Yee-HAW!

[JohnnyB]

The Brian Wilson Smile tour came to Seattle last night and I decided it was time to see a living legend.

Venue was the Paramount Theater, a renovated downtown movie palace that probably seats around 1200 (?), great visibility and decent acoustics everywhere.

The Smile album takes about 45 mins, so they didn't just come out and play it and leave. First set was a bunch of cool oldies, mostly Beach Boys songs but some Chuck Berry and others as well. First set was about an hour. Ya can't beat having the main act also function as the warm-up band. They did several numbers from "Pet Sounds" (Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows, Sloop John B....), which I consider more as classics than as oldies. Same could be said for many of the other numbers.

Smile was great fun. It's a 45-minute concept album where just about every song seques into the next and it's thematically related.

Brian received a thundering standing ovation, and for the encore they came back out and did another 30-45 mins of classics and oldies. Although the band was as tight as it gets, the encore had a great party atmosphere.

The musicians were incredible. It was a 19-person ensemble including Brian. Many of them were multi-instrumental. One guy did mallet percussion, keyboards, some ancillary percussion, backup singing, and elec. guitar, including some leads. A sax player did bari, tenor, flute, clarinet, harmonicas...I lost count. And his tenor and bari work was great.

My wife loves Bri and the Beach Boys, but isn't a big fan of Smile. But there was plenty of what she liked as well.

Great time.

[DavidE]

But can Brian sing anymore ?

[JohnnyB]

But can Brian sing anymore ?

Yeah.

Sure, he doesn't have as sweet and pure a voice he had in his 20s, but other than his late brother Carl, no one else had a voice like that either. What he still has left is pretty good.

He's about the same age as Paul McCartney, and McCartney's voice is thickening and roughening up a bit with age, but it's still him. It's sort of the same thing with Brian. His pitch control is still good, and he pretty much fronted the vocals for everything all night, though another singer doubled with him for much of it. There were a few mildly rough spots but he held up very well considering.

He can still sing most of the songs, but I think the vocal doubling helps him get through the rigors of touring. He pretty much sings all the leads (undoubled, IIRC) on the studio album.

He's certainly not an embarrassment, if that's what you mean. I think his getting Smile together after 37 years is a powerful personal triumph, and there's a certain poignancy to the world-weary way his voice sounds now when coupled with songs he wrote when he was 24.