Daily Archives: June 22, 2016

Pubishers Weekly Top Ten: “Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy” by Mike Love and James S. Hirsch – tells the story of Love’s legendary, raucous, and triumphant five-decade career as a member of the Beach Boys, the most popular American band in history – timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the release of the hit single “Good Vibrations.”

http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/70677-fall-2016-adult-announcements-memoirs-biographies.html

The Beach Boys
The Midland, Kansas City
Saturday, May 14

Technically, summer doesn’t start until June 20, but I live in Lawrence, and in a college town, summer starts when classes end, and that was Friday. So, I hit the road to Kansas City to see a band almost synonymous with summer: the Beach Boys. Now, at this point, the Beach Boys is Mike Love and Bruce Johnston, along with a plethora of hired hands. Did the audience care? No. Should you care? Maybe. Did I? No. I was there to sing along.

Saturday, it might’ve been a chilly Midwestern night outside, but inside, it was pure California. The number of people wearing Hawaiian shirts was innumerable. It was a mixed crowd, which wasn’t a surprising thing, given that the band’s fan base now spans three generations, and probably even verges on four. It was also muggy as hell, reflecting the fact that there were more Panama hats than I’ve seen outside of Florida.

The setlist was absolutely massive. If there was a single you wanted to hear, it was played at the Midland last night. Some were better than others: the back-to-back covers of the Ronettes’ “I Hear Music” and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers were given more time and consideration than the end of the Beach Boys’ first set, which featured versions of the band’s car songs that were abbreviated enough so as to verge on medley.

That was the interesting thing about how this show was structured: There were blocks of songs, such as the surfing tunes which opened the show and took up the majority of the first half of the opening set, then some California tunes in the second set, and so on. It seemed weird to be inundated with so many thematically similar songs, but it seemed to work, once one looked at the big picture.

Happily, though, given that we were about two days from the fiftieth anniversary of the Beach Boys’ superlative classic, Pet Sounds, the second set started off with quite a few numbers from that record — almost half of it, actually, including Brian Wilson’s, “Caroline, No” along with the songs that are now part of the great American songbook, like the achingly beautiful “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

It took until “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” — a full six songs into the Beach Boys’ second set — for the audience to really get up on their feet and dance. There was  a lot of sitting and boogying, and a few people would get up and raise their hands in glory here and there, but it took “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” for the audience to rise as one, absolutely unbidden, and it was pretty glorious.

All in all, the show was nice, and the harmonies were pretty spot on. Dancing was pretty limited to creaky hand gestures, and there was a little vocal strain here and there, but the Beach Boys never had to push for notes they could no longer reach. Be it voices that have stayed in shape, or just the sheer number of singers making it possible to cover up and age-related issues, the singing was solid.

ENE REVIEW: The Beach Boys start OK, end great

• Joe Malan | Enid News & Eagle May 22, 2016

You know how they say some things get better with time?

Well, in the same sense, The Beach Boys got better and better as their show went on at Enid Event Center Sunday night.

At no point this evening were The Beach Boys bad or disappointing … but you might say they encountered some “rough waters” in the beginning.

The Boys opened the three-hour-long show with “Surfin’ Safari.” This would begin a nine-song marathon that would appropriately end with arguably the most famous surfing song, “Surfin’ U.S.A.”

It was after this long series when The Beach Boys mainly stuck to songs one at a time, that they truly hit their stride, both as a vocal group and getting the crowd excited.

The songs about surfing and beaches dominated the first part of the show, with each part being divided into approximate hour-plus segments, with a short intermission in between. The second half of the show was heavy on all the hits, from “California Girls” to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

Highlights of the performance included a stirring, emotional rendition of “I’m So Young,” and basically everything involving a saxophone.

Oh, and there was an old, old song The Boys recorded back in the 1960’s called “Be True To Your School.” The band got the crowd riled up by displaying photos of OU Sooner and OSU Cowboy cheerleaders before playing the song. That was a pretty good idea; kudos to the band for that.

The end of the main portion of the show included just an avalanche of hits, the last two being “Kokomo” (the quintessential summer song) and “Good Vibrations.”

The crowd wouldn’t quite let the band go, though, as they were brought out for an encore which consisted of “Barbara Ann” (complete with kids dancing on stage) and “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

All in all, a fun evening indeed, and hopefully this isn’t the last time we see The Beach Boys in Enid.