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The Beach Boys, Good Vibrations
“Good Vibrations” was never my favorite Beach Boys song. Its taken me years of casual indifference before I really warmed up to it, and it was only when I found the song’s proverbial sunny side. For years I was turned off by the songs aggressive psychedelic atmosphere. I was always slightly afraid of the dark…
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The Beach Boys, God Only Knows
After accidentally realizing that he was a musical genius, Brian Wilson stepped up his efforts by the mid 60s. Looking for a more serious direction, he began collaborating with lyricist Tony Asher, who helped interpret Brian’s musical ideas into focused lyrical concepts. The increased level of lyrical and musical sophistication also stretched the limits of…
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The Beach Boys, Surfer Girl
It’s hard to imagine that summer is almost over. I’m actually on my third summer in a row. Just when summer ended in 2011, I jetted for Sydney, and spent 5 months there just as Australia’s summer dawned, fully missing America’s cold months. I returned home in March 2012, just in time for Spring, hence…
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The Beach Boys, In My Room
Followers of this site know I have about one billion tributes, breakdowns, and videos of my favorite group ever, the Beatles. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think I am some sort of pasty, Union Jack waving, North Englander filled with way too much national pride. The reality is, that while I am pasty,…
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The Olivia Tremor Control, Love Athena, Memories of Jacqueline 1906, Black Foliage (Itself)
The oddly named Olivia Tremor Control hail from Ruston, Louisiana, and are probably the most beautiful thing ever to come out of that place. Along with Robert Schneider’s Apples in Stereo, the OTC were founding members of the Elephant 6 Collective, the group of like-minded psychedelic enthusiasts who sought to re-inject the world with the…
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The Apples in Stereo, I Told You Once
When I was 17 years old, I first heard Her Wallpaper Reverie, a sort of mini Apples in Stereo LP, and I was blown away. It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone from the Elephant 6 Collective, and they were making the exact sort of music I was missing in the world. In…
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The Making of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The best discoveries are the ones you make by accident. Just yesterday, my roommate keyed me into letmewatchthis.ch, one of those movie streaming websites of dubious legality. It’s a pretty cool site with a lot of variety of stuff, but new and old. On a lark, I typed in “Beatles” in the search box, and…
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My Top 100 Youtube Favorites, a Retrospective, Part 1
Now that my countdown is complete, I thought it’d be fun to look back at the whole list, organize it, link it up, and add a fresh comment or two for posterity’s sake. So, without further ado, here it is, part 1 of my youtube countdown featuring the last 25 songs to appear on the…
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The Beach Boys, The Ramones, Do You Wanna Dance?
Part 95 is a double dose of glorious rock and roll. I’ve got the Beach Boys and the Ramones rocking the Bobby Freeman classic, “Do You Wanna Dance?.” In the Beach Boys version, drummer Dennis Wilson takes the lead vocals, and man is he good. Dennis was the only Beach Boy that actually surfed, and…