Beach Boys

April Keefer raises a hand to welcome the Beach Boys to Wildwood. About 15,000 people turned out yesterday for the band's first East Coast beach concert since 1983, when then-Interior Secretary James Watt kept the group from July Fourth festivities in D.C.

On the one hand, we have the Beach Boys with their chug-a-chug-a rhythms and high harmonies, feeling those "Good Vibrations," singing the praises of golden-skinned "California Girls" and knowing that "Surfin' " is more a state of mind than actually riding the Big Wave. And then there is Julio Iglesias, the smooth, tuxedoed romantic, singing his love songs in an assortment of languages, including, of course, that of his native Spain. Surely, there are good vibrations here, too, but mostly they are evident only in the eyes of adoring fans.

It's almost like those good old days that classic rock radio is trying so hard to make sure we remember: This week, Chicago and the Beach Boys perform at the Spectrum. Try to contain that enthusiastic outburst, and forget about the nostalgia angle: While both bands will dig deep into their reserves of old hits, both are experiencing success right now - the Beach Boys with "Kokomo" from the Cocktail soundtrack, and Chicago with the power ballad "Look Away. " How the mighty have fallen.

Help them, Rhonda. The Beach Boys have been rocked by bad vibrations since hearing that ABC began production last month on a TV movie about the '60s singing group. "It's not authorized, and we're not being paid," said the group's manager, Tom Hulett. "We don't want to help them get any publicity, and we are refusing to license (to them) any of the music we can control. " Executive producer Len Hill is in charge of adapting Steven Gains' 1984 nonfiction book, Heroes & Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys.

What musical group is in the same class as Bing Crosby, Berry Gordy, Irving Berlin, Johnny Cash, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Benny Goodman, Chuck Berry, Stevie Wonder, Kenny Rogers, Michael Jackson, Loretta Lynn, Paul McCartney and Elvis Presley? It's the Beach Boys, picked yesterday as the first group to win the American Music Awards' Award of Merit in the 15-year history of the prize. Singer David Lee Roth will present the honorary award during a live telecast of the American Music Awards from Los Angeles Jan. 25. ARRESTS AT CONCERT Police in Buenos Aires announced yesterday that they had arrested 130 people at a Sunday night Tina Turner concert, most for intoxication or for trying to steal stereo equipment from cars parked around the soccer stadium where Turner performed.

Jim Noir writes bouncy ditties about the random stuff of everyday life: broken computers, childhood tree-climbing, the key of C. But this 24-year-old from Manchester, England, turns them into low-key celebrations when he layers them with vocal harmonies. They become compact homages to the Beach Boys. "I grew up with the Beatles, mainly. I never really got into the Beach Boys until quite late on," Noir says on the phone from Vancouver. "All I'd ever heard was the old, early surf stuff, and I wasn't really too into all that.

If the Dallas Cowboys are America's team, then the Beach Boys — who are marking 50 years of fun, fun, fun with a new album and a tour that brought them to the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden on Saturday — are America's band. Granted, they have been more or less a movable oldies jukebox for the last 30 years, at least, but that does not diminish the deathlessness of their songbook or erase the fact that they have provided the aspirational soundtrack for American life, the grand illusion of an eternal summer of sun, surf, hot rods, bikinis, and burger joints.

Next summer, the needy, abused and neglected children Sister Kathleen Reilly helps care for at St. Vincent's home will be going to the beach, thanks to the Beach Boys. Next weekend, David Heaton will have a whole new crew of volunteers at 18th Street Development Corp. to help him repair run-down homes in South Philadelphia. As soon as they can be instructed and organized, Philabundance's Pamela Rainey Lawler will have more than three dozen new recruits to help her pick up surplus food and deliver it to the hungry.

Just how long have the Beach Boys been around? So long that there's now a second generation of Beach Boys. The newest member of the group that's made a career out of preaching the gospel of Endless Summers is Matthew Jardine, the 27-year-old son of Al Jardine. The elder Jardine was among the founding members of the Beach Boys, along with Mike Love and the Wilson brothers, Brian, Carl and Dennis. They made their first major - pardon the expression - splash in 1961 when Brian wrote and produced a number called "Surfin'.

And on the 46th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys played QVC. The reunited Beach Boys, that is, who are in the early stages of a 50th-anniversary reunion tour that was to have played a sold-out show at the Borgata on Saturday before returning to the Philadelphia area for a show at the Susquehanna Bank Center on June 16. They came to the sprawling 84-acre West Chester campus of the home shopping channel to hawk That's Why...

