The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (according to a Pet Groomer)

A few days ago my wife reached into "The Vaults" to blindly pull out a disc for the next installment. When she reached in she hovered around one of my all-time favorite albums. Unfortunately the CD picked ended up being the one which was sitting next to it. By my own rules I must now write about that album for "Out of the Vaults #9. But we'll do that tomorrow. For now let's do that one she didn't pick:

The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

The Beach Boys, in my opinion, really screwed themselves big time. In 1988 they released the song "Kokomo". Because of this ridiculously terrible song myself and thousands of other people around my age stayed clear of anything with the Beach Boys name on it for years.

Of course all those years I heard how great of a rock and roll album the 1966 album Pet Sounds was. Still, figuring it was probably somewhere in the middle between their very early catchy beach rock sound of "Fun,Fun,Fun" and the atrocious "Kokomo" , I was still in no hurry check out anything else released by the band.                                                

Then in 2000 while working in a local Book/Music Store chain I ran across a whole box set dedicated to Pet Sounds. Over four discs there was the album in mono, the album in stereo, backing tracks to each song, the string overdubs to a few songs, the "Stack-O-Vocal" mix of each song, this song with vocals no drums, this other song no strings or bass and in mono, and all kinds of different variations of the original 13 songs of the album. The box set was definitely a little overkill but it made me think if someone went through the trouble of compiling all these different versions of  the 13 songs then the album must be more than that "Aruba, Jamaica oo oo I want to take you. Too Bermuda, Bahama. Come on pretty mama" mess.

I took out the disc containing the "Stereo Mix" of the album and placed in the CD player. What came over the speakers was pretty amazing.

Of course I had heard "Wouldn't It Be Nice" before but always on the radio or in the background somewhere. Definitely not as clean and crisp as it sounded now. The next two songs "You Still Believe In Me" and "That's Not Me" continue just as crisp, both filled with so many different instruments coming at you from all directions.

The album also knows how to bring it down a notch. "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)" is a stripped down slower track. Singer/Writer/Genius Brian Wilson singing along to a lone cymbal while a very low organ and strings play behind him.

Deep marching band drums kick off the beginning of what will soon become one of my all-time favorite songs. "Waiting For The Day" is just a perfect song complimented nicely by the equally perfect "God Only Knows" a few songs down the line.

But before we reach that song, after the two minute instrumental "Let's Go Away For Awhile", we find another classic song. Although I had heard many artists including Johnny Cash and Dick Dale perform versions of the song ,with even more artist to perform it in the future, "Sloop John B" will always be owned by the Beach Boys. The old West Indies folk song receives the whole Brian Wilson treatment with an orchestra featuring an unexpectedly prevalent baritone sax player. Mike Love's great vocals on the second verse and his perfect "This is the worst trip I've ever been on" at the end of the song almost make me forgive him for the "Kokomo" debacle twenty years later.

"I Know There's An Answer" (accompanied on this CD by it's original version in the LSD referenced "Hang On To Your Ego" )", "Here Today", "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times", the underwater psychedelicized instrumental title track and "Caroline No", with it's barking dog outro, finish off what Rolling Stone magazine picked as #2 in their list of the 500 greatest albums of All-time, second only to The Beatle's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In my book this one is just a little bit better