I saw them in July. For full disclosure, I am a huge Beach Boys fan, and am the guy besides Mike Love who bought Looking Back With Love.
The real truth is this is probably as complicated to understand as the Gibson raid. Firstly, the current reunion band is a pretty tight and very impressive show. I highly recommend it. But it is really an amalgamation of several bands - Mike Love and Bruce Johnston's band that has been roaming the earth for the past decade, Al Jardine's band, and Brian Wilson's band which is a mutation of The Wondermints. And mostly the reunion band is the latter. So in "firing" the Beach Boys, Mike Love is really reverting back to the touring band he had for the last several years, which is obviously most lucrative for him, so who can blame him?
Live, the real thing you are hearing is largely the Wondermints, and you get to see Brian Wilson, who is pretty ramshackle at this stage. He barely plays. He can't sing anymore. His piano is a large white plywood and veneer thing that holds a keyboard and a teleprompter for lyrics. All his high parts are really sung by Jeff Foskett, who is doing a dual role of covering both Brian and Carl Wilson's parts - and very good at it. Brian comes out at some point with some junk import bass with his name painted on it, and he kind of plays something on it and gets to stand up, but the Wondermints are doing the bass parts - they trade off a lot, and play a 5 string a lot, which has no place in Beach Boys music. I editorialize, so indulge me. As far as the "real" guys, Mike Love does sing live, no lip synching, and he is as good as he ever was. That is just ok. He can sing his songs fine, and he is in great physical shape. He has been proclaimed an asshole for decades, but he never boozed or doped, and was into physical fitness, TM, and yoga from the get go. It shows. I've met the guy, talked to him, and he has no problem telling you what he thinks, but he has all his marbles for sure. They are disfunctional as a group. Mike Love's brother made them fabulously wealthy in real estate deals. Then they fired him. And sued him and each other. Fun.
The most prominent musician currently is David Marks, who plays a respectable lead here and there. He was kicked out as a kid and side-stepped the dope and booze period that sent Brian into the looney bin. That shows on him as well, as he is also in great shape. All these guys are in their 70s, so the fact that they cranked out a two hour show with loads of hits and non-hits, was great. Al Jardine strums like he is playing an acoustic, and both he and Bruce Johnston can sing fine.
In his day - pre psychotic and almost positively some level of stroke - Brian Wilson was a musical genius. Carol Kaye may have played a lot of fun bass parts, but there is no question that Brian Wilson wrote them out, and often played them. His bass parts were always fascinating - off beat, playing away from the root, simple (Vegetables - played by Paul McCartney), intricate. The guy had a really unique ear - singular, as he is deaf in one. That is why they never bothered stereo mixing Pet Sounds for years. He was just as involved in the band post-Pet Sounds as he was for that, but it began to taper off. The Smile debacle was too much for a frail mental state. After that, Smiley Smile was a major bomb and very confusing to the pop world, but one could make a pretty strong argument that he was ahead of the curve there in rejecting the psychedelic studio stuff he helped create. The later 60s and 70s lps that supposedly were not progressive were all made with his involvement. He just wasn't writing anything that was current pop. Except Sail On Sailor. They didn't have a lot of top 10 hits for the first couple of years either, although you might think they did from Endless Summer and Spirit of America. In his old age, he seems to be more interested in the 50s rock n roll and doo wop that he listened to as a kid, so in that respect he is more animated for that stuff, but that is an old story for a lot of musicians. I still love his Johnny Carson song.
So, spin is spin. The reunion band may be out on the road or in the studio again. But the Mike Love / Bruce Johnston band wasn't making any bread for a year, so back they come. The guy who may lose out is David Marks, but then maybe he isn't losing anything.
Also, Paul Revere and The Raiders may have sold out to Dick Clark and started acting stupid on Saturday afternoons, but they were a REAL band before that, and a dang good Pacific NW garage/frat band to start. And they were all decent musicians. So, cut them some slack. Plus they gave us Freddy Weller.
