The Beach Boys Love You

I'm writing a lot about albums I'm listening to at the moment. Because at the moment, I'm making an album. Perhaps it's quite delusional of me to imagine that anyone would ever care, but everyone who makes albums is delusional- except the one's who end up being famous. Since we are trying to make that Breakthrough Record, I'm going to plan on that succeeding. Thus, at some point after we're worldwide superstars, someone might wonder just what records the drummer was enamored with during the recording process. It matters. This article is about the Beach Boys album Love You. If our record, upon completion, has some Moogs on it, now you'll know why.

If one fancies oneself a rock and roll completist, at some point one must become a Beach Boys completist. And a true Beach Boys completist will sooner or later go down the rabbit hole that is Smile. I’ve been down that rabbit hole, and I’m not sure I ever fully made it out. But this particular article is not about Smile.

Brian Wilson’s failure in 1966 to realize his “teenage symphony to God” sent him spinning into a total breakdown, which rendered him about as close to Syd Barrett as anyone’s ever been who lived to tell about it. During this time Brian was largely a recluse, sporadically poking his head out to appear in music videos and at Live Aid, playing a keyboard that probably wasn’t plugged in. It would be a full four decades before he would finally reemerge as a consistent recording and touring artist.

But way back in the 70s, amidst the “Brian’s Back” campaign which the band and record label had orchestrated to boost ticket sales for Beach Boys concerts, Brian Wilson actually wrote and recorded an entire album of all new and original songs for the Beach Boys.

Love You was quietly released in early 1977 to mixed reviews and disappointing sales. Mike Love quickly steered the group back toward his ideal vision of nostalgia act, relentlessly touring the corn dog circuit. And Brian crawled back into bed. But Love You is a real album that actually happened, and you can still get it and listen to it anytime time you like.

Some of the lyrics (okay most of the lyrics) are pretty juvenile but regardless, this is a collection of pop tunes crafted by a man who’s ability to craft pop tunes is widely regarded as second to none. Gone are the Wrecking Crew and live orchestra from Pet Sounds. Instead, Brian used an array of 70s synthesizers to round out the tunes. All of the great melodies and hooks, the lush harmonies, the calls and responses you’d expect from a top notch Brian Wilson production are present and accounted for.

“Ding Dang” is a minute of silliness if ever there was one. But have you ever met anyone who could arrange those vocals? Some of the tunes, “Mona” and “Solar System” for example, sound almost satirical. Brian Wilson’s version of Spinal Tap. Even the chords are funny. But there’s also a strange, child like innocence which suggests a complete earnestness.

Love You is dripping with complex textures and while many of the songs are just a bit too weird for the casual fan to digest, it’s certainly never boring. The Beach Boys successes set a new standard for what rock and roll is capable of. Unfortunately their mediocre works excite no one and worse, they’ve got stacks of unlistenable dreck that really undermines their legacy. This really isn’t fair, because if one is to ponder the true Beach Boys canon, certainly nothing after 1980 may be included. Brian was always the creative genius, and Love You is perhaps the last full album where he really tried.

The Beach Boys catalog is often a never ending sea of compilations and repackages built around one garbage single. But there are occasional bargain bin finds of real quality, and Love You is certainly one.

Look, we only have so much time on this earth. And we have very few complete works by possibly the greatest pop composer ever. If you stopped listening somewhere between “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villains”, you’re missing out on some pretty neat stuff. It’s not as shiny as “California Girls” and certainly not as beautiful as “Caroline No”, but Love You is every bit as creative and undoubtably Brian Wilson’s most David Lynch-esque piece.

Songs Of Guilt

The new album is coming along, friends. We've logged two days in the studio already and have more scheduled. I'll delve more into that and post some pics soon. In the meantime, here's a little blib about a favorite subject of mine, U2...

Songs Of Guilt

Okay, the obvious pun was too tantalizing to pass up. At least I didn’t go all Grantland-y and make the headline read : **Semi-Clever Pun**  :  **Brief description of article**.

But seriously, at what point will my comedic chops evolve from “making my friends chuckle” to “making everybody laugh”?

