Intro and Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

C: lotta Punk here, Bottle, but i don't get it. Is there a theme? Did you just buy out the "B" section? 

B: no to the latter, yes to the former. How do you not see the theme? Rhetorical question, i know why. It's a human theme, not a computer generated one. It's also conceptually rather than physically chronological, so that's loads of fun. 

C: yeah, still no clue. 

B: one step closer to a complete hardware overhaul, patches just aren't gonna cut it anymore. Let's lay 'em out and ponder. 

Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

Ramones - Ramones and Rocket to Russia

Bad Brains - Bad Brains

Bad Religion - Generator

Echo & the Bunnymen - Songs to Sing & Learn 

C: i mean "R" is like 4/5 of "B." 

B: you're not wrong per se, but that's more like a ridiculous thing humans would trick AI into thinking because it's funny. The real answer is that it's before Punk, Punk, and Post-Punk. The fun part is the extra-dimensional twist in the middle with Echo & the Bunnymen. 

C: but that's at the end of your list. 

B: exactly, we fall through a pothole in the middle into 90s Punk Revival, then fall back through the same pothole from the other side and it takes us back to the beginning. Actually listening to each album will make it clearer. 

Pet Sounds 

Technically the 2nd Concept album, but arguably the 1st Bottlean album ever created, Pet Sounds is a historical and artistic watershed moment in recorded music. Rubber Soul lays claim to first album conceived as an album rather than merely a vehicle for collected songs, aka the new single and a bunch of filler just to sell a full LP at a higher price point. Album as work of musical art might be a better description, and it is precisely the lack of filler or etcetera on Rubber Soul that inspired Brian Wilson to fixate on creating "the greatest Rock & Roll Album ever." I should point out that these are philosophical distinctions as opposed to cold hard facts. I'm sure you can find plenty of what i would call "real albums" before 1964 if you try hard enough. 

The concept of Pet Sounds is that the producer can make an album, the studio is a multi-timbral polyphonic instrument, and the actual band barely needs to participate at all. In reality, Pet Sounds is a Wrecking Crew album produced by Brian Wilson that the Beach Boys sang on. Fun fact, barely anybody who wasn't also a serious musician cared or listened to it until like the 90s. 

So, philosophically speaking, what were albums before Rubber Soul/Pet Sounds? We're only talking about Pop music mind you, so they were predominantly compilation albums. Recording music in a studio has always been super expensive, and labels were by and large in the business of selling hits. After you had a bunch of hits, they'd put together a compilation of those hits as a full length LP. For lack of a better term, i call these proto-albums. They by and large don't make any sense as "[album] by [band]," and instead merely represent the mundane metamorphosis from music as music to music as commodity; the physical form of a band's music that you can listen to any time you feel like it. Today we call these "best of" or "greatest hits," albums whether they are or not. 

Not surprisingly, the Beatles (rightly or wrongly considering themselves to be kooler than jesus) couldn't get no satisfaction that way and together with George "no R" Martin decided to really explore the possibility of making the Album, as opposed to the then normative Compilation Album, a thing that was both artistically fulfilling and actually enjoyable to listen to from start to finish. Arguably they failed on the latter count, i want to punch myself in the face 3 songs into every Beatles album, but even a curmudgeonly curmudgeon such as myself couldn't dream of denying that they proved that an Album could and should be the ultimate artistic goal of any band. Maybe not 30 of them, but at least 2 or 3, 6 if you're really popular and/or good at it. Even though we all know i personally dislike most Beatles albums, this rightfully blew everybody's minds, and it's a bit unfair to hold the pioneers of a brand new artform to the standards of excellence defined by some jackass half a century later. Still gonna do it, but you can totally roll your eyes when i do. 

And that's when Brian Wilson had his Marijuana/LSD accelerated epiphany. He was already writing and producing all the Beach Boys songs, so why not just make a Beach Boys album they never actually had to play, or at least only had to learn how to play the songs that became hits? Good thing/bad thing, that one. Great in the sense that unto us Album was born, terrible in the sense that all of a sudden it's the producer as artist towering over musicians as a mere technical necessity. Lots of bands would soon get stuck in the quagmire of having to produce dozens of hits for a particular producer before anything they might want or like to do became even remotely possible. Worse, it would take another decade and the juggernaut that was EL&P's unapologetically progressive approach to Rock before the record buying public gave 1, let alone 2, shits about the matter, and yet another decade before the Album itself became standardized as something tangibly/demonstrably more important than the singles that preceded/advertised it. Albums in the 70s and 80s were an annoying thing bands wanted but labels certainly didn't. You can take a chance on a single, but a whole album of dubious sales estimates is terrifying. 

