Sunday Videos

Pet Sounds

I first heard the album “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys when I was in 8th grade. The Beach Boys had a new album called “Carl and The Passions, So Tough.” The album was packaged weirdly and along with the new album they made it a double album and threw in the old “Pet Sounds” LP, but it only cost as much as a single album. So I bought it and was amazed at how the Beach Boys looked. The all had beards and long hair and there were now two black guys in the band. I wondered if they knew how to surf.

I put the new record on first and it was okay, but not the greatest thing I had ever heard. Then I reluctantly put on “Pet Sounds.” I was never a huge Beach Boys fan as a kid and thought this old school Beach Boys album would be a bunch of car and surfing songs. From the moment I heard the opening guitar loops of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” my mouth hung open and I couldn’t believe the music I was hearing. This was different than anything I had ever heard before.

I remember my brother Jim coming in to the room and I said, “You have to listen to this,” and we both listened and were amazed we had never heard anything about this album.

Later I read that Capitol records wasn’t happy with Brian Wilson trying to veer away from the Beach Boys “surf, cars and fun, fun, fun,” formula. Just a few weeks after they put out the experimental (for the time) “Pet Sounds” Capitol put out a “Best of the Beach Boys” album in an effort to bury it.

While the album didn’t do that well here in the states, in England it went huge and even made the Beatles stand up and take notice. In fact it spurred them on to make their groundbreaking album, “Sgt. Pepper.”

Here’s two videos that discuss how “Pet Sounds” influenced the Beatles and the third is my favorite song off “Pet Sounds,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

Enjoy!

Comments

[Biff]

And here, we have Brian Wilson, waxing poetic on the theory of harmonic relativity with a goat.