Wildlife: The baby geese have outgrown the neighboring ducks -- their feathers still look yellow in the evening light.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: A squall now and then, but fairly sunny yesterday. A robin's egg blue sky today with no clouds in sight. (You can turn the rain back on after Memorial Day.)

Charity Alert: The Rainforest Site -- click for some more oxygen in the world.

Media Watch: I saw Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson And The Story Of SMiLE on the satellite two nights ago. It was centered on his performance of SMiLE at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2004, but the filmmakers had to re-tell some of his biography with the Beach Boys, and the load he carried in making them successful, in order to properly describe what the music known as SMiLE actually was, and what it meant.
Before we go on, I want everyone to know that I bought the CD of SMiLE just as it came out. My favorite part is the song Surf's Up, and the music which leads in and out of it. Hear it HERE!
When I was a young teenager, I was frankly a pathetic musical snob. I liked classical music, jazz, folk music, and blues, but I hated the smug radio music called "rock and roll." Much of it was cynical teen-pop foistered on "us" by Tin Pan Alley, it's true, but there was ferment in the business, and some very fine music was being created which changed the industry forever -- especially after the success of the Beatles. It took me awhile (too long) to catch on, but Phil Spector, Berry Gordy, and (to me) the ultra-commercial Brian Wilson were part of a musical revolution 'from the inside' that brightened up the whole world for over a decade.
The Beach Boys were literally the kings of Salt Lake City popular music. Their stupid manager, Murray Wilson, had signed then to a long-term contract at the Lagoon resort twenty miles north of the main city, and they played there at least twice a year, for almost nothing, from the early to mid 60's.
Thousands of local teenagers got drunk and deflowered in the wake of those shows, but I was too young and naive to know or appreciate those aspects then. The Capitol album Beach Boys Live captures the vibe of the time -- screaming crowds in a cacophony that drowns out the efforts of the players to make music. (The girls especially loved the apparently untalented but handsome Dennis Wilson.)
My ears first picked up on the quality of the Beach Boys' Don't Worry Baby, without knowing it's connection to Phil (and Veronica) Spector. Soon after, I had to grudgingly admit liking the album Beach Boys Today. (The Spector-like You're So Good To Me caught my attention, although I'd remain unaware of the wide scope of Spector's achievements and influence for a few more years.)
In June of 1965, I briefly ran into Carl and Dennis Wilson at a local music store. They seemed preoccupied and none too friendly, so we didn't say anything more than "Hi." The buzz on the street from the Lagoon show was that Brian Wilson wasn't there -- nobody knew, or cared about, the studio guy (Glen Campbell) who was in his place. Later, the crowd accepted Bruce Johnston, a good singer/musician with a retiring, almost non-existent onstage personality, but they still wondered why Brian Wilson backed away.
All was forgiven in my home town when Summer Days & Summer Nights came out -- containing a song named Salt Lake City. The record was loaded with good songs that even I appreciated -- the 45 RPM version of Help Me Rhonda, sung by Al Jardine, California Girls, Girl From New York City, and Carl Wilson singing Girl Don't Tell Me.
Brian Wilson was competing fiercely with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, in their prime, plus lesser and equally popular Rock groups. The movie makes that clear -- but it downplays the fact that these pressures caused his FIRST nervous breakdown -- forcing him off the road in late 1964.
In retrospect, I can see that the Beach Boys were trying to find their feet by the summer of '65. Every household in SLC with teenagers had the silly Beach Boys Party album, but they owed their fans something better than that. The Byrds-like Little Girl I Once Knew didn't quite fit the bill either.(Although the ultra-loose Barbara Ann from Party remains a fun single even now, doesn't it?)
Good Vibrations and the album Pet Sounds came out in the winter, and shut me up, along with other Wilson nay-sayers, forever. They were among the best records of 1966 -- all the superlatives written about them are true. The film spends a lot of time describing how Brian Wilson was trying to follow up these masterpieces -- it's a wonderful look at a remarkable artist at work.
The movie even shows footage from Leonard Bernstein's mid 60's TV special about pop music. That broadcast was one of the highlights of my teenage life -- when the foremost musician in America spoke approvingly about the music I now loved the most, it validated me internally, and externally. Brian Wilson's plaintive solo singing of Surf's Up at his piano was truly the highlight of that fabulous show.
Everybody knows what happened next -- when the Summer of Love occured in 1967, the Beach Boys were A.W.O.L. Carl Wilson ducked out of the Monterry Pop Festival, avoiding enforcers from the draft board, which was smart, but the whole group ducked out with him, which wasn't. They actually had no choice -- the Beach Boys were in disarray -- Carl Wilson was the sole bridge between lead singer Mike Love and creative source Brian Wilson. Carl also supplied the voice of their current hit singles, and they couldn't perform without him.
