Caine's Blog: Second Thoughts About The Boys of Summer

NB: I present this piece in two parts, one an esq critique from my perspective when Stars and Stripes first appeared, the other a reflection on the past thirty or forty years of The Beach Boys' sixty-year run.

The esq piece appeared in September, 1996:

The Beach Boys, Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1 (River North, 1996)

Take a tip from the old Les McCann-Eddie Davis hit, "Compared to What?" Your enjoyment of this latest Beach Boys CD will depend greatly upon the level of your expectations. No, it's no Sunflower or even an L.A. In fact, it's not exactly a Beach Boys album at all. It is rather another showcase for their big '60s hits, with the twist of the Boys relegating themselves to the background, doing their best to make other singers (most of them up-and-coming or second-tier, depending on your point of view) sound better than they really are. But compared to the other crap o the radio these days, hey: it ain't that bad. If you can resist the temptation to compare these tracks to the original Beach Boys records, this can be an enjoyable listen. It's meant to be taken as a lightweight entry, and on those terms it succeeds.

Bright spots first: The Beach Boys themselves haven't sung together this well on record in a heifer's age. Summer in Paradise in particular had them sounding so homogenized and synthetic that renditions that were meant as loving tributes to originals by others-- and in a couple of cases, themselves-- turned out devoid of spontaneity and spirit. There are no drum machines this time; if the instrumental tracks are not inspired, at least they are human.

Neither are the Boys content with a mechanical repetition of their old charts. There are fresh vocal arrangements on many of the old warhorses, done by none other than Mr. Country Feelin's himself, Brian Wilson. As coproducer with Nashville's Joe Thomas, Brian had a chance to work alongside country-pop visionary Jimmy Webb. Along with the other Beach Boys, Brian did his thing at the mic as well, and if he couldn't quite hit the high notes like he used to, there was Matt Jardine, who has been appearing regularly with the group on their current tour, to restore the lustrous falsetto sound we haven't heard since Brian went down on his luck twenty years ago.

Matt Jardine stands between Wilson-Phillips and Mike Love

There are four or five tracks that stand out from the rest. Lorrie Morgan leads off the album with "Don't Worry Baby," sounding comfortable and believable in the dragstrip setting of the song. (While there's no surf in Nashville, they do have their demolition derbies.) The song most deserving of wide exposure is "The Warmth of the Sun, featuring the legendary Willie Nelson, whose recruitment brought Brian on board this project at the beginning. It's one of Brian's most nearly perfect compositions and an ideal vehicle for the laconic Nelson. Kathy Troccoli sings an energetic "I Can Hear Music" (currently in the Adult Contemporary top twenty and still rising), and Timothy B. Schmit does a very un-countryish, but credible performance on a "Caroline, No" enriched by a new harmony arrangement for voices and strings that finishes the album out in grand style.

While I don't care quite as much for Collin Raye's lead on "Sloop John B," this tune also allows the Boys to fully strut their stuff, and Matt duets with Collin beautifully on the first chorus.

That said, this album-- given the C&W premise-- could have been a lot better in any number of ways. I'm surprised by the relative paucity of ballads here, generally a mainstay of country music. It seems natural that the few that are included-- that is, most of the ones I have just named-- are among the most appealing and successful on the album. I'm also curious about the non-inclusion of Beach Boys songs that, while not necessarily hits, were meant as C&W tunes, "Country Air," "Back Home," etc.

This is probably explained by the disc's almost total concentration on their greatest hits, sacrificing variety to a string of rockers, all at nearly the same tempo, by lead singers who sound nearly alike. I sometimes have to check the song-listing to recall that it's James House singing "Little Deuce Coupe," Junior Brown on "409," Doug Supernaw on "Long Tall Texan," Mark Miller (of the band Sawyer Brown) on "I Get Around" (with real handclaps by God!), Toby Keith on "Be True to Your School," Ricky Van Shelton on "Fun, Fun, Fun," and Graham Brown on "Help Me Rhonda." The two female singers fare well in comparison; I wish there had been a few more represented.*

Finally, some of the backing tracks seem rushed, especially on these fast songs, and several of the singers sound awkward as a result; "Rhonda" comes off most ungainly of all (it's got to be san-copa-ted.) The Beach Boys themselves play no instrument on any of these tracks, which are handled by Nashville cats, as I suppose they should be; still, it would have been nice to hear Carl take an occasional guitar break just to inject a little personality into an otherwise bland instrumental arrangement.

In short, I'm looking forward to a better Volume 2, one that features more excessive singers in a more reflective mood, singing tunes more directly descended from C&W traditions. I'd also welcome The Beach Boys handling a tune or two all by themselves to put their own stamp on the classics of country.

* 2021 note: Stars and Stripes appeared too early to include a sweet duet between Tammy Wynette and Brian Wilson on "In My Room," one of the last tunes she recorded before her death.

A FOND FAREWELL AND A LOOK AHEAD

For my money, The Beach Boys never recovered from the shock of losing Dennis Wilson. No longer could the group benefit from his unique writing and producing talent, but even more they would miss the sound of his voice in the stack, unmistakable, like a little cowlick within an otherwise perfect arrangement.

