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With comments from Sean Ono Lennon; Tina and Chris from the Talking Heads; Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan; and a whole bunch of '90s/'00s musicians.

http://pitchfork.com/features/article/9870-the-beach-boys-pet-sounds-celebrates-its-50th-anniversary-artists-pay-tribute-to-the-eternal-teenage-symphony/

Nice article!

Must respectfully disagree, BDIB, this is sound bite nonsense for the most part, very hit and miss, with a lot of millennial self-promotion and weak meta-irony dominating (as is mostly the case with Pitchfork, a music site that seems to have based its approach on all of the pompous "free paper" film critics who popped up in the late 70s/early 80s and  plagued us for so long until major newspapers started folding and the pros were forced to move down a notch).

I cannot believe that they were incapable of finding a group of people to at least talk about each of the songs on the LP, and do some actual justice to PS. This has a few moments of fresh insight, a good bit of rehash, some pointless trivia (with Chris and Tina showing the way...) and a whole lot of self-serving BS (including, sadly, Sean Lennon, who used to be able to not namecheck his own work).

We could collectively do infinitely better than this ourselves--and I daresay that the younger members of this board could easily do so without any "help" from us old folks. I'd love to see that rather than this type of half-assed tosh.

Not one mention of Carl Wilson's vocals on GOK...  :-\

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I haven't heard of any of these people aside from Spector and Lennon.  I have heard of the Talking Heads, but couldn't name any members.

I enjoyed it. Here are some comments:
The intro by Ron Hart was weirdly inaccurate but on-the-nose:
- If ever there was an artist so perfectly able to tap into the creativity of his inner child, it was Brian Wilson. – perfect
- He took in the Beatles’ then-brand-new album Rubber Soul, which challenged him to rethink his entire method of music making. – huh?
- 36-minute pocket symphony – does he know this referred to Good Vibrations and knowingly shifted it, or is he confused?
- Considering the lack of formal training Wilson possessed in terms of arrangement and composition, the way he translated his ideas to the album’s orchestral format is nothing short of magic. – perfect

-Sean Lennon has been raving about Pet Sounds for a long time, but this is the best tribute I’ve read by him; and I feel similarly: Pet Sounds is the means through which I’ve come to understand music.
-I’m thankful Drew Daniel exposed me to a really powerful poem, with a Pet Sounds reference.
-Ronnie Spector’s “peeking through the glass” mini-anecdote is new to me, and sweet.
-Patrick Wimberly validates assertions made about the impact of Kokomo and Full House that I’d always been dubious about. Guess I was wrong!
-Tina Weymouth explained a way that Brian Wilson unintentionally opened things up for other artists for a time. I’d never thought of that.
-Daedelus’ comment is my favorite.
-Ezra Furman cuts through some BS.
-Larkin Grimm makes a good point, and I love Caroline No anyway as well.

Does anyone have a savable copy of the picture after the Will Toledo quote? I don’t think I’ve seen it before.

Not a huge fan of the article. And this isn't the standard "Pitchfork sucks" kind of thing: I think Pitchfork is fine. Whatever Rolling Stone was to the late 60s and early 70s, I think Pitchfork was to a certain subset (fragmenting having done what it did) in the early or mid '00s. And now it's an aging entity, a Conde Nast company, for f***'s sake. Big ol' corporate entity trying to tell the kids what's cool. Good luck with that.

But for what it is doing, and considering the artists to whom Pitchfork has access, it could have been much better. I thought most of the blurbs were dull, and few of the artists were all that interesting. It wasn't entirely lacking, but this is your tribute to the anniversary of the album? Honestly, if that's what I came up with after thinking of running this feature, I'd have scrapped it.

Is it really Conde Nast?  ::) surprise, surprise.

Huh?? I thought the comments and thoughts were indeed insightful and sincere. Didn't know it was supposed to be a contest between Pitchfork and the SS board. Your comments follow the same vibe as myKe luHv's R&R HOF speech.  :tm

agreed.