But back to Pet Sounds. I should clarify the preceding synopsis by saying "not in England, though." English critics raved about this masterpiece of Progressive Pop and it was a best selling album for a huge chunk of 1966. But back in the US, what was anyone supposed to make of the Beach Boys, they of the cars, chicks, and surfing persuasion, taking a field trip to feed a bunch of goats? No seriously, why are the Beach Boys feeding apple slices to goats on the cover and doing Samurai cosplay on the back? I honestly don't know, i assume it was just considered humorously weird at the time. 

The music's not weird, though. This is just a fantastic listening album. Yes there are tuning issues, but they feel quaint. No there's no real plot to follow (unless you try to cram it inside the suitcase of Brian Wilson's deteriorating marriage), but there doesn't need to be. In the most basic sense these songs sound like they belong together, and that collective thing is called Pet Sounds; i assume as in "these are my pet goats, these are my pet sounds, and i have other pet projects if you're interested." I of course have the distinct disadvantage of NOFX's Heavy Petting Zoo lodged between my brain teeth, so i have to swerve around all that between paragraphs. 

Where was i? Oh yeah, if it seems weird that this isn't really a Beach Boys album, that's because Brian considered it a solo album. He had stopped performing the year before, there was no way they could perform this stuff live at the time, and with his inability to successfully Smile while riding the struggle bus, he relinquished his de facto leadership of the band. I think it's fair to say this is the end of the first Beach Boys, and everything after is a different, and thanks to Mike Love surprisingly unlikable band. 

Pet Sounds, however, is a delight. We begin with one of the greatest songs ever written, Wouldn't It Be Nice. Ah, young idealistic love. Reality, however, is much more complicated, and it's a bit of a surprise You Still Believe In Me. 

Now they aren't together and it's not nice or pretty at all. But when they're together, shhhhhh. I'm Waiting for the Day (when you can love again). If you're determined to use the autobiographical thing, then this all kind of has to be a fantasy about winning her back, capped off by winning her back in the instrumental Let's Go Away For Awhile, and realizing it's the worst trip he's ever been on. That's not exactly a romantic plot, now is it? My point is simply that as a story it's ridiculous. Instead, i think it's much more satisfying to hear Side A as a collection of stories about things not turning out how you expected or wanted them to turn out. If i have one criticism, it's that every song ends with a lyrical vamp and a fade out. 

Side B is more of the same, with the added sadness that comes from realizing that we simply change as we get older, losing a lot of our youthful exuberance in the process. 

Did i mention that Pet Sounds us not a happy album? I probably should have. Regardless, we'll end this ridiculously long-winded review with a word about songs in general. This album is particularly troublesome because everyone has the impression that Brian was writing about them or himself or that other person. In general that's not how songs work, as Carly Simon so rightly pointed out. Instead, what tends to happen is that songs take on the role of an epiphany in which the songwriter realizes that some particular personal experience speaks to a much larger and more universal story common to everyone. That may not soften the blow of hearing a song you're sure is about you when it's really not, but it's nevertheless an important perspective of which to be aware. Plus, Brian always had cowriters, so it's better to say that biographical details inform the song, rather than themselves being the subject. You Still Believe In Me is a good example, it's a universal sentiment that Brian could identify with because his marriage was in shaky territory. It's not about his marriage, it's about pondering the nature of his marriage at the time. Likewise, Caroline, No was Tony Asher's experience, filtered through Brian's sadness at growing up into world weary adults and longing for a return to the naive kind of love presented in Wouldn't It Be Nice. 

If anything Pet Sounds is about how frustrating it is that it doesn't pan out that way. I am of course Bottle, so i'd reply "who said you're supposed to be happy all the time?," or "that's because you're doing it wrong," but i was a worl weary senior citizen by the time i was teenager so i'm not a reliable narrator either. Some musicologists interpret this album as a plea for your buddy to reply "bitches, man," and some take the "everything is actually about yourself" approach that i take sometimes, but on this occasion i think Brian was simply trying to be as honest as he could about what he was experiencing. He was experiencing a whole lot of messed up stuff in his brain and it took him a long time to get to the end of that particular hallway because he didn't have a fast forward button. He got there though, he finished Smile and smiled. Plus, he invented Albums as i understand and appreciate them, so two thumbs up for that guy. Still, i am the jackass, so buckle up for a bunch of albums where i argue that Punk is actually a complete rebellion against everything "produced." Seriously though, if you've never given Pet Sounds your undivided attention, you really should. It's lovely.