The Beach Boys

I feel like everybody has some basic knowledge about The Beach Boys, wouldn’t you say? So many of their riffs have entered the cultural lexicon, surely most people can conjure the chorus to “Good Vibrations” at will, and “California Girls” and “Surfin USA” and “Barbara Ann” and “I Get Around” and . . . it just keeps going and going.

I had a greatest hits cd, so I knew all the basic hits, but I have to confess, when Kokomo came out, I think in the late 80s, I just really hated that song, and if you’ll remember, you couldn’t turn on a radio back then without hearing that song. It was everywhere. I still really hate that song.

My buddy Chris used to sing the praises of Pet Sounds, and for a while it was stuck in his car cd player, so if you rode with Chris, you had to listen to it, but I never listened all that carefully to it. So, that’s the extent of my background with The Beach Boys.

For about a month now, I’ve been going through The Beach Boys stuff, and I have to just say it, there’s a lot of really bad music in there. It’s a bit of a slog. People who claim Brian Wilson was some kind of pop Mozart, well, I am not convinced. I’ll put it that way, but I don’t want to take anything away from Wilson, either. That’s the point I’m trying to make. He doesn’t have to be a genius for “Good Vibrations” to be a work of high art, or for that Beach Boys sound, with Brian’s falsetto, being itself instantly recognizable and beautiful. “Sloop John B” is my favorite Beach Boys song, and I have probably listened to it 50 times the last several weeks. It’s about as perfect a recording as one could possible hope to get. It’s just beautiful.

Then it’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” and “Good Vibrations” and “Help Me Rhonda” and “I Get Around.”