Posted:Â August 25, 2016Â 6:06 p.m.
Out of the vast, chaotic cultural proving ground that was music in the 1960s, it seemed unlikely that a surfer band would become one of the most enduring cross-generational creative forces of the era.
The Beach Boys proved their durable charm again Wednesday night as a congenial crowd pushing 5,000 milled into the Foster Communications Coliseum, ready for another reminder that this band is about more than surf. It’s about America the way we’d like it to be.
As the colored lights flashed and swept the coliseum dome and giant beach balls arced through the air, people danced in front of the stage, in the aisles, in their seats. That blonde, tanned woman in the white dress who danced the night long at the bottom of the bleacher section overlooking the floor seemed emblematic, the girl in every high school so transported by the music that she always danced alone.
For the Beach Boys, it was never about flash. Even on the lightest themes, the music is thoughtfully crafted and from the beginning the soaring, complex vocals were the band’s trademark, with lyrics that lasted. The tour is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of “Pet Sounds,” a Brian Wilson-driven departure from their genre that initially left fans confused but is now considered one of their greatest works. The lyrics moved from the raucous “Everybody’s gone surfin’ ” to the pensive “God only knows what I’d be without you.”
Love touched on what drove the band through the decades.
“Music is experience of the spirit,” he said between songs Wednesday night.
And the songs confer an extraordinary type of grace on the ordinary things from an American era — cars, girls, boys and girls, more girls — but as the era moved on, the songs somehow moved with it. Although most of the 5,000 people who came to Wednesday night’s experience had never been within a mile of a surfboard, this was everybody’s music.
The diversity of the audience was a tribute to the band and its creations, works that unite rather than divide. Thousands of people, alike in spirit as grains of sand on a vast beach, found their common voice for a few hours.
