special introductory paragraph
Lost and Found! (1961-62) Surfin' Safari Surfin' U.S.A. Surfer Girl Little Deuce Coupe Shut Down, Vol. 2 All Summer Long Concert Christmas Album Today! Summer Days (And Summer
Nights!!) Party! Pet SoundsSmiley Smile Wild Honey Friends Stack-O-Tracks 20/20 '69 (Live in London) Sunflower Landlocked: The Unreleased 1970 Album & More Surf's Up Smile Carl and the Passions-So Tough
Holland In Concert 15 Big OnesLove You Adult Child Surfin' Rarities Vol. 1 M.I.U. Album L.A. (Light Album) Keepin' the Summer Alive Rarities The Beach Boys Still Cruisin' Summer In Paradise Endless Harmony Ultimate Christmas Hawthorne, CA Good Timin: Live At Knebworth England 1980 Endless Bummer (The Very Worst Of The Beach Boys) Songs From Here And Back
| Next time you listen to the Beach Boys how about doing it in a great vacation rental in a beach house? Instead of driving to the beach every day while on your beach vacation try renting a beach-front vacation home rental in Hawaii or California! |
Even at this early point in life's stamina, The Beach Boyz wuz fukin bitchass down wif da harmonizin n strategizin. But vocal harmonies will only take you so far when your lead vocals are quivery, out of tune and constantly threatening to make the mic erupt into ear-piercing amp feedback (just TRY to sit through "Judy" without your ears growing little skin flaps that shut closed and lock until the song is over and the waves in the air are less vomitous and disturbing.). And aside from a couple that appear to be sung by Brian Wilson, a young man with a very nice full-bodied, friendly voice ("What Is A Young Girl Made Of" is simply ADORABLE - especially considering it's an awful song!), every vocal on here sounds like amateurish garbage. Nasal Mike Love has never had the most beauteous voice in society, but back in '61 when his ego was only about 15 times that of a normal human being (as opposed to the quadruple digits it would soon reach), he sounded just hideous. Voice quivering everywhere, missing every high note, sounding like he'd stuffed his nose with earplugs to keep the stench of Brian's reeking B.O. from interfering with the formation of the powerful neuron connections that would one day bring "Kokomo" into the world (though when he did bass vocals, he sounded good! Go figure (skate).).
For the collector, you have the amazing chance to pick up such fantastic early non-album generic crap tracks as the Idjit-Goes-Hawaiian "Luau,", punch-drunk "Judy," surf nothing blah instrumental "Beach Boy Stomp," a capella so dull you'll wish you'd been there to stand on a ladder and unleash a stream of urine into their mouths "Lavender," "What Is A Young Girl Made Of?" (I was sure there'd be something in there about the lymph vascular system - FIE!) and "Barbie" (Angel Barbie, My Angel Barbie! It's just like Heaven when you completely steal every element of the song from another major hit single of the day).
Whew! Pardon me a moment while I rest my Play-On-Words organ.
Whew! Now pardon me a moment while I rest my Play-With-Turds organ! WHEEE!!!! (*squish squish squishy squirt!*)
To be fair with you, most of the worst songs were written by the producer people. The actual Brian Wilson-written songs on here are mostly (though not ALL) okay. Especially since a full SIX of these 16 tracks are their early singles "Surfin'" and "Surfin' Safari"! "Surfer Girl" is also on here, interestingly enough. But all of these craps was SO amateurish. Irritatingly amateurish. I know "Surfin'" was a hit, but man what a stupid song. But hey - why harmonize the chorus when you can just have five guys all slowly, surgically sing every syllable in the exact same key?
Getting back to the matter at hand, this album's pretty bad. But at least it's not all muffled and impossible to hear like the earliest Beatles recordings. This diarrhea- filled kiddy pool is Crystal Sparkling Clear!
No please, the jokes are getting ribald. The Beach Boys' sound still hasn't quite Gelled on this, their debutt album. The lead vocals are still pisspoor (I'm told that Mike Love sings most of them, and lord knows he was too busy beating the shit out of his wife to take singing lessons) and you can barely hear the music at all. At the time, the Boys played pretty rudimentary beach music anyway. Guitar had that Chuck Berry feel, but learned - not FELT, you know? It's like they don't FEEL it yet. You gotta FEEL your music. It's not about whether the songs are actually any good. You just gotta close your eyes and FEEL it. That's the only way to become a conduit for the derivative 12-bar blues rock of the Gods, like Keith Richards is.
The focus is on the great harmony vocals, but it's hard to listen past the uncomfortable lead singing to enjoy them. Mike sounds so uneasy and unpracticed, he takes what are basically nice enough little fun beach songs and turns them into an unpleasant, anxious listening experience like the kind that the Nazis used as a torture device in the Vietnam War in Korea. Still, you have to give Brian Wilson credit for writing nine original songs on their very first album! Let's all hear it for Brian! Yay, Brian! And among these are TWO classics ("Surfin' Safari" and "409," which keeps popping up in an ad on Yahoo! this week, much to my tasty delight), ONE additional hit single ("Surfin'," their one-shot song about the "surfing" fad whose success pretty much defined the band's image for all of eternity), one filler track that I for one love and find to be much more musically intriguing than the early-rock-by- numbers of the rest of the album ("Heads You Win - Tails I Lose"), two KICKASS cover tunes (the great surf instrumental "Moon Dawg" and Blue Cheer's classic "Summertime Blues" in what MUST have been the version that The Who covered at Leeds because the vocal harmonies are exactly the same and they sure as hey weren't in the Eddie Cochran version!).
But does these hits make up for the rest of the album? Does they? A miserably depressing "goodtime" song about a guy who loses his girlfriend to a stronger guy at the county fair, with her snottily calling him a "loser" in the song's fade-out? A ridiculous, darn near ASININE song about drinking root beer? A grotesque cover of Herb Alpert's Sominex jingle "Little Girl (You're My Miss America)"? A cutesy squeaky pellet of a song whose only redeeming quality is Brian Wilson falsettoing the words "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" (if you want an even more adorable song about a cuckoo, PLEASE do yourself a nicety and buy the reissue of The Monks' Black Monk Time with bonus tracks. GREAT ALBUM.)?
And there are two other songs but I'm bored about discussing them, so you're going to have to buy the album for yourself to hear "Ten Little Indians" (a hilarious "Weird Al" Yankovic-like parody of "One Little, Two Little, Three Little Cabbage Patch") and the song with the weird unnatural chord sequence that's about some piece of clothing called a "shift." Because I have NO INTENTION of talking about those in - HEY! WHO STOLE MY LIQUID PAPER (SCREEN VERSION)?
BOTTOM LINE: Nice top you got on there, honey. But I'd rather see your bottom.
BOTTOM LINE #2: Weak lead vocals and some filler still fail to completely destroy the debut Beach Boys recording album. Thank you, Nick Venet!
But you know me, I'm always thanking Nick Venet for everything.
I will now negate the above statement by not giving this album any higher than a 6, either. It's really not all that great, but such promise!
What you have to understand and forgive is that Capitol Records were even more of a bunch of slave-driving pricks 40 years ago than they are today. Because they COULD, they forced the Beach Boys to release an album every 4 or 5 months while keeping them out on tour pretty much nonstop. This not only resulted in Brian Wilson having a nervous breakdown pretty early on, but it also resulted in a whole lot of mediocre albums. When you give a guy no time at all to create his original wares, you'd better feel damned lucky when he's still able to come up with songs as unforgettable as "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Shut Down," not to mention such gorgeous "filler" tracks as "Farmer's Daughter" and "Lonely Sea" (which is more melancholy than anything Del Shannon ever did).
(Well, I mean except for that ONE thing).
The most surprising and unexpected thing about this album is that a full 5 of the 12 songs are instrumentals! Who the hell listens to the Beach Boys for instrumentals???? That's like listening to Eric Clapton for any reason at all! Moving onward, other reasons to enjoy this second official Beach Boys LP include such new additions to the Brunswick Musical Stew as saxamaphones, electric pianos, boogie woogie pianos, xylophones and fuel- injected stingrays, which zoom through the studio knocking over all the instruments every couple of minutes.
Let me address a couple of important points here. The first is that Chuck Berry sued the Beach Boys for stealing his "Sweet Little Sixteen" and turning it into "Surfin' U.S.A." This was a valid thing to do, just as it was valid for Killing Joke to sue Nirvana for turning "Eighties" into "Come As You Are." This doesn't change the fact that "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Come As You Are" are fanFRIGGINtastic classic songs with completely different moods and elemental foci than the songs that they stole their riffs from. I mean, those "Everybody's goin' surfin'!" vocal harmonies are GENIUS! You've been there! You know what I'm talkin' `bout!
The other thing I have to point out is that for many, many years, I thought the first line of "Surfin' U.S.A." was "If everybody had an ULCER across the USA.." Imagine my hilarious self-awareness when I suddenly realized they were saying "If everybody had HEMORRHAGIC PANCREATITIS." I must have felt like a real asspipe!
The third thing I wanted to mention is that whenever I sing the verse to "Shut Down" to myself, I end up turning the third and fourth lines into "But Obi-Wan set me straight of course/He said `Go to Yoda and he'll show the force," a couple of zany, off- the-wall lyrics from "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Yoda" (parody of The Kinks' "Lola.")
The fourth and final thing is that lately I keep getting the urge to answer the phone, "Cheese Whiz Jim!" Should I do that, do you think? Or will it just confuse Ari Fleischer every time he calls me up to borrow my soundproofed silver van with the really loud radio and sliding door on the side that he and George drive around when they want to take photos of teenage girls and offer them weed?
My fifth point is to state my strong belief that every prisoner on death row should be put down IMMEDIATELY. Innocent stray dogs aren't allowed ten years of appeals - so why do we give that right to human shit? I give the death penalty an 8 out of 10.
Ever hear that story about how Bruce invited the guy from nineties Beach Boys sound-a-likes The High Llamas over to talk about producing a new Beach Boys album? Bruce and Mike were at the airport to meet him. The guy has just flown over from England, lands, and gets met by Mike Love who immediately calls him a faggot.
But I love "Shut Down," I love "Lonely Sea," and I don't know what else is on this album. But I don't think you can find "Lonely Sea" anywhere else can you? That alone makes this one at least worth a 7/10.
Also I compliment you, Marky Mark, on switching over to the curly quotation marks. Didn't think we'd notice, did you, you scurvy reprobate?
Thanks for listening.
The hits on this sub-half-hour cotton sock include the very pretty ballad of whiches title is are the cover's album. And the bouncy "Shut Down" rewrite "Little Deuce Coupe." And I don't know if they were hits, but "Hawaii" and "Catch A Wave" are catchy as two young beach songs could ever possibly hope to be - almost as fantastic as "Honalei - High above the Rainbow's End" and "Catch A Booger (In Your Mouth)."
Oh my good god - I just laughed my butt off at a web site! Go look at www.blackpeopleloveus.com - hilarious!!! But make sure your butt is stapled on tight!
But about the album - the most important track on here regarding the future of the Beach Boys would have to be Side B, Track 1, entitled "In My Room." Not only does this gentle, almost darkly somber ballad feature the most hypnotizing vocal harmonies on perhaps any song they ever did - it's also a frightening foreshadowing of the schizophrenic isolation in which Brian became immersed in the early `70s. Granted, he didn't really trust his lyrical instinct and generally co-wrote with other people (Car songs? Roger Christian! Other songs? Usher! Asher! Heck, I think M.C. Escher may have co-written a couple too! Honey, can you check "Johnny Carson"? NO, not his BALLSAC, dammit! Get the hell out of that sauna!) but the moods brought forth were his - HIS. And even way back in '63, he was seeking the solace of his room because the world was asking too much of him.
And by "the world," I of course mean the soul-sucking monsters at Capitol Records. Which is why there are so many half-assed bring-me-downs like the awful boring failures of "The Surfer YAWN" and "Your Summer YAWN" and the shameless ripoffs of "South Bay SUWANEE RIVER" and "Our Car MONEY THAT'S WHAT I WANT." And another thing - the song titles suck. Who names a song "The Surfer YAWN," for crying out loud?
Take it easy,
That Guy In Memento
Oh, wait. I got one. The Beatles ripped off the concept of "In My Room" when they wrote "There's A Place," but no one ever says anything because they're the fuckin' Beatles and we love the fuckin' Beatles even though sometimes they ripped stuff off. Like the Beach Boys song, "In My Room." Which is on Surfer Girl.
As for "Surfer Girl"? Eh...not as hilarious.
As such, three out of the six great songs you'll find on here are songs that you likely already own - "Little Deuce Coupe," "409" and "Shut Down (Turn Off, the b-side of The Little River Band's "Lonesome Loser" Single)." The other three are worth owning, but at what cost? At what cost, I beg of you?
The answer is five billion dollars. For "No-Go Showboat" alone. Anybody who doesn't like that song has the evil of a thousand demons coursing through their very soul. As for the bad songs, they're bad. And bad for the Beach Boys means bland Four Freshman-style slow nothing ballads and "rockin' rollers" that sound identical to previously recorded Beach Boys songs, but with one chord changed.
I hereby declare today Warm Voices Rearranged day. My friends Gregg Turkington and Brandan Kearney have written a book of Anagram Record Reviews and I demand that you go out and purchase it right now. It's funny, it's cheap (at MOST, 12 dollars) and Gregg was kind enough to do one for me PERSONALLY! It's not in the book, but it's GOOD! Go see the "Mark Prindle" review page and look for Gregg's "review" of Only The Good Die Young -- consider it a free sample of the kind of genius you'll find in Warm Voices Rearranged by Gergg Turkkinggville and Brenda Karter. (btw, "Warm Voices Rearranged" is an anagram of "Anagram Record Reviews" - SEE??!??!?!! THEY'RE GOOD!!!! THEY KNOW WHAT "TIME" IT IS!!! OR SHOULD I SAY WHAT "EMIT" IT IS!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAH!!!1 HAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAH!!!! AHAHHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH
Is my intestine supposed to go all the way down my pant leg like that?
