Cheap Trick – "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School" (1977)

I like you and you like me, yes?

Sorry but I had to gag you

Unlike the ephebophilic title character of today’s featured record, I did stay in high school – where I not only got all A’s in my high school mathematics classes, but also co-captained the school math team.

Those mad math skills come in very handy when it’s time for me to fill up my car with gas.

You might think choosing where to buy gasoline for your car isn’t that complicated.  But you would be wrong!  

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Let’s begin at the beginning.

My car takes 89 octane gasoline – often called “plus” or “mid-grade” to distinguish it from regular (87 octane) and premium (93) octane.

Did you know that if you mix gasolines with different octane levels, the overall octane number in your tank will be an average of the fuels you've mixed?  For example, mixing equal amounts of 87 and 93 octane will result in a blend with an octane rating of 90.  (That’s because 87 plus 93 equals 180, and 180 divided by two equals 90.)

So one way for me to get the 89 octane gas recommended for my car is to fill my tank with two parts 87 octane regular and one part 93 octane premium – 87 plus 87 plus 93 equals 267, and 267 divided by three equals 89.

Why would I want to go to the trouble of doing two transactions at the gas pump – filling my tank two-thirds full with 87 octane gas first, and then pumping enough 93 octane gas to end up with a full tank of 89 octane – when I could simply fill my tank with 89 octane fuel?

Check the prices for all three grades of gasoline the next time you stop by your local gas station.  I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that you’ll find that the price that the price for 89 octane is much closer to the price for 93 octane than it is to 87 octane.

For example, the Shell station nearest 2 or 3 lines world headquarters currently charges $3.01 for regular, $3.81 for mid-grade, and $4.01 for premium.

If the mid-grade at that station was priced in proportion to its octane content, it would be priced at $3.34 instead of $3.81.  This means that you can save money by mixing your own mid-grade at the pump.

Say you need 12 gallons of gas.  If you fill up with mid-grade at that station, you’d pay $46.72.  But if you bought eight gallons of regular and four gallons of premium, you’d pay only $40.12.

By mixing regular and premium in a 2:1 ratio rather than simply filling up from the mid-grade pump, you’d end up with the same amount of 89 octane fuel but you’d spend 14% less!

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How many of you shop at grocery stores that offer discounts on gasoline based on how much you spend on groceries?

In my area, one of the large grocery chains has a deal with Shell.  For every $100 you spend at one of that chain’s stores, you save 10¢ a gallon when you buy gas at a local Shell station.

Let’s say you spend $500 on groceries in a month.  That means you can save 50¢ a gallon on your next fillup.

But you can only use that discount once.  If you buy five gallons, you save $2.50 – but if you wait until you have room in your tank for 15 gallons, you save $7.50.  So it’s best to wait to use your discount until your tank is almost empty.

I have on occasion made people who are riding in my car very nervous because I will drive until I have only a few miles’ worth of gas left before I fill it up in order to save as much money as possible.

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I had a little less than a gallon left in my tank when I decided to fill up the other day.

I was sitting on an 80¢-per-gallon discount for Shell gas.  The easiest thing for me to have done would have been to go to the nearest Shell station and fill my tank with 89 octane mid-grade, which would have cost me $3.01 a gallon with my grocery-store discount – or $45.01 for the 15 gallons I needed.

Would I have saved money by mixing 87 and 93 octane?

Ordinarily, that would have been the way to go.  But if I bought ten gallons of regular and five gallons of premium, my grocery-store discount would have applied only to my purchase of regular.

Let’s do the math.  Ten gallons of regular at $2.21 a gallon ($3.01 minus the 80¢ discount) plus five gallons of premium at $4.01 a gallon adds up to $42.15.  

That’s a 6.4% savings.  Not bad, but could I do even better?

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I usually fill up my car at the neighborhood Marathon station, which consistently sells gas for significantly less than the Shell station.  (Both Shell and Marathon offer gasoline that meets the “Top Tier” standard established by leading automobile manufacturers, so I’m happy to buy either brand.)

But I can’t use my grocery-store discount at Marathon stations – it’s good only at Shell stations.

Gas at the Marathon station currently costs $2.83, $3.23, and $3.49 respectively for regular, mid-grade, and premium.  

So filling up with 15 gallons of Marathon mid-grade would have cost me $48.45 – quite a bit more than I would have paid for Shell gas if I had applied my grocery-store discount.

