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If the Beach Boys had been able to continue in this direction, with Brian Wilson channeling his musical explorations back into a commercial rock vein rather than what Mike Love called "Brian's ego music," this group might have gained a whole new relevance in the late '60s and early '70s. Unfortunately, other things happened.It doesn't take my ear much imagination to hear something very much like Chicago at their peak form during the "CTA" era. Swap out the low-rent piano and bass lines with something jazzy, use a larger drumkit played around the beats instead of straight up and down, throw some reverb on the horns, put Pete Cetera on lead vocal. I owe this observation in part to old pal Larry K., who reported to me some years ago that he saw a Chicago/Beach Boys mashup during the mid-70s in The Windy City, and Chicago did in fact perform Darlin' with Petey on lead vocal and other beach men participating. I can hear why that would have worked then by listening to this track.
Darlin', The Beach Boys (1967, from "Wild Honey," originally released on Capitol Records T-2859), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.
I saw them at the Yale Bowl. Great show.
ReplyDeleteYou've been drilling deep on Obama. I love tax cuts.
59er: I'm working on an update about my Obama "hypotheses" for purposes of coherence. An idea isn't helpful if it's expressed in the manner of a lunatic. I was actually wound up about something else that I read last week, and it spilled over into the Obama posts. I'll try getting to that in a few days.
ReplyDeleteI also want to write more about taxation and tax fairness. I'm frustrated about my ability to write about economics, though, because my education is very light in that area (one intro and one macro class over 30 years ago). The politics and mass communications issues are fairly clear to me, though, even if my conclusions are wide open to argument. To speak speak with any authority I'd need to retake that macro class... something that I'm pretty sure ain't gonna happen.