(http://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/357/BrianWilsonquotepic2.jpg)

 ;D

In classic Pitchfork fashion I know hardly any of the artists commenting.

Some interesting comments though.

Thannks!

In other words, it's been four decades since you ceased to accumulate knowledge about current music in any meaningful way. No shame in that, but I hardly think Pitchfork are going to take your perspective to heart.

Not sure, but I think it's the opposite. I think The Cincinnati Kid is quite young.

The comments that I did like, I thought were touching or at least very honest. I guess this is interesting because it sounds like people are just stating facts or unbiased opinions of PS instead of praising it like we would. Which is fine to critique an album, just not when you're trying to, well, celebrate its 50th anniversary.

I know that Will Toledo is popular around my city and is heavily influenced by Brian, so I appreciated his comments. You guys should check out his bandcamp (https://carseatheadrest.bandcamp.com/).

And yeah, Pitchfork can be that overly pretentious art critic of the music world, only assigning 8.0+ ratings to Kanye and Animal Collective, but I still really like their interviews and their descriptions of Vampire Weekend songs. Plus, their weird news section is quite interesting.

I feel like they could have picked other artists that are more obviously influenced by Brian. Mark Foster, Robin Pecknold, A/J Jackson... I was happy to see Washed Out's Ernest Greene on there, though. Didn't know he was a Beach Boys fan :)

Not fair, really. I can only name one member; I can only name two members of the Kinks, two members of REM… I could go on… point is, I'm older than CK but if I've no interest in an old band, I can't name their members.

This might work a little better, in the right direction....it's 7:45pm (I would guess, don't think Brian would be up this early in the morning)...and it's time to hit the MEN'S ROOM, but some idiot can't let Brian pee in peace.  Just have to take another photo!! LOL! :lol

As for the article.  I find most of the comments have little depth.  Sure, some seem to understand the significance of PET SOUNDS, but many we're probably just asked to write a few words, and I would guess most of these were done in an email and quickly with little thought.  One thing that is clear:  There is a lot of love for Brian nowadays, by many of the young, hip musicians.  Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with more than 3 or 4 of them.

Dogbone

(http://i64.tinypic.com/lktar.jpg)

Good work, Dogbone. I think once the photo is turned around it becomes recognizable as one that's been seen before.

Sound bites is sound bites, guys. I would sure as heck like to read more stuff from the folks here than 80% of what was in the Pitchfork essay. Yes, a few of them have a sense of what's timeless about Brian's achievement. Emily ID'ed several that have that quality about them. But they are the exception.

One of the essays suggested that there weren't "perfect" BBs LPs because Brian wasn't a "consistent" writer...what are we to make of such ahistorical twaddle? Did this person understand that LPs weren't considered to anything more than a collection of tracks until right about the time Pet Sounds came out? That certain artists were the ones who pushed against that stereotype in order to conceive of the LP as a more encompassing artistic statement? And this was a right that had to be earned?

Tina Weymouth reminds us of that fact, but the timeframe she references is a bit strange, since in '76 it wasn't the record label taking care of Brian at all, it was the BBs pushing him prematurely back into the "drivers seat." If Tina was paying attention she would have known that Warner-Reprise had a rep for being an artist's label much earlier than the time she's referencing, but that the record label had actually had consistently stormy relations with the BBs. I think her comment epitomizes what Dogbone said about much of what's in the "roundtable"--a lot of off-the-cuff stuff tossed out quickly and with a highly variable amount of reflection applied to what was written.

The article is what it is... some of the choices of contributor (which I'm sure was down as much to who Pitchfork could get to contribute in time as it was the result of any great masterplan of selection) are odd, and not everyone is as much a fan of Brian, or of the album, as we are. But the comments seem heartfelt - particularly Sean Lennon's comments, which didn't bother me at all. In fact I thought they were rather sweet. Yes, he sees everything through the prism of his own life (in his particular case, as a musician, and of course also as the son of one of the most famous musicians of all time)... but don't we all do that?

