The best concert of my life, five years ago

This is why I still like Facebook. Every now and then it shows you “Memories” and some are truly great memories.

But let me go back in time — not five years ago, but twenty-six.

It was 1996. I was sixteen, in my second year at Stowe School, a countryside boarding school in England.

It was a rare weekend in the fall when I was able to leave the prison-like environment of my school and spend a couple of lovely days in London — because my Dad and my uncle were visiting from Russia. It was actually my first time in London and my Dad’s too.

I don’t know if it still exists — probably not — but there was a famous music store, HMV, in Picadilly Circus. My Dad is an avid lover of Western rock music. Even in the Soviet years, despite the Iron Curtain, there was always Western music playing at our home. The quality was often bad, as the tapes were recorded over multiple times but it was fine! So it was a special treat — to be able to walk through the aisles of a record store at the heart of the nation that had produced so many famous artists.

My Dad doesn’t speak English. Well, he knows many basic expressions but he doesn’t speak the language. While I was walking around the store, he demanded, impatient and agitated: “Help me find Radiohead. I’m not leaving here without it. I’m telling you, they are the thing.” He pointed to a salesman. “Can you ask this guy?”