Customer Reviews

Surf's Up

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this album in a discount bin on Hollywood Boulevard when I was going to collage. Frank Zappa was my musical ideal at the time. The Beach Boys were already considered an oldies band. I had always liked a lot of their songs and some of their songs I liked a lot but considered them guilty pleasures. Certainly not in the league of Zappa or Hendrix, my musical heroes.
It was a long slow process but this is the album that started to turn the depth of my appreciation for the Beach Boys around. Like most all of their albums there are a few songs on Surf's Up I don't care for but there are more that are as good as any. One, "Surf's Up" is a masterpiece. The album is worth buying for that song alone. Brian Wilson's much deserved fame as a composer, arranger and producer aside, listen to his voice on the song "Surf's Up" as he sings the phrase that starts "I heard the word, wonderful thing". There is nothing in music more beautiful.
Carl Wilson is a significant contributor to the Beach Boys genius and his Feel Flow is one of my favorite Beach Boys songs. Cameron Crow used it to good effect in his movie "Almost Famous" but mysteriously left it off of the soundtrack. "Long Promised Road" is another good song. "Until I Die" is almost too painful to listen to knowing the emotional pain Brian was going through when he wrote it.
As my musical tastes expanded to include more Classical and Jazz the fact I was always on the look out for good Beach Boys compilations finally forced me to acknowledge what my heart and soul had known for so long, The Beach Boys may well be the music looked back on by future generations as some of, if not the best of the late 20th Century, or any other century for that matter.

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)

This is Brian Wilson at his finest. The socially conscious lyrics and haunting harmonies make this an all-time album. Outside of a clinker or two (Disney Girls), this has to be the Beach Boys most artistic endeavor. Highly recommended for those with gourmet tastes.

This album was originally released in 1971. Although the Beach Boys had lost a lot of their popularity at the time, they were continuing to grow artistically. While Brian was having his well documented mental problems, the rest of the group was forced to step up and write more songs. But Brian did manage to contribute three songs to this album, two of which are excellent ("Til I Die" and "Surf's Up). Carl's two songs here are also great. Oddly, there are no songs by Dennis here. "Disney Girls", by sixth Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, is a bit more "MOR" than the usual Beach Boys song, but I still like it. The rest of the songs, by Alan and Mike, aren't all that special. And I know it was the early '70s and all, but did the album really need TWO anti-pollution songs? But this is still a very good album that Beach Boys fans should enjoy. Give a hoot, don't pollute!

PET SOUNDS IS THE BEACH BOYS REALLY GOOD YET SOMEHOW MODEST NIRVANA ALBUM THAT TRIES TO JUST SIT THERE AND BE SWEPT UNDER THE RUG AS THE CRITICS JUMP UP AND DOWN AND SCREAM.."LOOK AT IT ! ..LOOK AT THIS !!!..AIN'T IT THE DANDIEST !!!...BUT SURFS UP REALLY IS 'THE ALBUM' FOR THOSE WHO REALLY KNOW THE BEACH BOYS AND GREW UP WITH THEIR ALBUMS AND CULTURE LAYING AROUND THE HOUSE AS YER SISTER'S INSCENTS BURNED IN THE ROOM IN THE DISTANCE.."LOOKING AT TOMORROW...A WELFARE SONG" ...MAN THIS STUFF IS SAD...AND SOME OF IT AIN'T EVEN BRIAN WILSON STUFF..WHATS REALLY GOOD ABOUT IT IS HOW..IT "ISN'T GOOD".."STUDENT DEMONSTRATION TIME" IS AWEFUL AND YET YOU LISTEN TO IT AND ALL THESE OTHER SONGS THAT TRY TO BE A STATEMENT..(AND THIS ALBUM 'TRIED' INTENTIONALLY TO BE GOOD AND AHEAD OF IT'S TIME IN IT'S DAY...AND IT FAILED !)...STILL, ALL IN ALL IS ALL WE ARE...SO I WILL SAY, I SOMEHOW LIKE THIS THING AS MUCH IF NOT MORE THAN PET SOUNDS..IF NOT FOR DISNEY GIRLS (1957) ..AND THE KILLER "TIL I DIE"..PEOPLE..THIS THING IS A CLASSIC ! YOU SHOULD NOT OVERLOOK THIS HIDDEN GEM !

One note; The long Opera at the end "Surfs Up" is Brian Wilson at His all time greatest peak and nobody knows it..it is said he wrote thousands of songs and demo bits that he never bothered to record ...that just slipped away...that is sad people..IF ANY OF YOU OUT THERE 'EVER' WRITE A SONG YOU THINK IS EVEN HALFWAY GOOD..I RECOMMEND YOU GO RECORD IT ..BEFORE YOU FORGET IT....TRY TO BE THE GREATEST...AND DON'T LISTEN TO ANY INDUSTRY HACK...START YOUR OWN RECORD COMPANY IF YOU HAVE TO...I WISH THAT BRIAN WISLON WOULD HAVE ..BACK IN 71'..WE ALL MIGHT BE MUCH BETTER FOR IT TODAY ..IF HE DID

...Brian Wilson's songwriting with the Beach Boys. This is a depressing and disappointing coda to the Beach Boys' golden age.

The cover is really ominous for the Beach Boys-a sunless, dark blue-hued rendering of what appears to be a vanquished medieval warrior of sorts riding his horse- body sagging, head down, lance down. It's actually quite fitting, since the material inside suggests a tired band in full retreat from the rebellion of the 60s. For example, Bruce Johnston reminisces about the 50s in "Disney Girls", and Mike Love counsels everyone to avoid a youth revolution after the events of Kent State. And Brian, well, he's retreating from just about everything at this point, of course. His contributions to the album are placed at the end of the record, as if the other bandmembers were ashamed of the songs. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since its not like there was a huge contrast between the other brothers' material-no one seems in top form nor particularly happy on this record-the only difference perhaps being Brian wanted to die and pretty much was telling everyone in no uncertain terms on "A Day In The Life Of A Tree" and "Til I Die".

If you are looking for the Brian signature sound, it comes thru a bit on the final two songs, but only briefly. The rest of the album is spare in instrumentation, with heavy reliance on studio gimmickry to psychedelize the songs...perhaps to mask the substandard composition.

I recommend this album as a document of an end-of-the-60s/dawn-of-the-70s mentality that is somewhat akin to Hunter S. Thompson's grim assessment of that period, but preaches a stance that is decidedly less confrontational.

It's not a bad record, but not a great, or even good record. It's a state of mind. A bleak, unsure one. Surf's up, time's up...the jig is up.