We had waited over 700 days.

It was among the multiple victims of the pandemic but finally happened last Wednesday and was wholly exhilarating.

A reliable personal measure of the deep impact of an art experience is if it remains with me days later, and this occurred with my first viewing of Pulp Fiction and when I read Jonathan Franzen’s tour de force, The Corrections.

It has certainly been true for Tame Impala’s Rushium concert. It’s dominated my thoughts since, and I’ve had the Spotify concert list on repeat all weekend.

Alex and I had seats to the left of stage, and we could see over the crowded mosh pit. This attracted him. I then told him how a mate missed a large chunk of a Big Day Out as he was getting stitched up at hospital following a flying elbow in the Wayville mosh. Deciding to stay with me he saw my point which is good. I always have a point.

Kevin Parker’s music is inspired by the psychedelia of the sixties and seventies with its swirling, cosmic guitars and keyboards while there’s also a distinctive science fiction angle. Despite these key elements it’s timeless and seemingly autobiographical.

Like many of my age I was disappointed when on the 2015 album Currents he exchanged the guitar for the keyboard as his major instrument of expression. However, Parker’s sense of melody is peerless, and he builds songs which at once are simple and complex but always compelling.

There were many highlights and ‘Elephant’ was one when the confetti canons burst into dazzling, mesmerising life. I remember first hearing this song at my desk in Singapore and streaming Seattle’s KEXP (local radio remains untreatably dreadful). I was sure John Lennon was singing but the music seemed too modern. I was delighted to hear it back-announced as Tame Impala.

Sharing our excitement during the eighteen-song set I reflected on how music is now truly intergenerational. How great that my fourteen-year-old and I could genuinely enjoy this together and it not be something than one or the other must simply tolerate?

In the 1950’s rock belonged exclusively to the kids with the unrelenting despair of their parents and now music is accessible to all. It’d be easy to attribute this solely to the Internet, but I think it’s probably knottier than this. Either way it’s excellent and I’m also pleased that Alex plays jazz icon Miles Davis when taking his (ridiculously lengthy) showers.

Our night was not just about the music. It was a complete show and a massive lighting rig, like the spacecraft from Close Encounters of The Third Kind was suspended above the band. It was lowered and set spinning in a way that was thrilling and almost menacing too. The scale of the effects with video screen and laser show made the event colossal and cinematic. Alex captured much of it on his phone.

The setlist was sequenced magnificently with tracks from The Slow Rush dominating. I would’ve loved for Innerspeaker to have featured beyond the solitary tune, ‘Runway, Houses, City, Clouds’ with its soaring and extended guitar solo, but I understand that the bulk of the audience were there for the recent releases. The kids can’t be ignored! I especially loved two songs from Lonerism in “Mind Mischief’ and ‘Apocalypse Dreams’ with their spacey vocals and rising rhythms.

It was a great night and I was so jubilant that I bought Alex a t-shirt although I wasn’t sufficiently euphoric to consent to $90 Tame Impala tracky dacks.

I look forward to our next musical adventure.