Category: Culture

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Brian Wilson

The death was announced a few days ago of Brian Wilson, founder of The Beach Boys, singer, composer and producer.

The Beach Boys started in the early 1960s and was a family group with Brian’s brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love together with Al Jardine.

Their songs were summery, surfing, cars kinds of sounds, both the songs the group sang and songs Brian wrote for others.

As time went on, the band started to mature and their work became more serious. Brian’s drug use became a problem and he had mental issues.

By the late 1960s Carl had taken the lead in the band and they produced a number of albums that many people have not heard, but are worth finding.

These include Holland and Carl and The Passions “So Tough”. It’s probably fair to say Holland has stood the test of time and is as near to progressive as the band ever got. Brian’s contribution, the fairy tale, came as an extra 45rpm disc and is odd.

Brian’s great contribution is said to be Pet Sounds (1966). It has huge ratings and has been released in numerous forms, including a multi-disc CD of the rehearsals and other arrangements. We don’t get the love for this. It’s got some good songs and interesting arrangements, but it doesn’t stand up to comparison with Revolver or Sgt Pepper, a common comparison.

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Dr Who

The most receny series of Dr Who (DW) has finished. By all accounts, even the die hard fans have found this poor at best, and the future of the show is in the balance, again, with the loss of the latest actor to play the lead role, Ncuti Gatwa.

There are plenty of sites and books where you can look up the history of DW and find clips and even whole episodes.

We have a few thoughts.

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Football

I used to enjoy football when I was tiny, but don’t any more and rarely even look at it on tv.

Like so many sorts now, a 90 minute match (plus half time) can become a 3 hour marathon on multipe channels, with armies of pundits and exhausting analysis.

The players get a lot of money, some in the hundreds of thousands per week, I am told.

Here’s an idea to make big matches slightly more interesting – have the penalty knock out first, before the actual match. This will give one team at least a greater incentive to play – at the end, if it’s a nil-nil draw, we know who will be the victors.