Beach Party

No offense to Anthony Kedidis, Flea or the rest of the Chilli Peppers but I just can’t get my head around their slightly funked up version of the Beach Boys classic, “I get Around”

Their debut album, AM, is a great example of poppy alt-country. Being There, their sophmore double album, adds classic rock and loads of distortion. Their third album, Summerteeth, is like listening to a nihilistic version of the Beach Boys, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an album praised high and low for its complexities and trust in its listeners. A Ghost is Born won the band a Grammy for best alternative album of the year. A new CD, Sky Blue Sky, is forthcoming on May 15, 2007.

The Beach Boys used to sing about endless summers. These days, at least two of them seem to be caught up in endless litigation.

On a recent getaway to Copenhagen, blackcat and I were out strolling, taking in the city (looking for a restaurant we’d eaten at before and enjoyed, actually), and passed by a used record shop. We were a few steps past it when something I had seen in the shop window registered. “Was that what I think it was?”, I said out load and turned back. Sure enough, it was a copy of “Surf’s Up” from the Beach Boys. That was once a favorite record of mine and I hadn’t heard it in years. Since at least as far back as Oct. 17, 1989 at 5:04pm. That was when my HiFi system was trashed by an earthquake. (We used to live in California, you see.) I didn’t replace the turntable and sold all my records.

A new biography takes yet another peek into the tortured inter-workings of Wilson chronicling as the title puts it, “The Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.” Perhaps author Peter Carlin feels that he can do some more summing up after Wilson’s successful 2004 release of his previously shelved record of the late sixties, “Smile.”

Also, keep in mind that many classic pop/rock records had very few of the actual band playing. Virtually all the Beach Boys records used the famous "Wrecking Crew" of famous studio musicians, many of whom played on records considered epiphonal by such other artists like The Byrds, etc. The Beatles used a session drummer or two in the very beginning, and brought in musicians for instruments that were out of their experience, like trumpet, etc, but otherwise, they played damn near all the isntrument, snd sang all the parts.

According to the Associate [sic] Press , Love is perturbed that Wilson “shamelessly misappropriated Mike Love’s songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the ‘Smile’ album itself”. . . . The allegations of misappropriation apparently stem from a promotion in Britain’s The Daily Mail in which 2.6 million copies of a Beach Boys compilation CD were given away. Ergo, Love’s lawsuit seeks damages for “millions of dollars in illicit profits” plus one million dollars to put toward international advertising.

What better summer reading than a history of the Beach Boys and the Southern California experience. Or so I thought. Timothy White’s The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience is a laborious history of everything distantly related to the title. I read music biographies to gain insights into the performing, writing, and recording experiences of the artists. Timothy White wrote his book to collect every random story and fact he could find about the Wilsons and California. It’s a shame that a former editor at Rolling Stone couldn’t find himself a decent editor.

So despite being safe and comfortable at home, I can enjoy all of this along with everyone else attending. My only beef is that the online simulcast is a little off in announcing who will be appearing next in each location. For instance, by the time they ran a text banner announcing Destiny's Child coming up, they were done. And Brian Wilson performed some old Beach Boys tunes in Berlin, yet nothing announced that. I just happened to be tuned to Berlin online so I caught it.

WCBS-FM, the top oldies station in the nation for more than three decades, stunned its legion of listeners by abruptly switching formats this weekend. Goodbye, Buddy Holly and the Beach Boys.

Dennis Wilson was unfairly maligned as the least talented Beach Boy. He was a crappy drummer, a lousy songwriter, and more interested in drugs, alcohol, and sex than making music, or so the legend went. Though there may be a grain of truth to this — especially the part about drugs, alcohol, and sex — Dennis Wilson was at least fourteen times as talented as, say, the cancerous growth that is Mike Love. Dennis surprised a lot of people when he started writing songs for the Beach Boys in the ’70s,...

There was once a time when my dreams of driving through California involved either cruising in an open-topped red Chevy with surfboard in the boot and the Beach Boys blaring from a stereo, or straddling a roaring Harley-Davidson as I thundered through the Sunshine State with not a care in the world.

Woke up showered and listen the the Beach Boys for a while. Maybe heaven will be surfing in SoCal in the groovy 60’s.

I just feel really lonely is all. We are that perfect "gag me" couple...I am truly empty without him. To be clique...he completes me. Today my "trigger song" came on...yes, it's Kokomo by The Beach Boys. Then I somehow zapped back to the time when John and I were in Venice. We were holding hands...chasing and playfully pushing each other near the pier...then he kissed me. I loved it. I felt like those people in the ever-so-perfect diamond ring commercials. You know, those "A Diamond if Forever" ones?

This month's Rolling Stone (which my son calls the geriatric version of Spin) sports a picture of Orlando Bloom, "Hollywood's No. 1 Pretty Boy". Just to prove my son right, the initial pages are just filled with old guys: DeNiro doing an AMEX ad, Sting playing on a college tour, Springsteen out with Devils & Dust, Paul McCartney back on tour, Neil Young just out of a hospital for a brain aneurysm, an interview with a lined and haggard Robert Plant, and Elton John announcing his upcoming marriage to long-time partner David Furnish. Garbage band members managed to put aside their differences long enough to make Bleed Like Me, which has hit the Top 10. Whoda thunk? Mariah Carey's new CD, The Emancipation of Mimi, sold 600,000 copies in the first two weeks. Good Vibrations, the Broadway musical based upon the Beach Boys catalog, closed its 3-month run after savage reviews.

Those Cadbury commercials are cute, especially the one where the surfer shook his little chocolate booty at the shark. Doing a little search on it revealed that it was first shown in Australia in 2002. I guess they’re just recycling the advert here now. Even if I’m not a chocolate lover, it’s still pretty catchy. Makes me want to go out and get some, well almost. Tried to find the video or at the very least, audio of the songs but to no avail. The song is to the tune of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys....

Because I was bored out of my skull by the fact that I was ironing for so long, I began to actually listen to the lyrics of the songs playing. And the Beach Boys came on, telling of how it would be so much ‘nicer’ if the couple could stay together, as a couple, all the time. I used to think of the song as just a little ditty with a not-particularly-catchy tune, but perhaps I was wrong; it’s got a lamenting side to it which is skillfully disguised by upbeat, smiley singing. It’s a fresh look.