NEW BLOG

 First of all - This blog is NOT being retired. It will still feature my writings, inscrutable ramblings, and music reviews (which should also resume soon if I find the motivation).

Upon looking at my 'Gaelan Adventures' KSP blog, I terrifyingly discovered that it is still getting a LOT of views, and has in fact been getting a LOT of views for months even though I stopped posting on it years ago. Clearly there is demand for a Kerbal Space Program mission report blog on this website. I have no idea why, but there is one.

Therefore (after spending several hours getting my modpack to work), I have elected to create a new blog for my efforts to explore the Quarter-Sized Real Solar System mod:
https://kspqsrssexploration.blogspot.com/

Read it if you're interested! If you're not, don't.

Peace!

Jackson

Ruminations on Christmas

 Hello. I was going to write an article entitled "How to Destroy the Holiday Industrial Complex with Weaponized Cringe" and it is a very good article and it is about 1/2 done and I may repurpose it for new years or easters or next Christmas or I may forget about it entirely. It is what it is. (I don't know why I made Easter plural. Don't worry.)

Instead I am writing this substantially less funny and substantially more psychologically distressing passage about Christmas and my thoughts on it.

Christmas is a holiday in December that a lot of people celebrate because of this thing called 'Christianity'. I am not personally a card-carrying member of this whole 'Christianity' thing, but I am still forced to celebrate it, and I am not sure why.

The object of Christmas is to give gifts to each other I think because that's supposed to be good. In practice, this means people assume you want things, and they hand them to you and you either want them or pretend to want them. I am so bad at the whole Christmas thing that I seem like I don't want the things I want. Having to pretend to want things is above my pay grade.

There is also music which begins to play like a month before Christmas and keeps playing until about 2 seconds after Christmas Day ends. This music is occasionally fun. My favorite Christmas song is "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney, which is not a song that people like, but I have a spiritual connection with it. I avoid this song because it makes me cry. The last time I listened to this song was in June and it made me cry. When I was in my sophomore year of high school the teacher asked me what my favorite Christmas song was and I lied and I said "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love was my favorite, which everyone was very confused by, which I don't understand because it comes on the radio about every 30 minutes during the entire month of December. That is also quite a good Christmas song, which I enjoy.

Other Christmas songs are very annoying, especially some of the newer ones they come out with. There is a song called "Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses and I just remembered that I actually like this song so I am not sure why it is in this paragraph. All I know is that sometimes people play these songs while you are supposed to be unwrapping presents and it is too much. I cannot pretend to want things and listen to music at the same time. This is arduous to my soul and contributes immensely to my discomfort with Christmas.

There is also a whole lot of hullabaloo about Santa, who is not a real person. He is also not a religious figure that you are supposed to actually believe in, unless you are a child up to the age of around 7, according to former U.S. President Donald Trump. This is very confusing. All of the adults in the world tell the children to believe in Santa and are horrified by the very concept of their children not believing in him, even taking their children to sit in the laps of various middle-aged men who pretend to be Santa, but none of the adults believe in Santa whatsoever. It is a cultural tradition to lie to children on a massive scale, and people are frequently very annoying about this fact, and say that the adults are being abusive. I am not sure if I believe that, but it is immensely confusing. I first came to the conclusion that Santa wasn't real after looking at the NORAD Santa tracker at about age 8 and realizing that if Santa was moving that fast, the effects of aerodynamic heating would kill him. I was not like most children.

There is much mythology built around Santa. He has a wife and he employs many elves to make toys. He has reindeer and the reindeer have names and one of them is named Rudolph and is very important. There is a lot of media built around this mythology. Some of it is quite delightful and warms the soul and invigorates the spirit. There are many stop motion animations created by a company called 'Rankin-Bass' which are very delightful. The most famous of these animations is probably "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which is about Rudolph, the important reindeer, who does have a red nose. The story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer inspired another movie called "Olive, The Other Reindeer" (a pun relating to a song involving Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), which is also fun. I mostly know it exists because John Linnell of They Might Be Giants (who I admire greatly) wrote an oddly morose song about it, however I have also seen the movie with a bunch of people who also like They Might Be Giants and I can confirm that it is also fun. (I am one of 60 people who have liked the included YouTube upload of "Olive the Other Reindeer" by John Linnell, and this is a badge I wear with pride.)

Unquestionably, the most movie Christmas is "A Charlie Brown Christmas", which is a movie about Christmas and Charlie Brown. It inspires a deep sense of anguish in me for a life I never lived. The soundtrack is quite nice and the guy who plays the piano on it plays the piano quite in a good fashion. When I was a kid I wished that trees could talk to me, and they never did. This is when I learned that the world is unfair.

If I had to plan Christmas for me I would sit around and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas for an extended length of time and drink some egg-nog (a confusing Christmas drink which tastes good) under some blankets because Christmas is in the winter time and it is cold then. However, unfortunately, most of the time you spend Christmas going to someone else's house and talking to family or watching as other people go into your own house and then having to talk to them.

They ask me questions about myself and I don't know what to say, sometimes. They ask me how I am doing at college and I smile and nod and then realize I was supposed to be answering questions and it makes me sad. I feel as if they are trying to get me to play a part in a Christmas play (not an actual Christmas play, as those exist) and I fail to do the required tasks and it makes me sad. I would rather play Kerbal Space Program or go on a walk with one of my friends in the forest and talk about the meaning of life.

It is all a rather facetious method of communication. I like communicating with people a lot, but when it comes in Christmas time, it is all people you have not talked to in months and months and you catch up with them and they catch up with you and by the time you are all caught up both of you leave again for an extended period of time. If you try to talk about the meaning of life, everyone stares at you. Also, the Christmas phenomenon has a lot to do with putting a lot of people into one room, and I don't like that. I like talking to a few people at a time, but Christmas demands otherwise.

The gift-giving element of Christmas is also mildly frustrating. I already have most of the things that I want, except a fidget toy which isn't a bike lock, and a rocket poster, and a friend within 5 miles of me who is willing to go on a walk through a forest and talk about the meaning of life at 11:05 pm on Christmas. I ask for money every year for Christmas, because you can ask for things, and people get them for you. People get me things that aren't money and some of them are things that I want and others of them I am just forced to invite into my life. Every Christmas I accrue a greater collection of things invited into my life. This Christmas I now own two hoodies. I will probably use the hoodies, but I was not aware of their existence, and I don't know if I needed them. This fact is frustrating.

I often think about making a list of things which I want for Christmas, but I don't know what I want and the list of things which I do want is not nearly long enough to accommodate all of the relatives who are obligated to buy things for me. It is also rather hard to buy a friend. I tell them that I just want money and nothing else, but somehow it is a bad thing to only get me the thing that I ask for. This is also frustrating.
I got lots of candy this Christmas. This has happened many Christmasses before. I will eat some of it and forget about the rest.

Another major element of Christmas are the decorations. You are expected to decorate your house for Christmas and put up lights, which is fun. It is a pastime to drive by other people's houses and look at their lights and admire their disposable incomes. There are also lights inside the house, which is less fun. There are also many, many other decorations. Those who do not decorate are accused of not being festive and not Christmassing enough in their Christmas.

The oddest element of Christmas is the religious element. The Christ part of Christmas is derived from Jesus Christ, an important guy of Christianity, which is a big religion which a lot of people do. People are always concerned that the Democrats are trying to take the Christ out of Christmas. There is an odd dualistic relationship between Christ and Santa. People who like Santa more claim that Santa is derived from Saint Nicholas, and is therefore also religious. Realistically, I do not think Saint Nicholas has much in common with a chubby old man with a long beard who rides a magical, reindeer-led flying sleigh and subjects elves to dubious working conditions at the North Pole. The whole situation is very multi-layered and each of these layers makes it a bit more ridiculous. Christmas is ostensibly the holiday in which Jesus was born, but Jesus was not even born on this day. In fact Christmas was invented after they inserted Jesus into the old Roman holiday of Saturnalia, so perhaps the Santaification of Christmas is nothing but an ongoing cycle. Saturn is my favorite planet. The Roman God called Saturn also inspired a very cool painting by Francisco Goya, which I will not show here, because it is quite scary.

