Having made my way through the 5-CD Beach Boys compilation Feel Flows: The “Sunflower” and “Surf’s Up” Sessions, I ask myself, as I have before: was there ever a group that so veered between the great and the awful? Yes, the Beatles had clunkers now and then (“What Goes On” immediately comes to mind), but the Beach Boys — oh my.
This compilation alone includes “A Day in the Life of a Tree” (sung by a tree), “My Solution” (a mad scientist story), “Student Demonstration Time” (Mike Love’s rewriting of “Riot in Cell Block 9,” with lyrics that equate protest with rioting), “Susie Cincinnati” (she’s the city’s “number-one sinner,” a cab-driver/groupie, it seems), and “Take a Load Off Your Feet” (yes, foot care, with references to avocado cream, broken glass, and sandals). Yikes.
But then I hear the back-to-back album tracks “’Til I Die” and “Surf’s Up,” or the trippy “Feel Flows,” or the staggeringly good live versions of “This Whole World” and “Disney Girls (1957)” or almost any of the isolated background-vocal tracks in this compilation (for instance), and I’m undone. Even “Take a Load Off Your Feet” in a 1993 concert performance is weirdly glorious — and it puts to shame the current assemblage performing under the Beach Boys’ name. I recommend Feel Flows to any fanatic who doesn’t already have it.
Related reading
All OCA Beach Boys posts (Pinboard)
Friday, October 8, 2021
Feel Flows
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comments: 2
I've never been a big Beach Boys fan, but dare I confess that “Susie Cincinnati” is one of the songs of theirs that I actually like? I think it has to do with when and where I used to hear it (c. 1976-77), not that the association had any connection with the subject of the song, mind you.
Yep. I know that feeling with any number of songs, esp. stuff I heard on my transistor radio as a kid. The context adds value.
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