Well it's been a week already since the Brian Wilson show here in Edmonton at the Jubilee Auditorium, with playoff hockey going on it's been tough to get around and write about the show, but here we go.
The show last Wednesday happened to land on the same day as the Edmonton Oilers first playoff game in eleven years, so there was a lot of score watching happening during the course of the concert.
This was my second time seeing the legendary Brian Wilson on the Pet Sounds Tour having seen the same show last summer in Toronto at Massey Hall. The only thing is this time around I understood the show that much more. I have listened to the Pet Sounds album a few times in the past year and also read Brian Wilson's autobiography "I am Brian Wilson: A Memoir". This was a great book to read in advance as I learned quite a bit about the man and his struggle with mental illness. The last time I saw Brian in concert I was let down by how he didn't sing all the songs, but I now know that he always didn't. He wrote and composed all the music. So this time around I wasn't surprised with him not singing all the songs.
Brian Wilson and his 11 piece band started the show with an hour of classics. Brian shuffled on to the stage, shuffling a lot like Ozzy does. Then an intermission, after the intermission it was the Pet Sounds album in it's entirety, which was really good. After Pet Sounds it was another set of greatest hits, timeless classics all of them, hits like "Good Vibrations", "Help Me, Rhonda", and "Surfin' USA" just to name a few. The band included founding Beach Boy member Al Jardine who looks extremely good for his age of 76. Al pretty much was the ring leader of the band, also with Brian was Blondie Chaplin who is 65 years old and reminds me a lot of Keith Richards, he made sporadic appearances through out the show, bringing the rock and showmanship to the concert. Blondie played in the Beach Boys for a few years in the early 70's playing on a couple of albums.
Al Jardine's son Matt Jardine also plays in Brian's band and does all the falsetto singing, to me he almost the highlight of the show, the man has an incredible voice. The whole band was top class. As the show went on I couldn't help but think it was just one classic AM radio song after another, you kind of forget how many classic songs the Beach Boys had. Just look at the setlist and see for yourself all the hits. Brian doesn't have the voice that he once did and looks like he is staring into space most of the time, very little emotion from him, being as close as we were you could see that Brian doesn't even tap his toes to the music. Kind of weird really. Al Jardine's voice sounded great and the rest of the musicians were bang on. All and all I enjoyed this show more then I did last summer. Good times!!!
Setlist for the Edmonton show.
Brian Wilson.
Al Jardine.
Blondie Chaplin.
Matt Jardine.
Various other pictures.
T-shirt front.
Back.
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