For Those Who Don’t Get My Beach Boys Obsession…
GAH! This originally posted with the worst thing ever, rather than Brian Wilson. I apologise more than words can say for that.
Watch this, then you either will get it, or you’ll know you never will:
(For those who care, that’s Brian Wilson in 2004 performing the song Surf’s Up, from Smile, written by Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. The backing band there are Darian Sahanaja (keyboards,vocals), Scott Bennett (keyboards, glockenspiel, vocals), Probyn Gregory (french horn), Paul von Mertens (flute, harmonica, conductor), Jeffrey Foskett (sleigh bells, vocals), Taylor Mills (vocals), Bob Lizik (bass), Jim Hines (drums), Nelson Bragg (percussion, vocals), Nick Walusko (guitar, vocals) and the Stockholm Strings And Horns. Sahanaja, Bennett, Gregory, Mertens, Foskett and Bragg are all part of the Beach Boys touring band for the reunion tour).
Wrong YouTube URL: aiiieeee!!
I’m so very, very sorry. Someone in another comments thread was saying “Summer of Love really can’t be *that* bad, can it?” and it was 2AM and I had one link in my right-click buffer and the other in my middle-click buffer and… I’m so very, very, very sorry.
That was hilariously, uncompromisingly awful. :)
Yeah. The original track was the one I’d described in my earlier posts as being the one that should rightly lead to the destruction of all sound-reproduction equipment, and the deafening of all humanity, lest they hear it.
The fact that I still consider that band to be one of the best in the history of popular music should tell you how good the *good* stuff is, though…
Erm…that’s the Summer Of Love video.
I don’t get it. Sorry.
Absolutely no need for apologies – I don’t take differences in taste as some kind of personal insult.
Every time I hear that song it turns me inside out. It did the very first time I heard it, and it still hits me the same way. Imagine knowing the Beach Boys only for the dozen or so hits that every American is issued a copy of along with their Social Security card: songs like Help Me Rhonda, California Girls, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Good Vibrations as the one “artsy” song. I can’t say I listened to any of them closely, though I knew Paul McCartney liked God Only Knows. Anyway, you see a song with that title on a CD track listing, and naturally you figure it’s another oldie like Surfer Girl or Surfin’ USA. And then you hear that? Unbelievable. I don’t even know how to convey the force of that moment. I was converted on the spot.
Exactly. That’s why I choose that one as the “this is what they were really about” song. I honestly think that the second movement of the completed Smile is the greatest piece of music ever written in human history, and the two major songs that are part of it (this and Wonderful) are as good as any songs by anyone ever.
It’s Gershwin-level stuff.
Well, forget the “-level” bit. An era in California: “Orange Crates” meant to be like Gershwin, anyway? That was the whole point?
Yeah, Gershwin has been a huge influence on both Brian and VDP — you only have to look at the way that Smile is structured in three movements like Rhapsody In Blue. Orange Crate Art actually ended with a wonderful instrumental version of a lullaby by Gershwin.