I think a really interesting moment is the liner notes on the extra "Pet Sounds" LP issued with "Carl and the Passions" where they say the album is issued in mono "just like Brian originally mixed it." Of course he had to mix in mono; stereo doesn't work unless you've got both ears! But the pathetic thing is the way that note sounds like Brian's dead already.
But back to the subject of today's lecture: Black Holes. A black hole is an area of strong gravitational force created by a champagne supernova in the sky. Likewise, The Beach Boys album mentioned above has a lot of Brian's false(teeth)tto and lots of songs where the words come out of one speaker and the music comes out of the other, which I find fairly amusing since Brian Wilson can only hear out of one ear. "What happened to the music?," I'm certain he says to himself every time he listens to it. "Aw jeez, I. Oh God, I'll never be as good as Paul McCartney," he likely continues. "WHY AM I SUCH A FAILURE??? I TRY SO HARD BUT IT OH GOD STOP TORMENTING ME!" he continues. And, regardless of my seemingly lackadaisical attitude, I'm not mocking him or his disease. He has paranoid schizophrenia, you understand. That's a very, very bad thing to have. But more about that later!
There is no real advancement per se on this album, but it DOES contain the greatest early Beach Boys song ever, objectively speaking - "Fun, Fun, Fun," which influenced not only the completely non-classic Ramones song "A Real Cool Time," but also the amazingly shitty song "I Wanna Puke" by a young, crappy Mark Prindle (see, that "good" song ends with the "hilar"iou"s" line, "And we'll have fun fun fun til I vomit in my Dad's Chevrolet!"). Likewise, this album includes two of their best-ever ballads, "Don't Worry Baby" and "The Warmth Of The Sun." And those harmony vocals hit mesmerizing highs on the incredibly spiteful Ray Davies-style character assassination "Pom Pom Play Girl."
But the bad stuff is as quarter-assed as ever: I know he was a cute young man and all, but there was NEVER any indication that Dennis Wilson was good enough to deserve a DRUM solo. It's just a straight unaccompanied surf beat for two minutes! "This Car Of Mine" is nuthin' but a basic magaysic, "Keep An Eye On Summer" seems to me a rather extraneous ballad compared to the other two and Oh Dear Christ On A Television, the spoken word piece "'Cassius' Love Vs. `Sonny' Wilson" did not need to be released. The joke (such as it is) involves Brian Wilson making fun of Mike Love's nasally voice, and Mike making fun of Brian's falsetto. Somehow, I imagine the real-life Mike Love being a bit more mean-spirited than "At least I don't sound like Mickey Mouse with a cold!" - more along the lines of "Brian, you fucking insane prick - what the fuck are you trying to do, destroy our careers? Stop dating that fucking spade, stop writing your fucking ego music and come up with some fucking hits, you mental incompetent."
You see, I believe everything I read, and that factionally questionable bio Heroes And Villains told me that Mike is a foul-tempered, wife- beating, money-grubbing racist who verbally berated Brian during the most difficult period of the young man's life. And if a questionable bio says it's true, hey who am I to question authority - and let's face it, Mike Love DOES look like a bastard. Look at the guy! He's bald! Name me ONE bald person who doesn't deserve to be buried alive out in the desert.
See? It can't be done!
Oh, also I love this album. Because of something else I disagree with you on, Marky Poo. (May I call you Marky Poo? Thanks.) And that's that there's MAJOR advancement here: Brian's Phil Spector influence really comes into its own on "Don't Worry Baby" (which Brian wrote for the Ronettes, incidentally, before Phil rejected it), which also uses the Gold Star Studios house musicians. Same is true, though to a lesser extent, on "Pom Pom Play Girl."
Also, somebody please explain to me how "Warmth of the Sun" is a tribute to JFK (which Brian said it was).
Also also, my dad is bald. You insensitive prick.
The amazing harmonies continue! And each member has his own personal liner notes on the back, giving a special sneak peek into their unique personalities. The "burn the candle at both ends" party boy Dennis Wilson talks about his "fast life of driving my Sting Ray and XKE" (like a one-man Dead Man's Curve!); early egotist Brian Wilson brags about his inspirations and ideas and about how "the fellas have worked so well with me"; brand new member Al Jardine discusses "tranquilizers before every meal" (???), Carl Wilson just thanks everybody in the world and Mike "No Glove No" Love sounds a heck of a lot nicer than everybody always says he is! But none of this has anything to do with handbags or music. And you KNOW that. I'm not fooling anybody. I'm just stalling so I don't have to talk about the songs. But you know what critically despised, untalented musicians always say: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." So I'll write a ballet about designing a building - how goddamned hard is that, you pricks???
But "Itchload" might get bored if I go too long without talking about music, so I'd better get to the album now. Lord knows I don't want "Itchload" to get mad at me! Prick.
Classics include "I Get Around" with its weird, stop-start, drumless distorted guitar riff that somehow gets called "a gem of pop music" by people who I guess don't notice the weird, stop-start, drumless distorted guitar riff. Great song! But certainly not a "normal pop song" by any stretch of the Armstrong. Further classics include "Little Honda" - a song about a scooter later covered by Yo La Tengo! That's Spanish for "I Have It"! Well, I had the pleasure of seeing that very band play a live concert way back in '93-'94 and let me tell you something - if "It" means "anything positive at all," then they need to brush up on their Spanish! Further classics include "Wendy," a kind of half-ballad, half-pop rocker thing that I personally don't like all that much but the Descendents did! They covered it! And how about "Hushabye"? That great `50s -style doowop lullaby was so beautiful, the Beach Boys covered it on their All Summer Long LP! Eh?
Look, all these albums sound the same. They weren't even really "albums" in the sense that you and I know them. They were singles and filler, singles and filler - that was all they were meant to be. UNTIL! (very shortly) UNTIL!
I will now describe how each song sounds, for the benefit of absolutely nobody since people who own it already know what they sound like and people who don't own it will have no idea what I'm talking about. The intro to "Wendy" sounds just like The Ventures and nobody cares. "Do You Remember?" is a rewrite of "Little Honda" with the stupidest nostalgic lyrics since Ryan Adams' "The Summer of `69ing Old People" and you'd have to be autistic to give a flying friggidydoo. "Carl's Big Chance" is the theme to Sesame Street and this information will save lives. "We'll Run Away" is a bouncy waltzy 50sy ballad, and I'm the first person in the world to ever notice. The title track is bouncy with great harmonies, which is a really helpful description, don't you think? "Girls On The Beach" is identical to "Surfer Girl" except, where "Surfer Girl" is great, "Girls On The Beach" is a piece of shit. Otherwise, the songs are note-by-note identical. "Don't Back Down" is an oddball surf song that I don't like but am afraid to say I don't like because I know somebody will send in a reader comment saying, "Didn't you notice how creative the song construction is?" Why yes, I did. And I thought, "My, what creative construction he used in piecing together this song with the shitty, emotionless melody." "Drive-In" is a hoot of a bouncy surf number highlighted by the most poorly overdubbed lead vocal since Moses overdubbed the fourth commandment after flubbing a line in the original version of The Bible.
But none of these songs mean shim compared to the REAL highlight of the album, and the reason that it has been revered by fans worldnation for weeks today - "Our Favorite Recording Sessions." It's a collection of "hilarious" bloopers that are about as funny as oh I don't know. Hell, a pink guy.
I'd also like to point out that the Beach Boys were not the first to do "Little Honda," though it is a Wilson-Love song. It was originally done by the most clever Beach-Boys impersonators ever, a one-off called the Hondells. For a Honda commercial. And their version kicks the Beach Boys' version's ass.
Also whoever did "Hushabye." Seems as though if the Beach Boys didn't do it first, they didn't do it best. Even when they wrote it. "Wendy," however, may have been the most perfect song they ever did, and I still almost cry when it gets to the "ooooh" part under Mike's lead vocal. Man that's gorgeous.
And somehow I like "Our Favorite Recording Sessions." Why?
Peterbilt!
Kenworth!
Peterbilt!
Kenworth!
There is not a single Mack on this album. Every single track is a Peterbilt or a Kenworth. And the mood of the performance can best be summed up in the title of the first song - "FUN FUN FUN!" I find this convenient, for I couldn't have written such a clever sentence if the first song had been "Little Deuce Coupe." That phrase doesn't sum up anything. Had they chosen to package the album inside a car, perhaps it would have been a different story. But as it is, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the first song, like the rest of the album, is "FUN FUN FUB!"
Now let me expand on the Peterbilt/Kenworth argument by actually making any sense to anyone besides myself and Mark Springsteen, who lived down the road from me when I was a kid and taught me how cool Peterbilts and Kenworths were, and how much Macks sucked cock.:
Point A (Exhibit A): How much could you dislike ANY album that features "Fun Fun Fun," "Little Deuce Coupe," "In My Room," "Hawaii" and "I Get Around"?
(Gross!) Point B(lanky Steve has a booger!): Mike Love sounds friendly! And gives some of the most entertaining vocal performances of his life in his portrayal of a bunch of insane, confused Texans ("Long, Tall Texan") and a partying, growling Igor ("Monster Mash").
Point C: Kooky stage patter! They make the crowd "yell summ'm" before Carl kicks ass on "Let's Go Trippin'!" They joke about graduating "grade school, middle school and hair school - I MEAN! High school!" (a joke that makes no sense at all, quite frankly, but what do you expect from five guys that high on crystal meth). Dennis destroys the sanctity of The Four Freshmen's "Graduation Day" by shouting "DAY!" at the end before the other guys come in for the harmony. They even present an instrument-by-instrument introduction to "Little Deuce Coupe," revealing that Al Jardine's guitar is completely silent in the mix!
Point D: They pay tribute to their favorite bands! Not just the Four Fleischman, but Chuck Berry (a speedy honky version of "Johnny B. Goode"), The Rivingtons (the hilarious, unforgivably catchy "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow") and Jan & Dean ("The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" is as great as any Beach Boys song - what a great tune!).
And finally Point A: Every member gets a vocal solo! Dennis does "The Wanderer"! Brian does "In My Room"! Al doesn't do one and neither does Carl!
I admit that last argument wasn't as strong as the others.
Besides, Brian is like a supernova all over this album of mouldy oldies. Hey, did you hear that Beatles live album from 1964? ( okay, so there wasn't one, but lets imagine.... ) Sounded like a girl screaming for thirty minutes. I'd still give it a four out of ten though, because you know, Ringo has a big nose, and it IS the Beatles! Certified five star artists and incapable of breathing without being acclaimed as genius...... Jesus Christ, no wonder Brian went loopy. Oh right, his father. Mike Love. Eating shit off a plate! I get you!!
You know the initial reaction amongst American musicians when The Beatles debuted nationwide on TV with 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand'? The teenage girls were delirious in delight, but others couldn't understand what the hell was going on.
PS. I like Mike Love. Especially his poems. That's not funny, is it?
Let me bring an end to another wrong clich‚. Nothing rhymes with "orange"! Yes it does. "Porridge" rhymes with "orange." So does "storage." But they don't have N's!!!! So fuckin what, they don't have n's? Does "fame" rhyme with "vain"? Fine, go tell Ray Davies that "Celluloid Heroes" doesn't rhyme because "fame" doesn't have an "n." Does "been" rhyme with "dream"? Fine, go tell Paul McCartney that "Eleanor Rigby" doesn't rhyme because "dream" doesn't have an `n." "Porridge" and "storage" rhyme THE FUCK out of "orange" and if anybody ever tries to tell you different, belittle them and act really superior. And if it's your school teacher, call her a "monkey" and ask her, "Who wrote your lesson plan? A FOUR-year-old?"
Still and all, "Little Saint Nick" does make the oldies station, and it is the best one on here anyway. Whoever says it's not is lying.
9/10 at least.
Door Hinge
But on to Brian Wilson's old band The Beastie Boys and their 1965 CD Today!. This was the first record Brian put together after having a nervous breakdown on a plane on tour and telling the boys that he wasn't going to tour anymore because he wanted to devote all his time to songwriting and album production. It was a brilliant move that made their albums gooder automatically.
Brian was really hot on famous producer Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production style so he STOLE the crap out of it to give this album a really neat, thick, orchestral sound. If you're unfamiliar with Phil Spector's "Wall of Voodoo," let me susplain it a bit. What Phil did was record like eight billion tracks of piano, horns, guitars, organs, drums and strings, put heavy reverb on them so it sounds like they're all being played in a really big room, then cram them altogether in the mix so that you get really clear lead vocals backed by a throbbing symphonic muffled ball of cotton playing chords and notes, with an occasional bright instrument like a high-pitched lead guitar or harpsichord rising above the din. It's a really neat effect that even works on The Ramones' End Of The Century, even though nobody likes that album but me. So that's the kind of sound Brian gets here.
Most of the songs are great too, even if the first few all seem to have awfully similar vocal melodies. Tune in today for some great surf guitar ("Dance Dance Dance"!), a lot of terrific piano pop with occasional girl group influences ("Don't Hurt My Little Sister"!), the same swell vocal harmonies as always (all of them!) and two of the greatest Beach Boys compositions of all time -- the haunting ballad "Kiss Me Baby" and an early, experimental run-through of the soon-to- be-legendary-and-for-damn-good-reason angst rocker "Help Me Rhonda."
The only "ingredients" in this "tasty brew" that don't "tempt my palate" are a couple "dishes" of uninnovative `50s doowop balladry and "Bull Session With The `Big Daddy'," a two- minute "bowl of intenstinal bile with a spoon in it" in which nothing happens AT ALL. The guys chit-chat about getting some fast food, answer maybe one interview question and then get faded out. Question: WHY????????
Question 2: What did Mike Love like to chew on before gigs?
Answer to both: Brian's Nuts!
