You Still Believe In Me

On Pet Sounds Part One

As the rest of the Beach Boys were on tour supporting their latest
work, Brian Wilson stayed home to come up with the new work. Wilson
hired a young advertising copy writer to help him write lyrics to the
music he was creating. Wilson and Tony Asher had met through a mutual
friend, and one day seemingly out of the blue, Asher received the call
from Wilson that would put his career on hold for the next few weeks.
The question is, why would Wilson even need someone to help him write
lyrics for songs? He was, as history had show, very capable of
composing and writing songs all by himself. The answer, Wilson craved
a new perspective on these Beach Boys songs. He wanted someone to come
in and add something totally separate of the Beach Boys "style" that
he and Mike Love had perfected in their previous works. So in came
Asher, and together in a very short period of time, Wilson and Asher
would write the bulk of what would become Pet Sounds, our number three
best album of all time as listed by Rolling Stone Magazine. For the
most part the collaboration worked in a sort of mixed up formula.
Wilson would come up with the music first which would be followed by a
melody and then Asher would write the words to the melody. The lyrics
Asher would write would be directly influenced by conversations he and
Wilson would share. They would talk about young love and sometime
later a song like "Wouldn't It Be Nice" would surface. Asher wrote
great lyrics, but more importantly and notably Wilson wrote great
music. The art, the emotion, the feel of each song is best
encapsulated in the music and melody, as it with most great songs on
this planet.

I've always loved music of all sorts (even country and classical).
I've loved listening to music and I've loved playing music. When I was
young and first trying to establish my own musical independence and
knowledge I looked to what was out there to try to find stuff that
would satisfy me. I had always loved the Beach Boys, "Don't Worry
Baby" had always been one of my favorite songs, but I had never really
known them for anything except that earlier surfer style of theirs.
Then I came across this album of theirs that supposedly was one of the
more important albums in the history of rock. So I had to check it
out. There were a couple of songs that I already knew and loved
("Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows") but I wasn't very
familiar with the rest. That first listening of Pet Sounds changed my
life forever. How? Well it might seem minor, but after that listen I
was now in possession of my favorite album of all time. Pet Sounds is
my number one. No other album, that I have ever come across, makes me
feel the way Pet Sounds does. Each and every song is pleasing to my
ear. Each and every song takes me somewhere. And each and every song
makes me feel something.

Coming Soon......Part 2 on Pet Sounds where I will discuss each song individually.

I'm Already There

I haven't had a lot of time to get into the Pet Sounds discussion, but I should be able to get there in a few days. Meanwhile....

I think sometimes we underestimate our own emotions. Generally speaking this might be more true for males, but all of us at one point or another are surprised about the way we feel about any given thing at any given time. Everybody has those days where they are inexplicably happy, or even depressed. We all go through moments of nostalgia which at its very nature is completely random. But why does this happen? In our quest to know ourselves, how do we never reach the point where our emotions are incapable of surprising us? Is it that we don't know ourselves as well as we thought? Is it that we know ourselves too well? Or is it that we will never ever be able to gain full and complete understanding of our emotions? I think many would answer to the affirmative on that last question. I disagree to an extent. I think knowing and accepting our emotions' abilities to surprise us is part of understanding them. That surprise, I feel, is necessary. I think that not always being aware of our possible emotional responses are what makes us humans. If we know exactly what we'd feel at whatever circumstance and situation we are made into robots.

So to make sense out of absolute crap...embrace the surprise. Be shocked that you are feeling something that you hadn't felt in a long time, and don't try to ignore or hide from it. Your emotions are a part of you...a huge part of you. Take them, marry them with the logical side of you and be who you are.

All Their Words of Kindness Linger on When She No Longer Needs You

So a few years ago Rolling Stone mag put out a special issue featuring their list of the 500 best albums of all time. Not surprisingly I own a lot of these albums and I have my own words for most of them. Of course, this means I will be writing them here, but I'm not going to go over a big chunk of the list because I'm just way too lazy. So I'll take the top three starting from the bottom and ending at number one...........

