Brian Wilson/Jeff Beck/Al Jardine/David Marks October 5 2013 WDC (inc. spoilers)

[37!ws]

Band present, besides the three Beach Boys:
Jeff, Darian, Nick, Probyn, Mike, Bob, Scott, Paul - basically, the same group as from the summer

It's hard to describe overall....GREAT show...the Brian/Al/Dave segment -- Well, hard to call it a Brian show. Hard to call it a "Beach Boys" show....basically, not one of them really took the main spotlight, they all seemed to kind of hang back and not command a lot of attention. Brian was in fine voice, and he actually came close to singing "God Only Knows" in the way that Carl would have sung it; I've heard him struggle before to get the timbre just right, but he almost hit it this time! Brian also took back singing the lead on "Sail On, Sailor," and in fact, none of the backing band sang any leads. I have a feeling this was intentional so as not to dilute focus from the headliners. Again, Brian was in fine voice, only problem was -- just as earlier this summer -- sometimes when the focus was on Al or David, Brian would be late coming in for HIS parts. A couple of times I saw Al trying to wave at Brian to get his attention, and sometimes he actually conducted Brian to remind him to come in...

Surprise #1 for me: "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring." I think Brian was singing the bass part on this. (Melinda did once say that Brian usually does sing bass on songs with group vocals.) But wow...it was stunning.

All three of Brian's Beach Boys #1s were played one right after the other near the end of the B.A.D. set. Surprising omission from the set: "Surfer Girl"

Now...I'm not a Jeff Beck fan, but he did one helluva set, although I did get kind of bored with it, very "I get the point" for me...but everybody in Jeff Beck's band -- Jeff, the violinist, the bassist, the drummer, the other guitar player -- are just effing mad-talented!

Both headliners played for about an hour, then parts of each band joined together for a few numbers, including a couple of rockabilly numbers (one that was originally a hit for Mary Ford and Les Paul, but darned if I know the title!), and...perhaps the highlight of the night..."Our Prayer" --> end of "Child is Father of the Man" --> "Surf's Up" -- with Jeff Beck playing the melody as a guitar solo and the band singing the backup parts. Brian was obviously singing the "A children's song" part (judging from his mouth), but his mic was either off or not potted up at all...

Oh...and to those of you complaining about the price of Made In California....I won't say who it was, but I got to talk to a few of the guys in the band, and one of them said he hasn't gotten MIC yet because the price is way too high and he can't afford it! So he had to borrow discs 5 and 6 from a friend. Now...while I did order MIC from Amazon despite their price, I do say it's kind of ridiculous when you out-price somebody who freakin' BACKED UP THE BEACH BOYS AND STILL BACKS UP THREE OF THEM!!!!

But anyway...this is the weird thing...when we ordered our tickets, it was pretty late in the game, and the only tickets that showed up when the Mrs. went online to get the tickets were in the balcony. Bizarre. Yet there were MANY ROWS of empty seats in orchestra. There was still a good sized crowd, but there were PLENTY of better seats wide open, so I don't know why the only ones we could get were balcony...

So when we get to our seats, I find that our section was obviously NOT made for tall people -- I'm 6'2", and my legs literally could not fit! I actually had to twist my legs so that they took up the legroom in literally three other seats! (Despite my grossly overweight frame, I was actually able to fit in the seat itself with no problem, just no legroom!) I talked to one of the ushers about it, and she had me talk to the house manager -- who then offered me comped seats in the loge -- practically RIGHT ABOVE BRIAN!! heh! Great vantage point for taking pictures and video! Except, of course, that we didn't, because, of course, the rules prevented it....*cough*....

And because of my vantage point, I could clearly see Brian's hands on his keyboard. He was definitely not just going through the motions. In fact, before the opening "California Girls," he actually got his hands in position and I heard a B-major chord coming from his keyboard-embedded-in-a-grand-piano-shell. (Yup, that's not an actual piano.) Throughout the show, his hands were definitely in the right place, but his keyboard was pretty low in the mix. Noticed that before the bridge in "Wouldn't It Be Nice" Brian was playing the "baaaaaah ba ba baah ba-ba bah!" part with his left hand...

Only bad thing, I feel, is that the sound mix wasn't all that great. Sometimes it was hard to hear Brian, then all of a sudden *poof* he's loud and clear. The Tannerin was mixed WAY too high. During the band intros Jeff asked for a round of applause for the sound guys because they only had one hour to set up, which did explain a lot...

Glad I went? Oh yeah.