I wanted to end that paragraph with a point, but I am unsure of what point to make. My parents never raised me on the religious aspects of Christmas so it seems to exist as a cultural thing. Annoying people would assert that the modern bastardization of Christmas was invented by capitalists and Christmas is nothing more than a capitalistic excuse to spend money on wrapping paper and unwanted gifts. These annoying people have a good point, but this counter-narrative is almost as mainstream as the main narrative, so I do not want to talk about it very much. Perhaps the most relevant thing I can include is that The Residents (one of the seminal Experimental Rock bands from the United States) have a song called Santa Dog where they say that "Santa Dog's a Jesus Fetus, has no presents, has no presence, in the future." I think this is probably accurate. Richard Nixon was mailed this song, and he probably liked it, because it's a good song.

I think I have pretty much covered most of my important thoughts on Christmas. It's a holiday that exists. There are parts of it I like and other parts that I don't. I am glad that I wrote this article and shared my thoughts and I hope that you enjoyed reading it and it perhaps inspired some novel thoughts about Christmas and/or life in general in your brain. The idea of enriching another person's life by expressing my thoughts in language is an emboldening one, and it makes the ridiculousness of life more tolerable.
The world is strange and confusing and sad and lonely, but we have each other, in the end.

It's going to be okay. Merry Christmas.

2 poems

 2 poems i wroted

poem 1 for december

stepped out into the garden
and said,
i need no other's touch
for i live in my own dreams
and flew and flew and flew
until a crumbling piece
crashed into the vineyard
red columns and angles
strewn round
angles and colors and
deep maroon red red
and said,
i walk in circles every day
and i never have to walk out

poem 2 for december

if i went on a walk in a park
and you told me about your grandmother
and i would sip some water
and you would flash that little grin
from one corner of your mouth

and i'd fall in love again
and i'd walk up and say,
"i wrote this poem about being gay,
i think, i don't know what it means"
and you'd laugh

and then i'd forget again
tap on the edge of my display case
i am a salamander in a zoo
and i am forgetting who you are
and i forgot what 'poem' means

and the zookeeper would take me out
and say, 'it's time for your daily rub'
words spoken without expectations
of being understood
then, it would be acceptable

i wrote a thing ??? midnight its midnight hello :D

i dont even know what this is i wrote it last night in like two minutes but i guess you have to look at it now. sorry. i guess you could call it a poem but that feels weird. it's not a story. it's. i don't know if this counts as prose? even? i'm not sure. whatever. actually i'm not going to apologize i am not sorry i crafted this whole funky thing out of little bits of clay and i can kick it down the line if i Want to.


the nightfly

it was a cool september night in november and i sat and you and i and i and november and what and you and november and what and i sat at a two feet by four feet by about two and a half feet metal desk with legs with many legs with uncountable number of leg and i sat down and i thought about what i would like to eat for dinner and i decided on a salad and it made me happy to have decided something and it made me happy to have decided on a salad and i walked out of the door and i sat down at a chair which was one of those office chairs with legs and it sat at the desk and it sat and the desk had legs and i sat at the desk and i opened up my computer and i looked for microsoft excel and i booted up microsoft excel and and i saw the moon through a window cold breeze a light shades of blue and i looked for my computer and the desk was metallic and it had legs and i am your family so let me into your house

interchangeably;

 

do you think britney spears knows what she means to so many people 

"I think I killed my friend" and 37 other funny sentences

      37 funny sentences

1. I think I killed my friend
2. These are the benefits of being a marine biologist.
3. Don't worry, it's just cancer.
4. The philistines have uttered their pronouncements - I'm splittin'.
5. My mom called me a 'catch' yesterday.
6. I'm afraid of that tree.
7. Why does that squirrel look like that?
8. Do you want to go out for dinner?
9. I'm sorry, I'm busy.
10. I think it would be fun to have facial paralysis for about a week.
11. Sorry, I'm allergic to fire.
12. Does anyone else here like the Beatles?
13. Where am I?
14. I look up at the stars sometimes and I contemplate the futility of my existence.
15. I had a dream last night where you asked me what I wanted to do with my life.
16. You'd do great on Adderall.
17. This is funny sentence number seventeen.
18. Did you know that male seahorses get pregnant?
19. You're beautiful.
20. Nineteenth century French history tastes like a freshly baked apple.
21. I tried to make Akinator guess Tonetta, and it didn't work.
22. I could never be pregnant.
23. I know a lot of people from Ohio.
24. I find being scared unpleasant, but a lot of people enjoy being scared.
25. This table has six legs.
26. We drove to Tiffin and went to a fancy restaurant and I had chicken.
27. Do you think he knows where he is right now?
28. The number of legs that this table has is uncountable.
29. I hope God kills you.
30. It's Worm day for the worms.
31. I hope I impress you like a synthesizer.
32. The patient appears to be responding well to the spleement (spleen treatment).
33. I hate you so much.
34. Do you think dogs have any concept of geography?
35. The other side of the ocean contains gleaming paradise, and we can sit there awash in ecstasy.
36. Take off your clothes.
37. I hope Kerbal Space Program 2 isn't disappointing, but I think it will be.

i wrote a short story (also sorry for hiatus)

 HELLO I am sorry for hiatus on my blog blog. I have been busy at collej. It turns out being at home and being sick and having absolutely nothing to do is a large motivator to me writing bullshit. But it is apparently not the ONLY motivator because I wrote an extremely inscrutable short story this weekend. Well not inscrutable. It definitely means something but I don't know what that thing is. Maybe you can figure it out.

It is entitled 'mimi do you love her now' and the friends that I have showed it to seem to think it's pretty good.

So check it out if you want. The story won't bite you. I might, though. Probably not.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-mrrqGwgRn5J0NllyxQrgUDK4Ai9uKNB9wuQKuIYxiM/edit?usp=sharing

I will be on thanksgiving break soon and will hopefully return with more nonsense. And maybe more stories. Who knows.

REVIEW: Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) - The Beach Boys (1965)

Look at shirtless Mike Love. Behold him.

 Discounting the last filler track, Today! ended with a big question mark in the form of "In The Back Of My Mind", and it feels a little deliberate that this record begins with a saxophone line followed by a bit of decidedly low-key, lighthearted fun in the form of "The Girl from New York City". This album is viewed as a bit of a backwards step by a lot of people, mostly because the songs are about having fun in the summer time again, and not about relationship issues and being depressed. I don't think that assessment is totally fair, but it is a bit interesting how close some of Today! seems to be to Pet Sounds.

My big criticism with Today! is that some of the arrangements are a bit muddy. There just seems to be too much. This is also, probably not coincidentally, my big problem with Phil Spector's form of production! None of the instruments have any time to breathe and everything is just a big mush of session musicians and the whole arrangement ends up sounding like mush. I present the probably controversial argument that this album represents Brian paring things back a little and that's a good thing.

The actual songs are mostly weaker, though. I'm not going to sit here and make the argument that "Salt Lake City" is better than "Kiss Me Baby" or "When I Grow Up To Be A Man" because one of those songs just makes me wonder why Brian Wilson is going after Mormon chicks and the other two are really good. And "Amusement Parks USA" is probably the most self-consciously goofy Beach Boys song since "Cuckoo Clock", for better or worse.

There's a lot of things to like here, though! "Then I Kissed Her" is an excellent Spector cover, better than the original in my opinion. "Girl Don't Tell Me" is an unabashedly harmony-less, Beatlesque number, pretty unusually stripped back for a Beach Boys song of this era. (The little guitar lick is pretty obviously stolen from "Ticket To Ride", though.)

"Help Me, Rhonda" is definitely better than the version on Today, and one of the classic Beach Boys singles. It's very catchy! It's also a bit hard for me to earnestly review pop songs this poppy because there's not a lot intelligent to say here. Like, I don't know, I like the part where they sing "Help me, Rhonda yeah", and the chorus is catchy. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

"California Girls" is one of the Beach Boys songs that people love to write about because the instrumental is so ornate and pretty and complicated and then the vocals are just "Wow, girls are hot!" Controversial opinion, I think this is a good song. I think it's okay to write a song which is just about girls being hot if the rest of the song is good enough, and this song is definitely good enough. Also - and this is a big myth - a lot of people want to believe the part of this song Brian wrote 'under the influence' was the beautiful intro, because drugs make you make good art or something. It was actually the bass line, which Brian is adamant he stole from Bach, of all people.

"Let Him Run Wild" feels like a vastly sunnier and cheerier take on the lush romantic sadness of the second half of Today!, and while there's a fair bit of melancholy on this one, too, it's intensely outweighed by the sheer pop candyfloss of the chorus. "You're So Good To Me" takes the whole "sunnier and cheerier" thing to the logical extreme, being one of the most frighteningly catchy songs ever devised. I'm like 99% sure those "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA" backing vocals were cooked up in a lab somewhere. If the other pop songs on this album are hard to critically analyze, this song outright resists it - if you're reading into the lyrics to ascribe some sort of artistic importance, you are clearly doing it wrong. This is the type of song you're supposed to listen to and enjoy, not listen to and analyze, and you're listening to the fucking Beach Boys, so that's okay.