U2 is an entity I am more familiar with than any other. And I know more about U2 than probably anyone else you know. Trust me. U2 made headlines recently (mission accomplished- sort of) by releasing their new album for free, un announced, and by placing it in everyone’s iCloud account at once. Many people didn’t even know what an iCloud was. Some folks, like me, had to learn how to access it in order to download the album. Others were outraged that new music they didn’t ask for was popping up in their jogging shuffle.

Sadly the pushback was so great that it has thus far overshadowed what is actually a pretty great album. Casual iTunes users felt violated in some way. Contemporaries of U2 were appalled that the biggest band in the world would do something so blatant to further erode the value of music in the eyes of consumers. But who really got hurt here?

To the outraged consumers I say: You have less than zero privacy, and that’s your own choice. You post everything on Facebook. You have a GPS transmitter in your pocket at all times that broadcasts your whereabouts, along with everything you like, dislike, covet, are mildly curious about, and who all of your friends are to advertisers who in turn tailor marketing campaigns to the archetype you’ve chosen to assimilate yourself to. Get ready to find more and more things popping up in your Cloud.

To the righteously indignant musician, I submit: The genie left the bottle long ago. For better or for worse, owning media is a ridiculous notion to most people under 30. It’s the Wild West once again, and someone will figure out how to monetize music but it won’t be record sales. Blame Napster or blame Metallica, either way it’s time to get into the t-shirt business.

I have defended U2 until this afternoon. Today is payday, and like most paydays, I went to the record store. I love the record store because I love vinyl. I love the tactile experience; seeing the large artwork, pulling out the sleeve and reading all of the liner notes as I listen. I love thumbing through the bins at the record store because I always stumble across something I was not consciously aware that I wanted until I saw it. And I love hanging out among other music lovers. While I was there, a gentleman came in and asked for the new U2. I’ve felt like such a knuckle dragger for liking them these last few weeks, I welcomed the opportunity for a quick chat with a fellow fan. He, like me (and like anyone who truly enjoys music and has at least a passing knowledge and appreciation of U2) thought the new songs were excellent and couldn’t wait to own the vinyl. 

Sidenote: The album cover is so awful I almost don’t want to own the vinyl for the aforementioned reasons.

Anyhow, I chatted up the record store clerk on the subject and he was a bit salty. And it hit me. This is the real victim. You can count on two hands the number of acts with the selling power of U2. These record stores are likely hanging on by a thread. U2 puts out 2 to 3 new releases per decade, and I’m sure every record store owner was counting on this one to keep the lights on for awhile. They’re hoping this vinyl revival keeps building, but they’re likely in desperate need of a banner release by the world’s biggest band to float the whole operation in the interim. By giving the record free to everyone with an iTunes account, U2 singlehandedly took what was probably the largest payday of the year for record stores and cut it by more than half.

I still love U2. I think the new album is great. I will buy it on vinyl, not for them but for the record store. And I can’t wait for the tour. But they blew it here. For every record store that goes out of business in the next six months, the blood (red sky) is on their hands.

The Changing Zeitgeist (Thank God!)

Here's a piece I drafted a few months ago. I didn't post it right away because I'm attempting to be more positive, so anytime I write something critical I tend to sit on it for a while. But it's short, it's true, and it's kinda funny. Though it may seem to have nothing to do with the new album, this essay is a glimpse into our current state of mind, and our state of mind will no doubt have a big influence on the album.

I was born in 1980. For my entire life, the baby boomers have controlled money, power, culture, politics, pretty much everything. Oddly the generation who claims rock and roll, civil rights, and enlightenment as their own couldn't wait to sell out. Big box stores. Corporate monopolies. SUVs. Tacky subdivisions. Ponzi Schemes. Reality TV...
.......bleccccchhhhhhhh..... 
I worked at a used boat dealership for one summer in my mid twenties. The owner was just as smarmy as you might expect, complete with the gold crusted watch and classic hot rod collection. His motto was "It's not what you say, but how you say it." I doubt Jim came up with this on his own, he probably read it in How To Win Conversations and Influence Buyers or The Seven Habits of People Who Attend Leadership Seminars. If you're around my age, chances are you've been employed by someone similar. Nearly every business has been run this way for at least the last 40 years. Watch any commercial, drive past any strip mall, read the ingredients on the juice flavored drink product for kids.
The boomers never met a slick slogan they didn't like. The bigger the company and the more robotic it's employees, the better. A snappy scripted telephone greeting is their idea of customer service. These empty suits have built empires on such bullshit virtues. They're successful. They're in charge. And they're not going to listen to you.
Now, we're in our late twenties / early thirties and we've become our own marketing demographic. We're buying our first homes, getting married, having kids, starting businesses, making records, getting involved. If a business wants to succeed in the next 40 years, they're going to have to appeal to us. And for some reason, the old shuck and jive doesn't work on us. Not even a little bit. We know when we're being lied to, we know when the person on the other end of the line or standing across from us is just following a script. And we don't like it.
So guess what? We get to watch the dinosaurs go extinct right before our eyes. If your boss insists that you "hone your schtick" just smile and nod, knowing that his or her days are numbered. I swear, we've been browbeaten our entire lives to accept things as true even though we know them to be false. And for a long time the liars were right- by virtue of winning and being in charge. But the truth always comes out. If someone tells you 2+2=5 don't believe them, even if they have a twinkle in their eye and a smirk on their face. It's not how you say it, it's what you say. 

