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Author Topic: The Beach Boys According to George Starotsin  (Read 15159 times)
TMinthePM
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« on: May 28, 2013, 02:00:41 PM »

I gotta tell ya I've been reading this board, and before it the old white board - what did they all it, Cabinessence?- since 1996.

And in that time I've saved a lot of articles that appeared or were linked or referred to. Total's about 1200 pages.

So, sometimes I'll add stuff to whatever a thread is about if I think it might be helpful to the discussion. If not, just tell me or delete it and I won't be offended.

Right now I'm looking at about 20 pages discussing CATP-Holland and wondering if they'd be helpful to the How Cool is Holland thread? But I hesitate to add this pages to the thread for fear of offending. I think the stuff I put up on the Lei'd in Hawaii was helpful. I don't want to be a hog, but I don't mind sharing the bacon.

Well, anyway, I love the way this guy Starotsin writes so I'm sharing here his introductory comments concerning the Beach Boys. He covers just about the whole history of rock n roll on his page and is well worth the time. I never stop laughing when I stop in the see what George has to say.


The Beach Boys According to George Starotsin

Introduction
The Beach Boys are frequently considered to have been the American version of the Beatles, which is neither a compliment ('whoah, these guys are greater than Lennon-McCartney!') nor a denigration ('just look what these ridiculous Yanks offer as competition to our Liverpool boys!'). A much less vague and a much better formulated statement would be saying that people tend to react to the Wilson family in terms of rather overheated sentiments - to put it very mildly. The Beach Boys were an event, a symbol; whatever they were, they were important, and as it often happens with important bands, they are often judged for what they should not be judged.
Typical reaction number one, which has not so much to do with the quality of the Beach Boys' music as it has to do with general anti-Americanism, is writing the Beach Boys off as silly surfin' pop crap - usually demonstrated by people who tend to dismiss all 'pop' music as, at best, a lightweight and imbecile precursion to the 'serious' progressive/avantgarde/sophisticated stuff. As naturally wrong as it is, it is by no means compensated by the zealous sermons of people who think it their mission to convince the agnostics that Brian Wilson is, in fact, the long-lost heir of Jesus Christ and that Pet Sounds is the true New Testament of rock music (and Smile its hard-to-discover Holy Grail). These two parties and their respectable opinions usually rule the world of Beach Boys' creative discussion, and where East is East, West is West: "no band with a song like 'Surfin' Safari' deserves to live in a world populated with Jethro Tull members", say the ones, "no one sees the face of 'God Only Knows' and lives the same way as before", object the others.

Still other people prefer to take a completely different standpoint and object against this particular Beatles/Beach Boys matchup in the first place. This is unreasonable; such a connection could not have appeared artificially, and, although quite a few other American bands had been called "the American Beatles" at different periods (the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, among others), the links between the Fab Four and the Noble Surfers are certainly stronger than anybody else's. Both bands started out at the same time, being at the absolute forefront of the pop revolution of the early Sixties: in fact, the Beach Boys' debut actually preceded Please Please Me by half a year. Both bands showed the importance of relying on one's own forces instead of trusting outside songwriters; both demonstrated astonishing musical progress and yielded first-rate musical visionaries - unfortunately, only one in the case of the Boys (as much as I respect the talents of Dennis and Carl Wilson, they really surfaced at a much later period and even then were only a pale shadow of the former genius of Brian). And, of course, the two bands' creative competition through the 1965-67 period has by now passed into legend.

Who was better? The Beatles, of course, and I'm not even going to waste space debating this. (Yeah, I know it's only my opinion, but hey, it's my website as well). But then the Beatles were better than anybody, and passing on the laurels does not mean we're completely out of wreaths. And if it turns out that a lot of people pay no attention to the Boys whatsoever, well, this simply has to do with Fate, which has been more than unjust to the band.

The Beatles were lucky to assure themselves a certain degree of creative independence from the very beginning - by having a witty, sensible manager and no strong family ties. The Beach Boys, on the other hand, were managed by their Dad, Murray Wilson, who could be strong and decisive but couldn't tell Art from Fart even at gunpoint (not that he ever needed to, as long as the cash was coming in). In between family pressure, Capitol greed, and the 'collaborationism' of lead singer Mike Love, always the weak link in the band (spiritually, at least), the Beach Boys were all but forced to keep the "beach" image - to be forever pegged as grinning surfboard-trailing Ipana smile high school idiots with nothing but surfing and cruising on their minds. (Ironically, almost none of the band members were surfers in real life). For several long years Brian Wilson conducted a struggle against this tag... and ultimately lost the struggle by burning out.

The Beatles were also lucky not to have lasted that long. Whatever serious reputation Brian may have earned the band by steering it into the art rock channel in the mid-Sixties was already half lost by the time he'd gone into seclusion, and after the "glory surf" days of 1962-65 and the "pop heaven" pinnacle of 1966-early '67 came a long period of chart disappointments, personal frustration, desperate search for a new identity, patches and groves of brilliancy mixed with failed experiments and embarrassments. That period (1967-73) happened to become one of the fans' favourites, and for good reason: there's plenty of great art-pop material to be found on albums like Wild Honey, Surf's Up and Holland, much of it actually outtakes and rewrites of what Brian already had in mind in 1967, but not limited to oldies, and that is also the time when brothers Carl and Dennis lend one hell of a serious helping hand. Unfortunately, since 1976, with Mike Love taking almost full control of the band, they truly turned into an oldies outfit, and, although their late period albums aren't nearly as detestable as some will tell you (and some, like Love You, are actually excellent all the way through), this intentional reappraisal of their early Sixties image, as undertaken not by skinny sixteen-year old innocent youths, but fat, spoiled, bearded, and decadent rock stars, won them few new fans and lost quite a few old ones. (And by "new fans" I certainly don't mean all those people who were sending 'Kokomo' up the charts in the late Eighties).

Supplement creative problems with personal ones - pretty much every Beach Boy has had at least one serious psychic trauma in his life (not sure about Al Jardine), and two of them ended up dead at a pretty early age - and all of a sudden, in the place of a silly superficial surf band appears a whole web of serious ambitions, rich experiences, and tragic fates. And, thankfully, on top of it all, a rich, resplendent musical baggage. True, the Beach Boys were not about "rocking out"; but what's wrong with that? True, their music was never 'protest-ful' as real rock music should be (the few cases of Beach Boys essaying something 'socially biting' should better be left forgotten - 'Student Demonstration Time', anybody? Puh-lease!), nor was it ever pessimistic, despite all their misfortunes - but with all the pessimism and anger and depression and rebellion around, who wouldn't want to have a quiet haven for relaxation?

On the other hand, their music was deeply personal and individualistic; exceedingly religious - and I don't just mean Brian's "teenage symphonies to God"; religiousness flows through almost everything Brian Wilson ever did, starting with 'Surfer Girl' at least; and, of course, amazingly complex without looking artificial or show-off-ey. Even the Beach Boys' wildest enemy won't deny this band was king when it came to vocal harmony arrangements. In the mid-Sixties, the Beach Boys' music epitomized "BEAUTY": the kind of supreme, abstract, unreachable, idealistic, Platonic BEAUTY that the world of pop music had not yet seen, and, in fact, the world of music overall had not seen since... since... well, Brian Wilson hasn't exactly been called the 'Mozart of surf' for nothing.

In the long run, it's just best to take the Beach Boys for what they were, and they were different things at different times. Unless you're a ferocious metalhead or a Metal Machine Music adept, I think you'll always find at least something in their catalog that'd suit you. The Beach Boys weren't tremendously diverse (for instance, for all their fusion of pop with classical music, their mastery of all things blues- and jazz-related always left something to be desired), but they worked in the experimental pop genre, and this usually leaves a lot of room for everything. Unfortunately, you'll have to dig - getting Pet Sounds and falling in love with Pet Sounds is easy, but most Beach Boys albums, early or late, are uneven, and as for compilations, they do not always put the band under the best of lights; since the release of Endless Summer in the mid-Seventies, most of them tended to present the band as a 'party' one, further denigrating the band's reputation.

Yet despite all the odds, their legacy lives on - every now and then you're bound to come up with some new record that is described as "the Pet Sounds of its generation". It's been said about the Velvet Underground that they had few fans, but each one of those formed a new band of his own; almost the same could be said about the 'elitist' Beach Boy fans, the ones that truly 'get' the band as opposed to the general public that only knows them through 'Fun Fun Fun' and 'California Girls' (at best, through 'Good Vibrations' as well). Their influence can hardly be measured in words - and it's quite telling that some of the best indie-pop bands of the Nineties, like the Flaming Lips, for instance, mix Beatles and Beach Boys influences in more or less equal proportion.

Lineup: the Beach Boys were a true 'family' group. Brian Wilson - bass guitar, vocals, creativity; Carl Wilson - lead guitar; Dennis Wilson - drums; Mike Love - vocals; Al Jardine (the only non-relation) - rhythm guitar. All of them were great singers, so please add 'backing vocals' to everyone. There were some changes in personnel over the 70's which I'll be mentioning in the respective reviews. The only things you need to memorize before carrying on is that (a) both Dennis and Carl are already dead; (b) Bruce Johnston was an occasional replacement for Brian, especially on tour, and later joined permanently; (c) Brian's presence on all things post-Pet Sounds has been of extreme variability, and since the self-titled album of 1985, he's been disassociating himself from all things "Beach Boy-related", which is why I'm still not in a hurry to complete my catalog.
General Evaluation:
Listenability: 3/5. Two points off for WAY too much fluff on the band's early and later releases... in fact, the number of bad or mediocre songs in the BB's catalogue definitely exceeds the number of good ones.
Resonance: 4/5. Many lightweight pastiches and too much atrocious pseudo-emotional stuff from Mike Love is the only thing that prevents them from climbing higher.
Originality: 3/5. Their originality is slightly overrated - after all, they weren't the exclusive fathers of surf-rock - but Pet Sounds does break a lot of new ground.
Adequacy: 4/5. Down with Mike Love!
Diversity: 3/5. There's no mistaking a Beach Boys song, and the band's few attempts at a harder sound have been truly embarrassing. But within the pop formula, there's plenty of diverse experiences to be found.
Overall: 3.4 = C on the rating scale. Qualifiable for further upgrades?
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TMinthePM
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« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2013, 03:53:27 PM »

http://starling.rinet.ru/music/index.htm
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clack
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« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2013, 04:01:32 PM »

Lightweight stuff. Guy doesn't even know which Beach Boy played which instrument -- Brian mostly played keys, Al was the main bassist, Carl  (post Marks) played both rhythm and lead. And really -- the number of bad and mediocre songs greatly exceed the number of good ones?

And the true mark of amateurish rock music criticism : that damn Velvet Underground remark from Brian Eno which everyone has heard hundreds of times -- and even that he misquotes. Angry
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beacharg
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« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2013, 04:13:22 PM »

"The Beach Boys weren't tremendously diverse"

"Diversity: 3/5. There's no mistaking a Beach Boys song, and the band's few attempts at a harder sound have been truly embarrassing."

I STRONGLY disagree...
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TMinthePM
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« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2013, 05:00:11 PM »

I Know. I Know.

It's only Rock n Roll


SURFIN' SAFARI

Year Of Release: 1962
Record rating = 6
Overall rating = 9

This is 'Fun Fun Fun' even before the song itself. Predictably marred by generic contemporary stuff, but still...
 Best song: 409

Track listing: 1) Surfin' Safari; 2) County Fair; 3) Ten Little Indians; 4) Chug-A-Lug; 5) Little Miss America; 6) 409; 7) Surfin'; Cool Heads You Win - Tails I Lose; 9) Summertime Blues; 10) Cuckoo Clock; 11) Moon Dawg; 12) The Shift.

We will start this off with a controversial bit of statement: despite what people may tell you about creative growth blah blah blah, the Beach Boys were great from the very beginning. Okay, that was shocking, or stupid, or both. Of course they weren't really "great" in 1962. Then again, they were rarely 'great' at other periods, either, that is, if by 'great' you mean 'huge in the eyes of the demanding part of the public' (Pet Sounds is one of the few exceptions). But in a certain sense they were great from the very beginning: the amount of pure, unspoiled, unpretentious, sweet, innocent, and at the same time moderately intelligent (in a very special sense of the word, of course) F-U-N that you get from listening even to this ragged collection of hastily assembled material is simply stuttering.
I mean, look at the friggin' date. This was 1962, by Chrissake! The Beatles were still recording 'Love Me Do' and playing late-period Hamburg gigs at the time! We all know the epoch, don't we - that God-forgotten period of the early Sixties when rock'n'roll died for the first time and Fabian and Frankie Avalon temporarily took its place? Well, it wasn't exactly up to the Beach Boys to shatter that adult-happy world of revanchism, but they came damn close. And it's not so much because there's a cover of Eddie Cochran's 'Summertime Blues' on this album - most cleaned-up white boys of the time used to borrow an occasional rocker or two from the overthrown Fifties' heroes as well - it's rather because there is an unmistakably raw, unadorned, 'do-it-yourself' attitude on Surfin' Safari which the cleaned-up white boys just couldn't allow themselves. Surfin' Safari sounds like it was recorded for fifty bucks over two hours - and it probably was. And that's good.
Not that there was any intentional musical revolution or anything equally grand going on. The Beach Boys were still in high school at the time; like every standard Californian with high expectations, they were pretty, smiling, unsuspecting kids with surfboards (or, at least, pictured with surfboards) and hardly any musical ambitions in the first place, steered only by caring father Murray Wilson and the usual kid desires of babes and glory. The collective Britney Spears of their time. And, of course, nobody could expect them to break out of the corporate industry like that, all of a sudden; they didn't have the guts to protest against Capitol milking them and their talents mercilessly for almost three years, nor, in fact, would they succeed at the time even if they had the guts.
Naturally, Surfin' Safari is quite a typical product of its time - a time when the LP was still considered essentially as a way of cashing in on the success of a previous single (in this case, the title track, of course). Evidence? Filler-a-plenty. Well, okay, not really "plenty", considering that the album itself is so short it's over before you can even say 'chug-a-lug' - but even for that mammoth length of 24:50, there's a couple of truly nasty bits. For instance, the sweet, artificial ballad 'Little Miss America', the kind of generic sha-la-la-la stuff that millions of local and national bands and artists were pouring out in wagonloads at the time, precipitating "Little Miss America"'s fall into the embrace of rock'n'roll once again. It is interesting to note, though, that 'Little Miss America' is the only true ballad on the entire album - a thing quite exclusive for a band that was later to gain huge notoriety for their balladeering style and, in fact, build their reputation as 'serious artists' through soft sentimental stuff rather than upbeat pop hooks. If anything, it shows that at this point, the songwriting talents of Brian Wilson were still burgeoning.
However, if you're not that much of a ballad fan - watch out for that guitar! Carl doesn't do a great job there, of course (how could he? bet he didn't even have his driving license!), but it's obvious that he's been painstakingly trying to assimilate quite a few Chuck Berry licks, and even if their boogie-woogie isn't too audacious, it's still eminently danceable and, well, like I said, fun. Most of the melodies are indeed credited to by Brian Wilson (although I'm sure they're mostly stolen), while the lyrics come courtesy of his school pal Gary Usher. But don't make the mistake of listening to the lyrics on an early Beach Boys album - if you don't assume, once and for all, that ninety percent of them range from insignificant to ridiculously clumsy, this can really spoil your impression. Just enjoy the two jolly surfing odes (title track and 'Surfin'', their two earliest hits) and '409', the initiation of the car craze. All three songs are significant landmarks in Beach Boys history, and all of them feature the embryo of what was soon to come: a catchy, eminently sing-alongable melody, a ringing Berry-style "watered-down rock'n'roll" solo, a simple but steady bass line (Brian did pretty well on bass from the start, for a boy with no professional training), and above all - the immaculate harmonies of the band.
Now, actually, the harmonies at this point aren't all that prominent here, especially since Brian still hasn't developed that wonderful falsetto trademark of his, but they're still an essential component of most of the songs, especially on '409', with its 'giddy up giddy up' line, which I used to repeatedly interpret as 'idiot idiot floor of mine'. Hmm, well, okay, maybe 'Surfin' Safari' still beats it in terms of harmony complexity. And that stupid little 'dit-di-dip' doo-wop chanting on 'Surfin' - I know it's ridiculous, but it's really so cute in its youthful innocence and defiant unprofessionalism. As stupid as all this may seem to those preferring to judge pop music by modern standards, in 1962 this wasn't your old washed-up man kind of stupidity. It's a romantic and honest kind of stupidity - and when it comes to music, an honest fool is sometimes way better than an insincere wise guy.
And speaking of the "early stage" phenomenon, don't say you can't hear the opening lines of 'I Get Around' in the 'here a mug, there a mug, everybody chug-a-lug' refrain ('Chug-A-Lug'). Oh yeah, that's right up there, sir. And while the song is usually chosen as victim number one among the carnivorous critical environment, there's no getting away from the fact that it's the only anthem to root beer in my classic rock collection, which is, at the very least, just a fun fact. Everybody needs a root beer anthem in their collection, even if one actually hates root beer.
In any case, I like this record, and maybe even a little bit more than its immediate successor. Maybe it's the youthful enthusiasm that gets me going, or maybe just because they're so eagerly ripping off classic rock'n'rollers that I feel like listening to a Chuck Berry album. And no matter how naive or derivative songs like 'Cuckoo Clock' or 'Heads You Win - Tails I Lose' may sound, it's a fair gamble to state that they should have, at least in the rawness department, stood out from among similar efforts of the epoch. Even 'County Fair' is a tune guaranteed to bring an innocent, naive, silly smile on your face - that 'instrumental break' with 'county fair noises' in it is awful, of course, but the nasal, whiny vocals of Mike Love really bring the image of an inexperienced, charming little teenage boy who's like a baby - I mean, hasn't had enough time yet to be spoiled by the cruel world of showbiz.
If anything, the Beach Boys craze all over the country that was just round the corner couldn't have been simply trumped up. They had inspiration. They had charm. They had talent. Above all, they had sincerity - and I can't really see why the 'girls' and 'cars' thematics that's one hundred percent dominant in their early compositions should appeal far less to the general teenage mind than, say, the subjects raised by the Clash fifteen years later. Some like violence and 'London Burning', some like driving a brand new Toyota, and some like getting laid. And what's wrong with that?

