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.

Undertones – "Teenage Kicks" (1978)

I'm gonna call her on the telephone

Have her over ’cause I’m all alone

I need excitement – oh, I need it bad!

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I told you about a controversial Italian Supreme Court decision in a sexual assault case.

The defendant had admitted having sex with the alleged victim but denied having forced himself on her.  The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn his conviction was based in part on the fact that the woman who claimed she had been assaulted had been wearing tight blue jeans at the time.  

Why did that matter?  “It is a fact of common experience that it is nearly impossible to slip off tight jeans even partly without the active collaboration of the person who is wearing them,” the court said, concluding that the man might have been telling the truth when he said the sex was consensual.

Alessandra Mussolini and her grandfather

Female members of the Italian Parliament demonstrated against the decision clad in blue jeans.  The leader of that protest was Alessandra Mussolini, a member of the Chamber of Deputies who also happened to be the granddaughter of the infamous fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

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Il Duce is not Signora Mussolini’s only well-known relative.  She is also the niece of the legendary Italian actress, Sophia Loren, who helped her get a start in the movies when she was just a teenager.  

When she was 19, Mussolini recorded an album of romantic songs titled Amore.  For some reason, that album was only released in Japan. 

The following year, she graced the pages of the Italian and German editions of Playboy:

“Every actress does topless and stuff like this,” she later told an interviewer.  “You have to.”

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Neither Mussolini’s ancestry nor her Playboy appearances hampered her when she decided to go into politics.  (We’re talking Italy, after all, so being in Playboy probably helped her.) 

When she was just 29 years old, Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies – which is the Italian equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives. 

After serving several terms as a deputy, Mussolini successfully ran for a seat in the Italian Senate.  Later she was elected to the European Parliament.

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Mussolini broke with tradition by proposing to her future husband – police official Mauro Floriani – rather than waiting for him to get down on bended knee and pop the question.

Mussolini and Floriani on their wedding day

In 2013, Floriani was one of some 50 men – including celebrities, priests, journalists and politicians – who were accused of paying two teenaged girls for sexual services. 

The two girls were recruited by a pimp via an internet chatroom and set up in a basement flat where they earned up to 600 euros per day.  One of the teenagers told police that she had turned to prostitution because she wanted to be able to afford cigarettes, designer handbags, and “lots of clothes.”

Wiretaps revealed that Floriani was one of the men who contacted the girls most often.  He confessed that he had visited them, but said he had no idea that they were underage.

Floriani eventually pled guilty to soliciting the services of an underage prostitute, and received a one-year suspended sentence.

That might sound like a slap on the wrist, but remember that he had to face the wrath of his wife – who had called for chemical castration of pedophiles when she was a member of the Italian Parliament.  

I wonder if she thought about administering the more traditional form of that treatment to her errant hubby.

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“Teenage Kicks” – which was released in 1978 by the Northern Irish punk band, the Undertones – was supposedly the all-time favorite record of legendary BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel.  (The opening line of that song is carved on Peel’s tombstone.)

“Teenage Kicks” is yet another record I had heard on Steve Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show and nowhere else – until I recently heard a cover of it by Ash, another Northern Irish band.

Click here to listen to the original Undertones recording of “Teenage Kicks.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.