By 1998, with the death of Carl Wilson, even that perfect sheen, honed by decades of rehearsing and performing together, would be lost. The Beach Boys' past twenty-three years have been the story of, at first three, and now two competing factions. Their single reunion--Brian, Mike Al, Bruce, and David Marks-- for an album and a tour emphasized what they were still capable of doing, but the Boys are getting old, and with each passing year the chances of another reunion recede.

The first obvious thing about KTSA is the absence of Dennis's input, especially when compared to their prior release, L. A. : Light Album, which he rescued with material from his current solo project, Bambu.

Aside from "Goin' On" and the decade-old "When Girls Get Together," there really isn't an interesting track on the album.

The following release five years later, titled simply The Beach Boys, let them down by the sterile, synth-laden production of Steve Levine, the erstwhile producer of the latest fad, Boy George. Some of the tracks do appeal to me: Al's "Crack at Your Love" (!), Mike's "Getcha Back," Brian's "I'm So Lonely," and an interesting dive into Stevie Wonder's "I Do Love You," where I swear Carl and Al's leads both sound as if Stevie himself had sung it.

The best cut on the album, though, was the CD bonus track"Male Ego," if only for the fact it sound like a Brian Wilson production (but isn't).

Their next release, Still Cruising', was a cop-out of sorts, padded out with three songs from their sixties heyday and fair-to-middlin' new material. It marked the album release of their number-one hit-- the first since "Good Vibrations" in 1966-- "Kokomo," which received wide exposure in the Tom Cruise film, Cocktail. Better, though, is Al's swing at "Somewhere Near Japan," which succeeds in creating the tense dilemma set in the lyrics. Many of the rest are included by virtue of their being used in movies, like "Make It Big," but then there are"Island Girl" and the wretched "Wipe Out" with the Fat Boys. And Brian's sole contribution, the clunky "In My Car," has Eugene Landy" written all over it.

Summer in Paradise (Brother Entertainment, 1992)

(Our sponsor here inserts an unpublished piece he once wrote for esq:)

The good news is that the Beach Boys, after some seven years without a bona fide label contract, managed to get an album out at all. For the third time in their career, the Brother appellation appears, this time as "Brother Entertainment," whose "Executive in Charge of Production" is Michael Edward Love and which is distributed by the Navarre Corporation. Brother's old Indian logo, however has made way for something that resembles a flatted pyramid.

The bad news, of course, is that it's more of the same emotionally inert pop pap that has constituted the bulk of the group's studio output over the past decade. It's not that these tunes aren't pleasant to hear, but once you've heard one Terry Melcher production of a Mike Love song, you've heard them all: "Island Fever" is the latest Kokomo-Klone, while "Lahaina Aloha" recapitulates "Somewhere Near Japan," and neither gets better the second time around. In all, Mike Love co-wrote and sang lead on half the album's songs, the balance consisting of oldie covers and "Slow Summer Dancin'," not one of Bruce Johnston's better efforts. In fact, Summer in Paradise is more a Mike Love album than a Beach Boys album; Brian, of course, had nothing to do with it, and the other three guys appear to be present only to relieve the tedium of Mike's lead vocal on nearly every track.

A few words are in order concerning the oldies in the lineup. Sly Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime" is probably the most successful, although interest declines rapidly after the first chorus. A synthetic-sounding "Under the Boardwalk" is rescued by Carl's pretty rendition of the refrain, but even he cannot salvage "Remember," a pallid, robotic nineties-style update of the old hi. Without question, the low spot is "Surfin'," which barely resembles the single that started it all for the Boys thirty years ago.

Remember that crude, makeshift Hite Morgan production? Well, compared to this retread, it was a masterpiece. The new version could be a textbook example on how to waste all the advances in recording technique that have accrued since the original, whose raw energy and sheer joy seem to be mocked here by a condescending attitude and stultifying layers of studio glitz.

Finally John Stamos, who coproduced and sings a Dennis-like lead on "Forever," managed to accomplish a fairly literal remake of the Sunflower track, but it serves only to reemphasize the pointlessness of the whole effort. In short, one seeks in vain for the one cut that could redeem this album, but it simply isn't there: no musical surprises and certainly nothing to challenge one's imagination.

This is the first release I'm aware of marketed in the "eco-pack," which dispenses with the

customary throwaway wrapper. While it's certainly in keeping with the album's ecological slant, you may need a set of instructions to assemble it and a pair of pliers to open the damned thing. Other than that, Robert Lyn Nelson's artwork is the only distinctive feature in this entire project. My advice: buy the package and throw away the CD.

Here we arrive where we began, at the 1996 release of Stars and Stripes, Volume 1, the final Beach Boys album of the last century. With any luck at all, there will never be a Volume 2.

WHAM! Many fans besides me, I'm sure, had been hoping against hope for a new Beach Boys album featuring the five surviving members of the group. It finally arrived with their reunion tour in 2012, and it turned out to be a brilliant success.

As the group nears its 60th anniversary, I'm afraid there's little to come from this time hence.