New Record Time!

I've been writing lately about other bands and other things, because the Charlatans have been in pre-production for our new album. This Sunday, pre-production will simply become production. That's right, we're finally headed into the studio! I plan to write quite a bit in the ensuing weeks about the recording process. I've also got a few posts in the can about tangential subjects (The Beach Boys, The Peter Pan Syndrome, etc...) which I plan to weave in. And I hope to do some Q & A segments with the other band members, production folks, and guest musicians. But for starters, every record has a backstory. In fact, every record likely has many different backstories as each person involved comes in with their own baggage and their own hopes and dreams. For this record, here is the abridged backstory from the Drumist's perspective:

On October 5th, we go into the studio to begin tracking of our new album. This site was initially conceived as documenting our journey as a band from inception to notoriety and  profitability. Also, my personal journey of picking up the pieces after Scotland Barr, realizing what I really need to focus on (music), and starting over with an all new (sort of) band.

I say “sort of” because, in fact, Bradley Wik & The Charlatans has become Bradley Wik and Three Slow Drags. It didn’t start out that way! But shortly after recording our first EP as a three piece way back in 2009 it became clear that we needed a lead guitarist. That’s no slight on Bradley’s guitar playing. He is actually a fantastic guitarist. But this band needed a big sound, and the novelty of a power trio never held much sway when weighed against the versatility of a full four piece rock and roll band.

Enter Brian Bergstrom. Brian and I are, I suppose, musical soul mates. We’ve been making music together since I was 19 and we’ve each found our way into every band the other has been a part of. Our respective influences differ greatly, but also overlap at all the important parts. I can’t imagine making music without him. So of course, when we needed a lead guitarist, there was only one call to be made. And yes, Brian served a stint playing bass in The Slow Drags.

Our first full length album was recorded in 2011 and came out in 2012. The time between completion and release was a difficult one, as the band experienced some growing pains. It’s unfortunate but not uncommon that relationships ebbed and flowed amongst band members during those uncertain times. Sadly we had stagnated musically, and personality tensions hit their limit. A change had to be made. We needed a new bass player.

Mickey Nucci was the original bass player in Scotland Barr & The Slow Drags. He grew up with Scott, and he taught me all the songs when I joined that band. He was the steady hand and smiling face that carried me from a basement jammer who had no business anywhere near a professional rock outfit, to a confident and polished drummer with hundreds of gigs under his belt. We needed a new bass player in a hurry and Mickey agreed to fill in for the foreseeable future. About four gigs in it became apparent to all of us that he was the guy for the job, permanently.

We played out almost nonstop for a year and a half promoting that record. We took a huge step forward as a band in the process. But every album has it’s lifecycle and before long new tunes began to displace the album cuts in our setlists. We all lost and / or gained (or both) girlfriends during this time as well.

The “Burn What You Can, Bury The Rest” tour cycle ended on Halloween of 2013. The plan was to spend the winter demoing a new album to be recorded earlier this year. But after such a hectic playing schedule, we all had jobs and relationships to tend to. We worked on the new tunes sporadically through the new year and new songs kept coming. Finally in the spring we started plugging away in Brian’s home studio and again the band took a massive step forward. Free from the constrains of an impending show, we were able to chase the songs down their respective rabbit holes. All the live playing had galvanized us into a tight rock and roll band. And in Brian’s studio, each of us wearing headphones, we were able to finally hear each other. The newest songs were coming together more quickly and sounding better than ones we’d been playing for years.