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SURFIN' USA

Year Of Release: 1963
Record rating = 5
Overall rating = 8

Good to dance to, but just how much instrumental bravado CAN we take from the Beach Boys around 1963? (Or ever, for that matter?)
 Best song: FARMER'S DAUGHTER

Track listing: 1) Surfin' USA; 2) Farmer's Daughter; 3) Misirlou; 4) Stoked; 5) Lonely Sea; 6) Shut Down; 7) Noble Surfer; Cool Honky Tonk; 9) Lana; 10) Surf Jam; 11) Let's Go Trippin'; 12) Finders Keepers.

Starting with this album, Capitol began their humiliating politics of milking the band for much more than it was worth - Surfin' USA's couple high points are unquestionably higher than the ones on Surfin' Safari, but overall, there's more filler here than could ever be installed into the mouth of Lemmy Kilmister. And that's considering just how short all these early Beach Boys albums are! 24:21, thirty seconds less than its predecessor! A band like Yes would still be warming up its instruments! Technical note - at one point, the "kind" people at Capitol actually dropped the quotation marks and started releasing these early albums on two-fer CDs - two LPs plus a bunch of bonus tracks. Then they became greedy again and started re-releasing stuff at monster prices, one LP per disc plus no bonus tracks. Then they saw that most people were rational enough not to want to pay full price for a 24-minute LP which happened to have 'Stoked' and 'Let's Go Trippin' on it, too, and, fortunately, returned to their senses by reprising the two-fer routine. Who knows how long they will last?
Okay, technicalities and whining aside, let us now discuss the actual musical value of Surfin' USA, the Surf Kings' second American LP. Most of the songs on it are pretty nice ear-candy, even though neither Brian nor the others do not display a lot of musical ideas. But why should they? There were still no Beatles for miles around to raise the world from slumber, and even so, this album manages to surf-rock out pretty damn good. Do not, repeat, do not accuse early Beach Boys (or early Beatles, or early anybody) albums of being silly; in doing so, you fall into the 'trap of the epoch'. You wouldn't accuse a caveman of not drawing his buffalo bison with enough precision and accuracy, now would you? and yet, if you're an art lover, you are able to admire it, if you just take a correct stand. Same goes for surf rock. This album should be judged according to the values of 1963 or it shouldn't be judged AT ALL.
Problem is... even according to the values of 1963, there's not that much to judge. Once again, the Beach Boys were rushed into the studio upon the success of their next single, and this time, they had almost no chance to leave their mark on anything: the material is more or less equally divided between generic, sappy ballads and fun, but completely throwaway surf instrumentals which you can easily dance to while they're on but no sooner than they're over they're gone for eternity, unless for some unclear reason you decide to go back from where you came...
Even the single is not that great because it doesn't demonstrate any major progress. Everybody knows the title track, the band's signature tune of 1963, but it isn't even a rip-off of Chuck Berry's 'Sweet Little Sixteen' - it is 'Sweet Little Sixteen' with a different set of lyrics ('everybody's gone surfin'/Surfin' USA') and one half of the guitar solo replaced by an organ solo. Chuck apparently sued them for it and won - so that for a long time afterwards, it was appropriately credited to 'Berry', with no mention of a Wilson anywhere in sight. Being absolutely toothless and harmless, it's only natural that 'Surfin' USA' united the country in a much more radical way than 'Sweet Little Sixteen' - but in any case, it was a move way too similar to all the generic suave boys of the early Sixties dissolving the essence of true rock'n'roll in strong saccharine mixtures. It does rock, though. Moderately. And there's no denying that the harmonies have improved vastly - with the band now overdubbing vocal tracks, they add the first whiff of that unquestionable Professionalism that would soon become inseparable from all of their work, even the worst of it.
There's also a couple more rockers, just to keep your feet tapping, and they don't seem to be so obviously plagiarized, but don't forget that the 'hit' 'Shut Down' was later re-written as both 'Little Deuce Coupe' and 'Fun Fun Fun' - them car songs don't get better you know! And 'Finders Keepers', while it deceptively begins with a cheerful Jerry Lee-style piano intro, immediately develops into a second-rate surf rocker, no better and no worse than 'Shut Down' and the rest of 'em. And ever heard 'Noble Surfer'? Geez, the title is so ridiculous; but perhaps the funniest thing about the song is that when they reprise the title in the harmony section, they go like 'No-bull... sur-fer... no-bull... sur-fer'. No bull, indeed. Okay - some bull, as I'm not really inspired by this thing.
The only true advance here can be seen in the ballad department. This time, there's three ballads, and although at least one of them is written strictly according to the doo-wop handbook ('Lonely Sea'), this is the first time we get acquainted with Brian's angelic falsetto in all of its glory. It's no wonder that 'Farmer's Daughter' was later covered by a number of bands, including Fleetwood Mac: the first gorgeous ballad in the Beach Boys catalog, and thus, a song that sets the stage for all the future artistic triumphs. At the same time, it is one of the simplest and catchiest Beach Boys ballads, and thus wins extra points for an air of total innocence and freshness without losing them for being boring or non-emotional, which it ain't. Note, however, that both 'Farmer's Daughter' and 'Lana' are relatively upbeat, and only 'Lonely Sea' tries to go for the kind of dreamy atmosphere that would soon become the norm - but is way too generic to capture that atmosphere.
Still even these solid tunes get lost in a bunch of uninspired (although not always totally uninteresting) jams. Yes, they do show the Beach Boys actually can play their instruments - and at quite a significant level for a bunch of "singing kids" circa 1963. Unfortunately, Capitol made them overdo the subject: five instrumentals is way too much, don't you think? It's curious that 'Stoked' (credited to Brian) sounds almost exactly like the Stones' 'Stoned', released half a year later, with the only difference that the Beach Boys sing 'stoked' and Jagger sings 'stoned' - I don't think I need to explain the roots of this euphemistic differentiation. Who did they rip it off? Whoever it was, the poor guy is left uncredited on both versions.
It's all the more pitiful that 'Surf Jam', 'Misirlou' and 'Honky Tonk' all sound more or less the same (not to mention add nothing to the originals - and who can beat that guitar pulsation welcoming you into the world of Pulp Fiction as the credits roll along?). And apart from 'Misirlou', where the main guitar theme keeps the lead guitarist busy all the time, can all be described in terms of Mr Carl Wilson Conducting a Careful Dialog with his Instrument so as not to Piss Said Instrument Off by Excessive Plucking. I, personally, was raised on the Rolling Stones' early instrumentals, and while these also leave something to be desired in terms of monster professionalism, at least they got guts. 'Surf Jam' ain't got no guts.
Nevertheless, despite the critiques, I give the record a 5/8, and consider it generous for an album thus choked with go-nowhere tunes. For the record, this is the only LP where Al Jardine doesn't play rhythm guitar, being temporarily replaced by 14-year old (!) neighbour David Marks. Not that anybody noticed, of course, although, if you ask me, the guy is easily distinguishable by having the most Essentially Lost stare out of the five on the back cover. I do empathize, of course.

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SURFER GIRL

Year Of Release: 1963
Record rating = 6
Overall rating = 9

Finally, God-like ballads are starting to roll in. They're getting sissier... and that's why we love 'em.
 Best song: SURFER GIRL

Track listing: 1) Surfer Girl; 2) Catch A Wave; 3) The Surfer Moon; 4) South Bay Surfer; 5) The Rocking Surfer; 6) Little Deuce Coupe; 7) In My Room; Cool Hawaii; 9) Surfers Rule; 10) Our Car Club; 11) Your Summer Dream; 12) Boogie Woodie.

A whoppin' half a year in between albums - wake up, Capitol! - during which the guys had time to surf (not really), to tour (lots of that), to breed (who can blame them?), and, guess what, to write some more songs about surfboards, automobiles, and similar wonders of the modern world. They don't take any prisoners, either: check the track names from number 2 to number 5 in succession and then tell me you still don't get all those suckers complaining about how 'lightweight' the Beach Boys are. Okay, okay, so we haven't even gotten around to 1964 yet, so bear with it, suckers.
Now, their taking a little time did actually bring around several changes - changes that truly pre-herald the classic Beach Boys style to come. First, since they'd already reached mega-star status by the time (at least, as "mega" as a band of naive little lambs could under the circumstances), Capitol, without much reluctance, agreed to expand their budget - and thus they slowly start moving away from the typical four-piece band production to more intricate and complexly instrumentated arrangements. 'Surfer Moon', for instance, isn't much removed from preceding stuff like 'Lonely Sea', melodically, but is distinguished with lush orchestration (not exactly Phil Spector-style, but beefing the sound up substantially anyway) and strange occasional plucking... what's that? a harp? have the angels finally landed? well, not quite, but they're definitely starting to share some of the feathers. Elsewhere, you'll find a better pronounced keyboard sound, more organ solos, occasional chimes, and... well, no Coke bottles so far, but then, let's face it, if you got it all in 1963, what would you have left for 1966? 'Kokomo'?
Yet the main change, that sacred Point B which regularly makes you forget Point A, is the full arrival of Brian Wilson as the band's leading composer, arranger, and musical guru. It took a little time, but it paid off, and now he's so confident about his abilities that - hark! - there's but two instrumentals on the entire album this time around, not to mention no covers (apart from the instrumentals), no directly ripped off melodies (apart from the instrumentals), and no terribly bad songs (apart from the instrumentals). Instead, there are some terribly GOOD songs! 'Surfer Girl' and 'In My Room' used to confuse me by having the same time signature, but the melodies are actually different, and they are, quite justly, placed among the greatest ballads Brian ever wrote. Superb vocal harmonies are undeniable, but it's the disarming simplicity and at the same time emotional brilliance of 'Surfer Girl' that's the main thing about it; and as for 'In My Room', like many have noted before, it features wonderfully mature and thoughtful lyrics for a 1963 pop song (coincidence - the Beatles hit the same theme of self-isolation and compassion on 'There's A Place', their only "non-love" original song in 1963!) The only thing that mars the effect is the already mentioned similarity between these two and the third ballad, 'Your Summer Dream', where rhythm section is concerned. This kind of thing they yet had to outgrow.
These are the record's most heartfelt and inspiring songs; but that doesn't mean that the rest is as dismissable as could have been expected (not that I did expect the rest to be dismissable - it's you, my naughty reader, who keeps thinking in stereotypes and chastising everything that doesn't happen to have the Dylan-approved seal of worthiness on it! Me, I have already outgrown stereotypes in music. I now prefer to find stereotypes in reader reactions. Now, just how many flames have I deserved for this outburst of insolence?). They're simply not too different in spirit from whatever came before: just one more handful of funny fast surf-'n'-drive tunes, ranging from tolerable filler to respectable professionalism and occasionally moving beyond even that.
Tolerable filler includes stuff like 'South Bay Surfer' and 'Surfers Rule', songs that were obviously written with the sole intent of providing that slice of LA population with a couple more anthems into their backpack, so as to justify one of the vaguest, silliest, anti-Puritanest hobbies of all time. Mike Love wrote the lyrics for the latter, and Al Jardine (if I read the credits correctly) for the former, so you can more or less predict the results, but fortunately, Brian was at the wheel full time, so the effect on both is "innocent fun" rather than "dumb obnoxiousness". 'Surfers Rule' is even convincingly catchy, so that you can honestly enjoy it even without a good understanding of the difference between 'surfers' and 'hodads'; I must, however, take objection to beginning any song with an accappella chanting of the line 'it's a genuine fact that the surfers rule'. Might as well sing a Coca-Cola theme song. 'South Bay Surfer' nearly ruins everything with its idiotic bass vocal about how they're gonna 'take the big one', but that's the song's main faux pas and apart from that, it's just silly cheer-up filler.
And all the silly cheer-up filler is richly compensated for by respectable professionalism! (Occasionally moving even beyond that). 'Catch A Wave' - meatless, but pleasant; note the inventiveness with the vocal harmonies (the endless "waaah-woooh-waaaah-woooh-waaaah" which really creates sort of an "undulating" feeling) and the graceful organ touch at the end of each chorus. 'Little Deuce Coupe' - Brian's collaboration with Roger Christian, again, slightly pushed back by a generic instrumental melody/arrangement, but unbeatable in its catchiness all the same. 'Our Car Club' - "monster" arrangement on that one, with a brass section and something else hacking away in the background, can't really discern it. And occasionally moving even beyond that, you have 'Hawaii', which is also primarily just an "ad" song for a cool surfin' place, but who cares when you have this totally amazing falsetto from Brian? Apparently, these guys can be "gorgeous" and "upbeat" at the same time, combining a fast driving beat (crazy percussion on here - don't think it's Dennis behind the drums, though) with angelic harmonies.
So what's the balance now? As I said, the major improvement is in the ballads department - it took three albums for Brian to pen 'Surfer Girl' and 'In My Room', and if you wanna start the actual countdown to Pet Sounds you probably should begin here. Particularly with 'In My Room', which, with a little bit more studio sophistication and maybe a wee bit more depth in the lyrics, would have made a nice addition to Pet Sounds, totally fitting in with its introspectiveness, spirituality, and slight tinge of melancholia.
Apart from that, Surfer Girl represents the peak and the final stop of the Beach Boys as Idols of Surf; it does have an almost unusually high amount of surf-dedicated songs, even for the Boys, but it's their last album that does. In fact, the surfing subject is all but wiped out on subsequent records! Cruising will still remain an important subject for several albums to come, and girls and beaches will be most prominent, but - no surfing! Which probably goes to show just how much the lads actually did care for the practice in the first place. It's hardly a coincidence that the next time the word "surf" is gonna re-surf-ace in the band's repertoire will be a grand six years later, in 'Do It Again' - the song that Mike Love so hoped would bring back the good old days of fun, innocence, and youthful pleasure-seeking (not to mention big bucks). Not that it did.
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« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2013, 05:12:20 PM »

YOU GOT A KEYBOARD IN FRONT OF YOU?

MATCH THAT.
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« Reply #6 on: May 28, 2013, 05:33:31 PM »

LITTLE DEUCE COUPE

Year Of Release: 1963
Record rating = 5
Overall rating = 8

It may be the artsiest and grandest car commercial ever done... but it's still a car commercial.
 Best song: LITTLE DEUCE COUPE

Track listing: 1) Little Deuce Coupe; 2) Ballad Of Ole Betsy; 3) Be True To Your School; 4) Car Crazy Cutie; 5) Cherry Cherry Coupe; 6) 409; 7) Shut Down; Cool Spirit Of America; 9) Our Car Club; 10) No-Go Showboat; 11) A Young Man Is Gone; 12) Custom Machine.