Then there's Al Jardine, Gock Rod. Al's voice is a little higher and saltier than Mike's, but still sounds killer on the re-gendered Crystals classic "Then I Kissed Her" and especially the hit single version of "Help Me Rhonda," which should be playing on every stereo in America right now because it's such a great song. "She was gonna be my bride and I was gonna be her man/But she let another guy come between us and it shattered my plans." You feel the pain, right? I do! "Baw baw baw baw!"
And don't forget to purchase a ticket to ride over to Carl Wilson's very first lead vocal (or so it says in the liner notes here) "Girl Don't Tell Me." And I have to second the emotion expressed in these very same liner notes that it's amazing that he never sang lead before because he has a great voice. Kind of a cross between Mike's normal guy toddle-oo and Brian's falsetto. Or rather, like a fatter version of Brian, slightly lower in pitch, as if more food is in the tummy. Sounds great! I'm trying very hard to learn the difference between these guys' voices and I recommend that you do the same because chances are good that when you meet St. Peter (Penis) at the Pearly (Semen-Drenched) Gates, he'll say you can't get into Heaven if you can't identify the lead vocalist of "Summer Means New Love."
But don't let that holier-than-thou prick fool you - "Summer Means New Love" HAS no lead vocalist!!!! It's instrumental! Up YOURS, Guy In The Bible! Which reminds me of a hilarious Emo Phillips joke. "What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs at night?"
A horse! It has four legs in the morning, then you whack off two of its legs in the afternoon, then you glue one back on at night." HAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
But back to the vocalists. You'd be a goof to forget about Brian Wilson's falsetto, a fancy musical term meaning that he's singing really high notes but "falsely." Or rather he's singing at an octave much higher than his normal voice would reach on a cloudy day. I'll be blunt - he's singing like a GIRL. Like Frankie Valli or Lou Christie. And just like those two fine minstrels, Brian's falsetto can start to sound really whiny and irritating after a while. Not on "Let Him Run Wild" though! But then I suppose it would be pretty hard to ruin a pop song as beautiful as "Let Him Run Wild" (which would have fit in PERFECTLY on the soon-to-be-discussed Pet Sounds). And don't even get me BEGUN on the cheery "You're So Good To Me," which he sings mostly in his normal voice until the woman inside bursts out for the complete Four Seasons ripoff chorus.
Dennis has a voice too, but not on this album. Look for his voice elsewhere.
Musically, this album hits all the same high poppy, sad, surfin', doowoppy, soulful notes as Today!, but produced much more cleanly and less Wall of Soundy. Same great mix of rock and orchestral instruments too. The only mistake is "I'm Bugged At My Old Man." You can tell by the lyrics that it's supposed to be a joke, but - see - three members of this band, including the author of this track, had an incredibly abusive father. So it's somehow not funny to hear Brian's quivering, uncomfortable lead vocal tell "jokes" about his father locking him in his room and ripping the phone out of the wall. The "response" doowop vocals sound just as uncertain, as if the boys fear Murry could burst into the room at any time to bash them all deaf in one ear like he did to Brian. This song should have been left in the quickly sickening brain that thought it up. The rest of the album is GREAT though! And you can find it on a CD alongside Today!!!! A "two-fer"!!!
Man, I loved that funny little "two-fer" in Caddyshack. "Hey!" said Rodney Dangerfield. "That kangaroo stole my ball!"
Jesus, that didn't even approach making any sense.
Of course "California Girls" remains the centerpiece of the album (why don't you mention that one?), despite how much is crammed into it. I loved that song when I was about six, hated it when I was twelve because I'd loved it so much at six, then loved it again when I heard how dense the arrangement was.
And yet, "Help Me Rhonda" is the real best one on this album, and possibly my favorite Beach Boys song of all time. Certainly the one with the best, biggest, most cool production, begging the question: "Less Wall of Soundy? What the Hell are you talking about?" Of course I haven't heard Today! all the way through, so no more talking.
10.
Ok, thanks for that incoherent rant. Back to more of your reviews of albums I've otherwise never heard more than the lead single of in my life.
That wasn't nice. But neither are those JERKS who think it's funny to make fun of Bob Dylan's lyrics as Jardine the Sardine tries to present an earnest, respectful reading to "The Times They Are A-Changin'." And if you think THAT's not irritating, try listening to a seemingly stoned off his drunk mind Brian Wilson singing unhilarious parodies of his own "I Get Around" and "Little Deuce Coupe" (which, just incidentally, isn't anywhere near as funny as my OWN parody, "Little Brown Poope"). And "Hully Gully," being a song that sucks, sucks. But all the others are great, and what's really cool is that the CD is TIMELESS. Go into any inner-city ghetto at about 11:30 at night, stand on the corner and just count how many cars drive by with The Beach Boys' Party blaring out the window. If any car ISN'T playing it, yell at them "KKK Forever!" because that's code for "Kan, kan, kan you please play that Beach Boys' Party album forever, please kind sir?" Then you guys can hang out together.
Thank you. This has been an excercise in futility and pointless bickering. Send 5 dollars for the full course on videotapes.
Ha! How long has the world ached for such lively ear humor?
The problem with my listening manner is that this album is NOT a children's album. It is far too sophisticated, mature and - yes, I'll say it and you can argue if you'd like - EZ LISTENING for the younger version of me to get much out of. This is NOT the peppy, surfy Beach Boys from a year earlier. This is easy listening music - slow, orchestral, mellow and, as Brian himself will admit, mostly built upon a songwriting approach that has more in common with Burt Bacharach than the Beatles.
But there are a couple of aspects of the album that FINALLY made me realize what a wonder of nature it really is, in spite of my obstinate, argumentative, drunken, belligerent, publicly urinary attitude towards it. The first is that many of the songs feature some of the craziest and most difficult to pin down chord changes I've ever heard. The second is that every song seems like it's been stainpakingly built second-by- second in the studio for maximum instrumental impact, meaning that it almost sounds as if Brian recorded the guitars, bass and drums, then went through the tape second-by- second shouting, "Okay, three seconds of tympani. THERE! Now bring in the bells THERE! Have the mandolins come in in the background right THERE! Latin percussion? Wait.. Wait.. THERE!"
And the entire record is like this, smoothed over and coated with such glistening unexpected stringed instruments as harpsichords, tympani, clarinets, barinet saxophones, both string and electric bass in the same songs, vibraphones, violins, violas, cellos, bongos, ukuleles, flutes, English horns, Glen Campbell waving his penis in the air 90 miles an hour making a "hoooooo!" noise, tenor saxophones, bass clarinets, trumpets, glockenspiels, accordions, French horns, organs, harmonicas, theremins and something called a `piano,' which I'm pretty sure is one of these things with all the keys - oh, what do you call it, one of those - ah yes! A keychain.
All thirteen of these songs (fourteen if you count the one printed on the label that goes "KIHHHHHH!") sound as if an incredible amount of thought and work went into both the composition and production, and to be honest, it's not at all difficult to picture its composer going insane from too many hours of intense concentration and self- imposed pressure. If you're emotionally unbalanced to begin with, you CAN'T single- handedly construct an album this creatively rich and unbelievably SMART without putting far more strain on your brain than you are likely to be able to handle. Brian survived, please understand, but not when he tried to repeat the feat a year later. NOT THEN! (*scary foreshadowing music pounds out of your computer speakers, runs into your bedroom, memorizes your credit card number and jumps back in the speakers to buy stuff on ebay*).
Hit singles include "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (with its famous completely out-of-tune intro played on what I can only guess is a mandolin), "God Only Knows" and "Sloop John B" (all of which RULE!). Other tunes that you may have heard of even if you haven't heard them include "I Know There's An Answer," "Caroline No" and "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times." Lyrically, the whole piece reeks of really, really strong emotions like youthful longing, unconditional love, shame, fear, romance, existential confusion and sorrow about every child's inevitable loss of innocence. These feelings are musically supported by.errr. ballad after ballad after ballad after ballad.
But they're GREAT ballads! Not at all simple or predictable. Very intelligent, complicated songwriting (except for that damned three-note descending vocal hook that you'll find in about 75% of these songs as well as at the end of each verse in Weezer's "Buddy Holly"). But you CAN'T go in to your first listen with high expectations that you're going to hear some incredible heavenly album the likes of which you haven't heard before. Because, at least in my case, you'll wonder how an album with exactly ONE different mood and song styling has managed to make so many critics' Top Albums lists over the years. Pet Sounds has a genius that completely crept up on me slowly as I got older and learned more about what goes into putting a decent song together. And, speaking as a person who has written hundreds and hundreds of songs in my day (mostly hit singles for other bands - are you familiar with Patrick Hernandez's "Born To Be Alive"? Me too! Man, I wish I'd written that one.), I'm telling you that this is not an album that your ordinary everyday shlub (Linkin Park, Van Dyke Parks, Parker Posey) could have created. It's neat. And you notice more and more with each listen.
How could you not? All the songs are so darn SLOW, you'd have to be DEAD not to notice something new with each listen!
Signed,
Bill Idjerint
Which reminds me - there is a reporter at the New York Times named "Nat Ives." What kind of parents would name a child "Nat Ives"? Read the name to yourself a few times if you don't immediately catch what I'm talking about.
Despite the fact that this is some big deal, this massively innovative and influential album that everyone else in the world has spent 35 years building on the features of, what really amazes me at long last is that this is still, after four decades, as idiosyncratic as any album gets, including Freak Out!. People may have been inspired by the things Brian did on Pet Sounds, but no one was ever able to full-on copy what he did. I'm not really sure they ever even tried. I mean, personal songs, weird production technique, and complex melodies aside, listen to the arrangements alone: the basslines that sound like someone plucking rubber bands, and the harpsichord vamps, and the one-note organ lines, and the Hawaiian-sounding guitars, and the bass harmonica in "I Know There's An Answer," and the fact that the horns have harmony arrangements that sound like vocal arrangements, all mixed down together in mono with the Phil Spector small- nation's-worth-of-percussion....man, what a quirky piece of music, really! But it's damn near perfect, too, and oh so completely fantastic. Completely deserving of every accolade it gets.
2) This is the album that changed the direction of my life. As a classical performer my career was founded on pooh-pooing anything "popular", as all my colleagues do/did, then someone furtively played me Brian's 1995 "I just wasn't made for these times" disc and I totally and completely went for it. It wasn't long before I was on to Pet Sounds and I am here to tell you that apart from "I'm Waiting For the Day" and "Sloop Jon B" (which doesn't belong here) it's the best written and best performed song cycle in the history of music. The title track and all the stuff near the end (particularly I wasn't made and Caroline, no) are just mind-bendingly well put together. It all makes me sway gently inside.
All the other albums have one really great song you could take away and make a great compilation with. This needs two taking away to be perfect.
But when I started listening to Pet Sounds, I found the melodies insinuating themselves into my consciousness. They won't leave. They've even crowded out Coltrane, and God Only Knows how much I love Coltrane. There's just not much not to like about Pet Sounds.
Incidentally, I have also heard the Pet Sounds Sessions box set... very interesting and worth a listen for sure for Pet Sounds fans.
(a couple weeks later)
Oh jeez, I(matthewbyrd@hotmail.com, I hope I signed in right) had to comment again (jcb2533@homtail.com is me too), this album is the best! Bloody, bloody brilliant! I'm not even British and I'm saying that! I just read the Pitchfork magazine review of the Pet Sounds reissue......... and I actually think I'm pissed off! That damn reviewer missed every point possible! I think I hate pitchfork, I'm not even going to capitalize their name, bastards.
The thing aboot this album that really sticks in the craw is the fact that a good number of the tracks on here really sound like something from a particularly tourist-esque James Bond movie, complete with commentary from Mr. Albert Broccoli himself. Neat-o. Highlights include the four hits, "You Still Believe in Me" nasal football player extravaganza "I'm Waiting for the Day," lost Mary Poppins classic "I Know There's an Answer", cute lil' hit of mine "Here Today" and my ass.
Y'know, one often wonders in this world if one should just join the rugby team, gain ninety pounds of muscle and forget all this "bein' smart" crap. Sure, everyone goes to you for the math answers and the differential equation glory, but do you have second-degree burns on your johnson? DO YOU HAVE SECOND-DEGREE BURNS ON YOUR JOHNSON!!?!!&&$# NO!! NOT SO MUCH AS AN ABRASION!!! AND GOD--DAMN! IF THAT AIN'T THE ASSFREGGGGIN' MEANIN' OF LIFE until the days of office space and general depressing comedy by the makers of Beavis and Oh wait, the Beach Boys~? Yeah, that's exactly what Brian Wilson was thinkin' at the time when he wrote Pet Sounds, that fine foxy insane man, him. Thank God I wasn't drunk when I wrote this. Otherwise, we'd be talking about the actual "Mr." Johnson from Sesame Street.
FUCK. . . my HEARTBORKEN. . . EMOTIONS. But God bless the Beach Boys. They dull about 6.8% of the pain. 9.5 and don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow's shot down in flames. Yesterday's literally gone, yesterday's literally gone. . . (It's 12:15 over here.)
But let us not dwell on what might have been. Instead let's shake our heads in pity at these bits and pieces of unfinished work all haphazardly stuck together in a drugged-up insane haze. Gone are the billion instruments of Pet Sounds, replaced by the scary organ and tinkling noises of "Wind Chimes," the bass, jug drum and moronic tape speed manipulation of "She's Goin' Bald," the piano and stupid giggly voices of "Little Pad," the simple organ chords and rhythmic tapping of "With Me Tonight," the loud distorted goofball children's keyboard, tappy noises and atrocious vocals of "Gettin' Hungry," the minimal organ drone of "Wonderful" and the piano tapping of "Whistle In." These are extremely EMPTY songs musically speaking, which makes the excellent harmony/overlapping vocals sound all the more impressive. If you like them Beach Boys harmonies, you'll probably be able to enjoy a good deal of Smiley Smile.