If I mixed my own 89 octane at the Marathon pump by buying ten gallons of regular and five gallons of premium, I would have paid only $45.75 – still almost 8% more than what I would have to pay at the Shell station.

So did I go to the Shell station and fill up my car with a mixture of regular and premium? 

No way, José!

What I did instead was to go to the Shell station and buy ten gallons of premium, which cost $2.21 a gallon with my grocery store discount.

Then I drove a few blocks to the Marathon station and bought five gallons of premium at $3.49 a gallon.

The total cost?  $22.10 plus $17.45 for a total of $39.55 – that’s an additional savings of  6.1%.

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Some of you may think all this is waaaaay too much trouble.  You’ll prefer to just fill up your tank with 89 octane mid-grade rather than mixing your own by purchasing regular and premium separately at the same station – much less going to two different stations.

Either you’re made of money, or your parents didn’t grow up during the Depression – neither of which is true for me.

There’s one other thing.  I’m as big a fan of free-market capitalism as you’ll ever meet, but I get a nice warm feeling inside when I figure out a way to stick it to a big business – even when only a few dollars are involved.

So screw you, Shell Oil (which had $284 billion in total revenues in 2024)!  

And up yours, Marathon Petroleum (which brought in $138 billion in that year)!  

2 or 3 lines (with total revenues of under $100 last year) is bending you over in the prison shower and having its way with both of you – and I’m telling all my loyal readers how to do the same!

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Click here to listen to Cheap Trick’s somewhat creepy “Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School,” which was released in 1977 on the band’s eponymous debut album.  (Somehow that album failed to crack the Billboard 200 album chart.)

Click here to buy “Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School” from Amazon.

Beach Boys – "Heroes and Villains" (1967)

I’ve been in this town so long

So long to the city

The day after Brian Wilson died, a group of Washington Post arts and entertainment writers put together a list of their 14 favorite Wilson songs.

That list includes “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” “God Only Knows,” and “Caroline, No” – which would probably be the four records I’d choose for the Beach Boys’ Mt. Rushmore if there were such a thing.  (Kudos to the writer who picked “Caroline, No” – I think it’s very underappreciated.)

Brian Wilson in 1961

But some of their other selections are real head-scratchers.  

Take “Barbara Ann.”  (Please!)  “Barbara Ann” is a lot of fun to sing along with after a night of binge drinking.  But if you play it when you’re sober, it loses its appeal after about 30 seconds.  Also, it’s not a Brian Wilson composition . . . which should have disqualified it from consideration.

“Sloop John B” should have been given the title “Sloop John B-Side.”  It has a certain loosey-goosey charm, but there’s really no there there.  Once again, it’s not a Brian Wilson composition . . . so why would you include it on a list titled “14 essential Brian Wilson songs”?

Finally, there’s “This Whole World,” which was released on the Sunflower album in 1970.  Like a lot of Wilson’s post-Pet Sounds songs, it’s distinctive and interesting.  But in the final analysis, it doesn’t really work – the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

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What Brian Wilson songs that weren’t included on the Post’s list are on my MUCH BETTER favorites list?

The most puzzling omission from the Post list is “I Get Around,” which is the quintessential Beach Boys pre-Pet Sounds single.  And it sounds just as fresh today as it did in 1964.

“Let Him Run Wild” – which was the B-side of “California Girls” – was almost as perfectly conceived and executed as “I Get Around,” but the moods of the two records couldn’t be more different.  While “I Get Around” is about cool guys doing cool guy stuff, “Let Him Run Wild” is about uncool guys with hopeless crushes on girls who are waaaaay out of their league.  (Guess which of those groups I was a member of when I was in high school?)

I’d fill out the rest of my list with additional Pet Sounds selections.  (The Post’s list includes four tracks from Pet Sounds, but that’s not nearly enough.)  

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I talk a lot about Pet Sounds – which is far and away the greatest pop music album ever.  

Brian Wilson in 1977

[Sgt. Pepper?  Are you freakin’ kidding me?  Sgt. Pepper has “A Day in the Life” – the best Beatles song ever – and a few other winners.  But there are several very weak tracks on that album – especially “When I’m Sixty-Four” (Paul McCartney at his most annoying) and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (John Lennon at his most so-full-of-sh*t-that-his-eyes-are-brown).]

If I had to pick just one additional Pet Sounds track to add to the Post’s list, it would be “Here Today.”  

But I don’t have to pick just one.  So I’m also going to include “You Still Believe in Me,” “That’s Not Me,” “I’m Waiting for the Day,” and “I Know There’s an Answer.”

