070189 The Beach Boys, Shediac, NB

Canada Day, 1989.  My first ticketed outdoor concert.  The Beach Boys were coming to town (well, almost to town), setting up a stage right on the sand at Parlee Beach in Shediac, New Brunswick, the lobster capital of the world, and just a short drive from home.  It seemed like everybody in Moncton had a ticket and why not?  The world’s most iconic sun ’n surf group playing on one of the most popular beaches in eastern Canada – what could be better than that?

And the answer is: The weather.  The weather certainly could have been better.

Just as the first of about six hundred local cover bands took the stage to open the show the darkening clouds started to drizzle.  As I stood there with the drummer from my high school rock band lamenting the fact that we had somehow not managed to get on the bill (“we play Takin’ Care of Business way better than the last band did, and almost as good as these guys do…”) the drizzle turned to rain and soon the rain turned into a bona fide downpour.

The beach turned to sticky sand under my feet while a mass of umbrellas took up the best viewing positions in front of me.  Local band after local band struggled through their soggy sets trying not to get electrocuted as local cottagers roamed through the sopping crowd selling garbage bags as makeshift raincoats: $5 apiece.  I’m sure with every sale they got a friendly east coast earful (“Imagine!  You should be ashamed of yourself taking advantage like this.  Thanks so very much now, have yourself a great day!”).  I don’t know why anyone bothered to buy one; by this time the entire crowd was soaked through.

Finally, at long last the featured act was introduced and the real-live Beach Boys hit the rain-slicked stage.  The tired, pruned crowd mustered as much enthusiasm as it could, which was minimal, but we all got through the next seventy-five minutes together.    

The band was missing the great Brian Wilson (1942-2025) and they had an unlikely celebrity playing behind them, dude from Full House was on the drums and doing a respectable job.  With the undisputed band leader by all accounts at home in bed it almost felt like a well-oiled cover band up there, though the vocals were pretty spot-on.

Of course The Beach Boys have a remarkable folio to draw upon and they peppered their set with about half of the songs you would expect to hear from them.  Midway through the concert one of the Boys asked the crowd if we wanted to hear songs about girls or songs about cars (I guess they had gone through all of their surfing songs by then).  The crowd screamed for one or the other but of course (thought I) they were going to do both.  

I thought wrong.

Thinking about it from the band’s perspective it occurs to me that they were on a beach they had never heard of playing to a nearly-disgruntled crowd they’ll likely never see again, it’s pouring rain with plastic wrapping the amps and monitors and the stage is littered with puddles large and small.  I can totally understand the band wanting to get the heck out of there.  I think we all wanted to get out of there.

So they finished up the evening with either a string of songs like Fun, Fun, Fun and Little Deuce Coupe or Barbara Ann and Help Me Rhonda, I don’t remember which.  And what does it matter?  I had endured my first outdoor concert and discovered that I can spend a day rocking out in even the most adverse conditions and with only the most thinly veiled rock and roll on offer. 

Training ground for many more episodes to come.