"Summer Means New Love" is the first non-surf instrumental on a Beach Boys record, starting a new tradition of orchestrally arranged, moderately easy listening-ish instrumentals. It's probably not going to win any awards, but the string arrangements here are quite good, and I'm not going to dislike anyone for making me listen to a relaxing and lush instrumental by one of the great producer-arrangers of all time.

"I'm Bugged At My Old Dad" is the closest thing to filler here. It's also intensely uncomfortable to listen to, knowing that Brian's dad, Murry, was in fact kind of a shithead. If you can convince yourself to ignore all of that it's sorta fun! I guess. Maybe. I'm probably giving it too much credit.

"And Your Dream Comes True" is a short and pleasant little acapella number to close out the record. Congratulations, Beach Boys! You actually chose a sensible song to end the album with!

I'm going to slap another 8/10 on this but I will clarify I do like Today! a bit better. The catchy songs here are just so goddamn catchy and considering my undeniably high tolerance for 60s cheese I am mostly okay with the rest! This is not a universal opinion and I am totally fine with that!

Catch me next time when I review one of the most iconic and critically acclaimed albums of all time, perhaps the definitive statement of one of the great American bands, the famous, the classic, the one and only... Beach Boys' Party!

REVIEW: The Beach Boys Today! - The Beach Boys (1965)

No, "Bull Session with Big Daddy" is not a great new song written by Brian Wilson.

 Side A of All Summer Long was definitely a big step forward for the band in terms of arrangements and instrumentation, but this album is really where the band started firing on all cylinders - making whole albums that were at the very least uniformly good and where all of the songs were immaculately arranged and produced. Now, don't get me wrong, this album isn't perfect! There's still one very obvious piece of filler on it, the sound is still a bit muddy, there are some choices which were perhaps slightly overambitious - but compared to where the band was just a few years ago, it's pretty astounding.

The album starts out on a very strong note with a cover of "Do You Want To Dance" by Bobby Freeman, here given the much less lame title "Do You Wanna Dance". The first thing to note about this song is that it contains a rare lead vocal from Dennis, which ends up serving the song well, even though he's not as technically proficient as either of his brothers. The weird teenage nerviness of his voice ends up fitting the theme of the song perfectly in a way that a more 'choir boy' performance from Carl or Brian wouldn't. It's also self evident that this song is a banger. The arrangement is excellent in its imitation of Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound', and is one of the first Beach Boys songs to include most of the Wrecking Crew, a famous Los Angeles group of backing musicians that would go on to be heavily used by Brian. (Carl's still playing the guitar, though.)

"Good to My Baby" is pretty traditional Beach Boys fair, a lighthearted song about monogamy and loving women and stuff, and it's also pretty damn good. Maybe it doesn't quite reach the introspective heights as some of the other songs on this record, but it's pretty close to a perfection of the 'Beach Boys formula' with back and forth vocals from Brian and Mike and some moderately surf-y guitar underpinning the whole thing.

"Don't Hurt My Little Sister" has a slightly weirder concept and lyrical conceit than most Beach Boys songs of this era and it becomes even weirder when you realize it's probably about the then-teenage Rovell sisters! (Brian married Marilyn Rovell, with a very concerning age gap, between when the song was recorded and when the album was released.) Which is pretty messed up. Ignoring that, it's a good song, though. Once again, not that notable, aside from the fact Brian gave it to Phil Spector to record and he agreed and then kicked Brian out of the recording session for "substandard playing".

"When I Grow Up To Be A Man" is an unusually introspective single choice for the Beach Boys at this point - the lyrics speak to losing youth and changing in personality as you grow up, a pretty far cry from the "Surfing is fun!" of most of their previous up-tempo hits. It's also got some great harpsichord. I always thought the backing vocals were a bit goofy at the end with the increasing years but it's goofy in an endearing way... if that makes any sense?

"Help Me Ronda" would later be remade as a single for their next album with an added 'H' in the title, and I prefer that version more. But it's a still very fun and catchy song and I get why it did unexpectedly well for an album cut.

"Dance, Dance, Dance" is just pure sugar rush in song form. It feels unfair to criticize this because it's so perfect at doing explicitly what it sets out to do - which is, 'be an incredibly catchy pop song that never once demands you to critically think'. And I think there's a place for that in the world! Also there's a key change in the middle of the verse so that's kind of interesting I guess. I don't know. It's "Dance, Dance, Dance". I think you can surmise what it's about by reading precisely one third of the title.

"Please Let Me Wonder" kicks off the much-acclaimed Side B of this record, AKA the "slow and introspective songs about being in love and also being very sad" side. And indeed it's a beautiful, yearning love song, with some positively ethereal backing vocals. It's also a little bit pathetic - it's basically a song about being in love with an idea of a person versus the actual thing, and preferring not to know the truth about whether or not said person loves you. The arrangement is so perfect and the melody is so wonderfully lilting that it ends up making you feel a little bad for the guy, sufficiently bad enough that Brian actually gets away with whispering "I love you" melodramatically into the microphone at the end.

"I'm So Young" starts off with the line "I have a girlfriend", so you'd think it would be slightly cheerier, but not really! This one is a cover about puppy love and not being able to marry each other yada yada yada. And it's a really good cover too, with some GORGEOUS harmonies and wonderfully reverb-y production. Similarly to a lot of Spector's classic love songs, this is an easy one to get lost in, with so many layers of vocals and guitar work, and an absolutely ethereal Hammond organ underpinning it. It's just beautiful melancholy and honestly one of the highlights on the album for me despite being a cover.

"Kiss Me, Baby" is one of my favorite Beach Boys songs and one of those songs I like enough I have trouble actually writing about it! Just like every other song on this half of the album, it's ANOTHER yearning, melancholic, slightly pathetic love song. I really adore the way syncopation is used on this one and the production is just so wonderfully reverb-y and ethereal. The highlight, though, is the chorus which is absolutely beautiful. I'm pretty convinced that the harmonies in the chorus are what angels sound like. It's one of those beautifully layered Brian Wilson arrangements, with the bass vocals underpinning everything rhythmically and a melodic falsetto soaring over the rest of the song.

"She Knows Me Too Well" carries on the same general themes as the last couple songs, with some really pretty chord changes and an arrangement that does a good job of resisting the obvious. This one would have probably sounded pretty out there to a listener coming hot off the heels of All Summer Long, but in retrospect it suggests where the band would end up heading the year after.

"In the Back of My Mind" has another Dennis Wilson vocal, and I frankly don't think he fits as well on this one. To be fair, the hesitancy of his vocal performance is certainly reflected by the song! It's paranoid and unsure of itself, and unusually mellow and obtuse for a song from a pop group in 1965. The past few songs suggested romantic troubles, but this one seems to be hiding something a bit darker. The narrator has everything he could ever want, but he's terrified of something. His wife cheating on him is sort of implied, but there's a bizarre feeling of dread imbued here, and the ambiguity of the lyrics certainly isn't helping matters. The song ends with Dennis practically yelping followed by the orchestra falling apart on itself, not too dissimilar to what the Beatles would later end up doing with "A Day in the Life". There's no harmonies on this one, even! It would be a creepy, depressing, impactful, and moving ending of the album if it was the end, but in classic Beach Boys fashion, the band refuses to end their album in a normal way and shoves some filler on here to get it to 12 tracks. "Bull Session with Big Daddy" is an interview or something. It's pretty pointless except for the fact there's apparently a Capitol Records executive named "Dick Rising", which is a fantastic name.

I'm going to slap an 8/10 on this one. It's definitely brought down by the fact that the mix is a bit muddy, but considering it's from 1965 and has never gotten a great remaster, that's more or less expected. "Bull Session" has no reason to exist and a few of the songs on Side A don't hold up quite as well as the rest of the album, but it's definitely the best Beach Boys record I've reviewed so far. See you next time for Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), which is a fantastic album title.

REVIEW: The Beach Boys' Christmas Album - The Beach Boys (1964)

There are basically no uploads of this cover in good quality :(

 Hello! I am sufficiently awake now that I am able to return to my self-imposed duties of reviewing the Beach Boys. Today I have something sacrilegious to announce - I've never actually heard this one (until today, that is)! You see, I always feel distressed listening to Christmas music, because when it's not December it feels wrong and when it IS December I'm so inundated with the stuff it feels ridiculous to voluntarily listen to more when it's being beamed directly into my frontal lobe from every direction.

