Here for the Beach Boys
It might be sometime later on a Tuesday, but it’s still Music Monday right here, right now.
This last week – on July 4th to be exact – I went to see the Beach Boys in concert. I had seen them before in the late 80’s when “Kokomo” was a big radio hit and John Stamos was in the band.
As a big fan of Brian Wilson, I’ve been reading story after story that had lead up to this tour. The Grammy awards were the icing on the cake of this “reunion” tour [Carl and Dennis Wilson excluded for obvious reasons] which showcased Brian’s voice and song talents, even if they are a bit on the rusty side these days.
Venue
The acts before The Beach Boys took the stage later
The location for their Utah date of their 50th anniversary tour was the Lavell Edwards Stadium on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo. It had been years since I’ve been to this stadium and had forgotten about not only how many people it held, but the limitations they have here. No regular Coke or Diet Coke is served anywhere… only the caffeine free version. And when I tried to bring in my unopened bag of Twizzlers licorice, I was told I couldn’t as they were considered a “controlled substance” (honest.. the exact words).
Regardless of the above oddities, we hung out under the stands until the sun went down before finding our seats.
Band
The best shot of the band performing that I could get from my seat
Since this is about the Beach Boys, I’m not going to mention Scotty McCreery’s 25 min performance or the band talent contest that ate away at time the Beach Boys could have been playing… oh shit.. ok.. ok.
Once the Beach Boys took that stage, it was a really good show and performance. They played all of the hits like “Help Me Rhonda” “I Get Around” and “Surfin’ USA” and many others including “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows” from the brilliant Pet Sounds album. But given they only played for an hour, it wasn’t the reunion tour I wanted to see.
A few days later, the Beach Boys played Arizona and for much longer than an hour. In fact, that audience got to hear 50 songs performed by this California-based legendary act. We barely got more than 50 minutes, not to mention the absence of just about every song from the remastered “SMiLE” album, which was finally released last year. They did play “Good Vibrations”, but this was a hit single before the still-born status of SMiLE in the 60’s.
My intention here wasn’t to complain. I liked their performance and Brian Wilson’s voice held up very well [no lip syncing was done, which was easy to tell], Mike Love carried himself and his vocal range well and the backing band of Al Jardine, David Marks and Bruce Johnston made this long time fan stand up to dance and sing along to the hits.
But I can tell you that I really would love to see an entire set before they hang it up for good. Here’s hoping that might just happen.