Common people manage to relight those college fires

Do you remember the year you finished school? The year of self-awakening, of felling grown up and cool.

Do you remember the friend you had who was pretty good at the guitar, and how you would gather in his parents' basement, surreptitiously smoking and jamming Bob Dylan tunes?

It might seem that those days are long gone. That you'll never be 17 again. Wander into Common Grounds cafe bar on a Monday night and you'll find those long-buried memories brought back to life with frightening clarity.

From 7.30pm till 9.30pm on various nights of the week, the cafe is host to amateur musicians, and Monday nights belong to 22-year-old guitarist Jonathan Kemp and his 21-year-old crooning partner Ben O'Hara.

Last night was no exception, and had you made your way into the cafe and descended the stairs to its underground cavern, you would have nodded along to such college classics as The Animals' House of the Rising sun and The Doors' Light My Fire.

Kemp, his long frizzy hair tied into a casual ponytail, strummed his guitar with the determined focus of a self-taught hippy. O'Hara sang with all the gusto a copper-haired, faux-fur-sporting Jim Morrison fan could muster.

Sitting on either side of a table crammed at the back of the room, they performed with a conviction that almost disguised their weakness and forgave their lack of experience.

The ten audience members, of a noticeably younger age than the performers, clapped obediently between songs, and chatted amiably with the musicians during the two-minute-long beaks that followed each number. Flopped into chairs and couches they sipped their drinks, smoked and felt cool. Happy days are here again. . .

JESSICA WERB