mostly david ephgrave

Tonight, I watched Paul McCartney & Paul Muldoon discuss their new book 'The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present' with journalist Samira Ahmed at Royal Festival Hall. A picture from tonight’s show, courtesy of Macca’s Instagram.  While I've visited the iconic venue several times in the interim, the last show I saw there was Brian Wilson's live premiere of the lost Beach Boys album 'Smile' in 2004. Something about 1960s bassists clearly gets me out of the house. Tonight's show was very different but no less entertaining. Macca was engaging and happy to let the conversation flow where it went, which included the odd diversion from his stock responses. The chat was more Beatle-heavy than I'd have liked, but that's just me. And being a former member of the world's biggest band does tend to overshadow things. Tonight was the first show I've attended since the pandemic hit, besides September's Mostly Comedy obviously. I wore my mask on public trans...

I have this performance of The Beach Boys song Lady Lynda on regular rotation when I listen to music on getting ready in the mornings and seldom skip it. It's made all the better for the fact it was recorded at Knebworth Park - approximately six miles down the road from where I live (cue all those assassins trying to track me down to a less than ten-mile radius) - in 1980, less than a year before I was born, so if my family had lived in the house I grew up in by then, they could have potentially heard it from our window. I wish I could have been there myself, though if the gig was anything like Oasis' show there in 1996, it would have taken us a surprisingly long time to get home afterwards, despite the convenient location. When I went to see Brian Wilson perform Pet Sounds in Edinburgh last summer, he happened to have Al Jardine (who sung and co-wrote this) in the band, which was an added treat, and while he didn't sing my favourite of his Beach Boys songs at the gig, ...

Just when it seemed coverage had reached saturation point, the Beach Boys have weighed in on Brexit. I’m surprised it was the band’s metaphorical Great White Chief who felt the need to express his thoughts on the UK’s most contentious subject, when most of his interviews over the past twenty years have been monosyllabic at best; this was not without reason as Wilson had a tough upbringing before being thrust into the intensely pressured world of writing and arranging the majority of his band’s key material alone; a situation so stressful he literally took to his bed for years, having an impact he still struggles with to this day; does this sound familiar, Theresa? While his interest in Brexit is initially a shock, if you flick through his back catalogue, you soon realise the clues were there all along, from his anthem on a utopian post-Europe vision ‘Wouldn’t it Be Nice?’ to his song about a second referendum, called ‘Do it Again’. One of his most beautifu...

Tonight I went to see Brian Wilson play The Beach Boys' seminal album Pet Sounds, plus a truckload of his other classics at Edinburgh Playhouse, which was just what the doctor ordered at this stage of my Edinburgh run. I was glad I managed to secure a ticket a week or so after a bit of an online struggle with Ticketmaster as I knew it would be a treat to look forward to, which was perfectly positioned, what with it being the night before my final day off and a short walk from where I'm staying; I’d much rather be watching him than any comedy show or play on the Fringe as he’s a genuine legend and musical genius - to chose two vastly overused phrases - rolled into one. After The Beatles, McCartney and Dylan, I own more of his material than anyone, so to say I’m a bit of a fan is an understatement. While I was sat the gig and just prior to it, I essentially live-tweeted my experience (although I put my phone down for the duration of Pet Sound...

God only knows how the BBC managed to make one of the most beautiful songs ever written sound so bland. It starts promisingly, with a Sgt-Pepper-style orchestral tune-up making way for a pretty, understated celeste. Then standards start to slip. Singers line up one after the other to see who can mess with the phrasing of their allocated line the most; stretching them beyond recognition, in a desperate attempt to take up more than eight beats. Only Brian Wilson, Chris Martin and Kylie Minogue sing it straight. Just as things are looking up, Brian May strolls in with his scratchy pubic hairstyle and overly compressed guitar sound and you want to run for the hills. One of the world’s most searingly honest and sincere love songs has its heart and soul ripped out; a ballad that's reduced me to tears many times, does it again, but for all the wrong reasons. These line-at-a-time celebrity sing-alongs seldom work. Everyone tries too hard. Each performer spends too l...

This morning, when I was getting ready, I treated myself by listening to the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. I haven’t listened to it in its entirety for ages. These days, listening to a whole album is something I do less and less . Today, I made an exception and was glad that I did. It took me a little while to get into Pet Sounds originally. I’d heard so much about it that I had built up unreasonable expectations. I think part of the reason it didn’t grab me instantly was due to it being originally mixed in mono (because Brian Wilson is deaf in one ear) and therefore didn't have the same bite as Revolver, say, which was also released in 1966. I now realise that I was missing the point. Pet Sounds is a gentler, more personal album, with production that matches its introspection perfectly. The arrangements are beautiful. The fact the album was masterminded by a twenty-three-year-old blows my mind. Sadly, the experience was pretty mind-blowing for Wilson too. He succumbed to th...