Customer Reviews

Surfer Girl/Shut Down, Vol. 2

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here's another wonderful two-fer from the Beach Boys. Murray Wilson (Brian, Dennis, and Carl's father) was still the tyrant in the studio which may have slowed Brian's amazing development as a producer. Still, his songwriting was maturing very rapidly, while still keeping the "Fun Fun Fun" aspects commercial.

"Surfer Girl" is the stronger album of the two, with "In My Room" showing Brian's sanctuary away from the world even if Gary Usher wrote the lyrics. There's also the title cut, "Little Deuce Coupe", "Catch A Wave" (which Jan and Dean would steal the music for "Sidewalk Surfin"), and others. Marvelous.

"Shut Down Volume 2" has two of the finest songs to come out of the "60's, "Don't Worry Baby" and "The Warmth Of The Sun". "Fun Fun Fun" is pretty nifty, too.

The bonus tracks are cool, too. And a personal note to one of the reviewers; check out the last two tracks on the CD which both have intros that are NOT on the 1990 reissue. They're remixed better, too (in stereo and not mono). When the last song "I Do" is over, wait about 20 seconds and you'll get a nice little bonus of some acappella singing that also is not on the 1990 reissue.

If you have the 1990 reissue, check out the songwriting credits and compare them to this version. It's very enlightening.

This twofer pairs the third and fifth albums recorded by the Beach Boys. Their fourth album, a themed collection of car songs, contains four songs (including the title track) previously released on earlier albums and was therefore put on a different twofer to avoid duplication on the same CD.

The first album here, Surfer girl, yielded the double-sided American hit featuring the title track and Little deuce coupe, plus a further American hit, In my room. The second album here, Shut down volume 2, yielded two further American hits, Fun fun fun (though the album version differs slightly from the single version, added as a bonus track to this twofer) and Don't worry baby. None of these songs charted in Britain, which was gripped by Beatle mania at the time. However, Brits eventually came to love the music of the Beach Boys and these songs are now regarded as classics on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Surfer girl album is the stronger of the two albums here, with seven of the twelve songs being surfing music, of which I particularly like the title track, Hawaii and Catch a wave. Shut down volume 2 starts strongly with the two American hits and contains another outstanding track (Warmth of the sun) and covers of Why do fools fall in love and Louie Louie It is a fine album in its own way but not quite as strong overall as Surger girl.

Three bonus tracks include the single version of Fun fun fun, a version of In my room recorded in German and a previously unreleased recording of a song, I do, that the Beach Boys wrote for the Castells.

If you enjoy the early music of the Beach Boys, you will find plenty to get excited about here.

It's easy after all these years to forget the brilliance of Brian Wilson's vision. These two albums gave the first hint of just how bold that vision was, how far it might go.

The oldest Wilson's talent is already peeking through the clouds on Surfer Moon, Warmth Of The Sun, Keep An Eye On Summer. They are all worth the price of admission for this cd, it's worth sitting through the filler for these 3 masterpieces of surf angst.

Surfer Girl had been Brian's first ballad composition back in 1961, inspired by When You Wish Upon A Star. Perhaps he waited until he and the band could do it justice before committing it to record. If so, he timed it just right as it is a classic early Beach Boys performance. In My Room, wasted as a B-side, is an equally evocative song featuring a lead vocal from Brian, Mike Love now featuring mainly on the more up-tempo material. They both share lead on the embarrassing South Bay Surfer, a rewrite of Swanee River, and an all-time low point, and Dennis' obligatory lead is on Surfers Rule. The album closer is an instrumental called Boogie Woodie that features some intense boogie woogie piano from Brian on an arrangement of The Flight Of The Bumblebee.

According to the liner notes the double-sided single Surfer Girl and Little Deuce Coupe was recorded on 12 June 1963 and the other 10 tracks that make up the album Surfer Girl were entirely recorded at Western Studios in Hollywood on 16 July 1963; quite a feat. Some of the tracks are quite throwaway, but others such as Catch A Wave and The Surfer Moon, which features a string arrangement, seem to be the result of a lot of care and craft to achieve a tight sound, and indicate considerable musical growth and maturity on the part of Brian Wilson and the group. In the Track-By-Track notes for Our Car Club it states that as Chuck Britz did not engineer the track, as per normal, it "was probably cut at Gold Star with Larry Levine at the dials", calling into question the accuracy of both studio and date information as given.

Shut Down Volume 2 (1964) is ostensibly a collection of hot-rod and car related songs, some re-cycled, some new, intended as a rebuke to Capitol Records for including their song Shut Down as the title track on an ill-chosen hot-rod compilation without their acquiescence. In practice the subject matter was far wider than that.