Two final important notes. (A) When I was a kid, I had a dog named Smiley. He hacked and coughed a lot, much as I'm sure the Beach Boys did while taking bong hits during the production of this album. (B) I grew up loathing the song "Good Vibrations." And why? Because I fucking DESPISE Sunkist Orange Beverage! Those goddamned commercials made me associate one with the other, so I grew up malfunctional, believing that Brian Wilson's genius piece of psychedelia was about a bunch of assholes diving off of cliffs and drinking shittyass orange cola. It took forty-five years of electroshock therapy and fourteen lobotomies before I finally realized how incredible the tune is. How's about that theremin, you people who've heard the song? How's about I don't even bother to describe how the song goes, you people who haven't heard the song?
Speaking of bad cola, I haven't touched Mountain Dew since that hot muggy summer day when I drank a can, got onto a tire swing, spun around in a circle for about 10 minutes and vomited all over the place. Granted, this took place on the grounds of the church where my mother used to work, so it's possible that my body was simply reacting to the abhorrent presence of Jesus Christ.
I can't drink grape juice or eat white chocolate either, again due to childhood vomiting instances. Whiskey and Screwdrivers are also out. See, it's just really hard to eat or drink something after you've tasted it on the way UP. Because after that point, it just tastes like VOMIT to you!
At least, that's how I live my life. I'm dreading the day that I puke up a bunch of oxygen.
Which is why I'm slicing these GILLS into my sides as we speak! Do fish bleed this much at first too?
And can I just say, I can't stop loving "She's Goin' Bald"?
(seven months later)
Okay, I'm home from the internment camp, so let me continue. I'm sick. It's a sinus thing. My SINUS is being a big MINUS and oozing an endless stream of bloody mucus down my nose and throat. Luckily, it's the Thanksgiving Holiday, so I don't have the "misfortune" of having to take a few days off work. CONVENIENTLY, I got sick over a four-day weekend. Thank "goodness." But the space between my upper lip and my nose is completely dried out due to my constant wipings with ass wipe material (there are those who say I should be using Kleenex to wipe my nose, but I figure if a handful of live fire ants is good enough for my ass...). Even worse (by "Weird Al" Yankovic), I'm listening to all these albums I bought in Australia and unfortunately associating them brainwise with being sick. Hawkwind and Sparks especially - both great bands (except for Sparks' later - and shitty - material), but I'll probably never want to hear them again because I know they're just going to remind me of swallowing gallons and gallons of snot.
There are those who say I should be drinking orange juice instead of snot, but I figure "Fight Fire with Fire" (by Alternativica). Now that I've gotten us back onto the topic of music and misery, I'd like to speak a bit about The Beach Boy's Wild Honey. So let me turn on my new advanced "Voice Input" technology and free my hands for other things like knitting a cardigan.
This album sounds like muffin the be no not muffin muffin delete go back delete fuck no thing no thing the Beach Boys have ever nun bun fuck how do you delete erase done before.
It has an especially bass-heavy mix under which are buried a bunch of excited Carl Wilson shouted vocals and loosely harmonized backup voices. They've NEVER used a vocal approach this unpracticed before, but it sounds great with this music, which is the OTHER reason this sounds like nothing they've ever done. It's a bunch of groovy sustained piano lines! It's been said that this was meant to be a "soul" album, and you can see that in some of the songs, but it's definitely more along the lines of Lovin' Spoonful white person piano pop, with slight Stevie Wonder aspirations indicated by the occasional horn line. Very upbeat, happy and totally enjoyable. Just a bunch of really solid melodic pop songs with very little of the experimentation that drove Brian out of his patootie the previous year. It's too bad his brain was too damaged to say, "Hey! I can make a really good album without overworking myself to exhaustion! Maybe I DON'T need to lock myself in the bedroom with a stack of drugs and pornography for four years!"
Supposedly, this album is supposedly supposed to create a mood of peace and tranquility, but that's certainly not what I get out of it! "Meant For You" lures you into the insane cult and the rest of the album is a spooky ride through the insanity of late-60s hippie hell. First you try to keep your brain from exploding as the title track's chorus features five voices rising higher, higher, higher until you manically scrape bloody lines into your own face. Then "Wake The World" brings in LSD-addled Brian Wilson alternating a catchy tuba chorus with a REALLY creepy "mesmerizing" Sesame Street-for-pedophiles piano verse. "Be Here In The Morning" continues the insanity with an out-of-control falsetto vocal, screwball chord changes, a klunky waltz beat and loony vocal effects in the chorus, which revolves around a moronic shout of "Ah-ah!" and about five million voices harmonizing one word together. And it continues like this for the next 20 minutes. Maybe I'm just more paranoid than most, but the whole fucking album makes me want to lock my doors and never go outside again!
This is NOT peaceful music - it's corruption and schizophrenia masquerading as peaceful music. Regardless of Mike Love's Transcendental Meditation b.s., everybody in the world knows the guy is completely incapable of handling his temper. You can almost imagine him strangling a prostitute with a wire hanger as he sings the frighteningly cultish ode to "Anna Lee, The Healer" (unless that's Al Jardine - in which case replace "strangling" with "giggling and lightly poking at). Not to mention -- if this was supposed to be a "peaceful" album, why do all the vocal harmonies sound like they're pulled from a psychopathic horror movie? Oh! That's right. The chief songwriter was in the grips of paranoid schizophrenia.
Musically, you'll find very soft, odd piano mush without a hard edge to be found. But the hippyish weirdo attempts at gentleness end up sounding like Charles Manson after they're filtered through Brian's sick mind. Also, there's lots of horns and violins and things.
And it has Dennis Wilson's first two songs! And they're GREAT! His voice sounds more mature than the others. Unlike the wavery Carl, falsettoed Brian, scraggly Al and whatever Mike, Dennis sounds like an adult. An adult who can write some really fan-frigging-tastic songs with awesomely dramatic chord changes. Try to tell me "Be Still" doesn't sound EXACTLY like the stuff Pink Floyd was doing on More and around there. TRY IT!
(Did you try it? I stopped paying attention for a second there.)
To be honest, I only find ONE of these songs peaceful - Brian's bossa nova (or so I'm told) "Busy Doin' Nothin'," which honestly DOES sound like an overstressed man cheering himself up. Happy, groovy acoustic guitar picking and strumming, along with some kickbutt oboes or something. But that's IT. If you're looking to "feel good," don't buy this one, for Christ's sake. There are some amazing songs on here, but what makes them amazing is how SICK and WRONG they are - the most famous example of course being "Transcendental Meditation," an upbeat rocker with a disturbing dissonant break and nervous yelp between each eerily harmonized verse. Why on earth is the ONLY rocking song on the album called "Transcendental Meditation"????
You know, it's amazing how many questions in life you can answer with the phrase "Brian Wilson's schizophrenia."
Like this one - What is the first song on Brian Wilson's copy of Sonic Youth's Sister album?
SEE WHAT I MEAN?!?!?!? I MEAN, I TOTALLY JUST PULLED THAT QUESTION OUT OF A HAT!!!! IT COULD HAVE BEEN ANYTHING!!!
Aw, and I like "Meant for You!" AND "Be Still!" You're a harsh mistress, Prindle. But you are right about "Busy Doin' Nothin" being very nice (that was what you were saying, right?), and most especially about Dennis Wilson, who developed into one HELL of a songwriter. I miss him.
But, still, I can't help but wonder if your opinion is biased too much by your knowledge of the band's personal history. More objectively speaking, one could look at it as the band's attempt to deny reality (which is why the turbulent hippie generation rejected the album at the time -- the sentiments expressed were "irrelevant."). But I prefer it to think of it as the Beach Boys sincerely trying to find some peace and tranquility in the middle of all the chaos surrounding them (or, in Brian's case, inside him). In that sense, the album has grown considerably on me over time, because that's a feeling that everyone can relate to. That the Beach Boys were still trying to express optimism in the midst of turmoil was admirable. Even if the attempt failed, that doesn't invalidate Friends as one of the more sincere artistic attempts from the group.
That's why Stack-O-Tracks comes as such a godsend. It's the original Beach Boys backing tracks of 15 different great songs! So not only do you get the chance to pretend you're all five of the Beach Boys (six if you count Bruce Johnston, and seven if you count David Marks) singing in harmony with yourself, but if your mouth is on the fritz (cavity) one day, you can just sit back and revel in all the really neat things that Brian put in the mixes that you'd never noticed before because of all those voices clogging up the Expressway To Your (h)Ear(t). And you'll do this - "!!!!!!!"
However, let me add that this is only a great listening experience for people who know these songs already. And I don't just mean the classics either. The album also has stuff like "Darlin'," "Salt Lake City" and "Catch A Wave" that you're gonna want to sing along with and not just stand around going, "Gee. Strumming." Because the vocal melodies are spectacular! You know, when you just look at all of Brian Wilson's best songs, like "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "In My Room" and "Our Favorite Recording Sessions," it's really hard to NOT agree that the guy was some kind of genius. The stuff he came up with was so SMART - and CATCHY! And I don't throw the term "genius" around loosely.
(Note to self: Remove "List of Fifty Billion Geniuses" from web site before posting this review).
(Except Pam Dawber. Leave her.)
Brian (Wilson) is fading out of the picture fast, only co-writing FIVE of these 12 songs. His slack is picked up by his brother Dennis, who wrote three songs on here, two of which are just GREAT and along the same lines as the ones he wrote for Friends. Actually, one of them is a Charles Manson song, I'm led to believe. Dennis was kind of being stalked by the Manson Family at this time (seriously - this part isn't a joke). Rumor has it that he enjoyed the free sex, but Charlie freaked his shit RIGHT up. Dennis later denied that he'd spent much time with Charlie, but it wasn't TRUE!!!!! I WAS THERE, MAN!!!!!
I wasn't really there.
Ah! See??? Now he's even got ME denying it!!! The power of suggestion, my friend! The power of suggestion!
Don't blame me if you like some of this album ("Cabinessence," "Never Learn Not To Love") and despise other parts of it ("I Can Hear Music," "Cotton Fields"). That's NOT MY FAULT. If you'll recall, I went on Real People in 1978 and made it clear that I had nothing to do with the up-and-down quality of this release. I was on between the chicken that played Tic-Tac-Toe and the guy who got hit by lightning eleven different times (he later committed suicide to escape the endless neurological pain, btw - I WAS THERE, M. oh who am I kidding, I'm never there when anything interesting happens.
(*hops in car and drives away, 30 seconds before the Loch Ness Monster crawls out of the ocean, goes to the snack machine, gets a Whatchamacallit and disappears back into the deep*)
Oh. And anything with "Cabinessence" on it is worth the money. Anything.
(I like "Do It Again" and "I Went To Sleep" too.)
Huh? Oh, the album. If Friends was a 7, 20/20 has gotta be an 8, right?
What else is on here - "Wake The World"? "Aren't You Glad"? "Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring"? Come on, where's "Surfin' USA"? "Help Me Rhonda"? What were they trying to do, convince somebody they weren't completely irrelevant? If so, "Bluebirds Over The Mountain" was certainly no way to do it. That song is an atrocity, and always has been. If you haven't heard it, acknowledge that your life is at least a couple of percentage points happier than those of us who have.
Mike Love surprisingly has some pretty funny lines on here ("We're gonna take a little bit of Britain back with us. probably wring it out of our socks," "This next song is one that we do a capella. Which means `Nude.' No, I'm sorry. Lost my mind for a minute there."), but his voice is so much more jaded and tired-sounding than on the original young excitable live album from a half-decade earlier. The music business is a cruel place, even for great bands like Ebn-Ozn.
My final synapses is as follows: Good live album!
Oh, sorry - that second word was an action verb. I feel very strongly that it's good when an album lives.
(sorry Mark, I needn't be so cruel....but y'know)
Geologist A: "Well, I didn't find that very funny at all!"
Geologist B: "Well, that's not a very GNEISS thing to say!"
Geologist A: "Ha ha!"
Geologist B: "Ha ha ha! Hee"
Geologist A: "Ha ha!"
Geologist C: "See that crusty stuff around my crotch? I fucked a corpse."
That's all I have to say. Also, Mike Love. Check the guys beard on the cover art! What a man!! ZZ Top would piss themselves for such a beard!
I like this album. A lot.
If there was any justice in this world, "This Whole World/Add Some Music To Your Day" would have been released as a double A-side, topped the charts for 15 weeks, and won the Grammy for 1970's Record of the Year. That, and Matthew Sweet would be playing in stadiums.
Oh, well...I quit.
This particular instance can be described as thus: I traded something or other to some guy who had a bootleg of the never-released 1970 album by the Beach Boys called Landlocked. Or I bought it at a record show, I can't remember which. So this happened, which was fine. Where the problem arose was in which place to I visited All Music Guide (www.fistfucking.org) and it described another version of the never-released 1970 album by the Beach Boys with the same title but entirely different song listing!!!! So I no longer know what's right or believe what's wrong; hence, as an "album review," this poem I'm penning is doomed to failure, unlike all my others which have flown high with golden oats and silver beltbuckles. My only recourse is to describe each song in intimate, loving, black-stockinged detail, in hopes that you too will someday encounter the very same bootleg artiste that created this mish-mash of balderdash. Pish posh!
"Out In The Country" is just like that first song on Friends, but slightly less terrifying. Peach happiness nice. Have I even reviewed that album yet?
"Good Time" wound up on Love You. Move along! Nothing to sea hear!
"Lady" has violins, bendy guitar, acoustic and a great Dennis Wilson-sounding vocal and melody. Was this Dennis? Must've been. Nobody overproduced their tunes like that guy. And goodness! If you get a chance, pick up the rare-as-fuck album he released, plus the completely nonexistent second album he recorded, both of which I own copies of thanks to ebay and the kindness of strangeassness.
