I tried– and I mean I REALLY TRIED– not to pick a Beach Boys song today, but all my efforts were for naught. Asking people to associate a song with “summer” and expecting them not to pick a Beach Boys song is like asking them what they associate with shooting a man in Reno and expecting them not to pick a Johnny Cash song. Or asking them what they associate with the dock of the bay and expecting them not to pick an Otis Redding song. I mean, as we say in my profession, Q.E.freakin’D already.
I actually love the Beach Boys for many of the same reasons that I love The (early) Beatles, namely, for their mathematically perfect command of the pop music form. I’d rank Brian Wilson, the man behind the Beach Boys sound, with a level of genius equal or exceeding that of the 20th century’s musical greats: Prince, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Smokey Robinson, John Philip Sousa, Miles Davis, Elvis Presley, Ira and George Gershwin, Stevie Wonder. In fact, I’d put Brian Wilson’s genius alongside the non-musical geniuses of the 20th century. Yeah Wilson ranks right up there with Einstein, Roosevelt, Turing, Mandela, Salk, Foucault and Derrida in my book.
Anyway, here’s my pick for THE song that reminds me of summer, the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around”:
Just for the record, I never really paid much attention to the lyrics before, but now that I have I’m pretty positive that this needs to be reorchestrated and covered by Kanye or Lil’ Wayne or TI or somebody. Case in point:
I get around
From town to town
I’m a real cool head
I’m makin’ real good bread.
Some messages are timeless, really.
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Here’s your quick-access link to the entire 30 Day Song Challenge 2014 prompt-list and my picks for each day.