I did smile at Yuka Honda's comments. "The six bar intro of “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” is worth a thousand books. I consider it to be one of the greatest chord changes ever written."

Err... there IS no six-bar intro to that song. It goes straight into the verse!

I mean, I agree that the chord sequence is one of the best Brian ever wrote, and you COULD write a thousand books on it... but those changes aren't in the intro. Because there isn't one!

UNLESS: he means the vocal harmonies from 'Unreleased Backgrounds', which I've always thought were probably recorded with the intention of splicing them on the front on the track, as an intro. But as far as we know, Brian never ACTUALLY tried that out (perhaps, I speculate, because that would have made the start to album track 3 too much like the start of track 2?). So the track as released, in all its versions, has no intro at all!

Also: even 'Unreleased Backgrounds' (or whatever you call it...) is only five bars long...!!

Surely she (not he) merely means "the first six bars"! It's just oddly worded. And it is a fabulous sequence of chords...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuka_Honda

Yeah. The verse, from opening note to chorus, is six bars, so I assumed she meant that. Though it's a verse, it does have the feel of an intro.

All of this is proving my point that this group could concoct a much better 50th tribute to Pet Sounds than what appeared at Pitchfork...that would be a wonderful little group project, now, wouldn't it? Rather than bickering--not that this won't happen anyway!!  >:D

While I did not know most of the artists and did not find many of the comments illuminating, I found it rather touching that the article was even written and that the album is held in such high regard still by many of the younger set.

Nah, I'm 20, but nice try. 

That was odd.  I don't expect everyone to be as blown away by Pet Sounds as we are, but when you're reading a piece about artists "paying tribute" to the album, you kind of expect them to actually, you know, pay tribute.  With actual well informed opinions.

Oh well.

Wow. Not sure he is listening to the same song as the one on my album. That is not what that song says at all.  ???

She is listening to the same song.  Not a surprising point of view.

It's not odd that this woman would love the song but wonder if the blame unjustly fell on the female.  This song is so powerful in that it really captures the loss of sweetness and joy in a relationship.  Brian obviously wrote it from a man's point of view.  The woman's view is the same loss, but a different perspective.  I think Brian so beautifully captured the helplessness that both people feel when the magic is over that it grabs the listener in that way.  It's that point at which people decide whether to make it a real relationship and revive the romance when they can, or go off to find another fleeting thrill of romance, or a better match in reality.

Brian has never been afraid to take on the most intense human emotions in his music for people to listen and heal.  I've noticed all the comments on "Last Song" over the past year.  Many people haven't yet integrated what the music was saying, due to its intensity.  He's still doing that intense musical healing for people today.

Thank you DebbieKL. It is interesting to realize that the male/female perspective gives the song a different meaning.

The song is so heart-achingly beautiful and perfectly constructed (like the rest of the album) that we can insert our own personal experiences, loves and losses into it and come away with an interpretation that works best for us.

I always looked at the song like this:

Two former lovers meet again and he notices that she has matured and is not young and innocent anymore - like she still is in his memories. Brian assumes that she has lost her 'glow' because a lover after him did not treat her right and took that look that he loved away. Because she was not treated well, she is more hardened or cynical now, and he is saddened by this.

It was never literally "why did you cut your hair," but Brian noticing things have changed - and shorter hair is an easy change to notice. The long hair is a metaphor for youth, a carefree life and hope and to have that back would make him happy.

I will never hear that song and interpret it to mean that cutting her hair made her unlovable. It removes the loneliness and longing (and hope) from the song and replaces it with negative feelings toward her.

Oops - that's totally my bad on Yuka Honda, assuming she was a he. I only just saw this, having not been back into this thread for a while. That was stupid of me, and I should have checked. Feel a bit embarrassed now...!

And yeah, I guess she just meant 'the start of the song' when she said 'intro'.