"When Girls Get Together" is on Keepin' The Summer Alive. I'm bored. "I Just Got My Pay" SHIT. "San Miguel" "Over The Waves" some stuff that I know damn well was meant for Adult Child and thus probably not for Landlocked, further darkening my overall opinion towards bootleggers, all of which are 100% badness 25/8. Then some other crap. Look this is just a waste of everybody's time. This review sucks. I'm the worst reviewer ever. (ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING) All of my reviews are just a bunch of gross jokes with no insight at all. (OVERGENERALIZATION) That lame re-spelling of "see here" as "sea here" sums it all up: all I ever do is waddle in self-indulgent wordplay. (MENTAL FILTER) I get nice emails from people every week, but they're just being nice because they want me to review their shitty favorite bands. (DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE) My readers think I'm an arrogant asshole with nothing of worth to say. (JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: MIND READING). It won't be long before nobody at all reads my reviews anymore. (JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: THE FORTUNE TELLER ERROR) I'll lose the tiny bit of self-confidence I have left, my wife will leave me, I'll have to move home with my parents and I'll end up a 40-year-old bald crybaby, paralyzed in bed, even afraid to kill myself. (MAGNIFICATION, or CATASTROPHIZING) All I do is write a piddly web site that nobody likes. (MINIMIZATION) I feel so intellectually impotent, it's obvious I should never have returned from my site "retirement." (EMOTIONAL REASONING) I should at least have reviewed Frank Zappa by now like I've been claiming I would for three years. (SHOULD STATEMENTS) I'm a worthless failure. (LABELING AND MISLABELING). And it's my fault that somewhere some poor trusting kid spent his hard-earned money on a Cows album -- and hated it. (PERSONALIZATION)
Whoops! Time for a Triple-Column!
Sample tracks on this platter of food for the ears, that you shove in there and hope that your ear canals somehow eventually lead to your throat and down to your stomach, include: Mike Love with he and Al's wah-wah-pedaled surf update "Don't Go Near The Water (It's Polluted Because I Bathed In It With My Disgusting Hippy Beard)" and hilarious Lieber & Stoller parody "Student Demonstration Time (Hey Young People, I Swear We're "Hip With The Times," Please Stop Not Buying Our Albums)," Al with his minor-key acoustic Simon & Garfunkel/John Lennon soundalike "A Welfare Song (Are You Fucking Kidding Me, You Spoiled Rich Pecker?)" and supercatchy cheery "Take A Load Off Your Feet (This Is A Song About Feet. I'm Not Joking. The Entire Song Is About Taking Care Of Your Feet. I'm Extremely High. Listen To My Deep Words About Feet.)" and of course Bruce "Willis" Johnston's light rock piano anthem for 35-year-old marijuana smoking free thinkers, "Disney Girls (Is Your Wife One? I'm Going To Ball Her While You Sit In The Living Room And Cry)."
There's not a bad song on here. Some are merely GOOD, but the whole thing is so diverse and fun, it would probably be incredibly entertaining even WITHOUT the four pieces of genius that adorn side 2. But man, those four pieces of genius. Cripes! Three Brians and a Carl. Brian has flipped his wig completely, contributing a church hymn about a sad tree suffering from pollution, revisiting an absolutely melodically BRILLIAFUGCKINGNT lost Smile track called "Surf's Up" and, most disturbingly, utilizing an extremely unnerving peaceful/threatening musical dichotomy to announce to his fans that he KNOWS he has lost his mind. "I'm a cork on the ocean floating over the raging sea/How deep is the ocean? I lost my way/I'm a rock in a landslide rolling over the mountainside. How deep is the valley? It kills my soul. I'm a leaf on a windy day/Pretty soon I'll be blown away. How long will the wind blow? UNTIL I DIE."
Not that that's anywhere near as intelligent a thought as "I do them when I'm down in the tub/With avocado cream they'll take a rub/They wrinkle like raisins if I stay too long/I wouldn't want to do it wrong," but in this life, one can't fulfill all of one's desires in the exact same moment.
You know the crazy thing is that you'd think those lyrics would be from the foot song, but they're from this bonus track called "55-Year-Old Vagrant Women (Free Mustache Rides)."
There are a couple more crappers on this album than on 'Sunflower', however, you have "Til I Die" and "Surf's Up". The presence of these two songs alone would boost the ratings of even the Light Album (I haven't read that far down, but I venture to guess you gave it a 1 or 2, Mark). "Feel Flows", "A Day In The Life Of A Tree", "Til I Die", and "Surf's Up" are what really make this album great. Those last two...Brian Wilson is a genius.
I wish the Beach Boys would have taken various, carefully selected (not
just randomly selected) tracks from 'Sunflower' and 'Surf's Up' and made
one album. What would that track list look like? It would look like
this:
-Slip On Through
-This Whole World
-Add Some Music To Your Day
-Tears In The Morning (I love this song, so be quiet)
-Forever [shakes fists at the memory of "Full House"]
-Cool, Cool Water
-Don't Go Near The Water
-Long Promised Road
-Feel Flows
-A Day In The Life Of A Tree
-Til I Die
-Surf's Up
That would be a 9 right there, baby. A 9!
A side note: I got into this late 60s/early 70s era of the Beach Boys after hearing "Feel Flows" in the movie "Almost Famous", but I am not gonna post that on here because I don't want my indie cred to completely disappear because I have tons of it. [insert foghorn here]
So go down to your local Record Bar or Turtle's today and tell the clerk you want "All The Money In The Register." That's what cool people call Smile by the Beach Boys.
Cool people also run around Israel with fake bombs strapped visibly across their chests. If you don't do that, don't even THINK about trying to join my "Cool People's Club."
I played a friend of mine these tracks one year on my birthday (January 29th HINT HINT), and he shook his head sadly. "No," he said, "it's not brilliant! It's the sound of someone who tried to go too far!" Looking back on it, I can halfway understand what he meant--I think that Smile was doomed to collapse under its own ambition, really. But how could anyone go too far, and yet do it so brilliantly, huh?
In other words, there is still enormous potential to all of these recordings to make up one of the greatest albums of all time if they were finished, polished, and mixed properly. I won't deny that it's weird stuff, but some of it is just too, too good. Brian's sanity aside, the greatest tragedy the Smile sessions ever saw was that nothing was ever done with "Child is the Father of the Man," the most gorgeous thing anyone in the band ever came anywhere near. Including "God Only Knows." That french horn that you hear oh-so-faintly over the piano intro (in the interest of full disclosure, though, on most copies of Smile you hear EVERYTHING oh-so-faintly) has been haunting me for almost a decade.
But that's only the cream of a very, very rich crop, isn't it? What about "Do You Dig Worms"? What about "Holidays?" Or the "Woodshop Song?" And can you really have too many versions of "Our Prayer" and "Cabinessence?" WELL??!!
One other thing. I was talking in my SMILEY SMILE comments about Brian Wilson audibly straddling the genius-insanity line. Now, I don't know about you (Mark specifically, and Rich specifically, and the general "you"), but no matter the artist, I don't think you could find a better representation of straddling-the-line than "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow," which is the coolest, most imaginative, and most disturbing thing you've ever heard, all at the same time. It was done, dontchaknow, with no sound-effects recordings at all, just strings and organ and a temper-tantrum of production work. What might have happened if THAT had seen release? What kind of influence would it have on Frank Zappas and Residents? I just, just don't know.
Plus you can't deny the genius of some of these songs. Come on, most of this stuff was recorded in 1966! Even anything on Revolver sounds amaturish compared to the production work on stuff like "Fire", "Cabinessence" and "Heroes And Villians". This stuff is just way ahead of it's time, and it's such a shame this album couldn't be finished. Hearing the remains of "Wonderful", "Surf's Up", "Wind Chimes" and "Vegetables" clearly shows a masterpiece, which makes me really wish Brian could of finished it.
What's there is kind of frustrating and confusing, but only because the album was never edited or mixed properly! Brian had lots of ideas, the main idea being that "Heroes And Villians" was supposed to be the albums centerpiece with different pieces of musical ideas threading the song and album together, and other ideas like "The Elements", which was supposed to have songs about Earth ("Vegetables") wind ("Wind Chimes") and fire ("Fire"). That's a really crazy concept right there! I can't think of any other band striving for something so innovative like that in 1966! So for all those reasons, i have incredible respect for this album, even though it's unreleased and unfinished. People tend to write off the Beach Boys just because the stupid media put so much hype on it at the time and it ended up being aborted, but if you listen to the remains of these songs, it's pretty fuckin' obvious Brian was on to something brilliant here.
I made my own tracklisting that just compiles the more finished songs and that works alright to me, since even the unfinished remains of most of these songs are still gorgeous as hell. I couldn't possibly rate this, overall though because there's just no album tracklisting to speak of! Just countless bits and pieces taken from the sessions, and that's not what the album was supposed to be. It does work as a "interactive" album though, where you could pick your own tracklisting for the album, which i think is quite a cool idea, though unintentional of course.
Too bad it is a 1967 album recorded and released in 2004. Of course, in 1967, the Beach Boys didn't want to make it, didn't understand it, and Brian was incapable, given his condition, to complete it.
By 1967 standards, it is a masterpiece. Period. There are no fillers here. It all flows and it all fits together. It is perfection. This is the logical next step from Pet Sounds. Just as Sgt Pepper was the logical next album after Revolver.
And, by the way, Brian is, rather was, a musical genius.
I torture myself playing the 'what if' game. What if it had been released (as conceived) and produced (as it is here) in early 1967, before Sgt. Pepper? Would Sgt Pepper been different? How would the pop music scene been different? Would Smile be the greatest pop album, followed by Sgt. Pepper? Of course, there is no arguing who was better, The Beatles. But what if Brian didn't break down, what if Mike and the other's didn't fight his vision, what if. what if.
But the dilemma. It was produced in 2004, Brian is a sixty plus, and Carl & Dennis are dead. So what do we make of this album? What would Sgt Pepper be if it was shelved in 1967 and Paul recorded and produced it in 2004, without George and John? Would it still be the greatest pop record ever? Obviously not.
At the end of my first listening to Smile, I wept. It was the masterpiece we were promised over 30 year. Although Brian's backing band's harmonies were perfect, they weren't the Beach Boys. Brian's was voice was great considering that he has been through. But, Carl and Dennis are dead and it is 2004.
I just have an overwhelming feeling of sadness.
The truth is, in my opinion, ..
Just ponder that turn of phrase for a moment.
Okay so the truth, in my opinion, is that it's a little of both. Within eight lengthy tracks, this album gives you the opportunity to hear the Beach Boys perform a jazzy piano Steely Dan Jackson Browne song, a kooky stilted rock boogie of the Guess Who variety, a GOSPEL song (incidentally, stare all you want but the Beach Boys aren't negroes), a "The Band'-sounding drunken redneck waltz, a Crosby, Stills & Nash hippy-harmonized echoey piano tune and two slow ballads that sound about as much like "Surfer Girl" as Peter Gabriel's Us sounds like it has even one actual melody on it anywhere.
The times didn't want the Beach Boys. They had appealed to a certain type of person in the early 60s, and those days were long over. Which brings up an interesting point - J. Lo, Pink, the Backstreet Boys, Puff Daddy, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears - NONE of these popular celebrities are going to have careers five years from now. Because they appeal to a certain demographic - that of a teenaged girl (or really pansyassed teenage boy). When these fans grow up to be women, they will have no use for their silly old pop stars. And the new batch of young kids will CERTAINLY have no use for them because they'll be a bunch of old bags, replaced by a new batch of pop stars. These pop stars may think that they're "artists" who can live large and waste all the money they want, but they're NOT artists and many of them are going to be bankrupt when the income dries up and nobody buys their godawful shitty albums anymore. Pink is not, and will never be, Madonna. Puff Daddy is not, and will never be, Michael Jackson. These "artists" are today's equivalent of Debbie Gibson and MC Hammer - but with even LESS creativity. Watch them fail. And LEARN from them. Celebrity is fleeting - don't pursue it.
I suppose you can tell by the album title exactly how much input Brian Wilson gave this time around. Jesus, this album is NUTS. NOTHING on here sounds like the Beach Boys! And I REALLY can't tell their voices apart at this point. With the beards and 30th birthdays came a collective lowering of the band voice. Plus Jack Rieley had brought in all these NEW band members to give them some crazy "ethnic" feel, like at an ethnic Beach. Heck, for all I know, that's Rocky Pamplin singing lead on "Oh My Dear Brother."
Oh sorry, Rocky Pamplin was a member of the Beach Boys organization who was (*forms circle with thumb and forefinger of right hand, jams index finger of left hand in and out and in and out of the circle until huge blast of finger semen squirts out all over the geranium*) Brian's wife behind his back. Rocky also fought Mr. T and this big Russian guy.
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THERE HE IS NOW!!!!!!
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.God I hope I did that HTML right. After all that buildup - to let you down.. You'd probably KILL ME! You'd probably hunt me down and KILL ME! You'd probably call information, find out my street address, cleverly sneak into the building by pretending you're delivering a pizza, grab my keys out of the umbrella stand, unlock my door, stealthily sneak up the staircase and swizzle my balls around in your mouth with great sKILL, ME!adowlark Lemon of the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters.
You ever get the feeling that I don't find music criticism all that interesting?
Carl Wilson had left The Beach Boys and been replaced by William Shatner?
The 1972 album CARL & THE PASSIONS would probably have been titled SHATNER & THE PASSIONS .
I'd like to thank Microsoft Word's Grammar Check function for somehow failing to note that that entire paragraph was one huge run-on sentence. I have a hard time figuring out how to review albums that don't have one overarching sound to them. Holland is kind of all over the place, see. And a lot of people hate it. But, by describing every single song on it (using a selection of brilliant "food" analogies, helping you to visualize each track so perfectly that you now know EXACTLY how they all sound even if you've never heard any of them), I was trying to explain that, even though you may have heard bad things about it, it IS a melodic, strange, innovative, interesting and (I'll just point out again) "experimental" record. Without Brian, they could easily have turned to shit but they didn't! Not immediately anyway. "Sail On Sailor" and "Trader" in particular are should-be classics, "Steamboat" and "California Saga" are as peculiar as ANYTHING Brian dreamt of in his philosophy (class), and Brian's out of true fairytale will make you really, really glad you never developed schizophrenia.