Now, some of these early (and not only early) Beach Boy records may not say much in the "art" department, but if you wanna have a crash course in the commercial techniques of Sixties' record industry without having to stoop particularly low, you can't go wrong with albums like these. Taking a gamble upon the buyer's readiness to procure anything that had the B. B. moniker on it, Capitol went ahead and released this almost 'conceptual' album, almost completely dedicated to that particular invention of Homo Sapiens that prevented him from drowning in the side products of Aequus Caballus or whatever the proper Latin name for that species should be. Go cherry cherry coupe now!
No surfing, thank God, but writing twelve new songs about four wheel pleasures in a matter of two months or so was hardly any more comfortable; hence, the main disadvantage - four of the perpetual twelve songs are shamelessly pulled over from earlier albums - namely, the title track, 'Shut Down', 'Our Car Club' (from Surfer Girl) and even the by now 'golden oldie' '409' all get transferred on here. Which leaves you with eight original songs and about sixteen or seventeen minutes of original music in total - for full price! And whenever I think that the regular customer has to buy this for the same sum with which he could buy, say, seventy-seven minutes worth of Live At Leeds (!!!), I just can't escape the feeling that something truly does not compute in this mad, mad, mad world of ours. (Note: the 2-fer reissue CDs pair this with All Summer Long - a cruel move, that, as you thus have one of the most dispensable Beach Boys records on one disc with one of the most essential; that said, it certainly was out of the question for the smart guys at Capitol to respect chronological requirements and join it with Surfer Girl, because they'd have to write long apologetic passages explaining why the heck are 'Our Car Club' and 'Little Deuce Coupe' placed twice on one CD! Instead, it's forgive and forget, I guess).
In any case, we're not gonna speak about the "oldies" here (although it is interesting to note how '409', despite the melody still preserving its charm, already sounds light years beyond their then-current successes). As for the newer ones, they don't display much progress - "progress" doesn't happen overnight, which is probably close to the exact span of time all of them had to be written in - but in late '63, Brian Wilson already had displayed enough talent to hold a daytime job at Tin Pan Alley, and most of this stuff, workmanlike as it is, is fairly listenable. Since the album's subject matter had to be so rigidly stabilized, there's obviously no space for any lyrical discoveries (unless you think Roger Christian's brand of automotive metaphor deserves special mention, which it probably does, so I mention it, but can't bring myself to move beyond that), but the melodies, as usual, are zhen lihai, as the occasional Chinaman could have said.
The James Dean tribute 'A Young Man Is Gone', for instance, marks a first, having the band sing accapella for the first time - not in the primeval world of Surfin' Safari could you ever witness them daring something like that. It's technically a rewriting of Bobby Troup's 'Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring' (a track the Boys would later appropriate in its original version as well), but if ever there was such a thing as The Beach Boys Spirit, it's firmly incrusted into this song. 'Spirit Of America' has Brian embracing his newly-found falsetto once again - not nearly as distinctive as on 'Hawaii', but still quite decent. And songs like 'Car Crazy Cutie' and 'Cherry Cherry Coupe' really demonstrate their brave advances into the world of pure pop: they aren't exactly 'pop rockers', rather a curious amalgamation of their soaring ballad harmonies with the steady, punchy beat of the early brave singles.
The chorus of 'Cherry Cherry Coupe' is quintessential pop brilliance - a style that probably spawned thousands of imitators, all of which based their entire careers of penning innumerable tunes all based on the same 'go cherry-cherry coupe now'-style harmonies. (Not that the Beach Boys themselves didn't borrow these harmonies - I don't know the exact prototype, but I suppose a little rummaging through Phil Spector's backpack would help). And 'Car Crazy Cutie' has an amazingly complex vocal arrangement - far more advanced than anything they did before. Yeah, they're also going the well-familiar 'da doo ron ron' routine on there, but they're bringing it up to new levels, doncha know.
Yet on the flipside you're left with more and more perfunctory workmanship. 'Ballad Of Ole' Betsy' may be admired for Christian's inventive likening of the ever-present automobile to a respectable young lady (and it's a good thing the lyrics advance no further than 'Betsy's growing old' because I'd hate to learn what happens to the formerly respectable young lady next), but it's basically 'Your Summer Dream' made into even more generic doo-wop. 'No-Go Showboat' and 'Custom Machine' sound more like a Beach Boys tribute band than the real stuff: formally, everything is in its right place, including Brian's falsetto, Mike's whining, hip rhythms, etc., but neither of the two even has a "central hook".
And then there's the controversial affair of 'Be True To Your School' - a song whose melodic qualities don't fail to escape me (the vocal melody in the chorus is arguably the most inspired on the entire album), but whose basic atmosphere and lyrics are so trite, shallow, and, worse of all, so firmly emphasize the "flat American stereotype", that I'd much rather recommend a Karaoke version for you, whoever you are. You may be true to your school if you wish, boys, but leave to us the right to be (or not to be) true to ours, without the generic brain-muddling preaching. Save that stuff for cheerleaders and such (pseudo-cheerleaders actually do appear in the single version of the song, tacked as a bonus to the two-fer). It's this kind of sissy crap, of course, that was to lie the heaviest on the boys' account when they would be ostracized from the "cool" musical world of the mid-Sixties. In a matter of but three years, singing about being true to your school would be the equivalent of humming Havah Negeilah in front of the Reichstag - the main difference being that the latter would be an act of foolish bravery, while the former would simply be a foolish act. Not that the Beach Boys actually did perform the song live after 1964 (not to my knowledge), but then there was always more where that one came from.
In retrospect, Little Deuce Coupe was far from the only "dirty twist" of Capitol, but it set the precedent of the "superfluous Beach Boys album", and encouraged Capitol to issue more of those after it became a huge chart success (outdoing even Surfer Girl, probably because the two were released almost simultaneously and, as popular as the surfing craze could have been, surfing could never outbeat cruising for all the young people endowed with the 'Spirit Of America'). And, unlike latter "extra" releases (Party!, Stack-o-Tracks, etc.), this one doesn't even have "novelty" or "oddity" value: just eight more or less perfunctory and mostly expendable tracks, which is why I probably like it the least of all Capitol pranks.

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SHUT DOWN VOL. 2

Year Of Release: 1964
Record rating = 7
Overall rating = 10

More and more demonstrations of oncoming greatness... so the filler is even MORE annoying than before.
 Best song: FUN FUN FUN

Track listing: 1) Fun Fun Fun; 2) Don't Worry Baby; 3) In The Parkin' Lot; 4) "Cassius" Love Vs. "Sonny" Wilson; 5) The Warmth Of The Sun; 6) This Car Of Mine; 7) Why Do Fools Fall In Love; Cool Pom Pom Play Girl; 9) Keep An Eye On Summer; 10) Shut Down Part II; 11) Louie Louie; 12) Denny's Drums.

Looking at all the great material already recorded by the Beach Boys by early 1964 - or, actually, filtering that great material through the deep sea of filler - it's hard not to believe that the band had already reached its melody-writing/vocal-harmony-arranging peak. Is there a pop-rocker in the band's catalog that'd amount to a higher level than the first song on this record? Or a ballad that'd go for a significantly higher level of spirituality than the second song on this record? Not really. In terms of raw genius, the plank has been reached and crossed. Now, however, they had an extra job to do - to implement their obvious talent on record the way that'd truly befit an outstanding band. And with Capitol's requirements, being still hard pressed to release a new record every few months, they were still creatively stifled. Inspiration may come in flashes, true enough; but deep arrangements and clever production take time.
However, at this point, in between constant touring and constant sessionwork, even the inspiration flashes were hard to come by in sufficient numbers. This is why Shut Down Vol. 2 (for the record, the 'original' Shut Down was a multiple-artist car song compilation, released without the Boys' knowledge at all) sets the annoying trend of compensating for the lack of prime material with one or two tracks that don't even have anything to do with music in the first place. Yep, I mostly mean that load of "locker-room humour" (the liner notes' author's euphemism for "moronic juvenile crap") called "'Cassius' Love Vs. "Sonny" Wilson', where for three and a half minutes (longest track on the album, no less!) Mike and Brian stage a "humorous" "contest", with each one accusing the other of poor singing - snippets of songs like 'Little Deuce Coupe' or 'Farmer's Daughter' being interrupted by an endless set of five-year-old-worthy mockeries, the smartest of them amounting to something like 'well, at least I don't sound like Mickey Mouse with a sore throat!'. Oh, yeah, it's nice to know that it was one of the first "intentional self-putdowns" on record, and it's nice to see the boys not thinking too much of themselves and all, but please... it ain't funny, see? It's a far, far, far prequel to Mike Love's corny "unfunny" jokes on the band's live albums. For my money, the "non-musical" tracks on the following two albums are at least somewhat more tolerable because they don't try so hard to put their being funny in front of our faces.
There's plenty of other misfires - ill-conceived idea after ill-conceived idea, and all this at such a risky time, when the Beatles were successfully toppling the Beach Boys' status as teen idols premier! 'Denny's Drums', I guess, could also be called one of the first, if not the first, 'drum instrumental' on a rock album, but Dennis Wilson ain't no Ginger Baker (heck, he ain't even a Bill Ward), and I guess you can learn that drumming technique he displays in the track in a matter of a couple weeks of training, so what the...? The cover of 'Louie Louie', which the Beach Boys unfortunately could not evade (nobody would take you seriously if you didn't do a 'Louie Louie' cover those days), is stiff, unfunny, and uncomfortable, and it's easy to see why - this type of material simply wasn't fit for a Beach Boys treatment. I mean, what, singing the lyrics so you can actually understand them? What a bunch of nonsense.
To all this we should probably add the somewhat more questionable bits of doo-wop filler, only interesting from a historical point of view ('Why Do Fools Fall In Love' - the band's earliest attempt at a piece of Phil Spector-ish wall-of-sound production, but hardly interesting per se), or just not interesting at all ('In The Parkin' Lot', with a very uncomfortable melodic seam between the 'heavenly' slow cascades of vocal harmonies and the upbeat Love vocal melody - which also, as it seems, merely copies 'Fun Fun Fun'). Dennis gets a quirky lead vocal on 'This Car Of Mine', but that sure ain't enough to give this "should have been a dusty outtake from Little Deuce Coupe" thingie any more character, either.
The overall result is that Shut Down Vol. 2 is easily the most "tormented" album out of the Beach Boys' early period, the one where the disbalance between filler and genius is not just obvious, it's actually SCREAMING. Because nothing could be further away from the idiocy of 'Cassius Love' or the complete pointlessness of 'Denny's Drums' than the brilliance of the album's two opening numbers, Beach Boys' classics for the ages. 'Fun Fun Fun' is, of course, the ultimate cruising song, and arguably the band's highest achievement in the car genre (only surpassed by 'I Get Around', perhaps, but that song is bigger than just a 'car song', if you know what I mean). Here we are finally introduced to the band's complex harmony-weaving process in all of its glory, with two- and three-part layering and overdubbing and one part "chasing" after the other and all, which must have been really mind-blowing at the time, and in a certain way, still is. We can even forgive the boys for expropriating the 'Johnny B. Goode' intro for the song, can we? It fits right in!
The second classic is Brian's first attempt to write a ballad that would transgress the purely "intimate" stage and border on the "anthemic" - I mean, the progression between 'Surfer Girl'/'In My Room' and this one is obvious, as Brian skips the usual perfunctory chord progressions of the former (which instrumentally were just standard doo-wop territory) and tries to create something with the far more sophisticated Phil Spector formula; 'Don't Worry Baby' was his intentional tribute/sequel to Phil's 'Be My Baby' (and in terms of catchiness, I think, actually beats the master). In fact, the wonderfully "rounded" pattern of the vocal melody is so irresistible that it was subconsciously (or consciously - who can tell now?) ripped-off by John Lennon a whole sixteen years later for 'Starting Over' - which is more than mere coincidence, because Double Fantasy is, in fact, very close spiritually to the classic Brian Wilson vibe if you think about it.
Nothing beats these two, but you only have to endure the torture of Cassius Love to get to some more raffinated beauty. 'The Warmth Of The Sun' rises above average doo-wop with a really complex vocal melody and absolutely ethereal harmony arrangements; where 'Don't Worry Baby' speaks to God in terms of bombast, this song speaks in terms of humility, yet gives a feeling of depth and conviction that's far more evident than on, say, 'Spirit Of America'. As for 'Keep An Eye On Summer', it's like 'Warmth Of The Sun' re-written with less complex vocal arrangements but with more emphasis on catchiness; unlike the latter, its lyrics clearly target it for the Sissy Schoolboy, but if you have no respect for the Sissy Schoolboy, you probably won't have anything to do with the Beach Boys anyway. You gotta have respect for the Sissy Schoolboy, you know. When all is said and done, this land belongs to the Sissy Schoolboy.
That wasn't a HUGE amount of highlights, was it? But on the other hand, at least this album's got goshdarn character. This ridiculous alteration of immensely high and immensely low points says one thing to me: LIFE. It works as an enjoyable record, it works as a living document of its era, it's cool, even if not necessarily in the positive sense. And since it's pretty futile for me to try and evade all kinds of Beatles references and comparisons, I won't even try; the way I see it, I see a freshly ignited spark here, and I have little doubt who was the cause of this ignition. It may be Cassius Love vs Sonny Wilson on this one, but it'd be Cassius McCartney from now on.
Note that if you get the two-fer CD with Surfer Girl, you'll have three bonus tracks - the single version of 'Fun Fun Fun', which is ten seconds longer (awesome!); the German version of 'In My Room', which is ten times cornier (at least 'Sie Liebt Dich' was funny!); and the demo version of 'I Do', which is ten times better than the Castells version (not that I ever heard the Castells version - I've just been bribed by Capitol to promote their two-fers, don't you know).

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ALL SUMMER LONG

Year Of Release: 1964
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

This one captures the whole surf thing within a nutshell, all the best sides of it.
 Best song: I GET AROUND

Track listing: 1) I Get Around; 2) All Summer Long; 3) Hushabye; 4) Little Honda; 5) We'll Run Away; 6) Carl's Big Chance; 7) Wendy; Cool Do You Remember?; 9) Girls On The Beach; 10) Drive-In; 11) Our Favourite Recording Sessions; 12) Don't Back Down.

And the inevitable Beatles comparisons just keep coming - catch another one: All Summer Long is the Beach Boys' Hard Day's Night, an album that provides a perfect summary for the guys' first-period "sweet and innocent" state (well, maybe not so innocent, considering some of the band members' heavy sexual schedules, but you can't at least deny that they were screwing all of their partners based on completely innocent motivation!) The kind of glossy shiny simplistic pop perfection that makes grumpy people reach for their ELP albums, grumpier people for their Miles Davis, and still grumpier people for their Old Chinese qin classics, but if you ain't too grumpy, like me, it merely makes you hold your breath and wait - can the band 'top' this perfection by further branching out into unknown territory or will the band get stuck in this early Sixties mood forever? The Beach Boys could; but this doesn't mean that All Summer Long cannot be treated as a career peak of sorts in any case.
It's not radically different from the previous albums; it just acquires a level of technical and - should I say it? - inspirational perfection that, say, Surfer Girl could only dream of. First of all, there's not a single bad song on here, if you'll exclude the obligatory filler silliness of 'Our Favorite Recording Sessions', a track which just captures the guys poking fun around the studio for a few moments to give the album a "vivacious" feel, I guess - at least, that is probably the way that Capitol executives would explain its reason for existence while leisurely digesting all the caviar. Yes, another little prick here - when it comes to the Beatles, we can only witness that sort of historically relevant, but aurally unexciting crap on the Anthologies series, which is where it naturally belongs.
Apart from that, though, All Summer Long is undeniably the band's most consistent release to-date, which is all the more amazing considering that 1964 was probably the busiest, frenziest, most heated year ever for Brian Wilson: he was still constantly touring with the band, and in between all the public activity had to find quite a bit of time to throw out hit single after hit single and then rush back into the studio and write and arrange more for the band's albums - three more studio offerings and a live recording all in one year. True, out of these four, only All Summer Long stands out as a big achievement, but you try this kind of work rhythm! And this at a time when your buddies get all the girls!
Second, there's a good deal of diversity. No radically different stylistic ideas, because they'd done all those types of songs before, but you get everything, from surf instrumentals (only one, fortunately!) to doo-wop ballads to Berry-esque rockers to lush orchestrated pop stuff, with increasingly complex arrangements and vocal harmonies. Even the lyrics seem to have undergone some kind of maturation - check out, for instance, the cute teenage sentiment description on 'We'll Run Away' and I'm sure you'll all be reminiscent of something similar you could have undergone in your earliest years. (At the very least, it definitely sounds far more natural than 'Keep An Eye On Summer').
In all, All Summer Long is just about THE ultimate surf-pop album ever put out by anybody in the genre. Even the album cover is nice - the quintessential monolithic picture of them Beach Boys stupidly and unconvincingly fondling their surfboard out on the beach is replaced by a 'set-of-events' type of things, further adding colourfulness and conveying a sense of joy (and mystery - for instance, just how many of the girls pictured on the cover had to... well, you know?).
The major highlights on the album have sort of acquired an anthemic status for American pop culture, although the same may be false for respectable representatives of the world's other civilizations - so, in case you come from my side of the Atlantic and are ignorant about the driving power of 'I Get Around', a track that was the Beach Boys' first #1 on the singles' charts and deservedly so (actually managing to overthrow the Beatles for a while!), let me remind you that practically all about it, starting from Mike Love's typically sneering rock'n'rollish vocals on the verses and ending with Brian's soaring falsetto on the chorus, is impeccable, and that if the expression "really revs up" is applicable to a pop song in the first place, 'I Get Around' would be the first song to apply it to - because it really revs up!
'Little Honda' is only slightly less impressive, and am I the only one to hear faint signs of the upcoming Pet Sounds masterpiece 'Here Today' in the song's "first gear, second gear" chorus? Plus, it's a song about a motorbike, and I guess that can be judged as some kind of progression, too. Getting realistic, skipping from Cherry Cherry Coupe to Little Honda, you know. Even the 'lesser' rockers are fun - the naive rock'n'roll ode 'Do You Remember?' shouldn't really be off-putting (in any case, it's hardly any more stupid than the giddy patriotic ode 'Be True To Your School', right?). The main problem here, I suppose, lies in 'Do You Remember?' not being particularly inventive, but I guess neither was 'Surfin' USA', and it's still fun.
And am I right when I say I do see a certain irony about the lyrics to 'Drive-In'? What about lines like "don't sneak your buddies in the trunk 'cause they might get caught by the drive in, and they'd look kinda stupid gettin' chased through the lot around the drive in"? Heh - these guys really know how to go from formulaic sappiness to rough realistic pictures. But never mind, the harmony arrangements are still the best thing about the song. Perhaps the only problem with both 'Drive-In' and 'Do You Remember?' is that there's too much Mike Love about them and too little Brian Wilson; then again, it's not exactly nineteen-hundred-and-seventy-eight we're talking here, so I guess that can be forgiven.
But wait, I haven't yet badmouthed the ballads. Stinkin' teenage tripe, of course, offensive brainless commercial pop-slop ditties that should be repugnant to every person with at least a tiny bit of intelligence and self-respect and utter despisal for all people without said qualities. Total genius, too, particularly on the lonesome Peter Pan aria 'Wendy', one of the catchiest songs of the whole lot, and the title track, their most pretentious and anthemic song ever about the glories of the year's hottest season; in a way, 'I Get Around' is kinda like a "preview" of the album (the hit single), while 'All Summer Long' announces us the 'concept' - and in a pretty upbeat and joyous way, as expected. 'Girls On The Beach' is not very interesting, obviously written by Brian in such a hurry he'd forgotten that almost the same vocal melody had already been present on 'Surfer Girl', but at least technically it's still a big improvement. 'Hushabye' and 'We'll Run Away', in the meantime, provide us with more examples of Brian's genius in harmony arrangements - sorry for being repetitive, but a spade is a spade - and since great harmony arrangements can't really be described, I'll just shut up on that subject. As a bonus, I'll say that 'Carl's Big Chance' is their best surf instrumental up to that point. Oh, wait, it's not theirs. It's ripped off of 'Can I Get A Witness', and the Rolling Stones did the instrumental version better on their debut album. Shame on you Carl: you had your big chance and you blew it. Whatever, it's still a nice little intermission in between all the ballads.
Important technical notes: (a) there's only one cover on the entire album, which is 'Hushabye', and, unlike in the case of all their previous cover versions, I can't imagine the original actually sounding better - the song is 100% Beach Boys now; (b) all the external collaborators are gone, with most of the songs credited to Wilson/Love or just solo Wilson. Not that I believe Roger Christian or Gary Usher in any way hampered the band's development - rather the contrary, in fact - but surely the band's being able to become almost completely self-reliable (and that includes also their getting freed from the clutches of Dad Murry Wilson) was a positive factor, too.





