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| 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.
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