Yeah, I know! I was all like hoping I'd end up losing 20 years of my life to an incapacitating mental disease too. But not anymore! Thanks Brian!
I'm assuming, obviously, that your name is Jack Peed. If it is not, I ask that you understand that had I known that was the case, I would have written something different. Probably describing the album in some way.
Which reminds me of a joke: What's the difference between Mike Love and a 55-pound bag of sewage?
About a hundred pounds!
At the time, there was a big to-do about Brian being back for the album, contributing five songs and producing the entire LP, but he was still really sick and there's no way to cover that up. His production job is the absolute PITS! Good ol' Pits. Let's hear it for Pits!
Actually, I read a recent interview with Brian Wilson in which he dopily blurted out that he's especially fond of this record. The interviewer ignored the point and moved on, somehow not acting on the obvious cry for help or doing what any decent human would have done - that is, phoning up Dr. Eugene Landy and begging him to come back and fix Brian's shitty taste.
You would have to be REALLY forgiving to thoroughly enjoy more than, say, four of these fifteen tracks. You would also have to be so much into the sound of early rock and roll that you're able to enjoy it at half the speed, a quarter of the energy and maybe a hundredth of the songwriting ingenuity. And -- no offense to Jerry Lee Lewis or anything -- but most of us would rather fuck our cousins than welcome such a prospect.
Every single band member has a full beard, for Christ's sake. What possible reason could you have for buying it?
Everybody says "You're not insightful, Mark!" Well, here's a little secret = neither are many of your favorite reviewers = everything they write is based on what they read on All-Music Guide or from somebody else. Check it out and see if you don't see the same thing. It's important for a person to tell the truth. Here's your insight for this album: IT SOUNDS LIKE MUSIC FOR LITTLE KIDS. THE REASON THIS IS SO IS BECAUSE BRIAN WILSON WROTE ALL THE SONGS, AND HE SUFFERS FROM PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA. HE WAS ALSO UNDER MEDICATION, WHICH AFFECTED HIS SONGWRITING. THE MATURE STUFF HE WROTE ON PET SOUNDS IS NOT SOMETHING HE CAN DO ANYMORE, BECAUSE HE HAS LOST HIS MIND. HE IS ONLY CAPABLE OF WRITING HAPPY CHILDREN'S MUSIC. SAD YES, BUT IT AT LEAST SOUNDS LIKE HE WAS HAPPY WHEN HE RECORDED IT.
I like my butt. Music critique is stupid. This is a diary I've built around albums. Let's talk about the Fall and the Flaming Lips. Because boy is that "interesting." I can't WAIT to hear why you like "Revolver" better than "Sgt. Peppers'! That is really "exciting" to me! Wow! So you really like "Let It Bleed"? Oh! I have to argue about why I think "Sticky Fingers" is better! That's a GREAT way to spend my time! I will accomplish so much!
Which is not to say I don't appreciate your reader comments. I very much do. Seriously. I very much do. It's the mindless arguments I have no patience for. "You don't like Quadrophenia? You're FUCKED! That album rules!" Hey, thanks! Fascinating debate we've had!
Final note: It's good. If you like fuzzy synths and childish songs with infantile titles like "Roller Skating Child," "I'll Bet He's Nice" and the UPROARIOUS "Ding Dang," look no further than about a foot and a half in front of your nose. If possible, surgically alter your retinas so that you are incapable of making out any visual form past that point. Waltzes, weird harmony vocals, odd blurby synth noises, dippiness, sax, nostalgia, ob-la-di-ob-la-ripoff - trolley bells, ELP synths, nice chord changes, mediocrity, weird tones. Many people love it. And by "Beach Boys Love You," they of course mean "The Beach Boys = Mike Love + You."
Which is pretty much all the Beach Boys have been since 1986, so accuracy in reporting is comin' on strong!
"A child writing and playing music for other children..." That's genius! You neglected to say that the children listening took the album off the player and put it away, never to see the light of day again! Children making other children ill.... You know, it's human nature to look at someone else's accomplishments, be it art, sports, literature or music, and compare it to your own ability. Could I run that fast? Write that good of a book? Etc.,etc. Well, for the first time ever I can honestly say "I could have done that!" And I can't sing! Or play an instrument! But I KNOW I can write better lyrics than that, because I got past grade school without being held back!
Thanks for the blunt honesty. We needed to hear it. The honesty. Not the album.
This review is serious. I often dream of standing atop two enormous columns and stomping my feet to "Ding Dang" while millions of people dance below me.
As for “Love You,” itself, the album is neither a total throwaway nor a lost masterwork. It’s a fitfully moving, disarmingly honest and mostly catchy artifact from an obviously troubled Brian. 7.5 outta ten seems about right – the second side tunes will grow on you if you give them a chance.
"Don't sit around on your ass - smokin' grass. That stuff went out a long time ago!" That is the SECOND LINE on this LP. This REJECTED LP. This BRILLIANT, HILARIOUS, MORONIC REJECTED LP. Don't think I'm trying to be hipster by giving a rejected album a 9. But also don't think that this is a serious album to be seriously hunted down and listened to with serious ears like (I Don't Wanna Be Buried In A) Pet Sounds (-atary). This is mid-70s Brian Wilson we're discussing. He was a loon, see. But a FUN loon! A fun loon out to make himself and others as happy as possible under the sad circumstances. And the person who can listen to any given 10 seconds of this album without getting a big mocking grin on their face is an unpleasant, hurtful person who should be framed for murder and hung from the injection chair. Here's why:
It's a full-blown Vegas extravaganza! A musical festival of overblown show tunes with violins and horn sections for dancing with a cane and crooning in a tux! Cover tunes include "Deep Purple," "On Broadway" and "Shortening Bread," all performed with complete tongue-in-cheek sincerity (if that's possible. If not, shut it). Originals (or what I assume are originals - I might be wrong, and I admit that, as there are no songwriting credits on this bootleg disc) include "Life Is For Living" (the one that mentions doobs), "Help Is On The Way," (with its uproariously phrased opening verse, "Stark naked in front of my mirror/A pudgy person somehow did appear/Seems lately all I've eatin's sugar and fat/It's gettin' obvious that's not where it's at!"), the sickeningly sexist "Hey Tomboy," in which the band converts a tomboy into a GIRL ("Okay, put on a little lipstick, let's see what it looks like" - "Now let's put on a dress and some makeup!" - "Okay, now shave your legs for the first time!"), the out-and-out PATHETIC "Games Two Can Play" (in which Brian, in all seriousness, recites the verse "Joe South was singing `Games People Play'/ And I like to play games that two can play!") and "Still I Dream Of It," an honestly beautiful old person-style ballad he wrote in hopes that Sinatra or Davis Jr. would sing it. Neither would - THEIR LOSS. Fantastic song! And, like every other track on here, impossible to hear without imagining overweight bearded Brian standing on stage in a lounge, walking back and forth in front of the orchestra with mic in hand, singing with an eye on the stars, mesmerizing the audience with his dapper moves and manly yet sensitive delivery.
But the record company rejected it. A friend of mine suggested that they probably just didn't want to follow up the goofy children's songs of Love You with an equally bizarre attempt to convert America's Favorite Beach Music Nostalgia Guys into "Bri Wilson and the Big Beach Band - Live! At the Palamino Club. NUDE WOMEN! LIVE SEX SHOWS!" If that's the case, the record company can take a cue from Rick Dees and "Eat My Shorts."
It's impossible to believe even for a second that the album wouldn't have bombed miserably and been ripped apart by critics had it seen official release at the time. But 25 years on, this stuff sounds really really REALLY good. No fears or worries, no anxiety or terrorism. No hateful, evil Palestinians and Iraqis spreading fear and pain around the globe while George Bush's America waves banners of peace, sends over airplanes filled with emissaries of hope, and works day and night to create a global community of togetherness and understanding for all of humanity. Just straight, obvious, bullshit entertainment for old people like me, I'm 29.
But enough about the Beach Boys, let's talk about doin' it. Now I know that a lot of you readers are young people who have never done it, so let me try to put into words what doin' it is like. First, you whip out your rod, which should be ready for action. If you have prepared correctly, your partner's panties should already be soaking wet. Then when you're both ready to go, shove your wood right in there, get a steady rhythm going, concentrate and go harder, faster, harder, faster until you're both completely satisfied.
And that's how you clean a fishing pole. Some people also like to put liquid soap into the panties, and others actually prefer using a towel but I find the fabric can be a bit rough on the wood. Stick with something sheer like a work sock or silk underwear and you'll be the envy of all your friends down at the pier!
So tell me this - out of all the great songs on Adult Child, how on Earth's Green God (green with envy - GET IT???? THE PEOPLE OF EARTH CREATED A JEALOUS GOD???? I AM THE GREATEST TWIST-OF-PHRASER IN AMERICAN BIOLOGY!!!!) did only "Hey Little Tomboy" get chosen for the ACCEPTED album - and WITHOUT the hilarious sexist stuff at the end, where they turn her into a girl? Oh! And wasn't it around this time that they submitted a new Christmas album and it got rejected too? Well, one of those songs is on here too. As are "Come Go With Me" and "My Diane" from what I guess was a rejected - or at least abandoned - 1976 "New Album." So a little from here, a little from there, something sorrowed, something spew (FUC!!! DO THEY GIVE OUT AWARDS FOR TURNS-OF-PHRASE??? IF SO, I'D BETTER WIN FIRST PRIZE OR I'M FALSELY ACCUSING THE JUDGE OF CHILD MOLESTATION!) and you get an album with the same nostalgic feel of 15 Big Butts Magazines but with tighter production. No experimentation at all. Neither adult nor child - just simplistic cheery forgettable nostalgia, until the last few songs which suddenly lurch headlong into late `70s schmaltz with a VenGGGeance. The near- disco of "Match Point of Our Love," the total Breadness of "Winds Of Change" - she ain't good. ALSO! Astute fans may note that the band photo on the back is from the same exact roll of film that birthed the Love You band photo. Suggesting what? Probably that they couldn't get the entire band together for a new photo in the year 1978. Brian's input on this album seems to have been pretty minimal; actually, I read somewhere that Mike and Al basically did this album without Dennis or Carl contributing anything at all.
Did I even say what I liked about this album? I don't think I did. Let's go with the first three tracks (the album-opener in particular is, as far as I'm concerned, a new Beach Boys classic - the insane falsettos, the superhappy chorus - disturbing, but fun!), and then "Pitter Patter," whose melody appears to be SLIGHTLY (just a tad) borrowed from the lost-to-the-world "Still I Think Of It" and, oddly enough, "My Diane," which was no good in its original version but thanks to oh no! I can feel the Finger Revolt of late '02 coming on! R3eqnealnfds ;afkd;ariewakgksanv vjfemiiiiewafm dkgn lksa'jgrhiaemiwafmeipmasjfsadjm fgeiwmhipmf m
That didn't make any sense.
When they say "Light Album," what they mean is that eight of the ten songs are ballads. Gentle ballads with very quiet (if any) guitars, string sections, slow plodding tempos and absolutely GODAWFUL melodies. Examples for when you purchase the album and excitedly place the "platter" on the buttcrackle. Which reminds me of a little story - this one time I was in this CD store on 18th between 5th and 6th that caters mostly to classical music fans (losers), and this young teenaged dork kid with glasses was there with his dork father, and the dork kid kept asking the employees, "Where do you keep your rock platters? Do you have any Rolling Stones platters? Can I look through your platters?" See, his loser father must have taught him that the correct word to use for "LPs" or "albums" was in fact.. STUPID! "Platters"? What kind of asshole goes around calling albums "platters"? I imagine Cousin Brucie from the old Video Jukebox show might call them platters, but everyone else knows damn well that the correct term for an "LP" or "album" is of course "Big Juke." So all you kids who've just recently bought a turntable and are ready to go shopping, be sure and ask the record store employees for a "B.J."
Here are the examples I was talking about before I got sidetracked with my hilarious anecdote. "Lady Lynda" is Al Jardine's lyrics set to one of the most famous classical songs of all time. Point? No point! "Love Surrounds Me"? That's Dennis Wilson's voice shot to hell performing a disco funk ballad nightclub cocaine sex song! "Sumahama"? That's Mike Love doing John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" as performed by Richard Dreyfuss in the hit motion picture Mr. Opus Goes to Holland. And Carl Wilson's "Goin' South" and "Full Sail" have all the warmth and personality that Carl himself displayed the last time I visited him in the fall of '99. Talk about a standoffish ASSHOLE!
This is not a gentle, moving, lovely little meditation like Sunflower. This is Beach Boys Outbore Manilow. It's rare to find so many songs that do NOTHING all in one place like this. I guess "Goin' South" and that one on side two are okay, but the only REAL saving graces to this LP are the phenomenal songs "Angel Come Home" and the second greatest ever recording (second only to the Adult Child mix) of "Shortenin' Bread." That song alone should be enough to win your heart back, placed right at the end after all the snozers. It's the slowest version of the classic tune you will ever hear, but the beat is just so hilariously clompity-clomp and swaying-back-and-forth that it feels like you're on a high LSD "trip" and a bunch of animated circus animals are performing it for you. The dancing elephants are of course singing the bass "Mama's little baby loves shortnin' shortnin'" part, a choir of happy tigers standing on two legs are singing the "hoot! hoot!"s and the excitable lead vocals are probably by a ferret or a coyote or something - something that really shouldn't be in a circus, but it's there anyway and it's singing to you, and then suddenly the album ends and they all jump out of your stereo and your skin starts melting off and YOU THINK YOU CAN FLY AND YOU JUMP OUT THE WINDOW TO GET AWAY FROM THE NIGHTMARE!