The album kick starts with some Chuck Berry guitar licks which lead into Fun, Fun, Fun, their current hit single and one of their classics, although the best song on the record was Don't Worry Baby. Brian Wilson had written this for the Ronettes as a follow-up to Be My Baby but the idea had not been taken up by a controlling Phil Spector. It isn't known whether the Ronettes got as far as recording the song at the time (Ronnie Spector recorded it many years later), but Brian was spending a lot of time at Gold Star with Phil Spector picking up production tips, and played piano on a few sessions, so it is possible. If it was I would love to hear it. The Beach Boys version was later the B-side of I Get Around.

Brian Wilson first put what he had learned from Spector into practice on the flip of Fun, Fun, Fun. Why Do Fools Fall In Love? was a brilliant revival of the Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers hit, given a comprehensive and complex Spector-sound makeover using the famous session musicians at Gold Star, and fully realised by Brian Wilson, who may have still had Ronnie Bennett much on his mind, as Frankie Lymon was her vocal hero and the model of her own style in the Ronettes.

The liner information is incorrect here as the included version is actually the mono B-side version (which begins with an acappella vocal edit cheekily tacked on by Capitol Records, albeit 10 seconds longer than on the single), and not the stereo album version as claimed. One other track is mono for some reason, the lamentable Denny's Drums, on which Dennis Wilson fails to do anything interesting on the drums or to keep time. The album low point, however, is "Cassius" Love Vs. "Sonny" Wilson, a piece of "comic" filler that hastened the invention of the Skip button.

Carl Wilson contributes an instrumental, Shut Down, Part II, which has no connection with the earlier recording, and Dennis sings This Car Of Mine. More interesting is The Warmth Of The Sun, a break-up ballad written hours after the Kennedy assassination, so capturing a double sense of loss, and a version of Louie Louie, which is unique in that the lyric is decipherable.

The slightly longer single mono mix of Fun, Fun, Fun is included as a bonus track, though one wonders why they didn't just create a full-length stereo mix from the master, which would have made it redundant.

All in all, there is a great sense of fun and freedom captured in these grooves, with something considerably more substantial beginning to peep through.

I have a 1990 2 fer CD and like the sound better then the 2001 release. The reason being on the 2001 releases there is alot of hiss or background noise on the tracks which I find annoying. Even after adjusting the treble I could still hear it. It sounds like the old cassette tapes without dolby. After reading the booklets that are included it states on the 1990 release that noise reduction technology was used. The 2001 release clearly does not mention anything about noise reduction technology being used. I am now searching out the older 1990 versions.

MK

these early Beach Boys albums may not reach the musical complexity of later Brian Wilson works, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. the songs' relative simplicity mean that any added element, such as the swooshing harp on 'Catch a wave', tugs at you like an epiphany.

these two albums are jam-packed with genuine classics, from aching ballads ('Surfer girl', 'In my room', 'Your summer dream', 'The Warmth of the Sun', 'Keep an eye on summer'), and richly textured pop songs ('Hawaii', 'Fun fun fun', 'Pom Pom Play girl') to kicking instrumentals ('The Rocking Surfer', 'Shut down part II' - am I hte only person who likes these things?).

My personal favourites are 'Don't Worry Baby', conceived for but rejected by Phil Spector as a sequal to 'Be my baby', and, if possible, radiantly worthy of that masterpiece; and the Spectoresque 'I Do', a bonus track which should replace Mendelssohn and Wagner as the wedding anthem of choice.

There are a couple of oddities, including a German version of 'In my room' and a regrettable forerunner to 70s prog-rock excess, 'Denny's Drums', in which Dennis Wilson drums. Unaccompanied. For hours.

In the early 1960's, Capitol Records was forcing 3 or 4 albums a year from Brian and the Boys, so there is some inevitable filler amidst brilliance such as "Surfer Girl", "Catch A Wave", "In My Room", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Fun, Fun, Fun", "Don't Worry, Baby", and "The Warmth of the Sun." In fact, the tunes on this CD are either great or filler, very little mediocrity.

Great songs on this two-fer which are not on the greatest hits cds would be underrated gems such as "Hawaii", the gorgeous Brian solo ballad, "Your Summer Dream", and the anthemic "In The Parkin' Lot." Dennis Wilson (the only BB who actually surfed) gets to sing lead on the rockin' "Surfer's Rule", which lays down a lyrical challenge in its coda to the then hugely popular Four Seasons. "I Do" is an expansion of "County Fair" from the Surfin' Safari album. It has some of the most romantic lyrics of any Beach Boys song. "The Surfer Moon" is lyrically silly but, musically, an interesting ballad which features Brian duetting with himself. At this point, Brian was singing all the ballads and letting Mike Love sing all the uptempo hits. Dennis, like Ringo Starr in The Beatles, would be given an album track to sing on almost every album.

Throwaway tunes here would be sophomoric fluff like "South Bay Surfer", and the instrumentals ("The Rockin' Surfer", "Boogie Woodie", "Shut Down, Pt. 2", and "Denny's Drums.") "This Car Of Mine" is a junker, "Pom Pom Playgirl" is slightly interesting with some complex key changes, but a trifle at only about 1:25 long, and "Keep An Eye On Summer" is pretty but is one of Brian's least interesting ballads, featuring the conventional rock and roll ballad chords (I-vi-ii-V). It sounds as if it was churned out to meet a deadline, but it is superior to the version of the tune appearing on Brian's recent Imagination cd.

