Finally some real good news. Did a gig at a new venue on Friday called “the Tropic at Ruislip” which is in, yeah you guessed it, Ruislip. A solid showing for a first gig but for us the most important person in the audience was former original member of the Beach Boys, David Marks who just happened to be here on vacation.
The first half was a mixture of hits plus some lesser known tracks to please the Blueboarders(as the regular board posters from the Brian Wilson website call themselves) who had turned up in reasonable numbers. In the second half we introduced the crowd to Charlotte Cooper, a young lady who is in the process of recording an album. Charlotte is greatly influenced by the music of the Beach Boys and performed a couple of songs from the early mid sixties era “Don’t Worry Baby” and “Devoted to You”. She sung these songs very sweetly and was recieved warmly by the crowd. Shortly afterwards we persuaded David Marks to join us onstage and in doing so achieved what few Tribute bands achieve, which is to perform with someone that they are a tribute to. Anyone who is not familiar with David Marks might consider purchasing Jon Stebbins excellent book “David Marks – The lost Beach Boy”. In a nutshell David was in the band when they signed their first deal with Capitol records and featured on the first four albums. The songs David chose to play with us were some of the famous songs that he recorded at that time “Surfin’, Surfin’ Safari, 409, Little Deuce Coupe(which you can find on youtube) and Surfin’ USA.
To a degree, fame and fortune passed David Marks by. However he remains a good musician and a true gentleman, unaffected by the fame that he has acquired and we look forward to seeing him again. For the people of Ruislip who came to see the show, £8 to see one of the legends of the Beach Boys on your own doorstep must have seemed a real bargain.
To see some comments about the gig please visit www.brianwilson.com and go to the community page but be quick as posts come there thick and fast and finally push older posts out.
The Beached Boys xx