Crowd Cheers Beach Boys
by Don A. Metivier, The Post-Star, August 29, 1975
A well-behaved crowd of 26,892 cheered and danced their way through an hour-long concert by the Beach Boys at Saratoga Performing Arts Center Wednesday night.
It was the largest crowd of the Saratoga Festival season, and one of the largest in the ten-year history of the Center.
The crowd sat for nearly 45 minutes, waiting for the arrival of the Beach Boys, following an early concert by a rock group. Ambrosia.
“They are in transit,” a spokesman for the Beach Boys said, “relax and play with the Frisbie.”
The crowd had contented itself for more than half an hour by tossing a white Frisbie around inside the huge amphitheatre, good throws getting appreciative applause from the crowd, bad tosses, groans.
The stage was filled with all kinds of electronic gear, and four “Palm Trees” held up a huge light grid. The entire show was carefully staged, with a nice set on the stage down to T-shirts noting “Beach Boys, On Tour” worn by the stagehands, the light crew, and sound men
Shortly after 9 p.m., the Beach Boys appeared on stage, led by Dennis Wilson, clad in a turban and waving a streamered tambourine.
The crowd exploded in pent-up cheers and applause, and so it was for the next hour.
While the Beach Boys became superstars with their famed California “surfin’ sound,” they have changed that musical style for an updated, more electronic version.
The band now includes a timpani and electronic keyboard, as well as a variety of guitars, drums and congas.
Still, however, much of the music was familiar to the crowd, most of whom were too young to remember the sounds of “Surfer Girl,” “Barbara Ann,” “Help Me Rhonda,” “Surfin USA,” and “Good Vibrations,” when they were original hits by the Beach Boys in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The stomping, cheering crowd brought the performers back for an encore, which included “Surfin USA,” which the youngsters immediately recognized and welcomed, a tribute to the longevity of Beach Boy recordings.
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