So here we are. One away from entering the studio proper, where we’ll record live to tape a dozen or so tunes that we’ve spent the last year or so flushing out. This is a fully functioning rock and roll band, greater than the sum of it’s parts, with a clear vision. The way the last album came together was magical, as we really didn’t know what we were doing. Now we’re seasoned and tight. Before we hoped for the best and got it. Now the best is second nature and we hope for something greater. There aren’t three guys on the planet I’d rather be making a record with.

God only knows what the future holds. But all I’ve personally ever wanted out of life was to make something great. I’ve been a part of some great records, but this is the first time I’ve ever had the privilege of going in with the concept fully formed. The only thing left to chance is “how much better than great might it be?” And will anybody like it.

Successmanship

Six years ago I decided to give the whole playing music thing all I've got. Prior to that playing music was a priority, but never a viable career option. This is all well documented right here on this very blog, so no need to keyhole the cymbals now.

Anyhow, recently a friend asked me if Scotland Barr had ever 'made it'. I had to give it some thought. By his own standards, Scott never 'made it'. He wanted to be a star and he knew he had the goods. But ultimately I would submit that he did make it. He wrote, recorded, and published three full length albums (actually the last one is a double but Scott only was able to record vocals for half of the songs). I used to think making money was the hard part. But really, having the goods is the hard part.

What good does financial success in the arts actually do? I suppose it enables one to devote more time and resources to their craft, thus resulting in higher quality output. Except that any band's discography, viewed chronological, would seem to contradict this premise. Sure it would be nice to have lots of nice things, but again the history of mankind suggests a correlation between wealth and happiness which yields diminishing returns.

Scott used to tell me "You consider yourself a camera salesman who plays drums on the weekend. You should flip that paradigm and think of yourself as a musician first who does whatever is necessary to pay the bills." At the time I couldn't have disagreed more staunchly. Then I grew up and realized he was right.
In the last six years my average annual income has been enough to live comfortably on, provided you're definition of comfortably doesn't include home ownership or taking a vacation. Perhaps I'd have earned more had I gone into finance, but there's no way I could sleep at night.

The best part is I'm in a band that is trying to make it all the way. To wake up each day knowing you're part of a group with the highest of aspirations is a very cool feeling. If my band's loftiest goal was to get good enough playing ZZ Top covers to make $300 a night at Duffy's Hanger, I'd be out before the first practice was over. So we'll keep making records and trying to make the best records we can. And hopefully the people who hear them will like them. And hopefully more people will hear them as time goes on. But if I never make a penny playing music it's still a success.

Finally, there's a lot of bs and a lot of injustice in our society. I know that unfortunately most people silently endure the marketing lingo and tps reports just to stay on top of their townhouse mortgage and it must suck. But I can honestly say, the greatest benefit to being in a band and really giving it a go is something I'd never have guessed. It's the quiet confidence. I began to see the world more clearly, to remove monetary designations and look at things in terms of actual value. Money is important to a degree but one can always find a way to make it work. When you're a part of a community that is really striving to make something good, it's easier to ignore that crappy boss at that crappy job. You can walk away from a bad relationship with a bounce in your step and a smile on your face.

Plus when you're in a band every day is dress up day, so if I feel like rockin' a puffy shirt and plaid blazer I can.

Lifehouse is Facebook

Depending on your particular level of Rock & Roll Nerdiness, you may or may not be familiar with Lifehouse. For those of you who have better things to do than read the sleeve notes of classic album reissues, Lifehouse was Pete Townshend's intended followup to Tommy. If you're still lost, Pete Townshend is the lead guitarist and primary composer of The Who. Tommy was his rock opera which is no doubt best known for the hit "Pinball Wizard" (that deaf dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball).

Lifehouse is simultaneously Townshend's greatest success and his biggest failure. After years of work, Pete was ultimately unable to put it all together. Time ran out and nobody from the label to his bandmates could fully comprehend what he was on about. The project was abandoned, and from it's ashes were culled the collection of songs that became Who's Next- widely regarded as one of the best albums of all time and certainly The Who's most successful release by far. "Baba O'Riley" "Won't Get Fooled Again" "Bargain" "Behind Blue Eyes" all were originally part of the Lifehouse story.

