Brian Wilson

The concert was good. It was actually pretty similar to the last one Marty and I saw in 2004. Brian still has a voice which is a ghost of his prime. The band how ever is superb. At points they have 8 singers doing the various parts of the song. The instrumentation was amazing too. One of the guitarist tripled on French horn and flute. They did lots of the hits and a few less known ones from the Beach Boys 60s albums

After intermission, they performed his new album Lucky Old Sun which I am not that impressed with on CD. They did it very well live. The theme is growing up in California in the 60s so there was a screen with images and animations. I heartily recommend the show if there is ever an opportunity to see him. They also weren't very loud so no one's ears will be ringing afterwards.

The crowd was really old: lots of grey hair and paunchy faces standing and singing along. You really couldn't call it dancing. It was amusing to look at. Of course good old Lloyd was there with a free ticket. I talked with him a bit. If he had known I was going to be there he probably would have suggested a dinner on CL.

The weather was really frigid. It didn't seem so bad when we first started walking. Our original plan was to go to some galleries in Chelsea or SoHo. After a while we just decided to go to MOMA. It was free Friday but the line was long for tickets. We paid the $20 each so we wouldn't have to stand in the cold. Lots of greatest hits there. I had never seen it before. There was also a sold out Van Gogh show. It was very crowded. There was a cool video installation with large two floor high images posted on three walls with ambient music playing. I am not sure whether it was recently installed or not.

All in all it was a nice bonding day. No discussion of my personal issues.