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Jon Stebbins
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« Reply #7 on: May 28, 2013, 05:39:56 PM »

This stuff is mostly all wrong. Why would anyone bother to put it on a board where the majority of posters know more and have more intelligent insight about the Beach Boys than this guy? Comedy maybe? It would take more time than he deserves to correct all the misinformation and stupid crap in his reviews. He doesn't even know how to spell Murry. This tidbit about the Surfin USA LP is typical...

"For the record, this is the only LP where Al Jardine doesn't play rhythm guitar, being temporarily replaced by 14-year old (!) neighbour David Marks."

As most of you know Jardine played no rhythm guitar until Shut Down Vol 2, (album 5) and even on that he played bass on far more songs than guitar.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2013, 05:49:28 PM by Jon Stebbins » Logged
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« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2013, 06:38:16 PM »

It is to show how far we have come I suppose.
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« Reply #9 on: May 28, 2013, 08:34:55 PM »

This stuff is mostly all wrong. Why would anyone bother to put it on a board where the majority of posters know more and have more intelligent insight about the Beach Boys than this guy? Comedy maybe? It would take more time than he deserves to correct all the misinformation and stupid crap in his reviews. He doesn't even know how to spell Murry. This tidbit about the Surfin USA LP is typical...

"For the record, this is the only LP where Al Jardine doesn't play rhythm guitar, being temporarily replaced by 14-year old (!) neighbour David Marks."

As most of you know Jardine played no rhythm guitar until Shut Down Vol 2, (album 5) and even on that he played bass on far more songs than guitar.

Perhaps he posted it to provide a different opinion, an "outsider's" opinion.  I disagree with many of Starotsin's music reviews, but he clearly put a lot of time and energy into writing the stuff.  His ignorance of Beach Boys minutiae doesn't make his opinions of the music invalid.

Of course, the objections to these reviews aren't really based on his factual errors.  People are just offended that he isn't effusive enough in his praise of their favorite group.
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« Reply #10 on: May 29, 2013, 03:15:20 AM »

Have you read the news? Pope Francis says atheists can go to Heaven!?

Whoa! Let's Go To Heaven in My Car:

CONCERT

Year Of Release: 1964
Record rating = 8
Overall rating = 11

Well, the Beach Boys audience doesn't outscream the Beatles audience, but that way, at least you can hear better.
 Best song: I GET AROUND

Track listing: 1) Fun Fun Fun; 2) The Little Old Lady From Pasadena; 3) Little Deuce Coupe; 4) Long Tall Texan; 5) In My Room; 6) Monster Mash; 7) Let's Go Trippin'; Cool Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow; 9) The Wanderer; 10) Hawaii; 11) Graduation Day; 12) I Get Around; 13) Johnny B. Goode.

When it comes to Beach Boys Concert (not to be confused with the ten-years-later In Concert; ever looked for a good example of the importance of prepositions? look no further!), there are three prevailing attitudes. Number one: this is merely another one in a series of flashing cash-ins from Capitol, always on the lookout for more ways of making money out of nothing, and thus should be avoided at all costs. Number two: this is an interesting historical document in that it is one of the earliest available live albums from the early rock'n'roll Sixties (in my collection, it is the earliest) - no British Invasion band had a live album recorded in '64, after all - and so should be reserved for scientific-minded Sixties aficionados. Number three: this is just a groovy, fun album capturing the Boys at the height of their 'early level' popularity and in peak live form, with Brian Wilson still together with the band on stage.
Well, as long as it's just opinion and not recommendation, all of them are right. It's just that nobody said cash-ins can't be historically important, just like nobody said you can never sincerely enjoy a historical document of a cash-in. Because I honestly can, and do - in spite of all the teenage screaming and generally awful sound. (To be fair, the 1990 Capitol edition of this album, which pairs it with Live In London and which is the one I have, seriously cleans up said sound, although rumours have it that the latest Capitol reissue cleans it up even more - who knows, maybe you'll be luckier than me and actually be able to tell me if Al Jardine's really playing rhythm or they're just faking it). And while we're at it, might I actually remind that there's still far less screaming here than during any live Beatles performance of the era: put on Hollywood Bowl and you'll see the screaming doesn't stop or diminish for even a second, while on this record you can obviously hear the gals actually slow down at times! They do, in fact, hear when the rhythm section comes in, or when the boys start singing serious harmonies, because that's where the scream level rises, only to drop down a few bars later. Sometimes the band actually gets the audience to clap along, or to shout 'let's go trippin'!' at the required moment. Guess that proves the Beach Boys weren't nearly as HOT... but on the other hand, it also makes up for a more discernible listen. Whoever said bigger was better? Let's hear it for the Wilsons!
In the end, it all depends on the attitude. What I hear on this album, cash-in or not, is that the Beach Boys actually delivered on stage - putting on an energetic, funny and uplifting show which occasionally degenerated into something too juvenile, but normally was quite tasteful in its own rights. And besides, even if we concede that this kind of show was the early Sixties' equivalent of today's MTV romps for teenagers, just FEEL THE FRIGGIN' DIFFERENCE! Me, I'll take the bubblegummy entertainment of 1964 over the bubblegummy entertainment of today without raising an eye. Yeah, guess that's what the spread of filthy Democrat-stimulated anti-moral values will do to a planet. Now the world needs a 'Long Tall Texan' to bring back its glory!
Okay, we all know the Beach Boys weren't awesome instrumentalists. You can see Al missing out on at least half of Chuck Berry's notes in the 'Johnny B. Goode' intro - which he, on the other hand, compensates with terrific speed and an almost weird sense of total dedication to the material, as if he were trying to channel the spirit of proto-punk or something! But they had enough chops to deliver a fast groove and not let it fall apart, and have all their harmonies in fine form at the same time, and really, you can't ask much more from a band like the Beach Boys in 1964. And there's no reason whatsoever to doubt their absolute commitment either.
Add to this that the setlist is pretty unpredictable; either the Beach Boys didn't learn to perform enough of their own original material by the time of this recording (which, by the way, took place at the Civic Auditorium, Sacramento, in August '64), or those responsible for the compilation just decided to give the fans more previously unavailable material, but anyway, for every original on here you get yourself a cover version - covers which range from country-blues to rockabilly to (mostly) doo-wop standards of the time. They're good covers, too, if you're willing to overlook the "idiocy" of the material, as some might call it: sure a song like 'Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow' will never save the world from evil, but it can provide you with a clear fresh sparkling exhilarating laugh for two minutes, and if you ask me, that's almost as good (and far more realistic, too).
Then there's bluesy stuff like the obscure 'Long Tall Texan' (which gives Mike the opportunity to wail in that grossly exaggerated accent and give a few beeps on his saxophone which he apparently barely knew how to play) and the Dennis vocal spotlight 'The Wanderer', which sounds like the main inspiration for 'Little Deuce Coupe' (also on here! can compare! Dennis can't sing worth crap! But neither could Ringo when he was holding his drumsticks at the same time!); the cute doo-wopster 'Little Old Lady From Pasadena', a hit for Beach Boys concurrents Jan and Dean; the stupid, so bad it's almost good 'Monster Mash'; and that 'Johnny B. Goode' cover, absolutely rip-roaring by Beach Boys standards (and far, far more rockin' out than all that "hard rock" crap like 'Student Demonstration Time' they later tried to introduce into their act), but suffering from a couple problems, like an unexplainable dropping of the third verse - the song ends right after the solo - and totally abysmal sound quality even by this record's standards; you can barely hear Mike singing at all, which actually raises the question of how much singing on the other numbers was actually overdubbed in the studio. The only detestable cover is 'Graduation Day', not so much because of the melody but because I friggin' hate "be true to your school" stuff anthems. Besides, it's kinda generic and slow.
As for the originals, they're all performed fine and dandy, not at all different from the studio (well, of course, they have to make minor adjustments like eliminating the keyboard solo in 'Fun Fun Fun' and suchlike) - what's there to be said? Nothing, except that the audience screaming, in some cases, actually serves to pump up the enjoyment level. Yes, and Mike Love's proverbially inane sense of humour (or, to be more exact, sense of dishumour) is already starting to show up; it looks like he's outbetting himself on each of the following songs he announces, reaching a culmination in the stupefyingly dumb "school monologue" before 'Graduation Day'. But never you mind, it doesn't look way too obnoxious, not on the level of Live In London certainly. Guess the longer your beard grows, the more self-assured you become, even if you shouldn't.
And the album cover looks great too! If you don't stare at it too closely, it almost looks like Mike Love recoils in fear, about to get collectively whacked by all the guitarists!
Who knows how things would turn out...

READER COMMENTS SECTION



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TODAY!

Year Of Release: 1965
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

New levels of artistic maturity with no particularly new means to achieve it - which is all the more awesome.
 Best song: DANCE DANCE DANCE

Track listing: 1) Do You Wanna Dance; 2) Good To My Baby; 3) Don't Hurt My Little Sister; 4) When I Grow Up (To Be A Man); 5) Help Me Rhonda; 6) Dance Dance Dance; 7) Please Let Me Wonder; Cool I'm So Young; 9) Kiss Me Baby; 10) She Knows Me Too Well; 11) In The Back Of My Mind; 12) Bull Session With "Big Daddy".

The Beach Boys, like all normal human beings, preferred to evolve gradually rather than in Kubrick-like mega-moves, and yet Today! is certainly a huge progression from their earlier stuff. Might as well, in fact, be the major departure - for the first time, you get the feeling that Brian Wilson is starting to take things more seriously than it used to be before. It's not the first "conceptually cohesive" record in the Beach Boys catalog; in fact, conceptual-wise, All Summer Long and even Little Deuce Coupe had a far more cohesive feel to them, but it's the first time that a Beach Boys record gets to be cohesive through something a bit deeper and, to borrow a term from grumpier old men for a sec, more "mature" than hot summer days, surfboards and automobiles. Of course, neither can it be said that it's the first Beach Boys record to feature "serious" recordings - 'In My Room' preceded this stuff by a good year and a half, but it's the first Beach Boys record to venture into the 'serious stuff' openly and deliberately instead of just shyly treading water.
I am, of course, speaking of the album's second side - the famous "five-ballad suite" that's never interrupted by no stupid shallow pop-rockers, and in this way certainly presages the peaceful paradise of Pet Sounds. Now to be frank, I can't say that any of these five songs are immaculate chef-d'oeuvres. It's obvious that Brian spent a bit more time working on them than usual; since his resignment from touring, he'd found himself more free time and more space to experiment and to express his inner feelings (and to roll a quick joint every now and then, too, although Today! still displays absolutely no traces of that activity whatsoever). However, time takes time, and so far there are only vague hints at all kinds of new experimental approaches he'd be taking a year later. In other words, any of these ballads could have easily fit on All Summer Long - they're hardly better than 'Hushabye' or 'We'll Run Away' (and 'I'm So Young', by the way, continues the lyrical topic of 'We'll Run Away' to a tee!).
The trick, then, is that they're all grouped together - and that they're less formulaic than before, driven by Brian's desire to express feelings rather than the usual commercial needs. Even Mike Love seems to have sensed that, and, having now permanently replaced Usher and the rest as Brian's lyrical sidekick ("permanently" here being synonymous to "for a whole year"), huffs and puffs to produce lyrics that aspire towards the Philosophical and the Poetic, culminating with the totally untrivial - for the time - lyrical approach of 'In The Back Of My Mind', where the protagonist has apparently got nothing to worry about but is still tormented by some abstract fear that his love might not turn out to be eternal. The biggest advance, however, comes with the production, which is getting ever so more complex and Phil Spector-esque; it's almost as if Brian was so alleviated by the idea of not having to reproduce his own songs onstage any more that he let himself loose, in the process forgetting that the others actually still had to reproduce them. But hey, there's Bruce Johnston to take care of these things. Don't bother the true artist.
As for the melodies, 'Please Let Me Wonder' is my favourite - simply because the singing is the most angelic on the album. That's Carl taking lead - right? okay, wrong, they told me it's Brian, but I'm gonna continue anyway - and you can easily hear how this stuff leads directly into 'God Only Knows', and frankly speaking, I almost think that 'Please Let Me Wonder' might be the better song, unless one thinks that adding the word 'God' to a song immediately increases its artistic value ten times. Call me a jerk, but I actually insist that the best 'minor achievement' of this record had been in discovering this VOICE. Only a tinge away from generic boyband romantic tone, but that tinge means the world to me. 'She Knows Me Too Well' takes second place, with cute little 'she knows me... she knows me...' vocal harmonies adding a whole new dimension, not to mention Brian's falsetto that soars to new, unprecedented heights, again establishing one of the most major sonic elements on Pet Sounds. 'I'm So Young' is another great showcase for Brian; 'Kiss Me Baby' never impressed me that much, more of another average take on 'Surfer Girl' than anything major, but it does fit in with the rest of the "suite" pretty well; and Dennis' delivery on 'In The Back Of My Mind' almost ruins the entire experience because it's so wobbly... then again, maybe you're the one who abhors total perfection, and in that case the song might just be for you.
You may have understood from this paragraph - as good as Side 2 is, I'm frankly not overwhelmed with it, given the fact that most inclusions on Pet Sounds still top the quality of these tracks, aside from maybe 'Please Let Me Wonder'. It's an advancement and it's good songs and all, but the bad thing is, it's all too similar to the stuff that would be superior, so... So why a 9? Because of the amazing contrast with the first side, of course. Which magically and miraculously transforms this into the quintessential album for the Beach Boys - the first side is still the band at its fun surfin' games, the second side reeks of spirituality. Which one's your favourite? Predictable question, isn't it? Well, ashamed as I am, my favourite is STILL the first side, although I gotta admit that the second side might be objectively more valuable. Then again, it might be not. Let's get outta here before the wheel starts spinning.
Ahem. 'Do You Wanna Dance' totally rocks my boat, cover or no - it's as useless to protest against the song's unstoppable greatness as it is to deny that 'Jingle Bells' is a good Christmas song, and it's got the advantage of not being overplayed, too. 'Good To My Baby' is lightweight, but fun and memorable (I wonder if Mike Love ever hummed the tune to himself while taking his frustration out on his spouse, the hypocrite!). 'When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)', with its wonderful 'countdown', partially shares its melody with 'Then I Kissed Her', but don't let it bother you - instead, just dig in the marvelous duet between Mike and Brian. The only weak spot on the entire first side is 'Help Me Rhonda', and only because it's a weaker version than the single recording, included on Summer Days; particularly weird are the ugly volume shifts during the chorus, which I still can't figure out - is this some kind of problem with my CD copy or was this an intentional trick? If it's the latter, then this cold shower contrast between 'help me Rhonda help help me Rhonda' and then 'HELP ME RHONDA HELP HELP ME RHONDA' is easily the worst production trick Brian ever came up with.
But 'Dance Dance Dance'? Why, that might just be the best pop-rocker ever recorded by the boys. At the very least, it's totally on par with 'I Get Around' (there are melodic similarities between the two, too, but the vocal harmonies seem to be more elaborate on here). If Brian's 'I gotta dance right on the spot' chants don't get you right on the spot, you're either tonedeaf, a Throbbing Gristle fan, or Gene Simmons, too busy doing some cheap broad from high society to get a real life and recognize true genius when you see it. There's an alternate mix on the twofer-CD among the bonus tracks, which lets you see all the intricacies of the process of getting a classier production - the crispy bass intro of the final version is just sooo cooler than the "normal" intro on the older mix; and yet, most certainly an absolute majority of then current bands would have easily satisfied themselves with the 'simpler' version, and get a hit with it, too. Great surf guitar solo as well, almost bordering on a rock'n'rollish feeling, although, of course, the song has no real need for a rock'n'rollish feeling. So I said it was "bordering"!
In all senses, Today! is a transitional album, but in all the best senses of the word: both sides are fully competent and enjoyable, and I suppose there's no better place to start with the Beach Boys catalog if you wanna get to the core of the band from the very beginning. In fact, many a-person I've verbally duelled with about the Beach Boys prefers this to Pet Sounds as his favourite, and I totally get that attitude - except that I'd never be able to share it since the second side is notably inferior to the average quality of PS songs, and the album wouldn't get too far away on the first side alone. Besides, did I yet note that the record finishes on a total letdown with yet another bit of chitter-chatter, this time an interview/banter of sorts called 'Bull Session With 'Big Daddy''? Sheez. Here they go showcasing their newly-found maturity and then you get brilliant quotes like "of all of Europe the only thing that stuck out in my mind is the bread". Imagine that.
Oh, okay, on second thought, if I were a permanent resident of California, I suppose I could empathize with that. But I sure ain't stuck on that. You don't hear me going around complaining that "of all of America the only thing that stuck out in my mind is the SHITTY AMERICAN BREAD!". Even if that's definitely one thing upon which we Russians have them Yanks upside down. Smiley

READER COMMENTS SECTION



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SUMMER DAYS (AND SUMMER NIGHTS)

Year Of Release: 1965
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

Hey, if you wanted to know, the Beach Boys didn't first go "nostalgic" in 1976, nor even in 1969. 1965 is the correct answer!
 Best song: CALIFORNIA GIRLS

Track listing: 1) The Girl From New York City; 2) Amusement Parks USA; 3) Then I Kissed Her; 4) Salt Lake City; 5) Girl Don't Tell Me; 6) Help Me Rhonda; 7) California Girls; Cool Let Him Run Wild; 9) You're So Good To Me; 10) Summer Means New Love; 11) I'm Bugged At My Ol' Man; 12) And Your Dream Comes True.