That and I'm a fake fan.

Anyways this album was mostly recorded in the span of about two weeks soon after All Summer Long was completed. In June. So that's fun and not terrifying.

Now that I've actually heard this one I feel like I have wispy memories of hearing a few of these songs on Christmas radio stations, obviously including Little Saint Nick - which is unsurprising considering the radio DJs have to get tired of playing the same 3 songs over and over. It also might just be because half the songs sound the same. Overall this album isn't a major artistic statement or anything. But I'm not the literal fucking Grinch, so I will acknowledge this is a Christmas album and that is categorically not the point.

This album is divided neatly into two parts. Side A is original Christmas songs by Brian & Mike, Side B are standards with the Boys' voices and arrangements by Dick Reynolds, arranger for the Four Freshman, a vocal group Brian famously idolized and most other people don't really care about at all. And when I say these arrangements are schmaltzy you best believe that they are SCHMALTZY. It's a little bit funny hearing the Boys sing on something so blatantly schmaltz! Hearing the mid-60s Beach Boys on anything other than Brian Wilson's arrangements feels a little bit uncanny and evil, especially hearing them try to sing old religious Christmas standards. You'd think maybe these two things would end up working and it'd be enjoyable to listen to but there's a reason why people remember Little Saint Nick and not the Boys trying to do We Three Kings Of Orient Are for 4 minutes. The discrepancy in length is a little bit funny considering literally all of the originals clock in at under 2 minutes.

I don't really see much of a point in going track by track because the two sides are pretty uniform. Side A is fun but bare-bones original songs that don't have much in the terms of fleshed out arrangements, Side B is schmaltz which is good if you somehow like Christmas schmaltz and pretty uninteresting to anyone except the most devotee superfans if you don't. I will say that Mike Love singing "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake" makes an already pretty scary song terrifying.

The last track, Auld Lang Syne, contains what I'm pretty sure is an attempt to wake the listener back up when Dennis randomly jumps in to wish everyone a merry Christmas. Thank you, Dennis, I guess?

I'm going to slap a 5/10 on this one because it's not currently December and I don't know why you'd seek this one out versus the previous Beach Boys record or the next Beach Boys record. If it is currently December, then adjust this score up to a 6 because the originals are decently fun. Especially Little Saint Nick.

Anyways, see you next time for The Beach Boys Today!, a significantly better record.

two tweets i did

 hello unfortunately i am really tired from COVID again i will return with beach boys soon hopefully. here are 2 tweets i made which are true and legendary

"im doing my best. i try my best every day. im really trying to work on myself so one day i can mean a lot to a nice person like me and one day i can do a lot of good in the world. and there are some things out there that are scary but i wont let it harsh my vibe anymore"

"i just want someone who will give me silly little compliments and then wriggle around in the dunes... like some kind of quicksilver mercury type of thing... just fully windmilling your way through it. because what else can you do? slippery"

the second one is inspired by a very bizarre dream i had which had many twists and turns but i can unfortunately only remember the end, where i somehow deduced that "I'm slippery!" is the platonic ideal of pickup lines as it is gender neutral, makes 0 assumptions about the other person, and is highly seductive (???).

if anyone would like to wriggle around in the dunes i think you should do that and i believe in you! :-)

remember to breathe,
jack

REVIEW: All Summer Long - The Beach Boys (1964)

I really like this album cover so here's a big, pretty HQ version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This album is definitely the most 'progressive' work the Boys had made up to this point, and frankly - this is DEFINITELY sacrilege - this is the first Beach Boys record I actually come back to as an album. The British Invasion had officially commenced, and after Beatlemania, the Beach Boys knew that they had to react in order to not get swept up in the deluge - and indeed they did! All Summer Long is quite obviously their lushest record so far, and you could definitely make the case that it's the best. I was a bit tired of writing more-or-less the same thing for a bunch of songs for the last couple albums, so I'm very grateful for getting to the album where Brian really starts to stretch his wings as a producer - just listen to that guitar on Little Honda, or those pounding drums on Hushabye, or the layers to All Summer Long. Which is to say - I would probably take this one over the last few. (I have playlists of the first couple records with the filler excised. Sorry, not sorry!) Not to say I don't love Fun, Fun, Fun or Surfer Girl or any of their other early hits! But I don't think it's as big of a stretch to say this record is a leap forward - albeit maybe not as big of one as some people make it out to be.

Of course, it's not like this record is a hidden masterpiece on the level of Pet Sounds. Compared to the complexity and lushness of Today or Summer Days (and Summer Nights), this record still sounds a little bit bare - but it's hard for me to take points off for that. And as I'll get into, the second half doesn't quite live up to the new sounds of Side A. Still, this album is probably the pinnacle of the 'California Sound', before the Boys ended up experimenting further - but that experimentation is one of my favorite things about them. It's not an issue on this record, but I am very glad they branched out.

And it's also not like the Beach Boys instantly went from nothing to something here, either - Little Deuce Coupe and Shut Down, Volume 2 were both admittedly rush jobs, and even then, they definitely had signs of where the Beach Boys would end up heading. In the two years between Surfin' Safari and this album, the Beach Boys have come a long way, and it's not like they split all of said distance in a few months.

Still, though, "I Get Around" is probably the best of their up tempo singles up to this point. It's one of those songs where everything just... works. Listening to these records in sequence, I've been really struck by how the Boys constantly seemed to be iterating on their own records - going from "Surfin" to "Surfin USA" to "Fun, Fun, Fun" - and this song seems like the natural end of that progression. It's catchy, a load of fun, and manages to be lush and immediate at the same time - just enough layers in the arrangement to get lost in the song, but the production job never threatens to overtake the melody itself or subdue the "rock" part of "surf rock". There's a reason this song is still known and beloved, and if you haven't heard it... maybe stick your head out of the rock you've been living under?

All Summer Long (which unfortunately gives you results for some Kid Rock song now when you look it up...) is also fantastic. I have no idea how to articulate my feelings on it better than that this song just EXUDES summery vibes. Everything from the lyrics to the instrumentation just immediately makes me think of summer - not summer just by itself - but the mythic ideal of an American summer. Lounging on a California beach, having a picnic for lunch, watching surfers, it's all the exact kind of lifestyle that the "California Sound" elevated into legend, and I don't think there's a single song in the Beach Boys canon that captures that more succinctly than this.

Hushabye is the first Beach Boys song where I immediately go "oh, yeah, he's going for Phil Spector here" - and of course it sounds fantastic. The combination of angelic harmonies, pounding drums, and piano is fantastic, and although it's a cover I have to complement the Boys in selecting it and adapting it. The melody is angelic and the whole thing is complemented in the best way possible by the overall arrangement.

Little Honda is maybe my favorite of the early Beach Boys rockers that never ended up as singles. Just listen to that guitar! If "I Get Around" didn't exist this would be the obvious choice for single, I'd say, but fortunately it does. This is still definitely one of the best Beach Boys car songs, and the arrangement really shows that Brian was starting to add some gorgeous texture into his songs. Something about the low hum of the backing vocals combined with the guitar really "saturates the tape with sound", as Van Dyke Parks would say (a quote that I am probably going to use repeatedly, because it really captures one of my favorite elements of BW's production style)

We'll Run Away is my personal pick for a great Beach Boys song that everyone seems to constantly forget about. The moment at 0:30 where the instrumental suddenly cuts out as a harmony comes in is just perfect - it might be a trick that Brian would reuse, but it's just great. This is a very yearning, teenage angst-y love song, one of those classic blissfully romantic 60s tunes. The only thing I don't like about it is how Brian randomly goes out of tune at the end. It has to be on purpose... but like.. why?

I will momentarily stop gushing about this record because there's another fucking surf instrumental. Thank the Lord that this is the last one I will have to deal with - and also thank the Lord it's actually sort of good. It's not astonishing or anything but it's fun! For filler. It's still bringing the album down. If this is "Carl's Big Chance", I don't know if Carl is making the team. Sorry Carl.

Side B also kicks off well with "Wendy", which is also pretty filler-y, but still good enough that it would've been a highlight on... pretty much all of their albums before this. It's catchy, it's charming, it's fun, it's well arranged.

Do You Remember is a slightly less charming ode to the original rock'n'rollers. It's still fun! Not really anything to write home about or that I'd listen to by myself. 