At least there's no debate about the quality of the 'Don't Talk...' chords. I think everyone here is probably agreed that it's one of Brian's most amazing works. It might even be my favourite song of his ever, in terms of being a groundbreaking, original-sounding composition that is also intensely beautiful and very skilled at conveying some really deep, complex emotions.

He and Tony *really* hit it out of the park with Don't Talk, IMHO.

I've played a plethora of BB songs to females, and sometimes their perspective is interesting. Accusations of being sexist or anti-feminist are not 100% unfounded. A lot of times it requires some context to understand. In some cases, it only comes out that way because, obviously, they're singing from the male perspective.

One woman I played "This Whole World" to really didn't like the "when girls get mad at boys and go, many times they're just putting on a show." Out of a context, even in an amazing musical piece like that, that one line does kinda a sound a bit d**kish. My contention is that that is *sometimes* true, and guys do the same thing. But because it's from the male perspective, he's not going to take every line and point out that guys do it too. And the very next line points out that the outcome is the guy is left alone, so clearly his perspective left him alone. He maybe gets his comeuppance for thinking the girls just "put on a show."

And one can't ever fully defend the guys that released "Hey Little Tomboy."

I think that objectively, some BB lyrics can mean different things (e.g. Brian is a sexist a-hole for making a big issue out of a woman cutting her hair), but especially when analyzing Brian's creation and *his* perspective, more context makes it less inflammatory. Maybe he's obsessing over the woman in the song changing, but that doesn't preclude Brian, or the "speaker" in the song, being in the wrong for obsessing or being too picky or misconstruing the nature of the relationship in the first place, etc.

I think there are some misunderstandings here: first, when people point out that something is sexist, they very often do not mean to imply that the person who said it is an a*hole although often the person who said it feels insulted, but the purpose is usually, unless the person who said has been shown to be persistent and aggressive about it, to get people to think about the fact that our cultural training results in all of us having sexist views and here's an example. I think that most sexism is unintended and says nothing about the speaker other than he/she hasn't learned to question their received notions.
Secondly, regarding "My contention is that that is *sometimes* true, and guys do the same thing." Sexism frequently takes the form of taking behaviors that are sometimes true about the population at large and making them out to be particularly female; this has occurred because men have typically been the generators of cultural attitudes. So, if a subset of men and women manipulate and 'use' the people they are in relationships with, for example, it becomes a cultural meme that it's a 'typical' female behavior because it's men making the meme.

Sure. All potentially valid points. This is a huge, complicated topic that extends far outside of the BBs, and even far outside the particular topic of "sexism" and gets into criticism of criticism itself, the question of how much we need to parse the meaning or vibe of 60s (and beyond) lyrics written by guys that culturally were probably not all the most progressive guys of their era, and so on.

I mean, they did "Hey Little Tomboy" in 1976 and released it in 1978; that's the f-ed up beauty of this band, I'm not sure whether that means I should be harder on them, or give them a pass because the song is so over-the-top awkward and inappropriate that they clearly were ignorant as to how it could be perceived.  

My main point was simply that if, and I emphasize only *if*, there are folks that are completely incredulous as to why someone would take away from certain BB songs something they might construe as sexist or anti-feminist, I think there is plenty of room to make that argument.

For me, sometimes all of the context makes the lyrics palatable or even enjoyable, and occasionally (not even particularly with the BB specifically), certain lyrics are difficult to overlook, for a variety of reasons including and in addition to anything related to feminism (or lack thereof).

I love the BB car songs, but I've never been a fan of the "I've got the fastest car and therefore the biggest d**k" bravado stuff. I think some people would have found that kind of douchey back then as they might now.

I've always had trouble with Brian's achingly beautiful "Still I Dream of It" because he references having a maid in the midst of lamenting various things in his life. How bad should I feel for a guy that can afford a maid? Poor baby, must be tough having someone cook your food and clean your house for you. Is that missing the point? Yes. But we all put our own template on this stuff.

Totally agree