Compared to their previous whoppers like All Summer Night and Today! , this is a toss-off... so everyone says. And they got full documental proof to their claim, that's why they're making it. Capitol was putting so much heavy pressure on Brian to come up with product, product, and more product, that he was all but forced to scrap some of his more "serious" work in order to win more time for true creativity. Naturally, the final product ended up musically "obsolete" the day before it even hit the record shelves; look at the album sleeve and tell me it didn't really deserve being called The Beach Boys Yesterday! (Granted, that could have given rise to a popular suspicion that the Beach Boys actually prostituted themselves into releasing a record of Beatles covers, but then I'm pretty sure that 'Yesterday' was still 'Scrambled Eggs' by the time Summer Days came out. Besides, that didn't stop them from doing two Beatles covers later in the year).
There's one thing the naysayers really forget, though. When the Master is finding himself at the peak wave of his creative powers, he can turn a Burger King commercial into high art - let alone a set of summertime surfboard ditties. And with all the experience already garnered, Summer Days, though "formally" a toss-off, wouldn't be no Surfin' Safari for sure. There may be filler on this record, but it don't feel like filler: just because it's about surfing and kiddie fun in general doesn't mean that the songs cannot be phenomenal when it comes to catchy melodies and vocal harmonies. Besides, it just isn't true that the album is a complete retread: there are still a few minor surprises, a few major artistic breakthroughs, and, maybe most important of all - no stupid, time-filling, and artistically humiliating "banter track" at the end of the record.
Surprise number one arrives on track number seven - namely, the beautiful mini-symphony heard at the beginning of 'California Girls', which everybody knows to be a preshadowing of what would come next on Pet Sounds, although only a few unlucky losers (your humble servant included, along with Brian Wilson himself!) consider even better than whatever would come next on Pet Sounds. The main verse melody is so simple in its brilliancy that it's hard to believe in its very existence, and I'd bet you anything that if you didn't understand English you would easily mistake the heavenly chorus for an ardent hymn - instead of the sexist-nationalistic 'I wish they all could be California girls...'. But then again, scrap "sexist". 'California Girls' is really no longer merely a libidinous outburst, it's female-beauty-inspired art the same way classic nude paintings aren't merely an excuse for Renaissance aristocrats to jack off (although doubtless many of them have been used that way). And turning back to the "mini-symphony" - lasting all of 22 seconds - I'm not even sure that this kind of introduction had any true precedent in the pop-rock world. People would just launch into the melody right away, without wasting any of the song's precious three minutes on something so vaguely related to the main hook. In all seriousness, 'California Girls' should be considered a major milestone on the way to art-rock rather than a minor footnote. But hey, it's got the words 'tan', 'bikini', and 'hip' in it, so nah.
Surprise number two is Brian's solo spot on the exceedingly weird 'I'm Bugged At My Ol' Man' - an actual song that comes to replace 'Our Favourite Embarrassing Sessions' and 'Bullshit Session Financed By Those Assholes From Capitol'. Musically it's not important at all, but the lyrics are both hilarious, when you listen to them out of context, and sad, after you've learned the backstory of it all - Brian hysterically complaining about how his father won't let him go surfing or call up his chick and how he's sitting locked up in his home and growing a beard; all the time he's accompanied by nothing but a simple doo-woppy piano line, plus the other Boys add silly backing vocals from time to time (resulting in a rather goofy Elvis-like impression overall). Since Murray Wilson had been given the boot as the band's manager and self-appointed dictator for quite some time now, it's not surprising that somebody had finally given free reins to his emotions - perhaps in a way that was too vicious, but completely understandable. Goof factor aside, the song is firmly grounded in Brian's actual feelings and, again, is a major step towards complete artistic liberation.
That's just two big ideas, but if you can tolerate the idea of not achieving a musical revolution with every next song you write, Summer Days will provide you with a whole swarm of awesome numbers. 'Help Me Rhonda', updated from the limp, demo-like, and hideously produced version found on Today!, features arguably the most repetitive chorus in man's history, but the endless 'help me Rhonda help help me Rhonda' chanting is so upbeat and groovy, and Mike adds his low 'bow wow wow' counterparts in such an uplifting way that the effect can't help being ultimately marvelous. Then there's the Phil Spector cover 'Then I Kissed Her', immediately recognized and identified as a Phil Spector song through the 'pam - pa-dum bum bum - pa-dum bum bum' rhythm that, to the man, represented the equivalent of 'wizz wizz wizz whoosh whoosh whoosh' for Bing Crosby. The generic teenybopper lyrics almost make the song an embarrassment (they are way more sappy and banal and sludgey than the stuff Gary Usher was feeding Brian on), but that's Phil Spector for ya - Brian isn't responsible.
Yet another introspective ode ('Let Him Run Wild') features, indeed, one of the most 'wild' arrangement of vocal harmonies ever heard up to that point. The melody is more complex then usual, with rather unpredictable, confusing beat shifts; when the complex harmonies, the odd rhythms, and the brass-and-keyboards wall of sound come together, the effect is that of ably controlled sonic chaos, making the song a precursor to 'Good Vibrations'. Again, speaking in terms of the "getting closer to God" idea, 'Let Him Run Wild' with its ecstatic falsetto swooshes is statelier and more 'heavenly' than anything they'd done up to this point, although perhaps a bit too upbeat and fast to have fit well onto Pet Sounds. And, as if the regular songs weren't enough, they seem to offer you one last proof that they're now taking orders from the Old Man On High rather than the old man back at home on the final short accapella vocal spot 'And Your Dream Comes True'. Maybe it's not really worth listening to if you've already heard, umm, the 'Unreleased Backgrounds' on the Pet Sounds bonus, but otherwise, bow your head! A terrific 'document' of how tight, professional, and dedicated the dudes could be.
Even the songs that nobody ever remembers, the obvious throwaways, are salvageable. 'The Girl From New York City' is not very memorable, but never dull, rescued by a funny brass part and echoey harmonies that beat out the main verse melody; if encountered on any of the band's earliest surf albums, such songs would count as masterpieces. Here, they inevitably pale next to 'Help Me Rhonda' and 'California Girls', but look, if the entire album were filled with songs of that quality, I'd have to give it a 14 at least. Minor low points, for me, would include the instrumental 'Summer Means New Love' (more generic romantic movie stuff a la 'Ringo's Theme'), and probably 'Salt Lake City' (I'll refrain from ironic comments on that one because every single reviewer on the planet believes it to be his due to make a couple puns on behalf of the unfortunate song) - but what it actually boils down to is just the lyrics, as well as that annoying habit of taking the same verse melody and reusing it numerous times (here, I think, the blame falls on 'Little Honda').
However, if you're not in a hurry and are willing to give the record a couple more listens, you just might find some innocent pleasure in the cute little sax and organ passages on 'Amusement Parks USA' or in the 'Ticket To Ride'-ish vibe of 'Girl Don't Tell Me' - so they lifted that chorus off the Beatles, big deal; it's still better than rewriting their own material, not to mention that the Beach Boys, with all of their cultural background, are simply incapable of writing a "Beatlesong clone". Carl takes lead vocals here, and he does the job well - the song's one of these little hidden gems that don't jump out of you like that, all of a sudden. You have to wait for them to grab you.
Originally, I gave the record a 10, but that was sheepish pandering towards popular opinion. In fact, from a certain viewpoint, this, rather than Today!, might just be the Beach Boys' quintessential record - the last well-balanced album to represent all of their assets - light, medium, and heavyweight. If 'Amusement Parks USA' is so nineteen sixty-two of them, then 'Let Him Run Wild' is so nineteen sixty-six of them, and in between lies everything else. And finally, owning this record packed with Today! on a single CD means owning one of the five or six most awesomely rewarding listening experiences you can get out of this pop world of ours.





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« Reply #11 on: May 29, 2013, 03:18:17 AM »

PARTY!

Year Of Release: 1965
Record rating = 5
Overall rating = 8

The closest this band ever came to recording the proverbial "album of fart noises". They're sweet fart noises, though.
 Best song: BARBARA ANN

Track listing: 1) Hully Gully; 2) I Should Have Known Better; 3) Tell Me Why; 4) Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow; 5) Mountain Of Love; 6) You've Got To Hide Your Love Away; 7) Devoted To You; Cool Alley Oop; 9) There's No Other (Like My Baby); 10) I Get Around/Little Deuce Coupe; 11) The Times They Are A-Changin'; 12) Barbara Ann.

Inevitably, the "nostalgia and forgiveness" factor has kicked in, and in recent years, Beach Boys Party! has undergone at least a partial critical re-evaluation. What was earlier seen, through the eyes of those who not only look but also judge, as nothing but yet another in a never-ending series of crass moves on the part of Capitol Records, today is occasionally hailed as something "unusual", "unprecedented", and even "fascinating". Okay, so I'm actually quoting the liner notes here, and we all know just how far we can trust glowing liner notes, but this is just because the booklet is lying here beside me and the Internet opinion are a couple googlisms away. I do know what I'm talking about here, believe you me.
From a strictly formal position, Party! is indeed "unusual" and "unprecedented" - and if these two are particularly important for you, I guess it can also be "fascinating" in that respect. There is, however, one important aspect in which it is anything but "unusual": it steadily followed the old trusty formula of putting more Beach Boys product, at no matter what expense, out for the buyers in time for Christmas. Since Brian had already yielded to the pressure once, cutting down work on Pet Sounds in order to briefly concentrate on something lighter and simpler, apparently the executives thought it wouldn't be a problem to get him to do it again. But recording another "throwaway" studio record was out of the question for Brian, and putting out another 'standard' live album would be superfluous (not to mention it wouldn't even be featuring Brian himself, with Bruce Johnston replacing him on tour).
Apparently the idea of a "musical party" belonged to Brian himself (who knows, maybe it was the only way he could get around to getting rid of the executive pressure - besides, crazy ideas were always Brian's forte in the first place). A bunch of friends would be invited into the studio to fake a party atmosphere, everything loose and informal and spontaneous and blah blah blah; then the Beach Boys would put up the mikes, plug in the bass (the only electric instrument out there), bring out some simple'n'handy percussion, start strumming acoustic guitars, and run through a set of songs that would be as bizarre and unpredictable as possible. Twelve songs, over in a flash. And does it work?
In terms of sales, it certainly did - it outsold the subsequent Pet Sounds by far and brought them one of their biggest (and one of their last) hits with 'Barbara-Ann'. Yes, apparently the audiences were faithfully ready to buy every last piece of junk that the Wilsons and Capitol would send spinning in their direction - as long, of course, as the piece of junk did not represent a major artistic breakthrough, replete with slow, gorgeously arranged ballads and deep, honest sentiments, in which case they would happily pass it by as something decidedly alien...
Uhm. Okay. That was rather misanthropic of me, and besides it's not like Pet Sounds ever flopped or anything. Nevertheless, today, when the world and Capitol Records already do not see that much eye to eye as they used to, I would only recommend Party! to hardcore Beach Boys fanatics only. Truth be told, if you can play an acoustic guitar and sing a little bit, boast a significant number of friends that you can invite to your house all at once, and have access to primitive recording equipment, you can have your own Party! in a matter of several hours or less. Where Concert showcased the band at their tightest and most exciting, playing compact, fun, energetic music in front of real audiences, Party! has them at their most disjointed and, what's worse, most artificial.
The instrumental backing is unbelievably amateurish - nay, just plain crappy, because the Beach Boys are playing themselves and none of them ever was, or wanted to be, a Nick Drake with the acoustic. The harmonies keep wobbling out of sight - here today, gone tomorrow (although strictly speaking, the harmonies are still the - predictably - strong point of the record and the only element which, I admit, will be rather hard for you to reproduce in your back yard). None of the songs are rehearsed a damn, with the singers getting out of tune, forgetting the words, and breaking down in mid-song all over the place. And maybe I wouldn't mind if this were really spontaneous...
...but it actually isn't. Well, not all of it is. Much of the ridiculous, annoying, half-drunk laughter and pitter-patter on the part of "friends" was actually recorded by Mike Love at a real party - which took place in his own house, with no music involved whatsoever. This, in particular, explains why the drunk babble never stops even while the band is actually playing and singing, something that would probably never happen in reality (hey, if I were present at a Beach Boys party, I sure as hell would be keeping my mouth shut while the boys would be into the tricky harmonies - and quietly sneaking rat poison into the drinks of those morons who wouldn't). On the other hand, at least all that hum and din prevents me from actually being able to distinguish all the lame jokes that Mike - and I'm sure of this - is scattering, beartrap mode, in between the performances.
Maybe someone will see their "medley" of 'I Get Around/Little Deuce Coupe' as brilliant proof of the Beach Boys being able to rise above themselves and their "importance" and effectively make fun of even their best material. Didn't they already get a chance to do this with 'Cassius Love Vs. Sonny Wilson', though? What's the point? I hate to see myself coming across as a cranky old fart who's misplaced his sort of humour - but come on now, you actually get to pay money for this, and that ain't no funny matter. Do you wanna be deprived of hard-earned financial means in order to listen to Al Jardine grunting his way through 'The Times They Are A-Changin'? Maybe all you really need is to get to know that yes, Al Jardine loved folk, and loved acoustic Dylan, and was brave enough to get one of his songs recorded for the event. This will save you from the humiliation of hearing a bunch of underage morons following every second line of Al's/Bob's with "RIGHT!" followed by scattered outbursts of laughter because it's SO funny to hear oneself yell "RIGHT!" on a supposedly protest song. ('A test song', claims somebody, probably Mike, 'it was a protest song until now, but now it's a test song'. Now that's one joke that's really funny, because it's actually true.)
Then again, maybe you will shut me down and decide for yourself. To be fair, the album's hardly hopeless. It is nice to hear the band pay so much tribute to the Beatles, with 'Tell Me Why', 'I Should Have Known Better', and 'You've Got To Hide Your Love Away' (sung by Dennis, no less!) all finding their way onto the record, even if 'I Should Have Known Better' is weirdly abridged and the Dennis number is again saddled by silly "party" laughter. As far as "fully fleshed out" songs on here go (in the context of Party! this would mean "playing the song from beginning to end", "remembering the lyrics", "getting the chords right", and "keeping the idiot friends at a distance"), only two or three can be counted, but when they're good, they're good: Mike Love, as usual, does his absolute best on 'Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow', which is even more energetic here than in Concert; the Everly Brothers' 'Devoted To You' is crystal clear and cutesy-pretty without much interference (maybe because it is preceded by one of the boys yelling "shut up and go home!" at somebody who was on the verge of actually mistaking all this for a real party?); and the harmonies shine on bright on the cover of Phil Spector's 'There's No Other (Like My Baby)'. Good old Phil, always there to lend a helping hand.
That said, 'Barbara Ann', where the players and singers actually get assistance from Jan and Dean's own Dean Torrence, was the right choice for a single (which, by the way, niftily abridged the sloppy drunk coda by switching to fadeout mode - if you're a fan of the song and you really desperately need to know the way it ends, give us your money). About a third of the album is dedicated to novelty hits, but 'Barbara Ann' beats all the 'Hully Gullies' and 'Ally Oops' by a long shot. Dunno why - just looks that way. Such a fun, cleverly written ditty. Or maybe it's Dean's presence that gives it extra authenticity. In any case, if you ever look up "catchiness" in your local dictionary, you might find a picture of Barbara Ann there, whatever she may look like.
To sum it up, as an "artistic statement" Party! has preciously little value; as "entertainment", just a wee bit more; as a "musical document", merely a trifle higher. So I'm gonna put it into the "historic curio" folder, I suppose, along with whatever else comes by. But I'm not saying you can't have your thirty minutes of fun with it. (Psst! To tell you the truth, even I did have my thirty minutes of fun with it!) It's the sixty minutes of fun that I actually have my doubts about, if you know what I mean.