Don’t worry – I didn’t forget “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.”  Like “In My Room” – which is included on the Post’s list – that song is a cri de coeur from deep within Brian Wilson’s troubled mind.  But while the singer of “In My Room” will likely outgrow his teenage angst some day, the singer of “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” is a mature adult who has come to realize that his fear and anxiety will be with him for the rest of his life.

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One final note.

I’m probably doing Wilson a disservice by not including any of his post-1966 songs on my favorites list.

Brian Wilson in 2017

But I never bought any of the Beach Boys post-Pet Sounds records.  And while I’m sure there are some good songs on those albums, I can’t imagine that any of them are good enough to displace any of the songs on my list.

Feel free to try to make me change my mind – as anyone who knows me will tell you, I have no problem admitting it when I’m wrong about something.  (The last time that happened was in 1982.)

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I decided to feature “Heroes and Villains” today even though it didn’t make my favorites list.  

It’s a real tour de force record – in some ways, it beats “Good Vibrations” at its own game.  But in the final analysis, there’s a little too much sound and fury in “Heroes and Villains.”  And while that sound and fury doesn’t signify nothing, it doesn’t signify as much as “Good Vibrations.”  

To put it another way, “Heroes and Villains” is analogous to witnessing a dog delivering a sermon – the fact that it’s a dog speaking is so remarkable that you tend to overlook the fact that the points he makes aren’t all that persuasive.

Click here to listen to the version of “Heroes and Villains” that was released in 1967 on the Smiley Smile LP.  (There are a number of longer versions, one of which was released on the 2004 Brian Wilson Presents Smile album.)

Click here to buy “Heroes and Villains” from Amazon.

Beach Boys – "Pet Sounds" (1966)

[NOTE: I’ve gone to relatively few live concerts in my life – I’ve mostly listened to recorded music.  There are several reasons I prefer recordings to live performances.  For one thing, I figured out long ago that you could buy a lot of record albums for the price of a concert ticket. 

When I do go to a concert, I’m usually motivated by bucket-list considerations – I want to be able to say that I saw a favorite group up close and personal.  That explains why I’ve gone to live shows by The Rolling Stones, Kinks, David Bowie, Sonic Youth, X, and a few others.

But I think the concert experience that I treasure the most was seeing the late Brian Wilson at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in 2018.  Here’s a slightly-edited version of the 2 or 3 lines post I wrote shortly after seeing Wilson.]

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A few days ago, Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour” stopped at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Wilson and his band – including original Beach Boy Al Jardine, who met Wilson at Hawthorne High School almost 60 years ago – were originally scheduled to perform at the Kennedy Center in May, but had to postpone that show and several others when Wilson needed emergency back surgery.

Brian Wilson and Al Jardine

The years have not been kind to the 76-year-old Wilson’s body.  He needed help from his assistant to walk to the white Yamaha grand piano that had been positioned front and center on the Kennedy Center stage.  Once he took a seat at the piano, he didn’t move until the end of the no-intermission, two-hour-long show, when his assistant returned to help him walk offstage.

The years haven’t been kind to Wilson’s voice either.  At times, he struggled to sing on pitch.  

But none of that mattered.  HE'S BRIAN F*CKING WILSON, the genius who created Pet Sounds – which is the greatest album in the history of pop music.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see him perform live and in person.

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The concert got off to a great start with “California Girls,” which was followed by other pre-Pet Sounds hit singles (including “Little Deuce Coupe,” “Dance, Dance, Dance,” and “I Get Around”).  

Those songs couldn’t be more dated.  They depict a southern California teenage-boy-centric world that became extinct decades ago – assuming it ever really existed.

Brian Wilson masters “Pet Sounds” in 1966

Did the Beach Boys and their buds really sit around and debate the relative merits of hip east-coast girls, midwestern farmers’ daughters, and northern girls who “keep their boyfriends warm at night,” before deciding that tanned, bikini-clad California girls are the “cutest girls in the world”?   (I’m sorry, but to me there is no higher compliment for a young woman than “cute.”)

And did the hot-rodders who spent their weekends going from town to town in search of street-racing action really eschew going steady because “it wouldn't be right to leave [your] best girl home on Saturday night”?

The lifestyle the Beach Boys sang about in those songs was as foreign to a kid growing up in Joplin, Missouri, as life in Paris or Tokyo.  God knows I wanted to experience it, but that wasn’t happening.

