Song of the Week - 6/21/08 (Beginning of the Summer Edition)

Ahh the summer's here. Honestly, I'm not too excited because it's my least favorite season- me + humidity and heat = not good. Despite this, this week's song of the week is, in my mind at least, the ideal summer song: "Good Vibrations" by Brian Wilson/the Beach Boys.

Most people associate this song with the Beach Boys, but honestly, after 1966, the Beach Boys were essentially Brian Wilson and a bunch of dudes. The version I'm providing today is off of Brian Wilson's latest album Smile which was released in 2004.

The story goes that Smile was supposed to be the follow up to the Beach Boys' legendary album Pet Sounds in 1966. Brian Wilson, the de facto leader and mad musical scientist of the Beach Boys, by this point went legitimately insane. What I mean by this is that his obsessive compulsions for perfection was at its crest. Legend has it that during the recording of Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson actually had a goat in the studio bleating and recorded it into the track because he felt it was absolutely essential for the album. This makes whatever perfectionism in the studio people like Jimi Hendrix or the Beatles had look reasonable. Because of Wilson's insanity, the Beach Boys nearly split up and the album (which Wilson described as a "teenage symphony to God") was put on the back burner- for 37 years (which makes the wait for Guns 'n Roses' Chinese Democracy look like a nap in comparison). Wilson himself came back to revive the project and finished it and released it in 2004- no word on what kind of insanity he put into the project once he restarted it.

The signs of Wilson's musical insanity/brilliance is laced throughout the entire track. First of all, the song follows no conventional form. It's literally a mashing together of 4 themes with the reprisal of one. The instrumentation is interesting as well. Although there is no goat, there is a theremin that provides the ghostly backing to the part of the song that can be considered the main theme ("I'm picking up good vibrations/she's giving me excitations/..."). As far as I know, this is the only use of a theremin in any piece of popular music. Also the song features a string section as well as the numerous vocal parts.

Despite the song's uniqueness, in the end, Brian Wilson provided us with a thoroughly enjoyable song. I don't know about you, but this song screams "summer" to me. Enjoy.

Picking up Good Vibrations,
Greg