Paul Tanner, 95, a trombonist with the Glenn Miller Orchestra who later played a space-age instrument on the Beach Boys hit "Good Vibrations," died of pneumonia Tuesday morning at an assisted-living center in Carlsbad, Calif. Mr. Tanner performed with Miller from 1938 to 1942. During his long career he also worked as a movie-studio and ABC musician in California, and performed with stars that included Henry Mancini and Arturo Toscanini. He helped develop the electro-theramin, a keyboard-style electronic instrument.

J.K. ROWLING isn't finished with everyone's favorite boy wizard. In an interview with the BBC, Rowling said she's not opposed to revisiting Harry Potter and the Hogwarts crew for another book. She doesn't want to do a sequel or a prequel, but she'd consider "a sidestep. " "If I did have a great idea for something else, I probably would do it," Rowling said. Despite the massive popularity of her series, Rowling expressed dissatisfaction with some of the books. "I had to write on the run, and there were times when it was really tough," she said.

LOS ANGELES - Singer Scott McKenzie, who performed "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" - which became a hit in 1967 during the city's "Summer of Love" - has died. A statement on McKenzie's website says that the 73-year-old died on Saturday in Los Angeles. McKenzie battled Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disease that affects the nervous system, and had been in and out of hospitals since 2010. "San Francisco" was written by John Phillips, the leader of the 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas.

If the Dallas Cowboys are America's team, then the Beach Boys — who are marking 50 years of fun, fun, fun with a new album and a tour that brought them to the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden on Saturday — are America's band. Granted, they have been more or less a movable oldies jukebox for the last 30 years, at least, but that does not diminish the deathlessness of their songbook or erase the fact that they have provided the aspirational soundtrack for American life, the grand illusion of an eternal summer of sun, surf, hot rods, bikinis, and burger joints.

THE MORALITY and ethics of legal casinos may be legitimate topics of debate, but there's no argument when the subject is how gambling halls have enhanced the region's live-entertainment options. The latest proof is the recent opening of two major performance spaces — the Event Center at Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, and Ovation Hall, a key part of the $2.4 billion Revel megaresort that on Friday began its grand-opening weekend festivities. The men who run each of the properties acknowledged that such facilities are crucial to luring customers who will gamble, eat in restaurants and sleep in hotel rooms.

And on the 46th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys played QVC. The reunited Beach Boys, that is, who are in the early stages of a 50th-anniversary reunion tour that was to have played a sold-out show at the Borgata on Saturday before returning to the Philadelphia area for a show at the Susquehanna Bank Center on June 16. They came to the sprawling 84-acre West Chester campus of the home shopping channel to hawk That's Why...

Bill Hixon was a legend in the rarefied world of Florida surfing, where intrepid young people relish tropical storms and other coastal upheavals that send normal people fleeing, to test their skill and courage against the wild waves. He opened one of the East Coast's first surf shops in Neptune Beach in 1964. He went on to open two more surf shops, and organized surfing teams that competed on both coasts. And he created his own boards. He was, in short, a surfing legend at a time when the Beach Boys were singing about catching a wave and capturing the imaginations of young would-be beach bums, who would then join the "cool" guys at Hixon's Surf Shop and soak up the ambience.

THE ONLY TIME CNN political analyst Roland Martin was mentioned in Tattle, we got a none-too-pleased email from him. Today Martin may be sending out a lot of emails. CNN suspended him yesterday for "offensive" tweets during the Super Bowl that some critics said were anti-gay. As reported by the Associated Press, Martin tweeted about a commercial during the Super Bowl that showed soccer star David Beckham in underwear: "If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham's H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him. " The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said that the remark advocated violence against gays.

Bruce Springsteen has been added to this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival lineup. Springsteen and the Clarence Clemons -less E Street Band will perform on April 29. It'll be Springsteen's first Jazz Fest appearance since 2006, when he took the stage with his Seeger Sessions project less than a year after Hurricane Katrina. Eddie Vedder and rapper Mystikal also have been added. They join a previously announced roster that includes the Eagles , a reunion of the Beach Boys , Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers , Foo Fighters , Zac Brown Band and John Mayer , the Neville Brothers , Al Green and My Morning Jacket . Hundreds of acts will perform on roughly a dozen stages over two weekends from April 27 to May 6. * If you can't make it to the Big Easy, the Boss and his band will perform two shows at the Wells Fargo Center on March 28 and 29, as part of the first U.S. leg of the 2012 "Wrecking Ball" World Tour.

'Ladies and gentlemen," says the dapper drumming singer of Gary Lewis and the Playboys (and son of Jerry Lewis), "the Lake Arrowhead Pavilion is proud to present to you a group known worldwide for their surfing and hot-rod records - Columbia's recording artists, the Rip Chords!"