Best, The DEA
Post-Script: Hi! I'm Kelly Clarkson, winner of the 1992 American Idol series! When I heard that the DEA was reviewing my favorite Beach Boys album L.A. (Light Album), I knew that I just had to say a few words in support of the 11-minute disco version of "Here Comes The Night." A lot of so-called "fans" call the song a travesty, a boring attempt to cash in on the latest music craze. Nothing could be further from the truth. The original two-minute version of the song as performed on Wild Honey had its moments, I'll admit, but it's impossible to listen to without thinking to yourself, "You know - this song could really use an extra nine minutes of nothing at all going on." And hey! Looks like The Beach Boys felt the same way! By adding in a veritable cornucopia of disco voice effects and virtual grab bag of bass guitar doing that up-down up-down octave jump thing, they have taken what was once a short filler track and coverted it into a really long throwaway! And I for one couldn't be happier. I HATE good music!
Wouldn't it be nice if 1980 had found them in a more creative state? Where half the songs weren't bad `60s nostalgia, and even the good songs weren't all that great? I'll admit the title track is catchy, but "Endless Harmony" is more than retchy - some kind of new age Stevie Wonder treachery! Wouldn't it be nice?
Maybe if we hope and wish and dream and ignore the majority of the record, the cute country of "Livin' with a Heartache" won't seem quite as checkered. "School Days" is for fairies ("School Days" is for fairies), but "Sunshine"'s so happy (But "Sunshine"'s so happy), but wouldn't it be nice?
Wouldn't it be nice if I had bothered to describe what the album actually sounds like? Well, it's not a bunch of lousy ballads, but inconsistent thanks to Bruce and Mike. The best song here is "When Girls Get Together" - But Brian wrote that before he fell under the weather. Wouldn't it be nice?
Good night, Album. Sleep tight, Album. Good night, Album. You're fairly mediocre, Album.
Thanks, that fucking cracked me up.
Anyway. Far be it from me to tamper with such a perfect review, but I just have to point out the most obvious aspect of this album: the cover. I mean...there it is, a picture of the Beach Boys in a bubble, isolating themselves from the real world. And then on the record is the sound of the Beach Boys in a bubble, isolating themselves from the real world. Am I the only one who sees this?
RARITIES? Don't you mean SCARCITIES (of interesting material?). Hee!! Haa haha!!! Ho ! Ho! Ho!!! Merry C
This release is as stupid and suckassballsy a waste of human vinyl as the Beatles album Of The Same Name.
No no, Mr. Editor Man! I mean the Beatles album called Rarities! But I guess that's why we have a ten-second delay on my reviews, so we can correct errors like that before they're broadcast live before a national TV audience. Remember that time in '63 when I called John F. Kennedy a "dickhead with fingers"? You sure saved my ass THAT time!
Only 6 of these 15 tracks are Beach Boys compositions, and most of the album is just slightly alternate versions of songs you can "scam" elsewhere anyway (I think some of them are on that 14 Aberdeen Road Expresssway thing they put out. No, Hawthorne, CA was the name of it Regardless, a title doesn't make a man. A rose by any other name would smell like sheet.) "All I Want To Do" live. Whoop-de-asshole-do. A German version of "In My Room" (*makes jerking off motion, but with pants off and erect ding-dong in hand, for fifteen minutes*). A longer version of "I Was Made To Love Her". A 2-track mix of "Bluebirds Over The Mountain." Come on, what are we, suckers? Suckers for the TRUTH maybe! The truth is that the only RAREFIED tracks on here are covers of The Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends" and The Box Tops' "The Letter." Bruce sings the Beatles, Brian and Mike sing the Box Tops. And they're really cool! There's also a really really old boring unreleased song called "Land Ahoy," recorded back in 1962 when that dickhead with fingers was in office.
THERE!!! THAT was the time I was talking about, Mr. Editor Man! This entire review was a flashback!
(blooo! bloooo! blooo! bloooo!)
"Gosh Mallory! I still remember the day you were conceived!"
(blooo! blooo! blooo! blooo!)
(*footage of thirty smelly hippies pulling a train on Meredith Baxter Birney*)
Oh FUCK - I spelled it right!
This album is down-the-drain adult contemporary limp-wristed (slang for GAY, not PARALYZED FROM THE SHOULDERS OUT) synthesized shytpop seemingly geared towards attracting a new audience of 14-year-old girls who have never heard songs before and will thus be unaware that they generally involve actual musical instruments and melodies that don't sound like they were written by a retarded four-year-old.
Oh but what am I saying? Some of the songs feature the SMOOTH SOUL SOUNDS of some white guy playing a shitty saxophone solo. The mix is too tinny to bear, every single "riff" is a series of boring, anti-infectious two- or three-chord repetitions that you have heard a hundred jillion times in the Michael Bolton catalog alone. And NEVER have you even IMAGINED an album with this many fake instruments on it. It sounds like one guy playing all the music on his giant Casio keyboard! Imagine a Kenny G. album with no horn on it and you've got a pretty good idea of the relevance and timeless aural qualities conjured up by this wrongly-entitled dresser drawer filled with urine. "Getcha Back" was a hit, but how much is that supposed to mean when you consider that "We Built This City" was the ninth best-selling single of 1985? This is worthless. If you ever see it at a record store, just pull it out and crack it in two. Nobody's gonna care. I can't even imagine Bruce Johnston giving a shit, and you know how concerned about quality control HE is!
I would like to refute this reputation, as in my opinion this is one of the top 5 Beach Boys records ever. Of course it is ridiculously dated sounding, but it has that same magic quality of KISS's "Crazy Nights" LP that makes me want to invent a time machine to go back to the 1980's and have relentless amounts of sexual intercourse with poorly dressed women with stupid haircuts. By poorly dressed, I mean worse than the arrangements that marr a number of otherwise kick-ass songs on Beach Boys '85. More specifically, I'm talking women who wore horrendously colored Jordache jeans up so high past their waist that their asses looked 27 feet tall. You know, the "mom butt."
Speaking of mothers, maybe I only like this album because my mother had horrible taste in music and constantly played this album on cassette in the family station wagon while I was growing up. Ironically I got my first blowjob in that car. Sadly it wasn't from my mom and it wasn't to this album. It was from a fat girl in a painstakingly awkward silence. Whatever, we all have our follies.
But "It's Getting Late" seriously kicks ass in a most boner-inducing manner. "Crack At Your Love" initially sounds like the introduction to a horrible 80's soap opera that would have probably starred Rick Springfield before going into some classic Al Jardine ass-rompery. "Passing Friend" and "California Calling" also rule.
In the end, yes, this album is dated and not very good. However, if I were actually going to the beach instead of just watching porn at home I would definitely put this on before 'Pet Sounds.' Take that, pretentious music buffs.
What the album IS, incidentally, is some sort of celebration of the Beach Boys' music that had been used in recent movies. Everything from the dopey 50's-style failure title track (from the timeless Lethal Weapon 2 starring Danny Glover) to the feelgood gum commercial "Let My Love Open The Door"- ripoff "Make It Big" (from the unforgettable Troop Beverly Hills starring the haunting Shelly Long) to three old, GOOD Beach Boys songs ("I Get Around" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice" from the throwaway straight-to-video shit movies Good Morning Vietboobs and The Big Chill, as well as "California Girls" from the treasured Soul Man starring the poignant C. Thomas Howell, and NO I'm not making a hilarious Botch reference!!!! HAHAHAHA!!!! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!! HEEEE!!! LITTLE JOKE FOR THE HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF BOTCH FANS OUT THERE!!!!) to a song so exciting I have to start a new paragraph for it.
"Kokomo." The theme of my 10th grade homecoming reunion. At the time, I found the song so offensive, I in all honesty could not stand to listen to it without flying to L.A. to punch Mike Love in the stomach. But time has been kind to the worst song ever recorded, and now I find it sufficiently bad that I can LAUGH at how amazingly rotten it is. Steel drums, accordion, sax solo, really loud synth drums, really not loud acoustic guitar and Mike Love with his nose in a vice on top of it all. THE WORST SONG HIT SINGLE EVER - BY ANYBODY.
(except the Eagles)
It's from Cocktail, by the way, featuring the dyslexic Tom Cruise, who learns all his lines from listening to tapes. I'm serious! Check your Weekly Reader - it's in there somewhere. Even though Tom can't read it.
Then there's "Wipe Out" with The Fat Boys, a vicious gangsta rap band who threatened white mainstream society with their violent urban classic Straight Outta Big Fat Guys Wearing Glasses. The Beach Boys suck shit out of the Fat Boys' Fat Asses on that one, but the rapping is fun. The other three songs are Brand! New! Originals! One of them is subtle beauty marred by hideous production tricks and a dickhead Clapton-style lead guitarist! The other two SHUCK! Al Jardine slows down "Blitzkrieg Bop" and turns it into a reggae and suddenly I'm supposed to like "Island Girl." Brian Wilson and his dictator psychiatrist weirdo try to outwit a dazed public with a tired forgettable car song cleverly entitled "In My Car." It goes "There's a world where I can go to when I'm feeling blue - In my ca-a-ar! In my car! (In my car!).
No it doesn't! It doesn't do that! You'll be hearing from my lawyer!
Best,
Roger Waters
1.shitty soft rock production!
2.drum machines!
3.synths!
4.leathal weapon 2 ! yeah my favorite movie! good to know that you are into movies! mel gibson before the passion! danny glover! and joe pesi blabbing about!
5.the fat boys shitty cover of the twist ! ugh!
all in all I get this a 2/10
Worst of all - they RUIN "Hot Fun In The Summertime," "Under The Boardwalk" and "Remember `Walking In The Sand.'," Mike decides it's a good idea to remake "Surfin'" as a pathetic 80s fake-hard-rock crap thing song and perhaps most offensively --- JOHN STAMOS FROM TV'S FULL HOUSE PERFORMS THE LATE DENNIS WILSON'S "FOREVER."
JOHN STAMOS, YOU UNDERSTAND.
ARE YOU READING ME CORRECTLY?
I do actually enjoy two moments on this, actually. The always-reliable Al turns out a strong vocal on the chorus of "Strange Things Happen" that makes the song sort of tolerable. And I find that "Hot Fun in the Summertime" is actually a sort of inspired choice -- the performance is rather low key and nice and relatively devoid of the tackiness that infiltrates the rest of the album. However, the rest was so bad that Brother Records couldn't find a major label to distribute it in the U.S. The indie who picked it up went bankrupt as a result, I believe! So, now any copies left are pricey collectors' items. Which just proves that there is no correlation between collectability value and musical value.
Hey Mark! Me again... Look at commentary of Feldman715@aol.com at You site... Ha!!! It`s the Highest Level of Jewish Jokes ever!!! God, what a laugh!!! They beat Shel Silverstein & Sarah Silverman together IN ONE GO!!!! ha ha ha ha....
Does anyone know why Al Jardine's "Loop De Loop (Flip Flop Flyin' In An Aeroplane)" was never released on an actual album? I now own three different versions of it and have no problem suggesting that it's one of the most hilarious, catchy, goofy songs they ever dood (especially the Xmas version, "Loop De Loop (Flip Flop Santa's Got An Airplane)." That's my question to you, Society. Fail me again and next time all THREE World Trade Centers are coming down. As for the other material, "Soulful Old Man Sunshine" (?), a live "medley" of their biggest hits in 1966 (why the HELL would they make a "medley" out of their biggest hits???? What did they do for the rest of the concert? An 11-minute disco version of "Papa Oom Mow Mow"?
Oh god, if anybody can find me a copy of that, I'll mow your car.
Elsewhere, this and that, whatever. Good stuff. "Don't Worry, Bill" by the other guys that were in the band in the early `70s (lousy song), unreleased solo tracks by Dennis and Mike (the unbelievably offensive "Brian's Back," in which he pretends to actually LIKE Brian Wilson) and whatever, I mean is it good? YES!!!!!! Do you need it? YES!!!!!!! YES!!!! GOD YES!!!!!! KILL PEOPLE IF THEY GET IN YOUR WAY BETWEEN YOUR HOME AND THE RECORD STORE TO BUY IT!!!!!! MURDER THEM, RUN THEM OVER FIVE OR SIX TIMES!!!! THEN STEAL ALL THE COPIES THE STORE HAS AND BLOW THE PLACE UP WHEN YOU LEAVE!!!!!!
No wait that was a misspelling - I meant, "Nah, you don't necessarily need it."
BUT KILL ALL THE PEOPLE ANYWAY! BLOW UP THE WORLD!!!! SHOOT IRAQIS IN YOUR HOMETOWN!!!!! STEAL OIL AND RAPE CHILDREN!!!!!!!
Best,
Every Person In The Executive Branch Of The
Government
SOUNDS GOOD! DO WHATEVER YOU WANT!
Best,
Both Houses of Congress
AGREED. A TIME OF WAR (AGAINST TERRORISM) IS NO TIME FOR CHECKS AND BALANCES. WE SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT! THESE COLORS DON'T RUN!
Best,
The Supreme Court
But most of the originals unfortunately don't really hold very many candles to their 60s originals - the hooks just aren't there. The songs have this vague "holiday" aura, but without the classic stuck-in-your-head melody that is required of an Xmas classic like "Jingle Bells," "Little Saint Nick" or "What Can You Get A Wookie For Christmas When He Already Owns A Comb." As a whole, taken in its entirety with every song taken into consideration (including the version of "Little St. Nick" set to the music of "At The Drive-In"), it's a good solid rockin' roll Christmas album. Inoffensive, pleasant, at times toe-tapping, at other times sad and pensive, at other times even really bad! (Here's a hint for Christmas song authors of the future: Don't name songs "Melekalikimaka."). I am unbelievably angry at my goddamned printer right now. It won't print! Why???? What did I do wrong???? It's always been a piece of absolute shit, but now it's a completely NON-WORKING piece of absolute shit! Do yourself a favor and never ever buy an Epson Stylus C60 Series.