"Cassius" Love vs. "Sonny" Wilson is a weird recreation of a Beach Boys rehearsal with Mike Love and Brian ragging on each other's singing voices with really lame, sophomoric, and dated putdowns. The interesting thing here is that the putdowns reflected the true feelings of the participants, as Mike and Brian have always had an intense love-hate relationship, full of mutual fear and jealousy. "Cassius" and "Sonny" were from Cassius Clay (soon to become Muhammad Ali) and reigning heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, who were about to fight for the heavyweight title (Clay/Ali won). But even more embarrassing is "Louie, Louie" with the worst lead vocals ever laid down by Mike Love or anybody else. Confirms all of Brian's putdowns. On the other hand, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" is a fantastic remake of the Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers 1956 classic doo-wop tune. Brian puts in his most complex production to date, using for the first time Phil Spector's production techniques, studio, and musicians (a practice which would be used for the entire Pet Sounds album). There is a stunning moment where all the instruments suddenly drop out and the group does about 15 seconds of amazing acapella work before the instrumentation kicks in again. Gives me goosebumps every time.

Interesting Note: "Don't Worry, Baby" was intended by Brian to be the follow-up for The Ronettes to "Be My Baby", hence the similiar drum intro and title lyric. But Phil Spector was too proud to accept tunes from Brian, who he admired but considered an upstart. So, thankfully, the BB's recorded it, and it later became the B-side to "I Get Around", making for one of the best singles ever done by anyone.

Unfortunately, Capitol, as they did in 1990, has issued this music in lame, primitive 1960's 3-track stereo (usually with double-tracked voices coming out the side channels with the instrumentation left in mono in the center channel) instead of either using Brian's original mono mixes, which packed more power (listen to how the mono single version of "Fun, Fun, Fun" shuts down the wimpy stereo mix.), or doing modern stereo remixes of all the material. But even this flaw cannot prevent one from enjoying the greatness present on this two-fer which is a great value, with about 16 great songs. Buy and enjoy hearing the genius, romanticism, and beautiful voice of the young Brian Wilson in his early bloom.

Pressured on multiple fronts, Brian Wilson somehow managed to create a California utopia that he rarely if ever inhabited himself. Though his wounded spirit fills "In My Room, the "Surfer Girl" album essentially serves as soundtrack for Dennis, the younger brother Nick Kent once described as "shiftless and dumb as hell." Cars and perky girls dominate "Shut Down Volume 2," which features the incomparable "Don't Worry Baby." Wilson is at his most transcendent when trying to twist a lid on fear and doubt. "The Warmth of the Sun," written at the time of JFK's assassination, is a perfect song, sweet sadness and longing transformed into the kind of beauty that defies description. Early Beach Boys albums obviously pack the filler, but hearing the hits in their original context has its place. And occasionally there's an overlooked gem. The achingly gorgeous "Your Summer Dream," with its soft strumming and first flush of a crush chord changes, deserves to be plucked from anonymity. Like the other Beach Boys twofers, this one has a booklet full of great photographs and song rundowns, Capitol having had the good sense to honor America's greatest pop band with suitably attractive packaging.

Brian, taking full control of his destiny by producing as well as composing, starts creating some of the really great Beach Boys material.

"Surfer Girl" is a frustrating mixed bag of genius and filler. "Surfer Girl" and "Catch a Wave" show just how far Brian has come in a very short time in composing brilliant ballads and great rockers, "Your Summer Dream" is an often overlooked great ballad and along with "In My Room" is the first clear pointer to the future of introspective balladry that would dominate "Pet Sounds". However, for all the great material here, there's quite a bit of filler-- the overly melodramatic "The Surfer Moon", weak pieces like "South Bay Surfer", "The Rocking Surfer", and "Surfers Rule" and the really annoying "Our Car Club".

"Shut Down, Volume 2" (Volume 1 was evidentally a Capitol compilation) is somewhat better, with Brian's infectious "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "Little Deuce Coupe", a great cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", and a series of stunning ballads-- "Don't Worry Baby", "The Warmth of the Sun", and "Keep an Eye on Summer"-- that all stand amongst the great early Beach Boys material. Again though, there's so much filler on here (like the totally juvenile "In the Parkin' Lot", "'Cassius' Love vs. 'Sonny' Wilson"-- an odd and mildly amusing comedy bit, "This Car of Mine", "Pom Pom Play Girl" and a really lifeless cover of "Louie Louie" bear noting) that the overall quality suffers.

Bonus tracks include the slightly improved single mix of "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "In My Room" in German, which surprisingly I really enjoyed.

Overall, there's enough great material to make this worth having, even for more casual fans.