READER COMMENTS SECTION



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PET SOUNDS

Year Of Release: 1966
Record rating = 10
Overall rating = 13

Gee, and here I was expecting a whole album of bleating bucks and meaouwing tom-cats. Some "groundbreaking, this!
 Best song: pretty much a push between 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8

Track listing: 1) Wouldn't It Be Nice; 2) You Still Believe In Me; 3) That's Not Me; 4) Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder); 5) I'm Waiting For The Day; 6) Let's Go Away For Awhile; 7) Sloop John B; Cool God Only Knows; 9) I Know There's An Answer; 10) Here Today; 11) I Just Wasn't Made For These Times; 12) Pet Sounds; 13) Caroline No; [BONUS TRACKS:] 14) Unreleased Backgrounds; 15) Hang On To Your Ego; 16) Trombone Dixie.

Adequacy is that little straw of mine that could break the two-humped pet's back. In other words, if you only know three chords on the piano, don't choose Rakhmaninov as your idol. In 1966, most pop bands were well aware of this - and, as a result, left "serious" music to "serious" people (i. e. those whose parents could actually afford them a musical education). Occasional attempts at breaking out and confounding boundaries had already been made - most notably by a pack of musical zombies in possession of a magical rod of argent - but it took Brian Wilson to shake 'em all down and prepare the ground for baroque pop, symph rock, Keith Emerson, the Electric Light Orchestra, and, eventually, a triumphant return to basics with 'Kokomo'.
More often than not, masterworks are being created by accident, whereas chances are that if you go into the studio with a conscious "gonna beat them all into dust" approach, the results are going to be less than satisfactory. Pet Sounds is one of the happy exceptions to the rule. Brian Wilson wanted to make something truly outstanding - nay, scrap that, was absolutely sure that this time around the results of his work will be universally hailed as timeless. And whether Pet Sounds lives up to its present day reputation or it does not, the simple fact of life is that the album's unending popularity cannot be explained by bare smirks like "oh well, the critics have always wanted themselves an American Beatles' equivalent".
What has particularly struck me these last few days as I have been relistening to PS is how, well, odd it sounds. There really is no other record like it, and maybe there can never be. Imagine, I dunno, a wannabe architect, who, having never studied architecture properly, has suddenly been commissioned to design a brand new building, and being guided only by his vision (both artistic and literal - simply by gazing at all kinds of nearby examples) and a certain inborn genius, constructs... something. It's a structure you ain't never seen before, made of materials you never thought could belong together, always reminding you of something that you can't put your finger on nonetheless, and it's in constant danger of collapsing - but somehow never does. That's Pet Sounds.
I mean, what is Pet Sounds? Pop music? Certainly not the kind of pop music you had yourself on earlier, "commercial" Beach Boys albums. Deep under the layers of bizarre sounds you can still discern these old 'Surfer Girl'-type hooks, but they're not jumping out at you, and the radio would spit these songs out long before it could have the patience to chew 'em up. If you want objective "proof" that this is not "pop", look at the reaction of American audiences - Pet Sounds sold significantly less than Party!, and initiated the band's commercial slide; certainly a part of the blame lies on Capitol for failing to promote it, but then dammit, the Beach Boys were the hottest thing on the American charts by late 1965 - what kind of promotion would they need?
Art-rock? Well, provided that we have the right to compare it with a genre that it actually spawned rather than simply belonged to, it doesn't sound one bit like the kind of things we usually expect from 60s "art rock". For starters, if it's art-rock, where's the technical side? Where's the outstanding musicianship? The Beach Boys don't even play their own instruments on this record! Oh, that's right, it is a bit silly to expect great musicianship from the Beach Boys. But all these other guys playing (and the credits - where there are credits; my liner notes wisely omit them - go on for eternity), they're no virtuosos either. They're all there to contribute their share of the "pet sounds", but agility and technique is not one of the requirements.
Another thing is - artsy or fartsy, it's still very much Californian music. Hollywood bathos, albeit turned on its heels and forced to serve higher purposes, is all over this puppy. Sure you can find bits of Bach, but for every little bit of Bach there's a big slice of "Bach-Arach", if you know what I mean, or maybe even Rodgers & Hammerstein. Not that it's a criticism - it's just further reinforcing the fact that Pet Sounds is a pretty oddball piece of meat.
You never really know who the heck the thing is targeted towards, either. The primary audience, I believe, are still the same idealistic rosy-cheeked teens that gathered in droves to send 'Barbara-Ann' to the top of the charts. I mean, Brian himself was still being one of these (in a certain sense, he still remains that way in the XXIst century), and while the lyrics, penned by new collaborator Tony Asher, are certainly "mature" compared to 'Wendy, Wendy left me alone' or even 'There's a place that I can go to', they're still very much teen-oriented. Lyrically, Pet Sounds is exceedingly suitable for, maybe, the age of 16-17, when one is gradually starting to develop thin layers of conscience and self-assertion, even if they're still weak and unprotected. Musically, however, the album far transcends that level, which is an oddity again, because today we're kinda used to art-rock featuring complex, multi-level lyrics loaded with allusions and incomprehensible metaphors whereas the music often leaves you wondering if it hadn't been a better idea for the artist in question to have released a poetry volume instead.
Oddness alone won't get you anywhere, though, so let's move on to the songs. Most of them would fall into the "ballad" category, I guess, especially if listened to separately, but on the whole the album does not have a typical "ballad bash" feel to it - like, for instance, the second side of Today!. And not just because many of the "ballads" are actually upbeat rather than mushy, or because even the mushy ballads can unexpectedly turn into jerky rave-ups. Pet Sounds is, after all, a "teenage symphony", and you don't usually call symphonic music "ballad music" no matter what key it is played in. Certainly writing an album full of ballads was as removed from Brian's original intentions as possible. Writing a deeply religious album of heartfelt sermons and confessions, however, wasn't - and it's not his, or anybody's, fault that heartfelt sermons and confessions are rarely danceable, or that even when they are danceable, they can stop being danceable at any given second.
That, by the way, is exactly what happens on the very first track. There's no danger for the buyer when he hears 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' open with a nice little harp passage - after all, we'd already experienced that with the "overture" to 'California Girls', and just like 'California Girls', 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' very quickly - even quicker, in fact - turns into a catch-a-licious pop stomper. But then it doesn't take more than one minute before the song shifts into an entirely different mode - soft, drumless, and completely dominated by the Beach Boys' "choirboy" tendencies. Sure it regains the tempo afterwards - only to "lose it" one more time with one more gorgeous vocal section, then pick it up again and quickly scramble off into the fadeout before it gets peppered with rotten tomatoes.
It may not be the first time that the Beach Boys are experimenting with different sections within a single song, but it's the most defining of these times. The boundaries between danceable pop and hymnal music are gone, whammo and slammo. "Hooks" and "moods" no longer fall into different categories; frequently they are the very same thing. The entire album is based on mood shifts, and these, in turn, are represented by different series of hooks combined in unpredictable, non-formulaic fashions: I have listened to the album an innumerable number of times, and I still can't memorize the exact sequence of events within a song like 'That's Not Me'. What's even more disturbing is that the same song sometimes sounds like two different songs - 'I'm Waiting For The Day', for instance - while two different songs may, on the other hand, sound almost the same ('That's Not Me' vs. 'I Know There's An Answer', although I'm not referring to the strict chord sequences, of course).
The best news is that, in between all the experimentation and the channel-twiddling and the multi-tracking and the use of Coke bottles for percussion, Brian never forgets about the band's main technical know-how - the vocal harmonies - and these are, in fact, taken to a whole new level. Already on the second track, 'You Still Believe In Me', the listener is left completely reassured - each and every ace card is pulled out of the sleeve, and even though the song lacks an easily identifiable melodic hook per se, its constantly repeated wordless refrain (unless you don't count 'I wanna cry' as part of it), each time in a different vocal setting, playing upon all possible contrasts between the low registers, high registers, and their combinations, is unforgettable.
As for the religious influence, well, we all know that too much spiritualness makes a talentless artist look twice as disgusting and a talented one twice as mesmerizing. And I am not even talking about the album's arguably best-known tune, 'God Only Knows', the Paul McCartney favourite said to have been the first pop song with the word 'God' in it. Let others talk about it. I am talking about the truly Godlike 'Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)', a "ballad" that sounds like absolutely nothing else made before or since. The most frequently commented upon aspect of the song is, of course, its steady "throbbing" bassline that emulates the 'heartbeat' constantly referred to in the song. But I am far harder struck by the arrangement and production as a whole, especially the first part, before the orchestration - pretty, but the least unusual part of the song - comes in and obscures that faintly heard mystical piano part going on deep in the background. As Brian smoothly rolls on into the chorus part ('but don't talk..', with an intonation stuck somewhere in between lazy, melancholic, and tender, that I could never reproduce), the chemistry between that subconsciously-lodged piano, humming bass, and soothing vocals assumes an almost drug-like character indeed - especially if you're listening to this in headphones. But at the same time it's not drug music at all. It's just a teenage love song that has all of a sudden begun to reflect Brian Wilson's envisioning of what the real Heaven must be like, and it's nobody else's envisioning.
As for the technical aspects of the album - again, loads of stuff have been written about all the minor and major innovating touches, but since for me at least the melodic aspect is somewhat more important than whether you're tapping out the rhythm on a Coca Cola bottle or a can of Pepsi, I'd just like to draw your attention to the instrumental part on 'Here Today'. Not one of my favourite songs on the album, but keep in mind there are three completely different melodies replacing each other during that instrumental part, all of them quite unrelated to the verse/bridge/chorus, and if the Beach Boys weren't the first to do that on a pop record I don't know who was.
Occasional complaints from radical fans are directed at the inclusion of 'Sloop John B', a song that really doesn't fit in quite that well with the rest simply by being way too groovy and careless and rosy and maybe fitting better on an album like All Summer Long, but you bet your life they couldn't have arranged it like that in 1964. Besides, where would we be without a catchy light breather? And certainly one needn't be appalled at 'Sloop John B' rising to #3 on the charts where the album's first single, 'Caroline No', only hit #32 (considering that 'Caroline No' has about as much hit single potential as a double A-side version of 'Revolution # 9, Pts 1 & 2', #32 was a tremendous result, only explainable by the ever-present force of inertia). It deserved it fair and square. 'Sloop John B' is arguably the earliest candidate for making an impression on the listener, and the one song that'll most likely be sung along to, and it's arguably the earliest candidate for "wearing off" the listener as well, but a great catchy single is a great catchy single regardless of the context.
Nevertheless, after all those years I still can't help feeling a lack of something in Pet Sounds, something that's hard to put my finger on, but something that also prevents me from putting it on an even higher pedestal. In a very blunt, dumb-oriented manner I could maybe express that feeling with the immortal phrase "Duh, it all sounds the same". Certainly it does not - there's plenty of variety in the instrumentation and the arrangements, and the moods of the songs vary from optimistic/idealistic to contemplating/melancholic to solemn/religious. But there certainly is some common denominator to all of it, and it's this bloody denominator that prevents me from listening to the album more often than I actually do. Sometimes I think it's the very fact of Brian's spiritual overdrive: let's face it, it can be hard to listen to a sequence of songs each of which is trying to consciously convince you of its emotional greatness (the same problem is actual for George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, but slightly less so because for Harrison these things were coming somewhat more naturally and "at ease" than for Brian, at that point in his life at least). Thus when the song is truly, unquestionably great - 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', 'Don't Talk', 'God Only Knows' - it really doesn't matter, but when the hooks are of a slightly lower caliber (all of the songs whose titles start with the first person pronoun, IMHO), it does, and I still find myself bored with 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times' each time I'm just listening to it for the sake of listening and not actually paying attention to its technical aspects.
As for particular complaints - uh, well, I'm absolutely not in love with the two instrumentals. I know they meant a lot to Brian, and they fit in well with the mood of the album and all, but 'Let's Go Away...' still sounds a bit like it should have been someplace in the Wizard of Oz soundtrack, and the title track still sounds like a toothless early 60s instrumental spiced up by bizarre percussion sounds. The Beach Boys are a vocal band, fair and square, and given the choice between 'You Still Believe In Me' and 'Pet Sounds', I don't think I'll have to guess what anybody's decision will be.
I think it's telling that Brian himself was not entirely satisfied with the final album - or, at the very least, did not consider it his masterpiece to beat all other masterpieces, or else he wouldn't have gone on to pursue the ill-fated Smile project. Although he, of course, must have been dissatisfied for an entirely opposite reason, namely, that Pet Sounds, in the end, turned out to be less grandiose and overwhelming than he'd originally intended. But the one mistake of Pet Sounds that he really intended to correct was the overall narrowness of its scope; the follow-up would have been reflecting a more universalist kind of vision and read like a "thinking teenager"'s take on many things in life rather than just on his inner feelings about love, God, and growing older. As for the fact that it never materalised until too late - well, you can regard it as the equivalent of God hurling his lightning bolt from the sky and thwarting an attempt to usurp His privileges, even if God according to Brian Wilson around 1966-67 was, in all probability, still wearing short pants and dreaming sentimental wet dreams.
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« Reply #12 on: May 29, 2013, 03:39:31 AM »

George Starostin, Russian State University for the Humanities, responds to his critics:


   "К вопросу о методологии языкового анализа древнекитайских текстов!"


Which translates, I think as:

   "The Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the West behind..."

Correct me if I'm wrong on that point.



SMILEY SMILE

Year Of Release: 1967
Record rating = 6
Overall rating = 9

Could have been a masterpiece, but it's just a giant mess instead.
 Best song: GOOD VIBRATIONS

Track listing: 1) Heroes And Villains; 2) Vegetables; 3) Fall Breaks And Back To Winter; 4) She's Goin' Bald; 5) Little Pad; 6) Good Vibrations; 7) With Me Tonight; Cool Wind Chimes; 9) Gettin' Hungry; 10) Wonderful; 11) Whistle In.

With but nine songs on this sucker, this could have been a weak, weak four at best. As it is, the record happens to contain two of the greatest compositions Brian Wilson's mind ever managed to produce: 'Heroes And Villains' and 'Good Vibrations'. The kind of sound that's presented to us on these two numbers is the way I would REALLY like my Beach Boys to sound more often, and an album comprised of similar songs would certainly have been one of the most perfect pop albums in the whole wide world. To put it shortly, the two songs combine both the catchy upbeat side of the Boys AND the romantic sensuous spiritual side of the band within one musical unit - imagine, for instance, a cross between 'Dance Dance Dance' and 'Please Let Me Wonder' from Today! and you'll start realising the magnificence of the songs.
'Good Vibrations' is, of course, the Beach Boys' trademark element, a near-pop-symphony that manages, within its three and a half minutes, to tell much, much more than many a super-complex progressive rock album dares to. The ethereal organ dominated verses, the unpretentious upbeat surfin' chorus, the barocco interludes, the absolutely gorgeous 'meditative' part of the suite, and, of course, all those impeccable harmony layers plus rockin' cellos (count the Beach Boys as a direct influence on the Move and ELO, then) and Brian's experiments with the Theremin (count the Beach Boys as a direct influence on Led Zeppelin, now!). It's a well-known fact that the song cost 15,000$ to produce, with Brian going as far as intentionally recording different parts of it in different studios, and it was certainly one of those rare cases when it was all worth the money. Okay, most of it was. But don't let the song overshadow 'Heroes And Villains' - an even more upbeat pop-rocker with hilarious lyrics from Brian's collaborator Van Dyke Parks and a cappella harmonic interludes that certainly beat out Pet Sounds in their complexity. And for the Beach Boys, more complex harmonies is always better harmonies.
Now, like I said, the horror of the situation lies in that these two songs - dig this - are the only good songs on Smiley Smile. And there's a good reason for that. The story of Brian's 'superproject', Smile, is quite well-known, I suppose, and has been detailed in a thousand places, so there's no need for me to recall it; suffice it to say that the project never really lifted off the ground because of too much pomposity and heavy-weightedness - long-time projects like these can only be carried out well in certain circumstances, and the era of glorious musical revolutions of 1967 was certainly not the best environment for Brian to work. So, anyway, after Brian's nervous breakdown and cancellation of the project, the remaining Beach Boys took some of the better preserved songs, added some raw material from the sessions and a few song snippets recorded recently to pad out the album, and threw out Smiley Smile - a complete critical and artistic disaster.
And I'm not gonna be pretending that it's possible for me to enjoy the record as a whole. The biggest problem is, of course, that the material is so goshdarn raw. In fact, out of the remaining nine tracks, there's not a single one that could qualify as a real song. Instrumental snippets; a cappella vocal parts that fade out all of a sudden and get replaced by some totally frigged-out studio experiments; no rhythm sections for miles around; production that's leagues removed from the immaculate state of Pet Sounds; lack of well-developed hooks; I could go on with the accusations, but I think even these ones are enough to let us understand that Smiley Smile is totally devoid of cohesiveness. What it can perform is the function of a 'document', a little quick glimpse into the demented world of Brian Wilson and the goings-on behind the creation of his 'masterpiece'; but even so, let us not forget that the tracks date from different times and the album was not released as an 'archive' piece, but as a full fledged new Beach Boys album. It's no wonder most of the critical reviews at the time killed off the album and destroyed the band's reputation almost overnight. I don't blame the critics; it was a most foolish decision to release such a rag-tag product at the time. Thirty years on, it can be looked upon as a somewhat fascinating curio; in 1967, it was a silly gaffe.
It's all the more dreadful considering this really COULD have a better album. First of all, I am still befuddled as to why the Beach Boys preferred to release these strange, strange tracks when they had other Smile stuff like 'Surf's Up' and others lying around. They ended up scattering this prime material all over the next five albums; if it existed, whatever prevented them from putting it up on the album in the first place? (Four years later, in a very similar situation, Pete Townshend still found the strength to collect some of the best material from his failed mega-project, Lifehouse, and arrange it on Who's Next, which would go on to be proclaimed the Who's greatest album).
Second, even the tracks that are found on here often have their moments of glory. 'Vegetables', with the Beach Boys and Paul McCartney munching on carrots, is cute, if definitely monotonous; 'She's Goin' Bald' could have been a goofy little psycho anthem, but it's marred with the ear-destructive speeding up of vocals in the middle; 'Wonderful' has wonderful harmonies indeed, but is way too rambling and incoherent to be considered a song; the harmonies in 'Little Pad' could have sounded great in a 'Good Vibrations' clone of sort, but not as an absolute value in themselves, and so on and so on. But they all sound like raw archived demos at best. It's a real pain to sit through this album, believe me - a terrible pain as you realize the failed possibilities and the damage the album made to the Beach Boys reputation. They were expected to come up with their major album, a masterpiece of masterpieces, a 'teenage symphony to God'; but they don't even produce a normal album - they come up with this ragged demo stuff. Bah.
Don't get me wrong - I don't hate it, and from a purely psychological point of view, it's cool to see the Beach Boys 'trip out' in such eccentric manner. It's not Pet Sounds, but it's as far removed from surf-rock as possible (apart from the finished songs, of course, where surf-rock plays a major part, but they're in no way limited to surf-rock) and certainly didn't deserve the notorious Hendrix insult. The basic problem is that the album has no purpose and a very limited enjoyability potential. That's all. If you ask me very kindly, I may even raise the rating five, six, three hundred points, whatever; I admire the 'spirit' of the album, but it doesn't mean I will be regularly listen to it, and I doubt anybody in his right mind will either.

