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T O P I C R E V I E W
lemonade kid
Posted - 19/03/2012 : 18:54:36Surf's Up is the seventeenth studio album by The Beach Boys, released in 1971. The album was released that August to more public anticipation than the Beach Boys had had for several years. The album title is taken from the song with the same title written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks for the abandoned 1966–1967 Beach Boys Smile sessions.
"Surf's Up" (1971) was my first really wide eyed environmental/ecology awareness album....start to finish...with some Nam war protests (Student Demonstration Time-There's A Riot Going On) & some deeper introspection "Child is father to the man" Brian-song (Surf's Up), and social consciousness (Welfare Song) thrown it.
Between "Surf's Up" & Spirit's "Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus" (another ecology masterpiece, my turntable was booked up with nothing else for days.
Granted Marvin Gaye started it all really with "What's Going On (The Ecology Song)" and is arguably on one of the top five albums of all time. Still, "SURF"S UP" was more of an impact for me at the time.
The 70's were just starting, The Dream was over...peace love Beatles 'n all....so "Surf's Up" just fit my mood. I was too happy with 60's life and my "pipe" dreams when Gaye's "The Ecology Song" was released for it to make me too angry about the world....not too much anyway.
We were still all on the magic carpet ride!
I was really ready for "Surf's Up" after Altamont/Manson/Beatles' breakup...the 70's just looked different. It was time to get involved. So I joined the Nam protest, went back to art school & listened more.
The Beach Boys Surfs Up was released in 1971 and was the second album in a decade that many Beach Boys fans consider to be lost decade sandwiched between the surf, cars, girls, and Pet Sounds decade of the 60’s and the “Kokomo” decade of the ‘80’s, in other words the BEST decade.
The “Incredible Journey” of this album began somewhere around 1985 in the dollar bin at the Berkeley, California location of Rasputin Records, a record chain of some repute on par with Amoeba Records in San Francisco. In 1989 she, like ships I refer to all my albums in the feminine form, moved from the outskirts of San Francisco to Dallas where a nice home was found on open shelves in a “boom boom” combination of pool room and music room. The surroundings were nice here and she was snuggled in among friends that included Pet Sounds, Endless Summer, Holland, and All Summer Long. In 1999 the album relocated to Houston in similar surroundings this time in a private room. Somewhere around 2006 a separation occurred and 95% of my album collection was relocated to a friend’s house on Galveston Island, while a small crate found its way into the hands of a Houston photographer/artist. It was at this artist’s house in September of 2011 that Surfs Up and I were reunited.
By this time I had forgotten that he had any of my albums and was pleasantly surprised that my former albums occupied a place of honor in his house for one, and that he actually had a working turntable to spin his vinyl. And there in front of the crate, after a 5 year separation and a history spanning over 25 years we were finally reunited and it felt so good.
I hesitated to tell her, especially since the lone, sad Indian that was featured on the cover and was a piece by James Earle Frasier called “The End of the Trail” seemed to perk up slightly at seeing me, but I never was a real fan of this album. With the last couple of albums 20/20 and Sunflower The Beach Boys were slowly transitioning from a fun beach band where you would know what to expect, to a corporate entity with multiple factions and outside influences like Van Dyke Parks trying to direct the future of the band. In some ways it is amazing Surfs Up ever got made. The band had clearly broken up into two camps with the Wilson Brothers, Brian and Carl, on one side of the room with Carl wanting the album to have a more sweeping, pastoral feel to it with the title track that was originally intended to part of the ill-fated “Smile” sessions serving as a centerpiece, and the politically aware and environment friendly team of Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston in the other camp wanting to create ‘message songs”. Brian, for his part, was largely absent during the sessions and did not arrive until the very end to put some finishing touches on the overall project and add some couplets to the title track.
Having some time to kill before we went to the art exhibit, I put Surfs Up on the turntable and immediately changed my view of this masterpiece. Starting with side two first and “Feel Flows”, one of the first Carl Wilson centerpiece songs, I was sonically hit between the ears with a force so strong I had to sit down and reassess my entire relationship with this album.
With all of the hands in the pot it would have been real easy for this album to come out a disjointed mess. The reality is that mixing Carl only songs like “Feel Flows” and “Long Promised Road” with Mike Love vocal turns on “Student Demonstration Time” and Bruce Johnston on “Disney Girls” gives each song a feel and beauty all its own. All in all there are five singers taking vocal turns including Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love, and Bruce Johnston, with everyone pitching in on background vocals.
The last two songs on side one and the first song on side two combine to form as strong a 1-2-3 song sequence as you will find. Starting with “Disney Girls” which for my money is the second best beach boys song behind “Good Vibrations, followed by “Student Demonstration Time”, a song that written by Mike Love in collaboration with Lieber and Stoller and shares DNA with the song “Riot in Call Block #9”, and culminating in the structurally perfect “ Feel Flows”. This “Holy Trinity” of song is probably the reason the CD was invented. The inventor of the CD technology must have been frustrated like I was having his eargasm interrupted by having to get up and turn the album over to the other side to hear “Feel Flows”.
And then, of course, there is the fabulous multi-layered masterpiece of the title song “Surf’s Up” that is the last song on the album. Four years in the making and countless demo versions later the Brian Wilson Van Dyke Parks song finally saw the light of day and really marked the end of the Beach Boys as we knew them. The next couple of albums “Holland” and Carl and The Passions “So Tough” saw Carl Wilson take over the leadership of the band probably out of necessity since Brian seemed to be, at various times, too sick to tour, too involved in his own pet projects, or too disinterested to take an active role in the future direction of the band.
The album peaked at number 29 on the U.S. charts, number 15 on the U.K. charts and was voted one of the top 500 albums of all time. The album goes for $28.99 on E-Bay today.
Do I regret today putting the album up for adoption 5 years ago?
Absolutely not……………….she couldn’t be in better hands. –Walt Falconer
Track LIsting
Side One
1. Don’t Go Near the Water (Jardine, Love) 2:42 2. Long Promised Road (Rieley, Wilson) 3:34 3. Take a Load off Your Feet (Jardine, Wilson, Winfrey) 2:31 4. Disney Girls (1957) (Johnston) 4:11 5. Student Demonstration Time (Leiber, Love, Stoller) 4:01
Side Two
1. Feel Flows (Rieley, Wilson) 4:49 2. Lookin’ at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) (Jardine, Winfrey) 1:57 3. A Day in the Life of a Tree (Rieley, Wilson) 3:10 4. ‘Til I Die (Wilson) 2:44 5. Surf’s Up (Parks, Wilson) 4:12
* Mike Love – Vocals * Jack Rieley – Vocals * Brian Wilson – Composer, Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals * Carl Wilson – Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals * Bruce Johnston - vocals guitar * Dennis Wilson - drums, vocals * Al Jardine - vocals, guitar
Surf's Up....for me as brilliant a closer as "You Set The Scene", in it's own way.......I think this is the best version of this song, even over the SMiLE mix.
We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers & discoverers- -thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.
