That's Why God Made the Radio by The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys landed in Bangor, Maine last night. We did not get tickets to the show, the tickets were fairly expensive, and I decided that having seen them back in the eighties that I did not need to see them again.

Over the last couple of weeks having read articles about the band and it's tour, their fiftieth anniversary tour in fact, in Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone I was more interested in seeing them. Overall the tour has gotten good reviews, my concerns about how good they would sound, and of course about if Brian Wilson is capable of touring and performing turned out, according to most sources, to be unfounded. In short the Boys were playing a 150 minute set of forty or more songs that fans of all ages were enjoying.

One could not really have had any sense of expectation over the album of new material that The Beach Boys recorded and released recently. Truthfully I certainly did not. I was wrong.

Unexpectedly this is a refreshing, beautifully recorded album of layered vocals and harmonies that certainly would have felt at home on a Beach Boys album in the mid sixties. I have listened to the album three times and each time I listen to the last six songs, a connected Abbey Road type sonnet, that ends with the wonderful Summer's Gone I am more impressed. Brian Wilson has always been known as a musical genius even as he struggled with mental health issues. What becomes apparent quickly is this is his album, he orchestrates all the arrangements, the layering of vocals and instruments. If possible this album is not getting enough positive buzz even though all the reviews I have heard are positive.

This album makes me wish I had the big speaker ed stereo I had in high school and college with lights all over it, so that as I lay in the dark on a hot summer night I could feel the breeze and listen to the Beach Boys cope with growing older while still being true to their sound.

The single on the radio, the title cut, is a very catchy enjoyable song. It is however pale in comparison with the sheer beauty of the last six songs. Starting with Daybreak Over the Ocean the feelings of retrospection and the incredible arrangements are really beyond compare.

Is it possible that with their surfing music in it's seeming simplicity dominating our perception of The Beach Boys that we sold them short. Of course this was always the battle between Wilson and Mike Love, the latter wanting to make the music that he perceived as safe and sure to be popular and Wilson wanting to stretch and challenge both himself and his listeners. Wilson's genius is known far and wide. It was after all Paul McCartney who said that God Only Knows was the most perfect song ever written.

McCartney might well be right, but listening to the last two songs on this album, Pacific Coast Highway leading to Summer's Gone and one has to wonder, as great as this as, as great as they were, how much more could they have accomplished if we had not lost Brian for twenty years or more.

This is a good album. It has some great moments however. This is not rock and roll per say it is in the latter song perhaps a song on a par with our greatest, Sinatra, Rodgers and Hammerstein and yes McCartney and Lennon.

Brian Wilson is out of bed, finally. We are all lucky for it.

That's Why God Made The Radio by The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary this summer. The tour will be making a stop on the shores of the Penobscot at The Waterfront Concert Series. I have seen the Boys back in the eighties a couple of times, they were actually my first concert, and with the prices a bit pricey we will not be attending.

Still The Beach Boys are an institution and the huge amount of publicity they are receiving right now is well deserved. Even as a person in his mid forties I have no recollection of The Beach Boys ever be anything more than a nostalgia act. Any band that included John Stamos on drums in any incarnation has to really stretch to call themselves cool.

In the 1960's however the Boys were more, they passed many of the tests to qualify as a true rock and roll band. The album Pet Sounds was the precursor to the Beatles Sgt. Pepper and the Beachers were considered as a progressive band. Brian Wilson created the album Smile as a response to Sgt. Pepper but his band rebelled, calling it too far out there. Finally released forty years later it does not seem that revolutionary to me, but in the moment it was.

In short The Beach Boys are a huge part of rock and roll history. The new single is nothing new. It is however a very good song, the harmonies and high notes are perfect. We can wonder what studio magic has been done to make this happen, these men are all pushing seventy after all. I prefer not to know or to think about it. What I do know is this song fits with their catalogue in a very nice way. Brian Wilson, ragged from years of drug abuse and mental issues, still is worth hearing. Listen to this song and you can imagine some Sixties Beach Movie Actors trying to sell you a Time Life Collection of Feel Good Songs from the Beach Music Era. The fact that a new song can make you feel that shows that Boys have not strayed too far from home.

This is a good thing.