Day 255. Smile. (12/9/13)

I broke my key ring last week.

I know that won't sound overly seismic to any of you but I was genuinely gutted. I took my car keys out of my jeans pocket and there it was, gone. No longer linked, just a piece of metal floating around my pocket, a snap in the link where there should have been a connection. Ten years. Over.

Obviously this isn't about the key ring itself. As ever it's about what and who the object represents.

The key ring is two words sculpted in metal. The two words are these;

Pet. Sounds.

In 2002 Brian Wilson returned to the live arena. Nobody really expected the psychically fractured leader of The Beach Boys to ever perform before an audience again so his 'Live At The Roxy album had been a wonderfully surprising treat but what came next was something more.

A full reading of his (and his band's) 1966 masterpiece 'Pet Sounds'. A full reading of the moment that teen based pop grew up and embraced adult emotions.

One problem. He was playing London and only London. The Royal Festival Hall. I couldn't justify the cost of travel, ticket and accommodation at the time, I can't remember the price but there was no way I could stretch to it. I accepted the fact that I wasn't going to see Brian Wilson play live but that was okay because I'd never expected to.

I did get to see him later that year, the initial dates had been so wildly successful that a tour followed. I saw him in Manchester, then in Liverpool when he toured the not at that point completed 'Smile' album, his legendary 'lost' album that had floated around on bootlegs for decades. After that it seemed that you couldn't keep Brian away from the stage, he rolled around on a yearly basis.

But that's not the point.

The point is this;

I worked with a lad/had a friend called Barry Curtis, endlessly obsessed with the idea that Kevin Costner was the world's strongest human, that cheetahs were the fastest land animal, the man that celebrated April Fool's day one year by placing a notice in the staff room that Waterworld 2 was to be filmed on theMersey and that extras would be needed.

I'm probably not doing him justice here, workplace subjective memes may well lose their appeal to anybody outside that specific environment but Barry was a source of constant entertainment.

He was also a man of impeccable musical taste.

(I keep referring to him in the last tense, he's not gone we've just lost touch)

And being a man of impeccable taste, he went to see Brian Wilson.

And on his return he grabbed me on the next shift we had together and he gave me a gift. He said that he knew how much I'd wanted to go, how much I'd have loved it, so when he was passing the merchandise stall he thought that he should get me something from the gig, something that you would never be able to find anywhere else.

And he gave me a 'Pet Sounds' key ring.

It's genuinely one of the nicest, most thoughtful things that anybody has ever done for me.

And now it's snapped and I'm gutted.

Not for the object but for what it meant