The Beach Boys - Surf's Up
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Music CD Cover
Artist: The Beach BoysEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1990-10-05
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
- Don't Go Near the Water
- Long Promised Road
- Take a Load off Your Feet
- Disney Girls (1957)
- Student Demonstration Time
- Feel Flows
- Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
- Day in the Life of a Tree
- 'Til I Die
- Surf's Up
Free Music Notes for Surf's Up
Free Music Review: Walpurgisnacht is the most interesting part of the story
Hit: 5 Stars
I live in Huntington Beach, California, also known as "Surf City, USA" Home of Gordie's and Jack's surf shops, home of famous surfers and skaters, home of the long lamented Golden Bear (where I had seen all the boys except Brian play at one time or another) I lived in Huntington Beach back then--in fact I lived in Huntington Beach most of my life and I am OLD.
There was a record store in HB (on Warner) called Jeremiah McCain's that was very influential in making me the rabid rock and roll fan that I am today. In 1974 I was into Genesis, Gentle Giant, Van de Graaf Generator--stuff like that. What we used to call progressive. I was in this store one day and the craaazy hippie (who was neither crazy nor a hippie as it turned out, he was just playing his part with alacrity and verve, but that's a story for another day.) Handed me a sealed copy of this out of the cutout bin.
"This is a progressive record" he said. "Get outta town" I rejoindered in my best hipcat cool. It was a cutout, (for those of you not acquainted with vinyl, record companies would reduce excess inventory by slicing the corner off the cover, or punching a notch or sometimes drilling a hole in the cover--cutouts were dirt cheap, remaindered albums, and the last stop before being reground into budget release Vic Damone retrospectives. The price was 88 cents. What did I have to lose?)
Now I knew all about the Boys, and the Gremmies and the HoDads and all that stuff, although not a surfer personally (no talent for it at all) I am solidly a product of the surf culture. I hung at the Magic Mushroom and ordered my strips and cheese cooked soft. I also sang in a college choir (great way to meet girls, and a very inside enjoyment of some solid music) and all choir singers have an ear for the beach boys---beach boys music is virtuoso choral arrangements laid on top of a composition infused with what amounts to real genius. So the idea of a progressive Beach Boys album was not absurd at all.
Brian had become the real Los Angeles enigma. Endless LA Times 'color' stories would mention Brian like he had become the phantom of the paradise. (never leaving his bed, piano sitting in a sand box, the destruction of the tapes from SMILE) and was sharing the role of haunted genius with Phil Spector.
I took the record home, gave it a spin, and was instantly hooked. This was the old Beach Boys cadences overlaid with something hipper, and something darker. There was the undeniable presence of Van Dyke Parks, the full court press of the writing across band lines, and the subject matter was awesome. Welfare, Pollution, Vegetarian Foot Care (with what I believe as a fork and knife scraping as a rhythymn instrument) There is FEEL FLOWS, an ostensible surf paen with the most amazing production including extensive reverse echo.
A record is more than a recording of a performance. Recorded sound is a plastic art and a performance art at the same time. Nowadays you just dial stuff up on your apple, but the Beach Boys built a studio that had rooms in it just used to produce reverb and echo effects and used everything from the usual Neumann U87's to WW2 surplus submarine throat microphones. This record is a sound sculpture, and one of the most impressive ever made. (the original pressing of this vinyl album is superb, for it's day, better balanced sound and articulation than most CD's you will ever find.
The sounds on this album could still never be made by a live band, not even with today's technology. Surf's Up is deep and wide and wonderful. I still have that copy (with the very necessary lyric sheet and microphone list)and I have been told by at least a dozen people in my life to take it off the damn turntable and listen to something else.
The title track especially offers a window into what may have been.
Nowadays, of course, this is all well known and the dreams have been resurrected and are fine stuff too. But if you want to see the knuckle between the sixties and the seventies, this is it, for surf music.
HOLLAND continued in much the same format, and in some ways was better, but Surf's Up is the only entire Beach Boy's album on my ipod. So thanks to the insane guy for the recommendation (and all the others) and I am going down to the pier today for lunch--its all so sadly different, but the ocean is constant and true. If overpolluted, commercialized and broken down.
In the end the Ocean will win.
persevere
(Brian, should you read this---thank you for simply existing)
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