Going to shows by “Tribute Bands” is something that we like to do since the “originals” in many cases are no longer around and we didn’t get to see them back in the day…I mean, the tickets were sometimes $15!! Who could afford that? We have seen the Fab Four (Beatles), a couple of Queen tributes, Elton John, and even have tickets coming up to see Get the Led Out (Led Zeppelin) in Daytona.
Grace Slick, lead singer in the Jefferson Airplane in the sixties, was interviewed a while back when she said, “Who wants to see a fifty-year-old rock singer?” Well, apparently many of us…sorry, Grace.
At the Walt Disney Theater on this past Wednesday night, we drove over to the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando for The Beach Boys – yea, surfing, Deuce Coupes, girls on the sand – the whole thing. And while only two original members were there, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston fronted a very talented group of musicians to create the sounds of the beach that we loved as kids.
Mike Love is about to turn 79 years old – the band formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California, gaining national attention in 1963 inventing what became known as the “California Sound”singing to the youth culture of the sixties. Do the math – they have been around for fifty-nine years. Hard to top that.
The show was, in a word, wonderful. While the crowd was decidedly a bit older, it was encouraging to see younger folks in the audience enjoying music from a much simpler time in our Boomer history. It was obvious that Mike and Bruce were having a great time, and the audience that filled the Walt Disney Theater responded with applause, dancing in the aisles and singing along to those familiar tunes.
Seeing these aging rockers live today, decades after their peak of popularity, is to us a privilege. A few years ago we caught Gregg Allman at the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona for what would be his last concert there – another great show. The traveling shows with one or two members of bands like Three Dog Night, Herman’s Hermits, Grand Funk Railroad, the Turtles, and Rush are always worth the price of admission. Earlier this year we saw the actual, real and true Johnny Mathis in Daytona Beach. All great shows.
Yea, we like the “Tribute Bands,” but there is nothing like the real thing.
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