Girls on the Beach is another ballad - and once again, it feels a little bit beneath most of Side A - but it's still very, very good. Their harmonies are just fucking gorgeous and I will absolutely sit here and listen to whatever schlock just to hear them. And you can also really tell that Brian's skills in arranging everyone's vocals are improving as time goes on! Shout out Brian Wilson.

Drive In is also a fun car song, which similarly would be a highlight in most of the albums before this. It's definitely very catchy. And car. It's very car.

Our Favorite Recording Sessions is stupid filler.

Don't Back Down is yet another fun catchy surf song. I am really running out of things to say about these semi-generic but still enjoyable surf songs. I like ... I like how they sing. I don't know! It's good!

Overall Side A of this record is a pretty dramatic change for the better. Side B... not so much! But it's still very enjoyable and I would definitely say this is my favorite Beach Boys record up to this point. 8/10. Points deducted for Our Favorite Recording Sessions and Carl's Big Chance, but I am listening to this record in 2022 and I have this thing called a skip button.

REVIEW: Shut Down, Vol 2 - The Beach Boys (1964)

Those are weird looking surfboards.

 First of all I should explain why this one is called Shut Down, Volume 2 because it's one of the stupidest album titles of all time.

Essentially, Capitol put the song Shut Down on this compilation album with various artists on it, which was also called Shut Down, and it sold a bunch of copies, and for some reason they decided to call the next Beach Boys album "Shut Down Volume 2". Yes, this album is a sequel to a various artists compilation. Yes, that makes no fucking sense.

In other news, David Marks is out and Al Jardine is in on rhythm guitar, so this is pretty much the classic Beach Boys lineup now of Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike and Al that will continue (with some additions) until they start dying off. So that's fun!

This album starts off with a bang with Fun, Fun, Fun, which is one of the quintessential Beach Boys singles and one of those songs that most people have probably heard. Maybe they don't know that they've heard it but they've probably heard it at some point or another. And it is indeed a really good fucking song, with a catchy chorus, a fun instrumental break, and some really fun backing vocals in the verses.
It's followed up strongly by Don't Worry Baby, Brian's would-be answer to Phil Spector's Be My Baby, and while Be My Baby is definitely better Don't Worry Baby is no slouch either. As a ballad, it definitely stands up to the Beach Boys' previous best, although I personally think they'd go on to do even better.
In The Parkin' Lot ups the tempo again and is also a really fun, catchy song, with a very pretty tag showing off the Beach Boys' harmonies, which are excellent (at this point in their career that's to be expected).
Unfortunately it's followed up by the very blatant filler "Cassius Love vs Sonny Wilson" that basically involves the Beach Boys yelling at each other and then singing badly. It does kind of presage the eventual Brian vs Mike rivalry (that in my opinion is way overstated, but more on that later...) so it's interesting in that respect. But obviously it's cheesy and stupid and functions mainly to take up space on the record.
Back to an excellent ballad with The Warmth of the Sun, which I honestly might prefer to Don't Worry Baby. It's a very pretty ballad with a lot of nice ambiance and wistful seventh chords, and of course a typically excellent vocal from Brian to top it off.
Speaking of typically excellent vocals from the Beach Boys, I kinda don't like Dennis on This Car of Mine! I'm sure Brian was being nice when he gave him the lead vocals but something about the way he sings the 'o's in this song just sort of infuriates me. Thankfully the song itself is pretty boring so it's not much of a loss.
Why Do Fools Fall in Love is a Frankie Lymon cover and it's definitely a serviceable cover of the song. I don't think it'll really win any awards by itself but it's a nice slice of classic 50s pop songwriting done well. Brian sounds a little bit more like Frankie Valli here than usual, which is interesting. My immature brain also thinks it's funny that the Beach Boys sing the word gay on this one. Yes, I am mentally 12 years old.
I got into an argument about this midway through writing this very review but Pom Pom Play Girl is like... fine. I don't know. A lot of fans think this is underrated (including Mark Linett, one of the main archivists for the band, who keeps putting it on compilations) but I don't really see it? It's just kinda fun for like 2 minutes and then it ends. Not very remarkable.
Keep an Eye on Summer is another very good ballad! Their ballads are starting to get a bit formulaic, but it's an obviously winning formula, so I'm not going to sit here and complain. Another falsetto lead from Brian with another understated arrangement with guitar, bass and drums.
Shut Down, Vol. 2. is another surf instrumental. This one is fun I guess. I don't know. I ran out of things to say about the surf instrumentals by like the third one.
Next there's a cover of Louie Louie where the Beach Boys go R&B sorta kinda and it just ends up sounding a little stupid. It's still fun and Louie Louie is a good song but I would never put this on the aux. the "DUH DUH, DUH DUH" backing vocals are so goofy I kind of have to applaud them.
Next up is Denny's Drums which is... just a drum solo. Riveting.

The first three songs and Warmth of the Sun are great, but the rest is just a bit too fillerific for my tastes. I don't really have a ton to say about this one because unlike the past 4 records, there isn't really any new ground or progression here. Next up is All Summer Long, which tends to get earmarked as the start of the Beach Boys' "leap forward" to the complexity of Pet Sounds, which I'm really not sure I buy - but in any case it's a more interesting record!
A begrudging 6/10 on this one, maybe sliding to a 5/10. Anything less would be a disgrace to the three or four great tracks here, anything more would be a little bit silly for an album with "Cassius Love vs Sonny Wilson" and "Denny's Drums".

 

REVIEW: Little Deuce Coupe - The Beach Boys (1963)

That's a weird looking dog.

 Remember what I said about the Beach Boys' release schedule being ridiculous? Well, this one was released THREE WEEKS after Surfer Girl. Unsurprisingly they chose to recycle some tracks and just shove them on the album to fill it out into 12 tracks, which I would usually be mad about, but Capitol Records' release schedule here is so bullshit I would feel wrong blaming the Beach Boys instead of them. It still kind of sucks that there's a bunch of old songs on this, though!

This is their 'concept album' about cars (except not a concept album, because the Beatles invented those with Sgt. Pepper's! (sarcasm)) and I guess you could say it represents another 'leap forward' or whatever but it came out so soon after Surfer Girl it feels kind of ridiculous to say that.

I already talked about Little Deuce Coupe, the song. It's a good song and fine to open the record with but I do wish there weren't repeats on this album. I guess I'll take it over more pointless instrumentals but whatever.

Ballad of Ole Betsy is a ballad about a car. Which is obviously kind of stupid, especially because it does some weird "the car is like a woman!" metaphor, which has VERY distressing implications with the lyric "Betsy took some beatings but she never once complained", but despite the weird premise it's a well written song and I enjoy it. I think the little tearjerk moment at the end actually got me sad once which is kind of embarrassing to admit and I do listen to this song from time to time just for fun which is more than I can say about most of the first three albums.

My thoughts on Be True to Your School are very much colored by my intense hatred for pep rallies and school spirit in general but it's a fun song! There is some debate about whether the single version or the album version is better, personally I'd choose this one. The production is far from Wall of Sound territory but it's definitely getting more layered and involved as time goes on, and this song is a good example, with the pounding drums complementing the sax, guitar and vocals very well.

Car Crazy Cutie is also fun! I'm starting to think about taking back my comment about calling this one a step forward from Surfer Girl a bit silly, because the arrangements on the new songs are definitely suggestive of where they'd end up going with All Summer Long. Obviously, this isn't some lost Pet Sounds track, but it's very fun and interesting to listen to these records chronologically - you can just hear Brian getting better at arranging and producing. He's come a long way from Surfin' Safari, that's for sure. There's definitely a lot of energy here that just was not there at all a mere year before, and the progression from the kind of limp backing vocals in Safari to the harmonies here is pretty incredible.

Cherry, Cherry Coupe feels a bit like a step backwards to my ears. The melody just isn't as interesting and while the harmonies are definitely more textured than they would've been earlier, it's just not quite there compared to the big hits off of this album and Surfer Girl. Still, if this was on Surfin USA or Safari it would've been an easy highlight, and now I'm feeling sort of meh about it! So that's impressive!

Speaking of Surfin' Safari, here's 409 again! It is kind of impressive how out of place this song sounds even though it got released a year before. It kind of feels like filler on THIS album whereas it was a highlight on its home album. It's still a good song, though, and I'm probably being too hard on it.

Next is Shut Down from USA, and you can pretty much repeat my thoughts about 409 and apply it to this song.

