I pulled out a particular record sleeve that had momentarily caught my attention and looked closely at it. A typical cheap 1970’s re-issue package stared back at me, multi-coloured and somewhat tacky graphics highlighting, if I remember correctly (and how could I forget ?), the image of a surfer. An image that must have seemed a million and one light years away from where I now stood, pale-skinned in a sleepy English town ... albeit a sunny one. In truth, the whole scenario pictured must have meant very little to me at that particular moment in time. How naive I was ... I was pretty damn hot on my homemade skateboard. Those customised roller skate wheels used to burn up the tarmac, yes ... but actual surfing ? With water ??

  And wet water at that ..??

  I thought I vaguely recognised the name of the group, displayed so artfully on the cover. The Beach Boys, and I sort of knew a couple of their songs ...

  “Bar-barbara Ann, Bar-barbara Ann ...”

  ... that was one of them. I think ... But hey, we weren’t talking either Donny or Davy here, were we ?? Still, something must have appealed to me that morning as I held the record in my hands. Maybe it was the actual title on the sleeve, “All Summer Long”. It sounded pretty cool. Maybe it had something to do with the sun, still streaming through the windows, highlighting some sort of subconscious link between summer, sun and childhood fun. Then again, maybe not. Of course, it may simply have been that nothing else in my dear sister’s pathetic record collection was worthy of any attention ... unless of course, I lay all of the shiny black discs out in the direct stream of blinding sunlight, and then lay alongside, patiently waiting for the vinyl edges to curl up in the heat. That could be fun.

Nevertheless, for whatever reasons, five minutes later I was sat in front of the family music centre, a glorious chrome-edged, zero horse-powered Fidelity unit (top of the range stuff I was foolishly led to believe), and as the needle went down, settling comfortably between the charcoal-blackness of the grooves, and the first striking notes of “I Get Around” rang through my head, my eyes widened. I moved closer, I cranked up the volume ... I had arrived.

“I’m gettin’ bugged drivin’ up and down the same ol’ strip.

I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip ...”

  WOW !!! I must have played that cheapo MFP offering four or five times in a row, back to back, one after another. Once the final chords of the closing track, “Don’t Back Down”, had faded away, with that amazing falsetto wailing away into the darkness, it was back to the start again, and again ... and again. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably no more than an hour or so, my friend Jon casually strolled in. Not bad for someone who lived no more than fifty yards away. He’d skipped breakfast, thankfully had a wash, and chosen his mauve and white stripy tank-top that day. His mood was good and he looked pretty cool, or so he led me to believe. He was immediately forced to sit down next to me and subsequently made to listen intently to my new discovery ...

  “Listen ...” I told him. “This’ll blow your mind !”

He liked what he heard, but the excitement that shone around my face, lighting it up, didn’t quite register with him. Not at the same level anyway. But I guess that dress sense wasn’t everything.

And so it was that I was alone. Alone with my discovery. Bursting to tell the world, and share with everyone the joy I had found, but alas, it would be four or five whole weeks until I’d see the rest of my friends again. Four or five whole weeks until the school holidays were over. At least twenty-eight entire days before I could credibly hold my head up amongst the Bowie-freaks and Zep-heads. When, yes, I could proudly say I was a ... uhmmm, yes, a ... A BEACH-NUT !

  I don’t have that first MFP album anymore. I wish I could say I did. For posterity’s sake as much as anything else ... the one that started it all off. I remember that the rear of the sleeve featured a black and white photograph of the ‘boys’, all wearing their striped shirts. I guess I would have spent a rather lengthy period of time staring closely at this picture. Maybe I was looking for a sign or something … a secret symbol from one of them that only I would understand. It would be my initiation into a world I was so looking forward to walking into. A world of discovery. Possibly it would come from the one with the beard, he looked like a figure of authority. Was he Brian ? I had found out that Brian was the leader but I’d no idea what he looked like. And which ones were his brothers ? How cool was that… a group of sun-tanned brothers singing about this visionary land. Was one of them the chubby face with the clinical side parting ? The rough-looking one with the dark hair ? How about the funny one with the squashed face ? And who had the noticeably square-jaw line ? I had to find out … (imagine my despair when I found out that there actually SIX Beach Boys to put faces to ! Who was this Beach Boy ‘Bruce’ guy and where did he fit into the equation ? Who was missing on all of those group photographs ? And why …?)

  I had to know more before I could truly boast of my new claim, I had to HEAR more. I had to find out more. My sister wasn’t going to be much use. I really don’t know what tempted her to buy the album in the first place, it just wasn’t her. She was at that teeny-bop stage, plain and simple, all dressed up in tartan. And besides that, there was the added fact that she wasn’t actually talking to me at the moment. Something to do with the parrot on Les McKeown’s shoulder she had muttered ... I was well and truly on my own.

  Three days later I headed in to town. The sun was still shining and the trees were still green. And I meant business. If ever there was a man with a mission ... then I was that man. My first purchase was “The Best Of The Beach Boys : Volume Two”, on EMI cassette tape. The Boots record department had sold out of “Volume One”, but I didn’t care, that could come next week, subject to pocket money. Expense meant nothing to me in my quest to free myself from my landlocked ignorance. However, I can vividly recall wondering at the time why the counter assistant gave me such an understanding look as I marched up to the desk, all four feet six inches of me, leaving my father standing at the store entrance with a bewildering look upon his face, emptied my bulging pockets of rattling loose change, sending the coins spinning in all directions, and demanded ...

  “Some Beach Boys please ...”

  Did she know something that I didn’t at that time ? Had she seen it all before ...??