No, I changed my mind. Buy like eight of them, then go to the house of Epson America's CEO, John Lang and throw `em through the FUCKING WINDOWS. I'd say to have each of them print up a little note saying, "Thanks for nothing, PRICK" but all you'd get is a bunch of unreadable scribbles because YOU'D MIGHT AS WELL JUST DIP YOUR PENIS IN INK AND SCRAWL IT ACROSS THE PAGE - THE QUALITY IS EXACTLY THE GODDAMNED SAME. "Oh," they'll say. "It must just have a bit of dust in it." EVERY GODDAMNED DAY?!?!??!?! I have to clean these fucking ink heads like every three days or it prints everything in the wrong color with huge blank lines all the way down the page. And last I checked, there wasn't a huge dustcloud spinning around in my living room, so I think the problem is less the dust and more the PIECE OF SHIT SHODDY WORKMANSHIP. "Oh look at me! I'm a Japanese company who can't tell my ass from a hole in the ground! Buy my products!" Remember the name - EPSON - more accurately represented by its anagram "P-NOSE." Because the sensation you get when you're trying to use one is just like that of having an 80-year-old vagrant pee in your nose. Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas, all the folks at Epson America, Inc., subsidiary of Seiko Epson Worldwide! Maybe this year I'll leave a lump of HUMAN SHIT in all your stockings! As a personal thanks for all the GREAT WORK you've done creating a machine that manages to turn a simple memo into a dazzling piece of abstract pointillist art! No wonder you Japanese COCKSUCKERS all abuse your children if this is the kind of worthless garbage that passes for appliances in your country. Wake up in the morning three hours late because your alarm clock reset itself for no reason, hop in the shower to discover endless streams of cum pouring out of the nozzle, then hop in your car and drive straight into a telephone pole because the steering wheel was bolted in upside down and the brake pedal is in the back seat. FUCK YOU, EPSON! FUCK YOU!
After the lovely acappella "Auld Lang Syne" (one with a cute message from Dennis, one without any interuptions), there's some bonus tracks, and most of them are the aborted Christmas songs from 1977-1978. Some are the same songs as on MIU except with Christmas lyrics (which are usually the ones that aren't that good). "Morning Christmas" is the best of the lot, which is written by Dennis and is beautiful and emotional, just like all of his ballads usually are. "Winter Symphony" is also a nice Christmas song that was recorded in 1975, but finished with vocals in 1977 by Brian. And "Child Of Winter" is also an underrated goodie! Really catchy melody and spacey synths, sounds really cool. Too bad it was a flop single.
The Beach Boys were the perfect band to do Christmas songs i think, but there's a lot of mediocre stuff that spoils the collection. They might as well have picked the best songs and dumped the rest, but it's nice for Beach Boys fans to hear everything they've done.
WHAT THE!!??? Where'd THIS come from?
(Answer: Hawthorne, Calipllbbll
This is a DOUBLE-CD of "only if you're a really major fan" material. Buncha spoken soundbites, more Stack-O-Tracks-style instrumental backings (not to sound critical here, but why on Earth would ANYONE want or need to hear an instrumental version of "Surfin' USA"? Trust me, there's nothing going on in that song that you can't hear loud and clear behind the vocals!), several "a capella" mixes of songs that sound better with the music, a couple of Party! songs without the silly overdubs and some alternate versions of this, that and The Others starring Christopher Pickle as the campus guard. Let's all hear it for Christopher Pickle! HUZZAH!!! "Finding Electra" INDEED!
Look, I'm gonna be honest - I don't know who Christopher Pickle is, so I'm not really the best person to be commenting on his mafia ties and angel dust addiction.
You're really not gonna want this CD unless you have everything else. The songs are really good, of course, but you can find most of them in their CORRECT form elsewhere. The reason you're buying THIS one is to hear everybody making fun of Dean Torrence in a "Barbara Ann" outtake. "Hey Dean? Sing on key!" shouts somebody or other. And they're correct. Keys SHOULD be sung on. Which is why I'm standing on top of my mailbox key right now, screaming the Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance" at the top of my lungs. I don't care that it's 3:30 AM. We artists don't live by your rules. We don't need your corporate greed. Look what you've done to the rain forests and the ozone layer. There are children starving in the street. Go away, businessman in your three-piece suit! And I'm not the ONLY one who feels this way! (see http://www.boston.org/album6.html#ca). If we all unite together in sophomoric, simplistic platitudes, we can OVERCOME this injustice and make the world a better place for you and me!
The part where Dennis introduces Carl in an insanely overexcited voice is funny too. If you're looking for BEHIND THE SCENES, you'll get lots of it here!
Thanks for visiting my Cob Site! Please leave a message at the tone!
mike love rules
This album hits the ears the same way that the Rolling Stones' Flashpoint is -- like a bunch of old fellows who've given up on long jams, reworking hit singles and presenting a real-life presentation of who they are NOW. Instead, this is just a travelling greatest hits album, performing classic after classic after classic exactly as they sound on the original records. Which is nice! Because they're great songs! At least we don't have to sit through "Bluebirds Over The Fuckin' Mountain" again! Talk about a pile of DOLLARS!
No that's not the word. Toothpaste? No --
Ah! I remember - it's that stuff I put in my cereal -- Diarrhea!
And aside from some not-quite-there falsetto vocals (especially in the near-painful "Barbara Ann"), a bland cover of Chuck Berry's "School Days" (as opposed to Chuck Berry's "Stool Days," which I'm sure you can find on videotape somewhere), yet another bad attempt to recreate the studio masterpiece "Good Vibrations" in a concert setting, and the unfathomable inclusion of Al Jardine's classical music ripoff "Lady Lynda," it's pretty much nonstop happy surftime goodness gracious from the beginning of track one ("You look beautiful!") to the end of track 22 ("Oooo woooo! Oooo wooo-ooo-ooo-oooo-oooo!"). And that includes track six ("Sorry about the rain! Hopefully it's holy water!"), track 11 ("Happy birthday, dear Brian!"), track 19 ("You are so beautiful to me!) and track 666 ("Come Mark, and murder for me.").
It's not a must-own CD, but the last time I read the Bill of Rights, there was no such thing as a must-own CD.
Endless Bummer is exactly what it claims to be: the worst recorded moments of the Beach Boys' career. This includes not just wretched music (Spanish version of "Kokomo," Brian's astoundingly awkward and poorly-edited rap song "Smart Girls"), but also public embarrassments (Carl and Dennis singing in concert while under the influence of the white man's firewater, Mike recreating the band's timeless harmonies in commercials for the Hyatt Regency and Budweiser), disgusting, hateful backstage behavior (the always assholish Mike singing a humorless Bob Dylan parody and outdoing himself in a vicious tirade against the commercial failure "Heroes and Villains") and oodles of other hilarious publicists' nightmares (Brian soliciting cocaine from a group of teenaged fans, an uncomfortable in-studio argument between Brian and his loving, caring father). You can still hear the band's incredible talent, but it's shadowed by such sad-but-human traits as jealousy, bitterness, depression, anxiety, greed and... well...drunkenness.
Thank God for the ellipse...... Thank God for it indeed.
This was the first music review I've written as an adult. A man no longer in his 20's. A man in his 30's. I tried to be a bit more insightful than people generally think I am. As you can see, the result is a boring review.
Say! Check out the dangly penis on THAT gal!
Thanks for the laughs.
http://www.geocities.com/presto_art/beachboys
"I love to roll in
The snow but
When I do, I always end up getting
Wet and dirty
(Henry Dog is wet and dirty! Henry Dog is wet and dirty!)
I'm wet and dirty."
That's all we came up with, but that's enough for a dog to memorize. Speaking of which, you know how dogs are supposedly the gentle descendants of nature's merciless wolf? I've been meaning to ask this question to an animal specialist, so if you know one, forward it along: Do wolves in the wild generally run around the couch with a sock in their mouth at 4:30 in the morning? If not, I think I may have gotten a defective model.
Say! You know what ELSE is fun? Having really really high cholesterol, going on Lipitor and being thrilled to find it actually working, then calling the doctor to check on new bloodwork and happening across a sleepy receptionist. It occurred just this morning and went something exactly like this:
Her: Dr. Osher's office.
Me: Hi, I had my blood tested last week and I was just wondering if the results are in yet.
Her: What's your last name?
Me: Prindle
Her: Hold on.
(pause)
Her: Your triglycerides are high. They're at 209, and they should be below 150. Your total cholesterol is also high, at 266. It should be below 230. And your LDL, which is considered the 'bad' cholesterol, is high as well. It's at 176, and it should be under 130. So you should probably look into changing your diet.
Me (confused and upset): Umm... Do you have the numbers from my previous blood test?
Her: Yeah, hold on.
(pause)
Her: Okay, your total cholesterol was previously 249, so that has gone up since last time. And your LDL was 166 before, so that has also gone up.
Me: What about my triglycerides?
Her: Let's see -- okay, your triglycerides were previously at 80.
Me: Wait -- my triglycerides went from 80 to 266 in two months!?
(pause)
Her: Oh no, hang on. That was from last August. These are in the wrong order.
(pause)
Her: Okay, your triglycerides are at 75, your total cholesterol is 181, and your LDL is 100. So you're perfectly fine. I'm sorry to have frightened you like that.
WHEE!
The true "hallmark" (hang on, there's a great joke coming) of a great band is its ability to get signed to the "Hallmark" record label! (that was it) And nobody has been luckier in this respect than Mike Love, Al Jardine and Brian Wilson - the Cheech Boys. With their hilarious surf-rock routine "Dave's Not Home," this b
And nobody has been suckier in the past few decades than Mike Love, Al Jardine and (aside from completing Smile) Brian Wilson - the Beach Boys. But Hallmark's here to turn that fortune around, just as surely as they converted a dead in the water greeting card scam into the world's most profitable white slave auction. Yes, Hallmark has decided to join Starbucks as the second of two non-record companies that know nothing about music and shouldn't be putting out CDs. And the result is a zing-dinger!
Songs From Here And Back is about 4 minutes long and contains seven live tunes (a couple from the '70s, the rest from around '90), two bits of stage patter titled and programmed as unique tracks to make the CD seem longer, and one new solo song by each of the band's three surviving principals. Of the live songs, two are from Surfer Girl and the others are from All Summer Long, Today, Smiley Smile, Pet Sounds and - because Mike Love still hasn't realized that his "Kokomo" is a dated pile of '80s horseshit and not in fact a Beach Boys 'classic' overdue for official live release - Still Cruisin'.
Why does this album exist? But I digress.
Highlights include a nice performance of "Dance Dance Dance," a pretty rendition of "Surfer Girl" that Mike is kind enough to dedicate to all the lovely ladies here, a swell but unnecessary 1974 run-through of "Good Vibrations," and - best of all - a version of "I Get Around" performed with driving backbeat rhythm! So it sounds like an actual SONG rather than a series of introductions! Lowlights include Mike Love bragging about how his vomitous pissbag "Kokomo" reached #1, a 'car medley' composed of two songs, a strained-vocal trashing of "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and the three terrible, sappy new solo tracks. Brian waxes nostalgic on the corny, flaccid "The Spirit Of Rock N Roll," Al waxes his car on the Ronnie & The Daytonas homage/ripoff "PT Cruiser," and Mike waxes his pud with billiard chalk in the "Kokomo"-styled ballad "Cool Head, Warm Heart." Did I already mention that he once recorded a song about watching a neighbor woman masturbate? I own it. It's terrible.
I cut my ballsac again the other night. I was concentrating really hard not to, but I was drunk and my mind drifted for a second and SNIPPITY-DOO! Luckily the wife ran in and poured some assorted bullshit on it so the bleeding stopped. Not sure what all she poured on it, but now I have three balls so that's pretty cool.
Don't buy Songs From Here And Back.
If you're interested in buying Songs From Here And Back, just go to www.hallmark.com and do a search for Beach Boys (no quotation marks).
Then try to figure out how the search engine came up with this result:
"Son: Wonderful Gift. Front Message: On Your Birthday, Son What fun it is to smile at memories of your childhood... What a pleasure it is to share 'together times' with you now... What a joy it is to know the future has you in it... Inside Message: What a wonderful gift it is to have a son like you to love. Happy Birthday, Son"
Then try to figure out who the guy had to blow to get a job writing repetitive, awkward prose like that. Say! Why not use the word 'son' another three or four times? You don't want him to forget who he is in relation to the card-giver!!!!
But that's just one fellow's opinion. The important thing is that you're here, I'm here and we're all here together. What a pleasure it is to share 'together times' with you now. Happy Weekday, Reader.
If you like the Beachles, the Warmth Of The Sun collection might be worth picking up, mainly because the sound on tracks like Please Let Me Wonder, Kiss Me Baby, Let Him Run Wild, The Little Girl I Once Knew are vastly improved from the two-fer albums...oh wait, that's right, because they're in stereo and they sound fresh! Brian always had a thing for mono. Too bad he was always drinking after other people. Another thing about The Little Girl I Once Knew, I'm reading that the big "trick" was that they inserted two bars of silence before each chorus. Well on the two-fer with Today and Summer Days, mine has a tape hiss and pop between the break, and they've eliminated it on Wamrth of the Sun, which is great because now it's not distracting. I only have two complaints, one is that the wood block in Kiss Me Baby is mixed too loud on the stereo version, and two, since it's 2007 we have to deal with the stupid fucking prickholes of the industry putting copy protection bullshit on the CD. When I copied straight to my media player, I started getting garbles and skips from it after like track 21, so to fix it I used Audio Grabber, resequenced the tracks onto another CD and then dumped onto the media player...problem solved.
I don't know if you've ever considered forums or articles, but a great one which I'm sure would be a lengthy debate would be the whole copy protection issue. My take is if I bought the CD and paid more than 12 dollars with it, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, and setup a sweatshop making 6 gillion copies of it for free and give it out to the whole world, since obviously the industry thinks that's what I'll do. It's funny but it was never an issue with tapes...tapes that back in 1981 were traded in underground shows which eventually helped make four dudes from California very famous(And I'll give you a hint, they used to be great but on their last studio album, their drummer sounds...to quote Mr. Prindle "like he's using a pipe wrench") Anyways, now a good portion of CDs in the last couple of years now even have some extra software that installs on your machine even if you don't want it to. It's no wonder the MP3 biz is thriving and cannot be stopped even if Napster could.