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Latter-day Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin then joined Brian and the boys to sing “Feel Flows” and “Sail On, Sailor,” which teed it up nicely for what the audience had been waiting for: a performance of all 13 tracks of Pet Sounds.

That album kicks off with the rollicking, up-tempo, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” which is followed by “You Still Believe in Me” (a slow song).  Next comes another fast-slow pair of songs – “That’s Not Me” and “”Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder).” 

The "Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary
World Tour" band on  stage

After “I’m Waiting for the Day,” which is a real tour de force, the audience had a chance to catch its emotional breath during “Let’s Go Away for Awhile” (an instrumental) and “Sloop John B” (which is the only non-original song on Pet Sounds).

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The audience rose to its feet and burst into applause when it heard the opening notes of “God Only Knows,” the first track on side two of the album.

The woman sitting to my left had warned me before the show started that she would cry when “God Only Knows” was played.  I told her that I might join her because that was the song that my oldest son and his wife had chosen for their first dance together at their wedding reception – hearing me play the album when he was a child had apparently made an impression on him.  (That story was enough to start her tearing up.) 

“God Only Knows” is a tough act to follow, but the next three songs on the album – 

“I Know There’s an Answer,” “Here Today,” and “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Time” (a song that seems to sum up Brian Wilson’s troubled life) – are just as good.

Pregaming in my car on the
drive to the Kennedy Center

Next was the album’s title track – today’s featured song – a catchy, lighthearted instrumental that allowed the audience to gather itself before what was the emotional high point of the evening for me: “Caroline, No,” the closing song on Pet Sounds.

Paul McCartney has said that “God Only Knows” is his favorite song of all time, but I think “Caroline, No” is better.  Who are you going to listen to – Paul McCartney or me?

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There was no way for Wilson and his band to top Pet Sounds, but we sixty-somethings in the audience weren’t ready to go home yet.  So they gave us “Good Vibrations” – which took longer and cost more to record than the entire Pet Sounds album – and several more classic pre-Pet Sounds singles (including “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Barbara Ann,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” and “Fun, Fun, Fun”).

Wilson then closed the show with a solo performance of “Love and Mercy,” the opening track of his eponymous debut solo album (which was released in 1988).  

“Love and Mercy” also provided the title of the 2014 Brian Wilson biopic, which included some amazing scenes depicting the 23-year-old wunderkind (portrayed by Paul Dano) supervising the recording of Pet Sounds.  If you haven’t seen the movie, DROP EVERYTHING AND WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!

While you’re at it, watch the 2017 Showtime documentary, Making Pet Sounds.  Click here to watch the trailer for it.   

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The “Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour” kicked off in Auckland, New Zealand, on March 26, 2016.  

By the time the tour ends later this month, Wilson and company will have performed over 200 times in over two dozen countries – including Japan, Finland, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Iceland.

Why is Brian Wilson is putting himself through this ordeal?  

My ticket

It’s not because he enjoys airline travel.  (His assistant once asked him what went through his mind as they took off on a flight, and Wilson answered, “Don’t blow up, don’t blow up, don’t blow up!”)

And it’s not because Wilson needs the money – his net worth is estimated at $75 million.

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Wilson has a long history of mental illness – which was probably caused at least in part by his taking LSD and other drugs when he was younger – and suffers from auditory hallucinations.   His recent autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, suggests that he may continue to tour and perform because it helps him cope with the voices in his head that tell him “terrible and scary things.”

“Songs help me with my pain,” he writes in that book. “Music happens and the voices stop happening.”

He talks about dragging out performance of “Good Vibrations” because “any minute playing ‘Good Vibrations’ is a minute I don’t have to feel afraid or tired or haunted.”

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The title of this blog refers to the two or three lines from each post’s featured song that are quoted at the beginning of that post.  So you may wonder why I’ve chosen to feature an instrumental that has no lyrics for me to quote.   

They tell you to live in the moment.  But I often find that the anticipation of an event is more satisfying than the event itself.  For me, the best part of a vacation is the night before it begins – because once the vacation starts, I find myself counting the days until it ends.

The same is true of music.  Once you hear the opening notes of a song, it’s only a matter of a few minutes before that song is over.  But if the song never begins, it can never end.

“Pet Sounds” immediately precedes “Caroline, No” on the Pet Sounds album.  Every time I listen to it, I’m anticipating hearing the best song on the best pop album of all time.  

That’s why I’m featuring it on 2 or 3 lines today.

Click here to listen to “Pet Sounds.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.