Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Wednesday, May 1. 2013

Beach Boys

 Hearing this motivated me to catch up on Brian Wilson's life.


The Beach Boys are still touring, but not with Brian. Was it really Sgt. Pepper that tipped him over the edge?




Posted by Bird Dog in Music at 17:30 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I didn't see Brian Wilson anywhere in that clip. There were a lot of shots of his brother, Carl.

I saw Brian Wilson in his first return to the Beach Boys in performance, in 1976.
#1 D on 2013-05-01 18:22 (Reply)
That's Brian right there in front with the Telecaster, isn't it?
#1.1 T.K. Tortch on 2013-05-01 22:52 (Reply)
Yep - an original finish Telecaster no less. The other is a Fender Precision bass and Jardine is playing a Stratocaster.
#1.1.1 Tom Francis on 2013-05-02 08:07 (Reply)
I was in 7th grade at the time. I didn't understand about such things as "arrangements" of music. There were styles, which one liked well or didn't, and were done well or weren't. That was all. I medium-liked the Beach Boys, because I very much liked harmony, but I disliked vapidness in lyrics. Other kids may have envied a surfer, SoCal culture they couldn't have, but I just disliked it. I guess I was defensively a NewEnglander even then.

But "Good Vibrations" changed that forever. The harmony was so marvelous that I started to listen closely to the arrangements, learned what Wall of Sound was, and forgave the Beach Boys every "Barbara Ann" and "Little Deuce Coupe" lyric.

Yogi Berra once said "You can see a lot just by looking." Similarly, with Brian Wilson "You can hear a lot just by listening."
#2 Assistant VIllage Idiot (Link) on 2013-05-01 19:53 (Reply)
Like AVI, I was an adolescent New Englander who didn't fall in love with the Southern California surfer culture the Beach Boys sang about, though my having cousins in LA probably made me more neutral than AVI. We saw ourselves in NE as being more serious than the HAVE FUN culture of the Beach Boys. It wasn't being defensive, it was that we thought we had more on our mind than just HAVING FUN. Such as the Young Citizens for Equal Voting Rights group that was generated at our school around the time of the Selma marches- no teacher input whatsoever. A friend of my sister pilloried them in the student paper as the "We don't have anything to do on Friday afternoon so let's do it" group. THAT didn't go over very well with the YCEVR crowd. Not well at all.

In retrospect, having fun has its merits.

When I first met my cousins in LA when I hitched out to California when I was 18, I saw that to a big degree they reflected the HAVE FUN culture that the Beach Boys sang about. Though neither of my cousins did much surfing. OTOH, one of my cousin's husbands still surfs- and he is pushing 60.

Oh, the Beach Boys harmonies. Divine. Nowadays, even though my adolescence concurred with the British Invasion and with psychedelic music, I am now more attracted to the vocal harmonies of previous groups, mostly Doo Wop. In addition to Beach Boy harmonies.

Also to the credit of the Beach Boys was that they did a calypso song, something outside the rock genre. I found a version of Sloop John B done by Dwight Yoakum, a version which also has its merits.
#3 Gringo on 2013-05-01 22:03 (Reply)
Dwight Yoakum

Wow - talk about a wildly unappreciated vocal talent - he's the penultimate country/western (yeah, I know - I still think of it as country/western rather than country) talent - guy has a set of pipes and that nasal twang that is perfect for the genre.

Never understood how such a prolific talent (21 albums, 30 singles on Billboard, 25 million records sold, five #1, 12 Gold, and 9 Platinum Albums) could be so under recognized. Try it sometime - ask somebody who Dwight Yoakum is. :>)
#3.1 Tom Francis on 2013-05-02 07:54 (Reply)
Dwight Yoakum does one of my absolute favorite covers of another genre--"Train in Vain" by The Clash. He turns the frenetic, sarcastic anthem into a lament. Awesome, and worth the time to find.
#3.1.1 HockeyDad on 2013-05-02 13:33 (Reply)
Loved Dwight Yokum even before I finally admitted to liking Country/Wester music.

If you like Dwight you'll love his musical precedent Buck Owens.
#3.1.2 phil g on 2013-05-02 15:38 (Reply)
Here are Buck Owens & Dwight Yoakum performing Streets of Bakersfield, accompanied by Flaco Jimenez on accordion.
#3.1.2.1 Gringo on 2013-05-02 17:55 (Reply)
He's at his best when doing covers. He's also at his best when he's singing duets - everybody from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to Sheryl Crow - there's something about his voice that just adds rather than detracts.

One of my favorite Yoakum covers is Kinky Friedman's "Rapid City, South Dakota". He takes that song to places Kinky never even thought of. Amazing talent.
#3.1.2.1.1 Tom Francis on 2013-05-02 19:28 (Reply)
I disliked vapidness in lyrics

They were ahead of their time with female empowerment - look at "Fun, Fun, Fun" - "the girls can't stand her
Cause she walks looks and drives like an ace now" or "She makes the indy 500 look like a roman chariot race now" or "A lotta guys try to catch her But she leads them on a wild goose chase now". I would posit that this one song ignited the whole feminism movement!!
#4 Tom Francis on 2013-05-02 08:03 (Reply)
You (all) make me recall parts of my youth – born and raised on the shores of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.
I recall hearing the Beach Boys in the early 60’s. How different and amazing I found Brian Wilson’s words, and the boy’s harmonies! Heck, I may have even paid attention to Geography in school (for the first time) just to find out where California was, and ponder why that coast was so different from where I lived and what I experienced.
I wouldn’t wish Brian’s travails on anyone, and I am sorry for his suffering. Yet, I still enjoy his compositions – fun, sun, girls, and American life so much.
Honors for him like: R ‘n’ R Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, Kennedy Center Honors for a lifetime of contributions to American Culture, and the UCLA George and Ira Gershwin Award give some indication of what he is to us.
Thanks for the post.
#5 Westoakland on 2013-05-02 17:18 (Reply)
I am only a mild Beach Boys fan, but I am a HUGE fan of the Sloop John B. This song always makes me smile.

Thanks for posting it.
#6 Dangerous Dean on 2013-05-02 18:46 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.