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Although there are three more weeks of summer, as etched into the DNA of The Creator's very own Firmament, corporations have trained us to call off the season immediately after Labor Day. The drones have to get to work preparing the Xmas retail displays, which need to be set up by the Friday before Columbus Day. So here's something to transition all my fellow drones out of "official summer" on a sweet note.The "official" Beach Boys song for this time of year is, of course, "All Summer Long." I sort of like that one because of---not in spite of---it's bouncy vapidity and Norman Rockwell-HBO depiction of California teenage glory in the mid-1960s. The truth of that place and era for most kids was probably more about bullying, under-age drunkenness, and finger-fucking in the front seat of a 1951 Plymouth than "miniature golf and hondas in the hills." (Wait... I'm starting to like the song less and less the more I write about it.)
Anyway, the title track of the Pet Sounds album is an instrumental gem that has a sort of valedictory quality that well suits the manufactured occasion of a summer's end. The percussion throughout reminds me of crickets and cicadas like I'm hearing right now through the open screen windows. The beat wafts by like a balmy, early-evening breeze. As progression unfolds toward an ultimate series of formal, brass-driven stock ending-type cadences that have more in common with Sousa than rock and roll, subtle temporary key changes are injected that keep the mood bright. And the closing fade sustains an optimism that your pet sounds will always be around. (Unless you're dumb enough to store them all in "The Cloud," from which some corporation will steal them from you in a coupla years and make you pay for them again.)
Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys (1966, from "Pet Sounds," Capitol D 100513 [1990 CD reissue], via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.
Editor's note: the Wikipedia article on this album has some interesting information, but I must say that it's also chock full of thinly sliced horseshit. First, Pet Sounds is not "a heralding album in the emerging psychedelic rock style." It's just not. Period. Yes, Brian Wilson was using psychedelic drugs during 1965 and 1966, and an alternate version of "I Know There's An Answer," called "Hang On To Your Ego," has acid-driven lyrics. But just listen to it: what you hear is fairly standard surfer-type rock and pop arranged for a zillion different instruments---brilliantly, in my opinion---and mostly moody lyrics that are more characteristic of youthful depression than psychedelia.
Second, Pet Sounds is not an example of "Baroque pop" because, despite what Wikipedia has to say, there never was any such fucking thing! God help us! Yes, Wikipedia has an entire article on this nonexistent musical genre, and claim that the term has been in use since 1966. Well, maybe some early rock critic looking for attention coined the term, but no regular people ever did. Almost all of the references used to document the existence of this made-up genre were published in the 21st century (the rest are 1990s), possibly written by people who were raised more on rock music magazines than on rock music. You know: poseurs.
Now I'm so worked up I have to go burn some Delhi saffron incense and meditate....
see how hard you have to work to expose posers? Technology just makes it easier to pose than to expose. But our kids will never know what the 50s, 60s, and 70s were really like. And how dangerous will that be when a generation of leaders don't know history? Or science? Or music.
ReplyDeletebtw-- that's the first time I ever heard that song. Really. Ever! Guess I grew around that album like a hackberry around a steel fence post.
BO: you need to listen to the album cuts sometimes. I'll bet you don't even know what's on the B side of "A Walk In The Black Forest." Maybe you would enjoy it.
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