Spirit of America is a song about the Spirit of America car, driven by Craig Breedlove (interesting last name) and used to hit a land speed record! I am noticing this for the first time now, because the actual lyrics are kind of drowned out by the instrumental and backing vocals, which is probably not a bad thing - because let's face it, who actually remembers Craig Breedlove? Not me! It's still a good song, and even if I didn't notice what anyone was actually saying on this song, I still thought the melody was pretty good. And now that I do know what everyone's saying it's still good!

The next track is Our Car Club from Surfer Girl and like, just read the Surfer Girl review if you want to hear me talk about this one. I don't really want to review this again immediately after reviewing it once.

No-Go Showboat is one of the few new tracks here I'd really entertain as filler. The Beach Boys early on kind of had a habit of writing songs about... sort of nothing? Like on Surfin Safari where they just made a song about flipping a coin? And this one is just kind of based around the phrase "No Go Showboat", and how their car kinda sucks, which is fine, and it's a fun song, but it's not winning any awards or anything. This is one of those songs where I'm not really sure what to say about it. I don't think it brings the album down or anything and the bridge is fun but that's about all I have to say.

A Young Man Is Gone is a rearrangement of the Four Freshmen song "Their Hearts were Full of Spring" remade into a eulogy for James Dean. The harmonies are really, really pretty. I don't really care about James Dean but the harmonies are pretty enough they could be singing about taxes and I wouldn't really give a shit. Apparently Tatsuro Yamashita covered Their Hearts were Full of Spring! Thanks for letting me know, Wikipedia. I should maybe listen to that sometime.

In the Beach Boys tradition of ruining perfectly good closers with another song, we have Custom Machine! This is actually a really fun and catchy song though so I'm not nearly as mad at it. I also don't have a ton to say about it because like... it's another car song... and the instrumentation is pretty similar to all of the other songs, being a little bit surf, a little bit 50s rock and roll, and a tiny sprinkle of Brian Wilson stretching his wings. It's fun though.

It's kind of bizarre that on the previous albums they handled having extra space on the albums by adding filler, and on this album with an obvious time constraint, instead of just making a bunch of filler they just... shoved old songs on there. In terms of the non-filler songs, the amount is actually pretty similar (if not higher) than the first 3 records, as almost all of the new songs are pretty good on their own merits. I went into this one expecting to not really like it but I forgot how good most of the new songs on here are! I still think it's kind of lame there's a bunch of old tracks but it's forgivable. Another 7/10 for the Beach Boys, points deducted mostly for the old tracks. Once again you could probably convince me to give this an 8 on a good day but you have to have a high tolerance for goofy cheesiness to appreciate this era of the Beach Boys in general.

REVIEW: Surfer Girl - The Beach Boys (1963)

This is the album cover or something

 I was very, very sad when I looked up "Surfer Girl" to find the album cover and got like 500 stock images of ladies in bikinis and then had to specify "Beach Boys". I don't even know what I expected.

This is probably the most summery album the Boys have released so far, which is very funny, because it came out in September, only a few months after the last one! I would be remiss if I didn't mention how ridiculous the Boys' release schedule was at this point, pumping out album after album within months of each other. Which in hindsight explains a lot of the filler. I really wish someone would've sat the execs at Capitol Records down and forced them to give their artists a little bit of time to breathe, because like, they were doing this AND touring at the same time. I don't understand how they didn't all drop dead honestly.

This album is definitely yet another leap forward compared to the first two, with more actual songs than Surfin USA and far stronger harmonies and songwriting than Surfin Safari. I feel like the rest of my thoughts are pretty self evident by just going through the tracks, so I'm going to do that.

Surfer Girl, the song, is obviously a classic. The harmonies are absolutely on point here and you can really hear the beginnings of Brian's whole philosophy of arranging vocals like a church organ - Lonely Sea might have been a nice teaser of the potential of Brian Wilson to write a ballad, but Surfer Girl is such a perfect early 60s "boy meets girl" song layered with perfect vocals.

Catch A Wave is probably also the best upbeat track so far in their discography. The Beach Boys have finally seemed to figure out that falsetto is not their enemy even on the upbeat tracks, and the melody here is more lively than any of the similar tracks on the past two albums. I also really enjoy the lines about surf music TOTALLY NOT BEING A FAD, GUYS - and the vaguely carnival-sounding, dinky keyboard solo. This is just perfect 60s camp. 

Surfer Moon's arrangement feels very 50s and is (thankfully) not characteristic of where their overall sound would be heading but it's still good. It's a sweet song with a nice melody buoyed by some characteristically warm and fluffy harmonies. Is it cheesy? Yes. Does it feel a bit like a warm hug? Yes.

South Bay Surfer begins with a bunch of vaguely jump scare-y drum hits and then ends up being a moderately stupid but still charming surf song. I feel like I've talked about enough moderately stupid but still charming surf songs that you can kind of get my opinion on this one. It's fun and I like it but if this was someone's favorite Beach Boys song I think I'd cry a little bit. I do really, really doubt anyone aside from the Beach Boys ever called Miami "Ol' Miam". That just feels bullshit. No one ever did that.

Rocking Surfer is so goofy I kind of have to adore it. This is literally just carnival music and it kinda goes. This is probably the first time anyone has ever said Rocking Surfer "kinda goes". 

Little Deuce Coupe is another fun surf song except instead of being a fun surf song it's a fun car song! So that's nice! I don't have a ton original to say about this because I don't feel like it's a song that's hiding any secrets or anything. Aside from the obvious one - what the fuck is a "Pink Slip daddy"? I'm beginning to suspect when Roger Christian was helping Brian write all of these car songs he just started making shit up. But anyways yeah it's really fun and the falsetto is great and it's an obvious leap forward from the first two albums just by virtue of being catchier and having better harmonies.

In My Room is every hipster's favorite early Beach Boys song partially because most hipsters don't have the intelligence required to appreciate the DEPTH of Rocking Surfer and partially because it's really, really good. I really want to be contrarian and say that Catch a Wave is my favorite song or something stupid but yeah this is the best song on the record and if you somehow haven't heard it... firstly, why are you reading this, secondly please go do that. I don't really have anything original to say about this one because 50 billion people have already written essays about how this song reflects Brian's abuse at the hands of his father and his desire to find a safe place in his life, and I am not going to make that point any more eloquently than them.

Hawaii will end up reappearing much later on and my thoughts on it are strongly colored by its reappearance. If you're not a massive Beach Boys nerd you probably won't understand what I'm saying and that's okay! God Mike really sounds like Kermit on this one. It is a really fun song. I just keep expecting Mike to say "In Captain Cook fashion, you can't deny it" and it keeps not happening and I don't know what to feel. Shout out to the Beach Boys for ruining the Beach Boys for me.

Surfer's Rule is basically a Four Seasons diss track and I find that really really funny. Literally just going up to a bunch of Italian dudes and being like "We're cooler than you because we SURF!". That's great. I love that. I support that. I also love the line where they say "It's just as common as the Golden Rule now" because in its own way it's a much stupider version of John Lennon's whole "bigger than Jesus" thing. It's a fun song and everything I just find the concept of the Beach Boys making a Four Seasons diss track in 1963 really really funny.

Our Car Club is also fun! I really like how the melody lifts up with "You can bet we'll have our jackets on whenever we cruise" and I also really like the guitar here. Congratulations, Beach Boys! You've made like 5 good songs in a row!

Your Summer Dream seems to get a bit forgotten about compared to the other songs on this record and I guess I can see why? It's a pretty ballad but compared to In My Room or Surfer Girl it's a bit lacking. I will take any excuse I can get to hear Brian Wilson sing over a sleepy surf ballad instrumental, though. It's just so wistful and pretty, even if it's a bit under-cooked.

And of course because we can't have nice things instead of the album ending on a nice pretty note with the fade out of Your Summer Dream we go right into Boogie Woodie, another fucking surf instrumental. It's not even bad in and of itself I just hate the placement of it SO much. If they put this one in between Surfer's Rule and Our Car Club or something I wouldn't care about it but Your Summer Dream would've made such a good ending and this track absolutely does not need to exist. So basically I hate the Beach Boys.

I am giving this album a 7/10. It is clearly better than the first two, and honestly I am tempted to raise it up to an 8, but I hate the ending so much and it's still clearly a bit goofy and camp and cough juvenile compared to what they'd later do. I don't really think being goofy, camp, or juvenile are bad things, but a lot of people do, and I understand why those people wouldn't enjoy this record. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to someone as a first Beach Boys album to listen through, but there's definitely some gems here for the fans.