3. Revolver - The Beatles

Rubber Soul has always been my favorite Beatles album. I just always liked how it was a perfect transition between the bubble gumness of their early work and the acid trip of their later work, not unlike Ok Computer being a transition between heavy guitar Radiohead and super computer Radiohead. The thing is Revolver as, George Harrison was quoted in the Rolling Stone feature, could easily have been added on to Rubber Soul as the second part to that album. So I guess it's fair to say that Rubber Soul/Revolver is my favorite Beatles album. When we hear about the Beatles the word influential always pops up, and to those who don't really get it let me just shove it down your throat one more time. The reason why the Beatles are the most important band in the history of rock, alongside the only other band we'll talk about in these discussions, is that they changed the business and made it into what it is today. Given the short attention span of typical teenagers, the main consumers of pop rock, the genre was heavily dependent on singles. Creating a full length album of solid music was not a priority to musicians. Rubber Soul/Revolver and the number two and number one albums on this list are undoubtedly the albums that changed this forever (but not necessarily the first records to bring about the concept of solid start to finish albums). These albums were pieces of art from start to finish. They were not singles with fillers. They were fantastic whole works that were meant to be listened to all the way. They were to capture that short attention span of those teenagers and make them realize that there was a world around them.

When you pop Revolver into your CD player, or throw the piece of vinyl on your phonograph, you cannot dislike any of the songs. You just can't. They are too good. This album deserves to be on any top albums list and it deserves to be as high as it is placed here, my only disagreement would be that it should be linked with Rubber Soul. Anyway, let me talk specifically about a few select songs from the album.

A long long long time ago, during my first round at college, I was given an assignment in a creative writing class to write a very short story about a break up. In this story the narrator implies that one benefit from having his heart break was that now he could listen to songs like "For No One" and really get it. I had no idea that I was forecasting an experience of my own. "For No One" is one of McCartney's most beautiful songs and you don't have to listen to the lyrics to understand that, yet it's after you do pay attention to the lyrics, after you've experienced it yourself, that you completely get it. McCartney took the sadness of heart break and made it beautiful, so much so that if you hadn't felt it before you almost wanted to.

From what we can tell, if John Lennon isn't sleeping he's so tired. Throughout his career Lennon was able to take things we wanted to say and put it in killer songs. In "I'm Only Sleeping" the message is clear, "Leave me the fuck along." This song has always been one of my favorite songs. It's a song that hits you with a powerful opening note and continues on with flowing melody along the lyrics "Please don't spoil my day. I'm miles away and after all I'm only sleeping."

"Here, There And Everywhere" is the Beatles' resident balladeer doing what he does best, creating completely cheesy songs yet making them so good you forget that they are cheesy. Lyrics such as "changing my life with the wave of her hand" and "if she's beside me I know I need never care" are enough to murder the lactose intolerant, but McCartney makes it work.

Anyway, I guess that's enough on Revolver. Stay tuned for number 2 - Pet Sounds. Those who know me or who have read this blog regularly know I have a loooooooooooootttt to say on this album.

Yo Dawg

I was wondering the other day. What would have happened had Justin Guarini won the first American Idol? Would Clarkson's career be as hot it has become? Would American Idol have any credibility whatsoever. I mean Clarkson is really the only one of any of the winners who has actually beome bigger than the show itself. You almost forget that she had anything to do with Idol. Whenever you see any of the other winners (or runners up in the case of Clay Akin) they are always introduced with a reference to American Idol, but do you even think about the show anymore when it comes to Clarkson. By the way I just want to throw in that I have never seen a full episode of American Idol. Anyway, had Guarini won would people still watch? If Clarkson had come second would she had blown up as big as she has? Would the movie had been called From Kelly To Justin? The thing is a Guarini win would have been a much better setup for the rest of that show. It would have given us the correct expectations. Instead people were smart the first time and picked an actual superstar. Clarkson, as far as I can tell, has been the only real winner of what that show was supposed to be. The rest just were just part of a glorified community talent show.