My very first concert that I ever went when I was 14 years old was The Beach Boys. I got pretty fascinated and into roots rock music in my early teen years as they played a version of Chuck Berry song and some surf theme sounding doo-wop which began some of my interest in that type of music.
Katie and Claire have never yet been to a concert (apart from stopping and watching the 80's band Loverboy play a few songs at a County Fair we were at and they happen to be playing at it). Katie and Claire really like The Beach Boys songs as they are so singable. So last night we went to see The Beach Boys playing over at a winery-concert venue in San Jose.
We now started a tradition of the first-ever-concert for Kimballs to be going to see The Beach Boys like I did for my first-ever concert. I also would not allow someone like Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers to steal that precious first concert-initiation. So it is the Beach Boys now for Katie and Claire.
It was interesting seeing The Beach Boys after so many years of not seeing them - since two of the originals have died and two others are not currently in the band as they fought legal battles over who gets to use The Beach Boys name and other things like that and it seems quite messy. So there are only 2 originals in the current band, the lead singer being one of them so the songs still had the original vocal for most of them.
I got too caught up for a while during the concert wondering what makes a band a band. Because the lead singer is still the same, but the majority of the rest of the band is new - is it still truly "The Beach Boys"? When Van Halen got a new lead singer with Sammy Hagar after David Lee Roth originally left, the rest of the band stayed the same so they kept the name the same. KISS now is only half originals, but the two new ones dress up in the same make-up as the old ones did. The now pop-ballad band Chicago lost three very key people in that band years ago and they still call themselves "Chicago". The Who has only half the band left but they call themselves The Who - however, I did read that Pete Townsend say he sees themselves more a Who cover-band. To some degree, after seeing The Beach Boys 3 other times - it did feel like a Beach Boys cover band. But I had to stop dwelling on thinking about that and just enjoy the night out with family watching a nostalgic type of show.
I did just read that the living original members of The Beach Boys are going to get back together in 2011 for a reunion since it will be their 50th anniversary as a band. That seems more like it would truly be "The Beach Boys". As I am still thinking about it, sports teams stay the same name - even when the members of the team are 100% different after a decade or two. You still call the baseball team the same name, even though it is entirely different players after years. So the uniform defines that group more over time, not the actual players. So is a band still called the name of the band if over time there is barely anyone from the original band in it?
I am thinking too much about this. But a distraction from other things I now must do.