REVIEW: Surfin USA - The Beach Boys (1963)

I hope the formatting works lol

 Welcome back to the second installment in my Beach Boys album review series! Unfortunately I had to work on an essay yesterday but the essay is done and I am ready to let the brainworms take over! I can feel them wriggling. I can feel them.

This album is yet another stepping stone into the Beach Boys' development. David Marks is still on this one and Al isn't and that makes me sad! But in the positive category, this is where they started doubletracking their vocals, and everything sounds noticeably better. Brian Wilson has also figured out that he has a falsetto, which is a big boost. The only negative of this album compared to its predecessor is that we get more limp-wristed surf instrumentals because the Beach Boys think they're Dick Dale apparently. 

The title track is obviously great and definitely a leap forward for the band even if it was stolen from Chuck Berry. Farmer's Daughter actually has a falsetto lead and showcases that this weird Brian Wilson kid can actually write a pretty good melody if he wants to!

Misirlou is like, decent? My policy for covers deserving to exist is that they should either be better than the original OR do something the original doesn't, and Misirlou fails on both regards.

Stoked is funny because you get to hear Mike Love very unenthusiastically say "Stoked". That's the only positive thing I have to say about it. In terms of these weird late 50s early 60s instrumentals where the lyrics are just one word being shouted, Tequila is the only one I've ever wanted to actually hear, and that's because Tequila is the best song of all time and Stoked isn't. Hardly Brian Wilson's finest work, I have to be honest. I don't think there's even any key changes here, the hack fraud. I guess the guitar is sort of fun. If you're very bored.

Lonely Sea might not be the first ballad Brian wrote (that honor goes to Surfer Girl) but it's the first one that we hear on a Beach Boys album and it's a damn good one! The arrangement is more understated and minimal than you'd usually get from a Beach Boys ballad (mostly because Wilson hasn't quite narrowed in on his Phil Spector worship yet) and that really benefits the plaintive, minimal lyrics. There's also a dramatic spoken word bit which is incredibly early 60s and also very good. The fade out on this one has probably the prettiest harmonies featured on a Beach Boys album so far - you'd be forgiven for not noticing it yet but Brian absolutely already has a knack for counterpoint.

Shut Down is another car song. This is kind of sacrilege but I don't think this song is that great. They'd go on to do substantially more fun car songs and the melody is just not quite there for me. The harmonies are doing that weird early Beach Boys thing where nobody wants to sing falsetto so everything's just kind of stacked in the middle and it doesn't sound great. The sax solo is fun if admittedly kind of stupid! Shoutout to Roger Christian for knowing a lot about cars or something.

Noble Surfer is pretty filler-y but I can absolutely forgive it because it's fun and inoffensive. You have to admire a song that has "Ain't joshin" in the chorus. Also the title is a pun! Get it? "No bull surfer"? Like "No bullshit"? The Beatles could never. I'm actually not even sure what that twinkly keyboard (?) instrument is that does a solo but it's nice. Basically this song is like ten times better than Shut Down. Sue me.

Honky Tonk is another surf instrumental. I don't listen to the Beach Boys for guitars. I don't really even know what to say about this.

Lana is a nice attempt at an upbeat falsetto-y pop song but the melody is just not quite there yet compared to their future accomplishments. Once again, I am going to be murdered for this, but Brian sounds a little bit pitchy here. There's a fun solo though! I just kind of wish this song went more places. It's all a little bit one note, which is not a criticism you can make about about a lot of the upbeat falsetto-y songs that are going to come after this.

Surf Jam is ANOTHER surf instrumental. Please sing. I am begging you. It's also like fine. I don't know. My criticism isn't that they play instruments terribly or anything, and I get that they're a surf rock band so it's expected, but I want to hear your voices! Not to be controversial or anything, but the Beach Boys are good at singing! I also do not believe for a second this was actually a jam. Something about it feels sterile to me. (I am probably going to receive hate mail about how it actually was a jam and I'm doubting the genius of David Marks on the guitar or something, but I don't care.)

Let's Go Trippin is another instrumental. This one is at least moderately fun. The sax player kind of sounds like he's just there. I feel bad for him. I feel like he's not having fun, although I sorta am, listening to this. I'm sorry, sax player.

Finders Keepers has a weird structure so I like it. The song just kind of... stops with the "SHE SAID, SHE SAID" line? It feels like it's trying to go 3 different places and fails at all of them and I respect that a lot! In the future Brian would learn how to write songs that go 3 different places at once and succeed at all of them and then a bunch of hipsters would call him a genius. That day is not today. But it's okay. I still respect you, Brian. And Mike. You have a writing credit on this one too. Good for you, Mike.

Overall the actual song songs here are mostly endearing (Surfin USA and Lonely Sea are absolutely classics) but the surf instrumentals I just... don't care about. So I'm going to slap another 6/10 on this one. Probably slightly less generous than Surfin Safari? But also slightly more. I liked that Surfin Safari was mostly actual songs, but the actual songs on this one are better.

Well whatever. Come back next time for Surfer Girl, and we can finally be done with the "Surfin trilogy", which has to be my second favorite Beach Boys trilogy, along with the "Lo fi trilogy" that isn't even lo fi. More on that later. Not next time later, much later. Bye!

REVIEW: Surfin Safari - The Beach Boys (1962)

Surfin' Safari, 1962

To start things off I should first explain who was even in the Beach Boys at this point. I am going back to write this section because I almost mentioned Al before realizing Al is only on one song here. At this point, the Beach Boys were Carl, Dennis, and Brian Wilson (brothers), Mike Love (their cousin), and David Marks (some guy). And I guess Gary Usher (also some guy) has a lot of writing credits on this one but he's not a Beach Boy so we don't talk about him.

I should first of all establish that the Beach Boys were like 12 when this album was made and the concept of an album as being a thing as an art form didn't really exist in rock-n-roll music yet. So yeah, this album does suck a little as an album, but a surprising amount of the songs on here are originals for the time - and that's mildly impressive!

The second thing I have to say is that this album sounds kind of primordial. It sounds like Brian and the Boys (tm) just learned what this 'Music' thing was and spent a few weeks trying to learn their respective instruments and then recorded this.  Which is kind of endearing in its own way, but if it weren't for all of the other songs the Beach Boys made after this, I feel like this record would have been totally forgotten about. (Now that I think about it that's kind of endearing in itself, so I'm not sure why I said 'but'.)

In fact, this album is so primordial that I'm not really sure what to even say about it as a whole. It's all very goofy and camp and it's pretty hard to take seriously. The Beach Boys' harmonies definitely have not reached their eventual church-organ-esque heights by this point. At this point, their vocals still sound a little bit amateurish and uninteresting, with the backing vocals having more of a rhythmic function than a harmonic one.

I'm just going to go track by track now because I ran out of things to say.

Surfin' Safari is as good of a song to open the record with as any - it's catchy, it's fun, and it has decidedly passable guitar work.

County Fair is kind of stupid but also kind of endearing in how stupid it is, which is a running theme on this record.

Ten Little Indians is just kind of racist and was bafflingly the second single for this album because Capitol Records thought surf music was a 'fad' (which, to be fair, it sorta was, but a much longer lasting fad than they bargained for)

Chug-A-Lug is literally just an ode to liking root beer, but it does sort of set up some of the Beach Boys as individual people. Brian listens to the radio! Dennis likes cars! David is a womanizer (or more probably, likes to think he is, considering he was like 14 at the time)! Carl likes to drink! I'm guessing Gary refers to Gary Usher, but who the fuck is Larry? Is that the mythical fourth Wilson brother? The world may never know.

"Little Girl (You're My Miss America)" has an unexpectedly charming vocal by Dennis Wilson but it's a somewhat lacking cover of a song that's not that charming to begin with so whatever.

409 is probably the best song on this album by the pure virtue of having the most energy. It still very much has that pre-British Invasion rock sound to it, which I've never been the biggest fan of (especially the weird dead zone that started when all of the 50s rockers either turned to Jesus, got drafted, or died, and which ended when the Beatles came on the scene) but it's still good.

Surfin' is probably the peak of the weird primal energy of this album. It very much feels like the first attempt of someone writing a song - and it's not a bad attempt, it's catchy, the om-bop-didididit's are fun, but it's not anything to write home about. For some reason on my copy of this album this song repeats 3 times and I didn't even notice until halfway until the third time. That probably also says something about this song but I can't figure out what.

