Pure Genius?
Kids, I apologize for my long absense in posting to Travis’ YouTube links page — er, I mean the Buddyhead blog — but, I think there’s been enough Pearl Jam, Black Crowes and Dick Ashcroft songs to keep you up-to-date on the trailblazing Adult Contemporary scene for some time to come.
So, to hasten my return to posting, here’s more of the same: Ye Olde Classique Rock… But, moreso as a little reminder that while the best rock music may be long gone, every sacred cow is nonetheless just a COW.
Do you ever get tired of hearing indie-rock jerkoffs regurgitating the same tired old storyline about the genius of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys? You know the drill, the oft-repeated, but seldom really understood notion that the Beach Boys’ music is the work of pure, tarnished genius. Remember, this idea came about in the days before we had figured out how to justify mocking the mentally ill by qualifying their pathetic art as "outsider music." Well, yeah, Brian Wilson is responsible for writing some downright catchy tunes in his eagerness to out-do both Phil Spector and The Beatles. But, genius? Nah… However, anytime I hear good songs like "Good Vibrations" or "Hang On to Your Ego" I am reminded of lesser-known nuggets of pop wisdom that fell so far from the tree of knowledge that we’d all easily forgotten them in the shadow of the love-good vibrations. I think the true "genius" of this pistol-whipped clan shows through clearest on tracks from the 1977 album The Beach Boys Love You whereupon Brian Wilson penned gems like "Johnny Carson" (an earnest paen to the late night talk show host: "He sits behind his microphone/he speaks in such a manly tone…/Every night at 11:30 he’s so funny…"), the thinly-veiled ode to getting a blow-job while driving "Honkin’ Down the Highway" and the penultimate summation of the Beach Boys in one 57-second blitzkrieg of inanity called "Ding Dang."
I’d bet that 90-percent of the insipid indie-rock twerps today who listen to the Beach Boys because they’re "supposed to" don’t even realize that the whole reason anyone liked them in the first place was for the same reason that people are tickled pink talking to a retarded person — because what they’re saying seems so incredibly funny!
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