Well that’s it from us for another week dear reader, and who else could we leave you with than The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson who died earlier this week. I think I’d heard Beach Boys songs on the radio growing up but my first real experience of his music in recorded form was his 1988 self-titled debut solo album which I picked up from the local record library in Bebington’s Civic Centre on the way back from school one day. Opening with the just crushingly beautiful ‘Love and Mercy’, the record on release bizarrely failed to chart in the UK which was criminal when you look at some of the shit in the charts at the time but hey it was the 1980s, the decade that music forgot as Bob Harris once put it. And although I love the music of The Beach Boys too these days, it’s his solo work which always had the most intimate impact on me (I’m also a huge fan of his “Imagination” album, I had this song going round my head for almost the entirety of my recent trip to Colombia). Then word “genius” gets overused but it’s entirely appropriate in Wilson’s case. RIP Brian.
Take care everyone, don’t forget Palestine and keep fighting the fascists. If the most out of control gangster nation on earth hasn’t started WWIII by then we’ll see you on Monday. Have a good one.