For some reason, Townshend was drawn to the idea of a deaf, dumb, and blind protagonist. But since he'd already mined that territory in Tommy, he decided to change it up a little bit for his next project. Tommy was literally unable to speak, hear, or see due to trauma suffered as a young child. In the Lifehouse narrative, young people are unable to truly experience life due to willful self-imprisonment in a metaphorical gilded cage. This dystopian setting bears a striking resemblance to modern society.

In 1970 Pete Townshend envisioned the internet at least 15 years before Al Gore invented it. The song "Relay", which ultimately didn't make the cut on Who's Next, is about just that. But in 1970 nobody else in The Who or their extended circle could really grasp the concept. He envisioned a society where everyone was connected to the same wire. In the story, this was initially embraced as a great step forward for the human race but ultimately it would ensnare mankind as the world became one monolith. Hence the Who's Next album cover, which shows the band taking a piss on an actual monolith they found among some rocks somewhere.

That brings us to Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, Whatever. From the stage I see faces illuminated by their mobile devices. Endlessly scrolling eyes, killing time by reading meaningless 'bumper stickers' (as I'm wont to call them) and "liking" things. The internet has made available endless information to the world. But the problem with endless information is you can't find anything when you're looking at everything. So we've filtered it. Now we only see what's in our news feed. And what's in our news feed is mostly fake. "Likes" can now be bought.

Let's say you open a new coffee shop, or write a book or play in a band. You can hire a company in the US who will in turn hire somebody in India to fabricate Yelp reviews, come up with hashtags, and create fake Facebook accounts by the thousands to "Like" your product and get it trending. Then it pops up on Google and Facebook and bam: you're now popular.

Meanwhile, the English language has been reduced to 140 characters or less. Art is viewed in digital form on a 2 inch screen. What's Good and What's Important is determined by whoever pays Kim Kardashian enough money to tweet about it. This could easily be a less funny draft of a Louis CK bit, I realize. "The Hot Pocket Guy?" No. The Everything Is Great And No One Is Happy Guy.

Next time you go to a show, or a ballgame, or just out to a bar, try this experiment: Leave your phone in your car. Once you don't have it, you'll realize how many times per hour you compulsively reach for it. Remembering you don't have it, you'll then realize that you really had no reason to reach for it in the first place. Pretty soon your eye level will rise and you'll start to experience what's actually happening in real life. The first thing you'll notice is all the other people and their compulsive need to check their phone. You'll see folks interrupt face to face conversations with a friend or loved one every few seconds to gaze and scroll. And you'll probably take pity on these poor souls, bound to their devices, missing out on life because they're obsessed with "staying connected" at all times. But then you'll remember that you've left your phone in the car and, having not checked your messages in an hour or so, you'll convince yourself that perhaps someone has flirted with you on OKCupid so it's probably time to go retrieve it.

Or perhaps you'll cease to care what's in that little 2 inch window because the possibilities every other inch has to offer are far more enticing. And I call that a bargain, the best I ever had.

Music is a Time Machine

I touched on this thesis a few posts back, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately and wanted to write more. We've all heard the studies which claim that music education in k-12 is paramount to learning in general. If you haven't, I'm too lazy to google a link right now but it's out there. The reason is that music has the very unique ability to stimulate both the right and left brain hemispheres since it is simultaneously very creative and mathematical. Children who spend twenty minutes learning piano at the top of the school day retain much more knowledge from every subject they study that day.
So engaging with music seems to heighten our awareness. Say you buy a really good album that you listen to intensely for a certain period of time. Because your brain is functioning at a higher level, everything else you experience during this period of time is recorded into your subconscious mind in acute detail. Inevitably you will tire of this album and it will go on the shelf. Years will pass and you will seldom even think of this album. Then, for some reason, you pull it out and play it again. Suddenly everything you were doing all those years ago is foremost in your thoughts. Things you had seemingly forgotten altogether are as if they happened yesterday. If you often ate lunch at the Thai place near your old job, now you can almost taste the Pad See Ew. You feel the potholes on the Sellwood Bridge that was once your daily commute. If you were going through a breakup at the time your heart might ache all over again, even though you've long since moved on.
This, I can only imagine, is similar to what people mean when they talk about acid flashbacks.