READER COMMENTS SECTION



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WILD HONEY

Year Of Release: 1967
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

The Beach Boys go 'soul'? The Beach Boys go 'retro'? Or the Beach Boys just don't know where to go?
 Best song: DARLIN'

Track listing: 1) Wild Honey; 2) Aren't You Glad; 3) I Was Made To Love Her; 4) Country Air; 5) A Thing Or Two; 6) Darlin'; 7) I'd Love Just Once To See You; Cool Here Comes The Night; 9) Let The Wind Blow; 10) How She Boogalooed It; 11) Mama Says.

Definitely a huge improvement over Smiley Smile in every possible way - except that Smiley Smile is such an oddball record it can't even stand to comparisons. Anyway, the critics bashed it in any case because by the time of the album's release it was obvious the Beach Boys were no longer 'on the cutting edge', and the disillusionment was at its peak. And, of course, sales plummeted down both because of the bummer of the predecessor and because by now America turned its attention towards the Summer of Love bands, San Francisco and stuff. You know.
In the process, Wild Honey was missed. It's not a masterpiece - but it's the first in a lengthy, lengthy series of hit-and-miss albums where minor chef-d'oeuvres walk hand in hand with "weird" stuff as well as with ugly filler, a situation not unlike the one with, say, the late Kinks' catalog. By now, Brian was in a pretty malfunctioning state: it's not that he was completely "disabled" as rumours sometimes go, it's just that he was essentially disinterested in making 'perfect' music. You know, when your dream world crumbles around you and the project of your life comes to naught and you find yourself unjustly despised and forgotten and you STILL have to commit yourself to making music, if only for the sake of your comrades and the few remaining fans, what good can come out of it? It's amazing that Brian even could be further writing good songs. But essentially, starting from Wild Honey, the Beach Boys go back to becoming a real 'band', maybe even more so than ever before. At around this time, Dennis and Carl started to emerge as songwriters, Mike Love took over the lyrics, and Carl even started trying his hand at production - all spurred on by Brian's example. The only true genius in the band was Brian, of course, but let us not forget the importance of influence within a single band. Would George Harrison go on to produce such a masterpiece as All Things Must Pass had he not spent a dozen years working side by side with Lennon and McCartney? I know I can't prove it, but every rational and irrational thought I've ever had tell me 'no'. So let's not underestimate the separate Beach Boys' abilities, either. A lot of ugly things came out of it, but a lot of beauty as well.
In any case, the majority of Wild Honey numbers are still dominated by Brian's songwriting. But it's a kind of songwriting that has nothing to do with the barocco beauty of Pet Sounds, and even less so with the weirdness of Smiley Smile. It's a nice pop album with not a single true stinker in sight; neither do we see the Beach Boys' harmonies - apart from two or three numbers, the classic multi-track harmonizing is almost ENTIRELY replaced by isolated lead vocals. Wild Honey has often been called the Beach Boys' 'soul' album, which, to my mind, is due to two factors: (a) Carl's wailing vocals on several of the tracks which defy the "pre-established pattern" by going all over the place and rising to passionate screaming from time to time; (b) their cover of Stevie Wonder's 'I Was Made To Love Her'. Otherwise, it's just a pop album. It's just instrumentated in a pretty different way; organ, electric piano, Theremin, and a cappella singing come in to replace primitive Berryesque strumming of the earliest stuff. It's simple - for the most part, and certainly fell out of the contemporary culture like a stone. But so did the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society.
It's telling, though, that the best number on here is undeniably 'Darlin' - a number written by Brian as early as 1963 (why the hell didn't they put up the song on an album like Surfer Girl is beyond me, it's stronger than almost everything on there). It's a fully-produced up-tempo number that's really distinguished by an adventurous brass section and Carl's magnificent vocalizing - there's a wonderfully subtle 'fragility' to his vocals that gives a feeling of insecurity and maybe even 'cowardice' even as the singer is wailing about how 'I love the way you soften my life with your love'. Few other songs come close to the level established by this piece of brilliancy: maybe the title track, with its almost "astral" Theremin riff and more of that funny Carl wailing, this time positively psychotic.
Minor highlights abound, though. 'Easy-going', light quasi-throwaway numbers at close sight turn out to be quite endearing, like, for instance, the simple piano-led 'Aren't You Glad' (a bit in the 'Good Day Sunshine' vein, if you know what I mean, only more romantic), or Brian's tiny ditty 'I'd Love Just Once To See You' where he betrays his feelings in the end by adding '...in the nude'. Tee hee. 'Let The Wind Blow', while I don't find it too memorable, has a strong vocal harmony showcase, if only to remind us that the Beach Boys were still strong at their main game even if, for whatever reasons, they preferred to hide it on most other tracks.
The other upbeat tunes are actually first-rate, as well: the Stevie Wonder cover is pretty energetic (of course, it was also given to Carl - Wild Honey is, without a doubt, the place where the guy really found his vocal style), and 'Here Comes The Night', with its complex and unpredictable chorus - I particularly love the moody organ pattern on it, which adds an entire new dimension to the song - is beautiful, if only you manage to forget the hiccupy disco remake on L.A. I suppose the only upbeat number that a Beach Boys lover can have trouble with is the 'rock sendup' 'How She Boogalooed It', where even Carl's vocals can't help the feeling of corniness; not coincidentally, it's the only number on the record written by the other members of the band without Brian's support. But I don't find it offensive - the guitar/organ interplay is interesting at the least, so it works for me. Finally, let's not forget the delicious 'Country Air' with its convincing celebration of "outside" delights... remember I mentioned Village Green Preservation Society? the two albums certainly have their moments in common.
Finally, we get ousted out of the record by Brian's mantraic chanting of 'eat a lot, sleep a lot, brush 'em like crazy, run a lot, do a lot, never be lazy' ('Mama Says') - weird, eh? - and taking a chance to reevaluate what we just heard, we come to the conclusion that it's one of the Beach Boys' strongest albums of the Sixties. No, it's not innovative, but neither, in a direct sense, was the White Album. What IS innovative about both of these records is that both the Beach Boys and the Beatles go and 'revisit their roots' armed by their newly-found experience, professionalism, and amazing musical discoveries of the past two years. Neither 'Wild Honey' nor 'Here Comes The Night' nor 'Darlin' would have been able to sound that good in 1963; Brian Wilson had to go through Pet Sounds and Smile to establish that style. That's progress, in a certain sense.
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« Reply #13 on: May 29, 2013, 03:48:11 AM »

I gotta tell ya I've been reading this board, and before it the old white board - what did they all it, Cabinessence?- since 1996.

And in that time I've saved a lot of articles that appeared or were linked or referred to. Total's about 1200 pages.
Wow, that's very impressive, Mr. TM! Wish I had such a gigantic collection. Maybe I should follow you & start copy/paste various BBs-related articles from various sources as well.

Welcome to the board, btw!
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« Reply #14 on: May 29, 2013, 04:04:17 AM »

George Starostin, Russian State University for the Humanities, responds to his critics:

   "К вопросу о методологии языкового анализа древнекитайских текстов!"

Which translates, I think as:

   "The Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the West behind..."

Correct me if I'm wrong on that point.
Is it a joke? How can the methodology of linguistic analysis of ancient Chinese texts relate to the lyrics of "Back in the USSR"? You were way off in your translation, totally.
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« Reply #15 on: May 29, 2013, 05:42:59 AM »

Thank you RRA1.

Am happy to join the faculty here at The College of California Knowledge!

TM
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« Reply #16 on: May 29, 2013, 07:42:18 AM »

I think a link would have sufficed.
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« Reply #17 on: May 29, 2013, 09:31:13 AM »

My favorite part of these reviews is when he says, essentially, that Be True to Your School is such a horrible, All-American sissy of a song that it's no wonder the Beach Boys never played it after 1964 "to [his] knowledge."

Since it's clear he knows nothing about the band, and even acknowledges his ignorance, why would he say that they've never played a certain song after a certain point in time, when they've definitely played the song live HUNDREDS (thousands?) of times since then. WHY GEORGE? WHY?

The outsider perspective of the band from a fairly open minded reviewer who has done a little research, at least, is sort of interesting to read. But it's often infuriating.
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« Reply #18 on: May 29, 2013, 09:43:47 AM »

FRIENDS

Year Of Release: 1968
Record rating = 8
Overall rating = 11

Almost unbearably mellow, but so what if I don't happen to be in a mellow mood right now? The melodies are fine.
 Best song: PASSING BY

Track listing: 1) Meant For You; 2) Friends; 3) Wake The World; 4) Be Here In The Morning; 5) When A Man Needs A Woman; 6) Passing By; 7) Anna Lee The Healer; Cool Little Bird; 9) Be Still; 10) Busy Doin' Nothin'; 11) Diamond Head; 12) Transcendental Meditation.

After Wild Honey, I guess it was obvious that the Beach Boys had entirely given up on competition of any sorts, and both of last year's albums had cemented the "dated" image of the boys so firmly in the public opinion that it was impossimble to compete anyway. In this respect, I don't think Brian ever had any illusions about potential success when he and the boys were recording Friends. The album seems to go entirely against the trends and norms of 1968, in almost every single respect, even more so than the Kinks. It's abysmally short, about twenty five minutes long, bringing back the era of Surfin' Safari. It's based on singles. It's drastically underproduced, with many of the tunes employing just a single organ pattern or a trivial piano-bass interplay. Worse of all, it's softer than any other record released at the time - rock record, at least, if we're to consider the Beach Boys a rock band.
But it's a good record, twenty five minutes of calm, quiet, and exceptionally tuneful relaxation. It's just that the record is so stripped down that at times I get the feeling I'm listening to Smiley Smile again. Fortunately, it is not so: all of the compositions on here are all very well thought-out and finished, all of them joining together in one intentional package of briefness, charm and soothingness. It just takes time to get into; a time and a mood. Unfortunately, so far I haven't yet had a chance to get into the required mood, but I'll try to fake it. After all, there's a time for everything, and just because I haven't been patient enough to wait for the time for Friends, do you think I can bash a good album just like that? No way!
I can bash certain songs, though. Like almost everybody, I can, will and even feel myself obliged to bash the chitlins out of 'Transcendental Meditation', one of the band's lowest points of the epoch. What an ugly and dumb way to end the record - with a two-minute pseudo-rocker based on discordant jazzy brass work and corny, sappy vocals that have absolutely nothing to do with transcendental meditation. The only excuse I can take for the existence of the song is that it has to be taken tongue-in-cheek, based on the Beach Boys' unhappy experience of touring with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. If they ever wanted to make fun of his doctrine, they couldn't have taken a better route... and even so, it still sucks.
More arguable would be my dismissal of the two compositions by Dennis. Despite the hugely laudable liner notes about Dennis' enormous creative potential and beautiful voice, I can only say that (a) if Dennis ever had a potential in the first place, it wouldn't start coming out until a couple of albums later and (b) out of all the Beach Boys' voices, his is undeniably the worst - not exactly lacking expression, but very insecure of itself and, well, ordinary compared to the rest. 'Little Bird' is at least upbeat in its own humble way, but 'Be Still' just passes me by like a stone: minimalistic organ notes and near a cappella singing in that shaky tone don't really make up for substantial listening.
So let's stick to the real thing, shall we? There are nine more songs, which all rule in one of the nine possible ways. Way number one: take the same minimalist organ pattern as in 'Be Still', but supplement it with a great emotional vocal hook and cute backing vocals and make a half-minute intro. That's 'Meant For You', as gorgeous an introduction to an album that there ever was. Way number two: make up a cheerful, delightful waltz that will make you feel at home even if you're listening to it through a gap in Lucifer's jaws. That's the title track. Way number three: to punch up some emotionality, take a music-hall melody and play it in a minor key to put an inch of melancholy into the pudding ('Wake The World'). Way number four: sing a song in a pitch higher than everything you did before ('Be Here In The Morning'). And so on...
I'll just mention three songs more because there are substantial things I think I can say about 'em. 'Passing By', although instrumental, is also one of the very best instrumentals ever recorded by the band. Unlike the early obligatory surf send-ups or the "experimental for the sake of experimentation" stuff on Pet Sounds, this one has a really interesting original melody that's just as soothing as everything else on here but doesn't suffer from cheaply penned lyrics. Cool harmony lines, oh so cool harmony lines, too. Next: 'Anna Lee The Healer' is beautiful. A bit McCartneyesque in style, and I could care less if Mike Love's lyrics are ridiculous beyond belief, set out to celebrate the talents of a masseuse of all people. Finally, 'Diamond Head' is another instrumental and one of the weirdest ones they ever did. Who said experimentation days are over? It describes a Hawaiian landmark and does so in a million different ways and so vivaciously I really gape in awe. Listen to the sound effects, the slide guitars, the complex percussion, the way the melodies fade out and come back in a different way... a whole world of its own.
And that's about it. I know I mentioned the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society in the previous review already, but I can't help but make a comparison again - this album is the equivalent, with the nice charming rural atmosphere overwhelming the listener. Even the album cover with all the 'green' overtones brings on associations. Needless to say, both albums sank equally low at the time... and were replaced on the pedestal as time went by. Still, let us not forget Friends is not a masterpiece - too short, too much filler for such a short album, and, well, hey, it's no Pet Sounds, you know, as banal as it sounds.

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STACK-O-TRACKS

Year Of Release: 1968
Record rating = 6
Overall rating = 9

Here's your chance to be a Beach Boy! Don't forget to bring the buddies along to sing harmonies!
 Best song: ask Capitol about this, not me.

Track listing: 1) Darlin'; 2) Salt Lake City; 3) Sloop John B.; 4) In My Room; 5) Catch A Wave; 6) Wild Honey; 7) Little Saint Nick; Cool Do It Again; 9) Wouldn't It Be Nice; 10) God Only Knows; 11) Surfer Girl; 12) Little Honda; 13) Here Today; 14) You're So Good To Me; 15) Let Him Run Wild; [BONUS TRACKS]: 16) Help Me Rhonda; 17) California Girls; 18) Our Car Club.

