Active Voices

By Captain Spaulding and Tom Fredrickson

WHEN I GROW UP TO BE AN (OLD) MAN
(CS)

Tom Fredrickson and I saw Brian Wilson at the Rosemont Theater out near Chicago's O'Hare Airport last Wednesday night. I'm happy to report that one and all who attended went quickly to a blossom world.

It was a great show, with a crack thirteen-piece band that consisted of various members of the Wondermints, Ides of March, Poi Dog Pondering, several Chicago studio aces, longtime Windy City popster Scott Bennett, and ancient shock-jock and luau shirt aficionado Steve Dahl on theremin.

They bolstered the quixotic Beach Boy genius so well that Tom and I wondered at times if he was little more than a stage prop. Longtime Beach Boys sideman/guitarist Jeffrey Foskett sang all of Brian's old falsetto and high-harmony parts, while Brian gruffly bulldogged his way through singing Mike Love's lead parts in a fascinating role reversal. I sometimes got the disturbing sensation that Brian's current voice sounds dangerously like Jimmy Buffett's--a sensation twice as disturbing when I read this week's New City and the capsule preview for the show lambasted Brian's latest album Imagination for sounding like a Jimmy Buffett production.

Brian clearly did not feel up to performing without a net, and who could blame him? It's been over three decades since he abandoned the road, and the psychic and physical wear-and-tear on him since has been almost inconceivable. Still, the crowd was there as much to pay tribute to his perseverance as they were to enjoy his music. He felt that and appreciated it, and gamely soldiered through the set. By evening's end, he appeared to be genuinely enjoying himself--and the band was so good that no one begrudged the fact that they seemed to swallow up Brian musically. After all, it takes about five or six musicians just to have a serious go at all of the percussion on "Good Vibrations" alone. And the band even improved on the studio versions of certain songs, such as "South America" and "All Summer Long". When was the last time anyone ever said that about the Beach Boys proper? When Brian shuffled offstage for about ten minutes in mid-show, the band did an orchestral samba of Pet Sounds instrumentals that was mightily impressive. This band was a keeper.

Still, the exquisite band and the well-chosen set list reduced any doubts about Brian's current stage competence to the background. His song intros in and of themselves were worth the price of admission, awkward and endearing all at once. "When I was a young guy, I used to sing like a girl. Uh, this is a song called 'Caroline, No'." And his sly sense of humor remains intact. During "Surfin' U.S.A.", he substituted the line, "...and down in New Orleans" for both "...and down Bimini way" and "...and Waiamea Bay", proving that in gentler, pre-litigious times it was no big deal to nick wholesale someone else's song the way that he nicked his hero Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen".

The crowd was as much of a throwback as was Brian's attitude towards "Surfin' U.S.A.". I remember my friend Ron Swanson and I talking about how balding and long-in-the-tooth a recent crowd was at Chicago's Vic Theatre when we were there to see a Richard Thompson show. That crowd would have been teenybopperish compared to the Brian Wilson audience. I had a fleeting thought that Tom and I might have been the only paying customers too young to have been around when little deuce coupes had fins. It was an all-ages show, and to me that usually means that I'll be sharing space with a crop of teenagers. In this case, it meant grandparents bringing their grandchildren with them.

It was such an unhip crowd that Smashing Pumpkins panjandrum Billy Corgan was able to walk in to the theater, pick up his tickets at the Will Call window (where I was waiting for Tom to show up), and stroll through the lobby and up into the balcony while only being recognized by me and a solitary chick. You'd think that Chicago was crawling with cueball rock stars. I didn't acknowledge Corgan, although I was tempted to tell him as he walked past that I hoped he might learn a lesson tonight in how to write a decent melody.

Still, for a bunch of vanguard Boomers with one foot in the grave, it was a raucous crowd. Not as sing-alongey as Beach Boys crowds when I've seen the band at state fairs, but raucous nevertheless. It felt like a crowd of devoted Brian Wilson enthusiasts, rather than run-of-the-mill, see-'em-'cause-they're-classic Beach Boys fans. They were deliriously appreciative of the man and the amazing talent with which he has wrought more good pop music than anyone else alive today, with the debateable exceptions of Paul McCartney, Jagger/Richards, and Bob Dylan. I think that they were also cheering him for his survival skills, particularly in light of his years of foggy mental incoherence and the deaths of his brothers. I hope that he sticks around for a long time as both a touring and a recording artist. I also hope that this tour serves to inspire another immensely talented songwriter stricken with a grave case of stagefright, Andy Partridge of XTC, to once more attempt to tread the boards.

--Captain Spaulding

Brian is God
(TF)

While Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan and former Replacement Paul Westerberg were rumored to be in attendance when one-time Beach Boy and all-time vocal pop maestro, Brian Wilson took the stage at the Rosemont Theatre, I saw no celebrities, with the possible exception of a woman who looked like she might have been the sister of WCKG Chicago radio personality Steve Dahl -- and I don't think that counts. Like I said to Captain Spaulding at the show, I've seen hipper crowds at funerals. But there is something to be said for the fact they all came out in support of an act that many (myself included) must have concluded might well have been a train wreck. To summon a Vegas cliche, there was a lot of love in the room.

I enjoyed every minute of the show, which placed musical values above showmanship (Brian Wilson is in no way, shape, or form a showman) or popular success (though most of the songs were million sellers). Brian had the balls to open with mid-60s non-hit single "She's Not the Little Girl I Once Knew," which, it is suddenly now clear, has an even more breathtaking intro than the vaunted "California Girls." And he had his band play two "instrumentals" from Pet Sounds, perhaps the most gorgeous vocal album in history. "All Summer Long" has never sounded like such a good rock and roll song.

While Brian's stage presence was ingratiatingly wooden, he made one of the coolest exits I've ever seen. The final song of the final encore was "Fun, Fun, Fun" and with the band jamming and the whole audience singing along with the final high "woo-ooo" descant on the outro, Brian simply got up from his prop piano and strolled off stage without a glance back.

Now, I'm off to spray paint "Brian is God" on the garages of Evanston.

--Tom Fredrickson