Heads You Win, Tails I Lose has a very interesting concept. It is literally just a song about flipping a coin, and Mike Love argues against the morality of using a coin flip to dispute arguments. That's the entire song. I really have to wonder who suggested writing this one. It's cute though, or something. I don't know. I'm running out of things to say.

Summertime Blues is a mediocre cover of a great song.

 Cuckoo Clock is probably my second favorite song on this album, and definitely the one most indicative of Brian Wilson's soon to be evident gift for melody - it's almost twee! It's still more or less filler, of course, but it's filler which warms the heart, and that counts for something, right?

Moon Dawg is surprisingly decent. Considering that the Beach Boys have never been known for their individual instrumental talents and this is their first record, it's nice that this instrumental is just a little bit boring and not embarrassing or anything.

The Shift sounds like every other song here pretty much. It's about an at-the-time-fashionable style of dress which I've never heard of. So that's fun!

Overall, I have to give the Beach Boys credit for trying, and this record's faults are at least charming, but it's still not very good. I never really come back to this album or any of the songs on it, although 409 and Surfin' Safari probably do deserve their places in the wider oeuvre of the Boys' hits, if only for their place in history at the beginning of the 'California Sound'.

I will slap a (maybe slightly generous?) 6/10 on this album. They will go on to do much better. Just not today.

 

Reviewing Every Beach Boys Album, an intro

Hi everyone! I have made the executive decision to make this blog slightly more than just me posting nonsense constantly so I have decided to review every Beach Boys album because I hate myself.

First of all, I should state a few things about what counts as a 'Beach Boys Album' and what doesn't:

• It has to be a studio album. I'm not going to try to come up with interesting things to say about Graduation Day 1966. Sorry Graduation Day 1966 fans.
• Beach Boys albums only. I am not doing solo albums because then I would have to review David Marks' solo albums by technicality and I don't hate myself THAT much. 
• This feels kind of obvious, but I won't be reviewing archival compilations as actual albums with the possible exception of Disc 1 of The Smile Sessions, which most fans can probably agree is a special case.
• I'm only going to be reviewing albums which the actual Beach Boys themselves probably know about. This rule is here so I don't have to review the 500 junk compilations that pop up on Spotify constantly of the same few songs from the Hite Morgan sessions.
  

Did I actually have to specify any of this? Probably not! But it's fun to be unnecessarily specific. And that's what counts.

See you next blog post (probably), where I ramble about Surfin' Safari.

thoughts about olive oil

look at this image of a capybara on a boat. it has no bearing whatsoever to the post i just think its cool

so like everyone knows virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil are like better than normal olive oil. but when was the first time you just saw non-virgin olive oil on sale. like when have you ever walked into a krogers and seen "slutty olive oil" on sale. how do we KNOW it's better. i havent had the sex variety of olive oil.
the dichotomy between virgin and non-virgin is pretty intuitive. like either you have had sex or you havent. but what does EXTRA virgin mean? does extra virgin mean that it was raised in that one monastery on greece where women are banned and it has never even seen a woman in the course of its olive oil life? did i just inherently gender all olive oil as male and also imply olive oil is heterosexual? (yes)

but like. what does EXTRA VIRGIN even mean? does it mean like, no one has ever flirted with this olive oil? if you flirt with olive oil does that mean the olive oil is no longer pure. that it is less innocent. does that demote the olive oil.

much to ponder.

bye! sorry.

addressing my blogspot past

 hello everyone. i literally just finished writing my last post so it is obviously time to begin working on a new one. this is very reasonable and normal behavior!

i am writing this post to address an important and terrifying fact. if you click on my blogspot profile i have (GASP) two other blogs! one of them is called 'gaelan adventures' and the other one is called 'the general blog of jack' or something!

i contemplated deleting both of these but i ultimately decided against it because that would be engaging in dangerous revisionist history. i cannot contribute to the rise of totalitarianism in america. i simply cannot. 

so instead i will try to explain what both of those blogs are.

the gaelan adventures: gael is the name of the home planet in the kerbal space program mod galileo's planet pack. i made this blog in like 2018 when i was going through one of my "dangerously obsessed with kerbal space program" phases, which just kind of happens, and i will probably go through another before too long. i just kind of narrated missions i had in the game and it's probably embarrassing. you can look at it if you want or something.

general blog of jack: i made this blog in like 2016 to. i have no idea why actually. i abandoned it after 2 posts. one of the posts is a callout on the government of india which i think is really funny. i actually just had to read a book about indian politics for a class and i think its funny that past!jackson and current!jackson are both interested by the affairs of india. i think thats really beautiful and i love that for myself.

okay thats all. thats the whole post. i dont know.

sorry.

dating app profile

 i am still in the "getting to know you" phase about this whole blogger thing. (please ignore that i have used this website before. please ignore that for narrative purposes.)

so, i figured it would be a fun activity to list off some fun things about me. and maybe i could also pretend i am making a match.com profile and the year is 2007 and i am trying to do a chrischan-esque lovequest. my allegiance to the second sentence in this paragraph is dubious so dont be surprised if i forget about it please. im not that smart.

a very real image of the author.

name: jackson

age: none of your business !!! (actually i am 14 but VERY mature for my age. (actually thats a lie i am 18. sorry.))

sex: yes

location: none of your business !!!

looking for: fellow weirdo who likes nerd music and has inscrutable interests (the bar is pretty low. don't worry)

smoke: idk

drink: i do drink fluids yes. mostly water

body type: humanoid, alive


you probably figured this out by now but ive never actually made a dating app profile (is that grammatically correct. i have no idea and also dont care) much less a match.com profile in 2007. i was 3. that inhibited my potential slightly. im already out of ideas so im just going to list some things i like and things i dislike

things i dislike

• the pharrell song happy
• straight people (except you. if you are straight and reading this youre one of the good ones)
• when people expect me to take a hint. i am incapable of taking hints. please tell me whatever you are thinking i will be much less offended than if you just assume i understand whatever you're alluding to when i don't.
  
• the cars (band)
• the replacements (band)
• paul dano. there is one chubby white boy with brown hair who can be brian wilson and it's ME. back off poser.
• discrimination... injustice... war... famine
• james corden
• small talk
• every odd birthday. dont know why
• when i have 13 pings on discord and i think they're dms from my friends but i actually just got pinged repeatedly on some random place i dont even check.
• mashed potatoes
• crowded hallways
• that weird limbo where you know someone enough to know you want to talk to them more, but not enough that you're actually able to do it without getting anxious and feeling like you're being too pushy, and then said anxiety ends up making you more awkward and less enjoyable to be around and then you just come off weird. trust me i am an interesting person trust me trust me trust me trust me. and if i am coming off weird then tell me because (see above point about how i am incapable of taking hints)
  
• anything that happened to me or that i did from ages 12 to 16
• 
  
• 
  
• help i have no idea how the formatting works here how do i get out of the bullet point
• • OH NO I MADE IT WORSE HELP
  • what
  • what
  ok i figured it out
• WAIT FUCK
  
  i cant get the formatting to unscrew itself up so heres things i like
  
  
•  talking to people. especially online when i get like 15 dms from someone and it's like about nothing. i love it when people dm me nonsense and i feel like people dont bc they're scared of being annoying but really like, whatever!
  
• men
• well not all men. but i like men. do you get the joke. the joke is that i'm gay.
• the beach boys
• they might be giants
• kerbal space program
• watching video essays about things i'm not even interested in
• when people have intensely specific interests. like go off bestie i love that for you
• that one video of george w bush where he says "now watch this drive"
• britney spears classic 2007 album blackout it goes hard as fuck trust me
• when people are blunt
• maps. atlases
• hours spent reading wikipedia
• hours spent reading tvtropes
• hours spent reading long dead niche interest forums trying to deduce the status of every active member's marriages
•  playing the piano
• writing inscrutable bullshit (see: right now)
• the little prince (book)
• its such a beautiful day (don hertzfeldt. movie)
• stevie wonder. if i have to explain who stevie wonder is i inherently do not trust you.
• minecraft but mostly because i live through nostalgia vicariously
• which is weird, because a lot of my life so far has kinda sucked.
• this isnt a sob story though im okay now
• well i have covid but like aside from that.
• im getting sidetracked
• i like walking through a forest in the fall time :-)
• dogs
• i really like dogs they're so friendly.
• i like cats but idk if cats like me :/
•  riding my bike
• dreams....
• mario kart wii
• we like to party by the vengaboys
  okay those are like most of the things i like. that went on for longer than i thought so i think thats like enough for right now or something. to quote macarthur "i shall return". if you have read this whole post and would like to marry me, please, let me know. thank you!