My first (and hopefully only) daylog...
I'm copying this to a few lists. Apologies if you're not interested , or if you get this several times...
Wow...
Brian Wilson at the Manchester Apollo - what can I say?
Tonight may well have been the best night of my life...
The show started with 'Well, You're Welcome', sung totally a capella, in pitch blackness. The lights came up and straight into Wonderful... after two verses this segued into an abbreviated version of CabinEssence (no second verse)... this may be the greatest opener anyone's ever done...and the rest of the set didn't disappoint...Sail On Sailor, Our Prayer, Heroes & Villains (not the cantina version as such - even better - this had the choruses from the single version (but with Brian singing Bicycle Rider at points), the 'In The Cantina' section, and the ending used on the other live shows.), Surf's Up was a thing of beauty as always, Please Let Me Wonder, Cal Girls, Marcella, Do It Again, Don't Worry Baby, Your Imagination, Forever, Good Timing (dedicated to Carl in place of Lay Down Burden, which wasn't played), Meant For You, Friends, The Night Was So Young, Busy Doin' Nothing, You're So Good To Me... it was as close to a perfect setlist as I can imagine. And obviously the Pet Sounds section was wonderful.
Brian was on *FAR* better form than the Jubilee gig - and better even than the gigs in January. He actually went to the front of the stage and shook hands with the front row, which I'd not heard of him doing before, two or three times (when going off and coming on stage).
Darian's keyboard broke down just before YSGTM, and they had to take a break while it was fixed (during which Brian and Jeff told knock knock jokes, the crowd sang Happy Birthday to Brian, and they did the cigarette lighter routine), and Brian seemed a little thrown for a while (even forgetting the line 'you're so good to me' in the song) but coped surprisingly well with a fairly major upset. Mikey rather than Andy being present made little real difference to the sound - the only real difference I could see was that Desert Drive was dropped...
The audience, BTW, were nowhere near as responsive as in January - but that's not to say the audience was bad. In January, pretty much every single hardcore fan in the country went to the gigs (hence presumably the comments about how good the audiences over here were - there were *only* huge fans there) - this time people are only going to one or two nights, and the rest of the audience is made up of more casual fans (there were very few cheers when Your Imagination and Melt Away were introduced, for example). However there were plenty of people I knew there - good to see Iain Harris and Paul McNulty again especially, as I hadn't seen either of them in a long time.
But it was after the gig that was really magical - I went looking for Ian Alexander-Barnes (we owed each other some tapes & CDs) and saw him among the 'important people' with backstage passes. Alex McCambly came up and looked quite sad - he told me he'd had a pass for me, but had been unable to find me and so he'd given it away. Obviously I was devastated - but then John Porteous came up and told me I could have his, as he'd met Brian several times anyway!
So I got to go backstage (with Ian, Alex, Annie Wallace, Robbo and some others) and meet the man himself. He seemed very tired and didn't talk much to anyone - just 'thanks for coming' and so on - but I got to shake his hand, and got my Love You and PS Live CD booklets signed.
I also got PS live signed by Foskett, Bob Lizik, Darian, Probyn and Nick. I spoke with Foskett briefly about his solo stuff, and he said he's sorting out a distribution deal in the UK soon.
I also got Darian, Probyn and Nick to sign my Wondermints CD liners. Darian seemed quite shocked - "Wow! You *BOUGHT* that? Thanks!" - when I passed him the liner to Wondermints, and we chatted briefly about the Mints (the new album will be out in September all being well, and there's a slim possibility they may do a couple of UK shows but don't hold your breath). Nick also seemed surprised to see I had mints CDs, and pointed out his be-hatted cartoon image on the Wonderful World CD cover while signing it.
Probyn was *VERY* talkative - chatting with a few of us for a good ten or fifteen minutes. He agreed with me that a Love You tour would be fun (if impractical), and said the band often sing Johnny Carson on the bus (and backstage at the Tonight Show), as well as chatting about Smile songs, playing the trumpet, his favourite song (undecided but probably Don't Talk) and a hundred other things...
I'm still absolutely in shock, and I'll be grateful to John for the rest of my life, and I've stuck my backstage pass on my guitar for posterity, and I'm probably boring everyone now so I'll shut up ;)