cancel the concert. So, we had to choose a different concert. We chose Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Collective Unconscious is a popular Minnesota band that performs tribute concerts of different 60’s and 70’s bands. In 2019, we saw them preform a tribute concert to the Eagle’s at the Paradise Theatre in Faribault, and they were very good. We were excited to see them perform Simon and Garfunkel’s music. It did not disappoint.
Collective Unconscious includes three guitar players who are also the vocalists, a drummer and a keyboardist. In addition, for this concert, there were 4 violin players, 2 trumpet, 2 trombone, 2 saxophone players, plus a harpist and flautist. They put on an impressive performance, and amazingly they sounded like Simon and Garfunkel, just as they sounded like the Eagle’s when they sang Eagle’s songs. How do they do that? They are very talented.
The first act they performed various songs by the duo, and a couple solo works by Paul Simon.
After intermission they played through the entire Bridge over Troubled Water album, the last album recorded by Simon and Garfunkel in 1970, before they went their separate ways.
The first song on the album is “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, a favorite of mine, and many others. The lead vocalist did a superb job!
The group performed the songs in order on the album, and after several songs one of the vocalists said something to the effect… Back in the 60’s if you were laying on your orange, shag carpeting listening to a vinyl album, you would hear the scratch sound indicating it had come to the end of side one. You would have to get up, physically turn the album over, and set the needle down to play side two... His sound effects and word descriptions were so vivid, we could envision everything he said. It looked like most of us in the auditorium were from that era and could identify with what he was saying. It was not only funny, but nostalgic.
After they finished side two of the album, they came back for an encore and played three more songs including, “The Sounds of Silence”, another one of my favorites.
It was fun to be out on a Saturday night…hanging out listening to great “oldie but goodies” music in an “oldie, but classic” dinner theatre, that was built in a cornfield in Chanhassen, Minnesota in 1968.