From the website above: Filled with compositions that are complex and sophisticated while glorious and beautiful, "SMiLE" was originally intended to be the follow-up to The Beach Boys’ iconic breakthrough "Pet Sounds." It was to appear in stores in January 1967. In fact, more than 400,000 SMiLE record jackets were printed and ads were taken out in various magazines to prepare for the concept album.
The only new song played over the radio by the Beach Boys in 1967 was Heroes and Villains, and it wasn't well-received, to say the least. It sounded like half-hearted polka music to most young ears, including mine. A strange single called Gettin' Hungry by Carl Wilson and Mike Love came out, along with a scatter-shot album called Smiley Smile -- it sure looked like the Beach Boys were having a crisis with Brian Wilson, which was exactly the case. We all knew that SMiLE had been shelved -- what showed up in it's place was only purchased by people who needed an unscratched version of Good Vibrations.
Brian Wilson had suffered another nervous breakdown, and sad to say, he'd have several more. Drugs and medical quackery blighted most of his next thirty years, but he would survive, and re-establish himself as a performer eventually.
When Wild Honey came out in 1968, I personally liked the new sound of the Beach Boys, especially Carl Wilson's soulful, slightly unsteady voice, and the complex group vocals. I could put up with Mike Love if he was wasn't always the focus of the band. Friends was pretty mellow, and I enjoyed Do It Again on 20/20, except that the rest of the album was pretty unfocused. (Neglected Dennis Wilson had some interesting tunes, and there was at least one refugee-song from SMiLE, that I didn't know about at the time.)
When the Beach Boys moved to Warner Brothers they put out two superb albums: Sunflower and (do my ears deceive me?) Surf's Up, which contained a very pleasant version of the legendary song, five years after we all first heard it on television. Feel Flows by Carl Wilson is my choice for best cut, even though Brian's classic Until I Die is included too -- it is a very good LP!
My favorite incarnation of the Beach Boys encompassed the albums Carl and the Passions, Holland, and Beach Boys In Concert. The band was fronted by a mixed-race South African named Blondie Chaplin (who's been touring with the Rolling Stones lately). His ethnic East Indian countryman Ricky Fatarr played the drums while Dennis mostly stood and sang. Carl's bro-in-law Billy Hinchie played a variety of instuments in the back. Their music wasn't just white bread pop.
Brian Wilson's Marcella, and Sail On Sailor, Carl Wilson's Trader, Chaplin's Leaving This Town, and Dennis Wilson's Steamboat still please me mightily.
It was only a strange coincidence that I moved to Holland a few years after the Beach Boys tried and failed to base themselves there -- provoking yet another setback for Brian Wilson.
After they moved back to America, their recorded output was pretty ragged -- Fifteen Big Ones, with the original five man group, was pretty unadventurous. Love You was embarrassingly BAD. The Beach Boys were doing alright as a touring act -- except that Brian or Dennis could act VERY inappropriately at ANY time. Carl put out his own album in the late 70's, but it was unexpectedly lame. What surprised me was how good Dennis Wilson's unhearalded album turned out to be -- he was justly infamous in the gossip columns as a womanizing drunk. Well, he put out a better-than-average record in the late 70's, and I'll remember him for that, even though the rest of the world may remember his degraded end in 1982.
The Beach Boys lingered on in the 80s, and even played a part in getting Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary James Watt out of the government. (Don't mess with Nancy Reagan's friends!) Carl Wilson probably saved his only remaining brother's life twice -- once by getting him back into treatment with Dr. Landy, and second, using the legal system to force that same damned psycho-parasite away. When Carl died after fighting cancer (privately) in the late 90's, Brian Wilson had a new wife, a new life, and a career of his own, outside of whatever remained of the fractious Beach Boys.
His daughters by his first wife Mary -- Carnie and Wendy Wilson, sing very well, and have had some big successes with Chianna Phillips, daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas. Carnie has demonstrated a talent for writing too. I last saw the Wilson sisters singing with Al Jardine (reportedly the only mellow ex-Beach Boy) on a PBS special -- they all sounded great!
The movie finally shows how big a risk Brian Wilson too by revisiting SMiLE. He had lost so much confidence thirty-seven years earlier, and had suffered so many reversals of fortune during those intervening times, that no one could ever blame him for leaving that project in the past. The scenes of him facing up to the responsibility of re-creating and performing it, and even re-enlisting Van Dyke Parks, whose career had also been seriously set back by it, are portraits of dreadful courage.
Congratulations to his band for singing and playing what has to be the toughest vocal music on the planet -- requiring almost telepathic communion with Wilson's hyper-sensitive soul. May everyone continue to do great work!