I was all set up to bash this crass mockery of a record like every self-respecting music critic should when all of a sudden I was seized with a blasphemous thought... hey, it's really fun! It's kinda nice to have it around! Admit it! Isn't it?
Okay, let me explain. Stack-O-Tracks is the last in line of a series of ridiculous Capitol attempts to cash in on the Beach Boys' name. Seeing as how they only got one studio record from the band in 1968, and it didn't sell much at all, Capitol decided to issue a collection of some of the band's best songs with the vocals wiped out - presumably, so that you and your friend could put it on at a party and sing along. Make your own cover version of any of fifteen Beach Boys songs. To make matters easier, they also put in lyrics sheets for every song and even sheetnote music (the latter is somewhat puzzling, though; maybe the original plan was to have a double album with nothing but music on the first LP and nothing but the vocals on the second? That'd do the trick, and you'd also have yourself a Sixties Zaireeka before The Flaming Lips came up with the concept... anyway, I'm digressing).
Of course, Capitol miscalculated by a good three years or so: in 1965, hordes of Beach Boys fans who were scooping up their Christmas albums and stuff like Party! probably would have easily swallowed this stuff, too, but in 1968, ridiculous cash-ins like these were long out of fashion. So the record quickly went off the shelves and remained that way until it was re-issued on CD as a 2-fer with Party! several decades later. Which, of course, was rather generous on Capitol's side - here you had a 2-fer edition that you had a full, complete, and unabridged right to avoid unless you were a diehard completist (generous, because they could have put, say, Party! together with a chef-d'oeuvre like Today! and this album together with some other classic and... well, you get it).
Needless to say, nobody ever took this seriously - a Beach Boys album without the vocals is, after all, pretty similar to an Eric Clapton album without the guitar. And the whole "proto-Karaoke" stuff should be enough to make you nauseous. However, there is a minor point to this record, and I fully agree with the liner notes on this issue. The Beach Boys weren't merely about the vocals; they were also about immaculately crafted, complex, and very often beautiful arrangements, and as much as we love the band's gorgeous singing, these other assets often get lost behind the angelic harmonies. In this way, Stack-O-Tracks gives the listener an opportunity to experience the music as such, and perhaps, notice some interesting details that inevitably slip past you when you're listening to the "real" versions. After all, with all the anthologies and boxsets and outtake collections of famous bands and artists, you very often find yourself listening to instrumental versions of well-known vocal performances that the compilers deliberately put in there so you could appreciate the music more (an immediate example - the strings-only carcass of 'Eleanor Rigby' on the Beatles' Anthology II); Stack-O-Tracks can function in the same way.
Not that this guarantees more than one listen to the tracks, of course, but I guess it is worth one listen. It's kinda fun to compare the early songs, like 'Surfer Girl', with the later ones: where 'Surfer Girl' features minimal instrumentation and nothing much happens once you've gone past the first two phrases, on later tracks you start getting additional instruments one by one (harmonium, organ, horns, etc.), trickier time signatures, and, of course, all those multi-section things on Pet Sounds era material. I guess Pet Sounds tracks are, unsurprisingly, the most interesting ones in that respect - 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', 'God Only Knows', 'Here Today', and 'Sloop John B.' would all have been excellent instrumentals even without the harmonies.
Funny enough, Capitol didn't actually manage to wipe the vocals entirely on the older tracks - 'Little Saint Nick' and 'Catch A Wave' in particular have faint echoes of the band singing which can easily be audible even without the headphones. Hey, of course, if you use the record for its original purpose ("you sing the words and play with the original instrumental backgrounds to 15 of their biggest hits!"), that's not a big problem.
The 2-fer reissue actually throws three more "instrumental backgrounds" into the package (with 'California Girls' probably being a worthwhile addition), but it's not something I can get particularly emotional about. Anyway, it is a worthwhile addition to your collection if you're learning to play Beach Boys songs or if you're just particularly curious about how they structured their arrangements, and in this way, it's certainly a more reasonable cash-in than Party!. But, of course, if you already have one of those nifty Karaoke machines that can wipe the vocals out of any record in your collection, no need to bother. Track down Brian Wilson's liner notes to the record, though - very useful for a basic understanding of some of the musical techniques applied here.

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20/20

Year Of Release: 1969
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

Adding diversity, retroism, all kinds of crap... makes up for something that's all over the place and all for the better.
 Best song: I CAN HEAR MUSIC

Track listing: 1) Do It Again; 2) I Can Hear Music; 3) Bluebirds Over The Mountain; 4) Be With Me; 5) All I Want To Do; 6) The Nearest Faraway Place; 7) Cotton Fields; Cool I Went To Sleep; 9) Time To Get Alone; 10) Never Learn Not To Love; 11) Our Prayer; 12) Cabinessence.

It's a paradox: 20/20 obviously shows that the Beach Boys were at a creative halt at the time, probably suppressed by the lack of commercial spark in their three previous albums or other personal reasons (and Brian certainly didn't give a frig at the time). It's formally a hit-and-miss affair, hastily patched together to free the Beach Boys of their Capitol contract (they were signed up for twenty albums, hence the title). So they stuffed the album with a bunch of recently produced singles, just a couple new Wilson originals, a bunch of covers, a bunch of Dennis' songs, and even a Bruce Johnston instrumental - figures. Moreover, it's 20/20 that actually initiated the practice of digging into the Smile vaults to pad the record with better quality material, a practice the Beach Boys would be employing for years to come. In other words, it's just total turmoil.
But guess what? This turmoil had a good side to it - as nice as Wild Honey and Friends (hey, and Pet Sounds, too!) were, they just couldn't provide one crucial factor: diversity. These songs are quite different from each other, often delving into areas like straightforward rock'n'roll and country-rock which the Beach Boys weren't experts in; but for the most part, it all works, and I count no truly bad songs on the record. Even better, the record has a bunch of downright classics - it's no wonder that, while most Beach Boys' greatest hits albums kinda dismiss the previous three albums, they're usually packed with stuff from 20/20, and rightly so. While some of the band's Seventies' albums could boast better songs, there wouldn't be an album that'd have 'Do It Again', 'I Can Hear Music', 'Bluebirds Over The Mountain', and 'Cabinessence' all in one place.
Yeah, it's also that last Beach Boys album where I don't have to scratch my head and find the fast forward button to skip past a Mike Love atrocity or a Dennis Wilson mediocrity and find out that deeply hidden snippet of Brian Wilson's genius. There's a lot of Brian Wilson's genius on 20/20, but the other boys sure give it some competition. 'Do It Again', for instance. It's the first in a lengthy series of Brian's/Mike's "nostalgic" pastiches - surf-style songs that heartily yearn for the good old days of 1962, and here the nostalgia spirit isn't even subtle, as the "let's get back together and do it again" chorus openly declares its goal. But it's also a great song, with a terrific mid-tempo rhythm and wonderful echoey effect on the snare drum. It's surf-rock for sure, but again, it's great to hear the guys come up with a 'sophisticated' version of surf-rock, with production and arrangement values miles ahead of whatever they did six or seven years ago. In this way, it's tons better than the plain retro stuff you can find on M.I.U. and later on, since the song has a 'sincere' ring to it. Let's do it again! Why not? So what if Mike Love grew himself an ugly shabby beard? Whoever said you can't surf with a beard?
It's really funny, though, that 'Do It Again' is, in fact, the only sign of Mike's spirit on the album. Well, okay, if you don't count 'Bluebirds Over The Mountain', where he also sings lead vocals on the verses. I have mixed feelings towards the song. On one hand, the melody is really groovy and catchy. On the other hand, for idiotic reasons they had to go ahead and screw it up by letting their tour guitarist Ed Carter come up with generic 'screaming' electric guitar on the breaks. The guy may be competent, but the cheerful poppy nature of the song and the, er, "aggressive" style of Carter's playing don't stick together any better than Elton John with Eminem, if you get my drift. The liner notes complain that the single bombed because 'nobody wanted to hear this kind of rock from the Beach Boys', and yeah, I guess I have to agree in some way - nobody wanted to hear this kind of shitty rock from the Beach Boys. If you wanna meld nice pop with ugly rock'n'roll, at least find a more subtle way to do that than juxtaposing sweet friendly lead vocals with distorted 'rebellious' guitar playing.
Because I, for one, think that the Beach Boys are able to do rock'n'roll - I don't have any problems with Dennis' 'All I Want To Do', a raunchy screaming rocker with a raunchy hoarse Mike Love on the vocals and sex noises in the background on the fade-out. It's not exceptional or anything, but it's pulled off in a pretty convincing manner, with creditable lead work this time and a cool wall-of-sound production. Almost MC5-like, although to be sure, Love's vocals remind me of Eric Burdon in this particular spot. As for Dennis, he comes one step closer to matching the efforts of his betters by refining his 'ominous', shadowy style on the self-produced 'Be With Me' and the harmony-drenched countryesque 'Never Learn Not To Love'.
Carl gets only one spotlight on the record, but gosh, oh what a spotlight this is. For some reason, I never see 'I Can Hear Music' get the praise it deserves - and sometimes, it even gets some flack for 'cheesiness'. Hmm, so what if it's a Phil Spector cover? Who cares. It's absolute and total pop perfection, one of the best performances ever to come out of the Beach Boys. No, you don't get me well enough: it's just a perfect pop song. Not one note to give, not one note to take; an ecstatic hook on the verse, an ecstatic hook on the bridge, an ecstatic hook or two on the chorus. Easily one of the most gorgeous and blissful love songs ever written (yeah, so I'm just a sentimentalist! Never mind, we'll get to Judas Priest in a minute), and Carl's vocals are beautiful. My only complaint is that they shouldn't have let it fade out so quickly. That sucks.
In the meantime, as this is a true true band effort, Bruce Johnston gets in the "Proto-New-Age" instrumental 'The Nearest Faraway Place' which is a bit dull but nowhere near as bad as people say, and Al Jardine regales the band with a 'contribution' in the form of his take on 'Cotton Fields'. This song, curiously enough, is often presented as a lowlight - I don't get the reason; I think the Beach Boys pull it off mighty fine, hardly any worse than CCR did the same year (and at least, unlike Fogerty, Al sings the complete lyrics to the song, not just one verse and one chorus over and over again).
This leaves us with Brian, and that's the section I'd like to bypass - I've already spent quite a lot webspace by talking about Brian's style. Brian's style is always the same, so if you dig Brian's style, you'll dig the songs he writes on here.'I Went To Sleep' and 'Time To Get Alone' aren't among my favourites, but the closing two Smile outtakes are glorious - particularly 'Cabinessence', which should be listened to in headphones at top volume to get all the grandiosity of the vocal harmonies on here. It's like a sea with batteries of waves crashing into themselves in every direction and yet it's all natural and oh so fluent. Awesome.
In all, 20/20 is more than a fitting conclusion to the Sixties - definitely the Beach Boys' highest moment as a 'band', an Abbey Road of sorts, even, with lots of different styles and different personalities working to integrate their talents into a rather cohesive whole. I'm really surprised the album doesn't get as much respect as it ought to: it's easily my second or third favourite Beach Boys album by now. Plus, if you get the 2-fer with Friends, you'll get fabulous bonus tracks like their last single for Capitol, 'Breakaway', or Dennis' amazing 'Celebrate The News' with ear-shattering wall-of-sound vocal harmonies, or even a fun and touching version of the folk standard 'Ol' Man River'. Lost at the time, the record still doesn't get enough respect - come on now, people, it's time to recognize that Brian Wilson wasn't the only good thing about the Beach Boys. Not by 1969, at least.

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LIVE IN LONDON

Year Of Release: 1970
Record rating = 7
Overall rating = 10

They're back on stage - professional, bearded, gorgeous, and thoroughly unfunny.
 Best song: GOD ONLY KNOWS

Track listing: 1) Darlin'; 2) Wouldn't It Be Nice; 3) Sloop John B.; 4) California Girls; 5) Do It Again; 6) Wake The World; 7) Aren't You Glad; Cool Bluebirds Over The Mountains; 9) Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring; 10) Good Vibrations; 11) God Only Knows; 12) Barbara Ann.

As every Beach Boys connoisseur will explain to you, the title of the album (the last word, actually) is no big surprise - by the late Sixties, the Beach Boys were so "irrelevant" in the States that nobody could be bothered with putting out cash-in albums like these anymore; not so in Britain, where the Beach Boys were still well acclaimed and respected. Thus, naturally, this album, released without the band's consent in 1970; it was released in the States only as late as 1976, to coincide with the band's carefully crafted "comeback", and was strangely titled Beach Boys '69, even if the actual show was recorded at the London Palladium in December 1968. Of course, with the passing of time this strange gaffe has been corrected (now the album is widely available on a two-fer CD with Concert), but still you can't help but wonder how dumb record executives can be sometimes.
Anyway, this is an excellent concert and all, but, of course, you can't expect the fresh young energy of 1964 any longer. By focusing on newer material (only two songs from 1965 and everything else from Pet Sounds and later), the band kinda finds itself torn between wanting to put on an energetic entertaining show full of friendly spontaneity, on one hand, and making every effort to preserve every musical/vocal nuance of their ultra-complex recordings so as not to appear too minimalistic or unskilled, and this results in a somewhat cumbersome feeling overall. My credits don't list anybody else besides the Beach Boys themselves, but apparently they're augmented by a horn section (or at least just a couple of saxes), and somebody's gotta be playing the theremin on 'Good Vibrations' unless they're playing to pre-recorded tapes, and even the Who had trouble playing to pre-recorded tapes. Of course, Brian isn't present either, but apparently Ed Carter (!!) is, so he can faithfully reproduce the vomit-inducing 'heavy' guitar playing on 'Bluebirds Over The Mountains'.
What really grates on this album is Mike Love's incessant chattering. I gotta give the man the props for actually admitting to being an ass (in the liner notes, he's quoted as saying that 'I tell jokes sometimes which are corny, which are outright stupid... that, to me, is funny when nobody laughs' - why, Mike?), but that doesn't excuse him from being an ass. None of his jokes are funny, and there's just way too many of them (and why does he have to announce 'Bluebirds Over The Mountains' in Spanish?). At least they should have put them at the end of each track so that you could skip the goshdarn banter... instead, they put them at the beginning, aww crap, why can't this world be perfect? And who does that man think he is, Karl Marx? Look at that goshdarn photo! Compared to a sexy hunk like Dennis, he looks like a miserable tramp.
Outside of all these problems, it's still a good concert album, of course, chockful of classics as well as a few unpredictable choices. The Beach Boys are giving the British audiences what they want to hear - thus, there's three Pet Sounds numbers, out of which 'God Only Knows' is the major highlight, with Carl's singing as beautiful as ever. 'Good Vibrations' might actually put some people off because they're trying way too hard to recreate the original exactly, with all the harmonies and all the tricky instrumental bits and the theremin, and that's a pretty hard task to do - but, just like in the case of prog bands, sometimes it's worth admiration to just observe the audacity; and since the Beach Boys weren't virtuosos (even if a comparison with Concert does reveal that virtually every Beach Boy has become much more mature at his respective instrument since 1964), it's even more admirable that they managed to throw together a version that doesn't make me cringe for even a second (except the little bit where they go into the quiet, slow, most heavenly part of the song and the audience goes on clapping by inertia and Mike mutters 'different tempo, eh' - that's a bit silly).
Then there's some material from Wild Honey (a stompin' version of 'Darlin' that opens the show is actually one of the main highlights), and all of those recent singles like the aforementioned 'Bluebirds' and 'Do It Again'. The major surprises include an emotionally uplifting 'Wake The World', which, as Mike announces, 'we like to do in total darkness'; the pretty, and flawlessly performed, accappella number 'Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring' (which you can also find nowadays among the bonus tracks on Wild Honey); and their choice of 'Barbara Ann' as the encore (where Mike misses out on the second verse, the scum!). So on a technical level, there's few things to complain about, and I guess that the album is worth your time if you don't plan on getting it separately from Concert.
And the two-fer reissue also adds two important bonus tracks, each reflecting its epoch: 'Don't Worry Baby' with Brian taking lead vocals (from the same show as Concert), and 'Heroes And Villains' from the still unreleased Lei'd In Hawaii live album from 1967, known to be Brian's first actual concert performance with the boys since his 1964 breakdown. The 'Heroes And Villains' performance is actually wonderful - absolutely self-assured, steady and sharp, which makes me really yearn for the album's release... but I guess some things are hard to reach, eh?
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joshferrell
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« Reply #19 on: May 29, 2013, 11:47:28 AM »

"Fart Noises?" wait till he hears "Love You" lol.. LOL
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Aegir
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« Reply #20 on: May 29, 2013, 11:47:49 AM »

I think a link would have sufficed.
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« Reply #21 on: May 29, 2013, 11:52:56 AM »

I found this guy a few months back. I'm no expert on the band either, but from the looks of the responses here he needs work on his facts a little! Still, I think the reviews are entertaining.

He recently made a Blogspot and re-reviewed all the BB albums:
http://only-solitaire.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Beach%20Boys
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It’s going to be the greatest tribute album ever made.
SenorPotatoHead
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« Reply #22 on: May 29, 2013, 12:19:22 PM »

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TMinthePM
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« Reply #23 on: May 29, 2013, 12:38:02 PM »

A few observations

1. I find the man to be quite entertaining

2. He offers a full throttled review of the catalog with flair and panache, and would perhaps in a more civilized age be applauded for the clever dexterity with which he sustains his monolog.

3. Despite the barbs, gaffs and general irreverence, his heart (and probably his head) is in the right place – he is obviously a fan.

4. I think it entirely appropriate to present his writing at length here (although, in truth, the appetite is slaked in excess) this being a Forum devoted to things Beach Boy, sometimes more like a Colosseum.
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Dudd
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« Reply #24 on: May 29, 2013, 12:45:54 PM »

A few observations

1. I find the man to be quite entertaining

2. He offers a full throttled review of the catalog with flair and panache, and would perhaps in a more civilized age be applauded for the clever dexterity with which he sustains his monolog.

3. Despite the barbs, gaffs and general irreverence, his heart (and probably his head) is in the right place – he is obviously a fan.

4. I think it entirely appropriate to present his writing at length here (although, in truth, the appetite is slaked in excess) this being a Forum devoted to things Beach Boy, sometimes more like a Colosseum.

Agreed!
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Quote from: Brian Wilson
It’s going to be the greatest tribute album ever made.
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