Wednesday 27 June 2007

The Zimmers

Have you heard about the Zimmers? They are very old people who live in England. When I say old, I mean VERY old. The Zimmers are a rock band of 40 old age people who love singing and music. People like the 99-year-old Winifred who is fed up in age care centres. Another person is Joan who hasn't left her flat for three years, and lead singer 90-year-old Alf who loves to sing “I hope to die before I get old.”

The Zimmers are not happy with the way old people are treated in the modern world. Some of them do not have any family to visit or take care of.

To record their songs, the Zimmers use a very famous studio in London. It is the same studio where the Beatles recorded most of their most successful songs.

One very famous music producer has brought together 40 very old people to make a music band. Those people are people who are not happy living in age care centres and those who live alone. They are just waiting for death to come.

When Winnifred, aged 99 years old, she recorded a song in the studio, she said that it was the best day in her life.

People all over the world can see the Zimmers and listen to them thanks to the internet. The Zimmers have a web page on a famous web site called MySpace. Their page was visited 20,000 times in only two days after it was published on the net. Now this page is visited by tens of thousands of people every day.

The Zimmers were on the news all over the world and people started to talk about them.

The Zimmers say that they used to lead a lonely life. They complain that younger people do not see them in the street. They do not even look at them. The Zimmers just want to tell the world that they exist.

The Zimmers include a 100-year-old singer called Buster Martin. He is the band’s drummer too. People look at him like a rock star now. He appears on TV shows and gives interviews. The whole band was asked to go to America to appear on a famous TV show. The problem was that some of them did not have passports. They did not dream of travelling abroad all their lives. They were given special passports and went to America. Everyone enjoyed their singing.

The message is clear. Old people want you and me to know that they are still here.