The Beach Boys 50th
Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
I often think that the Beach Boys will never quite take their rightful spot in music history. Whereas the Beatles will always be considered musical geniuses, The Beach Boys – to the general public – will be too closely associated with the simple feel-good surf rock ditties and throwaway tracks like Kokomo to ever be considered brilliant. However, music critics often know better and have thus ranked their album Pet Sounds as the greatest album ever recorded, even topping the Beatles’ many masterworks. At the core of this Beach Boy genius is one particular Beach brainiac named Brian Wilson. You might recall my chance meeting with him back in 2008, but up until now I had never seen him perform in person. Read the rest of this entry »
OK, he’s still a nice guy, but the title just proved too darn tempting to not use it. It just so happens that in the past he was a super nice guy, who willingly signed autographs and posed for pictures for free, at least when my friend Bob met him at a golf tournament a decade ago. Now he’s charging an arm and a leg (and might even use them in his next concert, covered in blood) for the same thing. But Alice Cooper, despite the fact that he nearly drained me of 100 bucks, is still a very nice and cordial guy, who was a pleasure to meet at the Chiller Theatre Show in Parsippany, New Jersey, on April 28, 2012. 
Following the Easter holiday, my focus was mostly on getting prepared for my upcoming trip; there was a lot of grass cutting, laundry folding, finding autographs, searching out DD&Ds and movie locations, getting slightly ahead on this here website, uploading CDs, visiting the library, and getting Mindy and her daughter Taylor prepped to take care of Tiny and Baby. So with the lone exception of having lunch at Chick-fil-A with Mom on Thursday the 12th, this was aobut all that I did with my week. 
Neither I nor Patti LaBelle are strangers to Billboard’s Number One Hits charts. I’m a student and collector of music, while Ms. LaBelle actually had two songs hit the coveted number one position. The first one came in 1975 when the song Lady Marmalade by LaBelle, the band she was fronting before become a solo act, topped the charts for a week in March. The second came as the result of another collaboration – this time with Michael McDonald. The song On My Own capped out at number one for three weeks in June in 1986. 
There were a couple of odd things about meeting Jane Wiedlin when she appeared at the Chiller Theatre Show in Parsippany, New Jersey, on April 30, 2011. The first was that although she is primarily known as the rhythm guitarist of the all-girl New Wave band The Go-Go’s (with whom she is pictured, second from left), she didn’t have a single photo of herself with the band to offer. The second odd thing was that every one of the photos that she did have for sale had been pre-signed by her. It’s as if she had gotten bored sitting there and just went ahead and signed all of them. As any autograph collector can tell you, part of the thrill of getting an autograph is watching it come to life right before your eyes.