The Trek Movies: Best to Worst, pt. 1

It's been a few years since my last Trek Movies rankings. It's six years later and there have been a couple of other movies so let's do the more definitive up-to-date version. 

Usually I do these sorts of things least to most favorite. But I think there's mostly agreement on which ones are best but considerable arguing to be done about which ones are the worst, and why. So let's start at the top and work our way to the bottom. 

1.

1982

A villain from the Enterprise's past returns and completely overwhelms the ship's defenses. The Captain must reconcile his present with his past and get over himself or everyone is going to die. Sacrifices are demanded; a new planet forms.

Not much argument here. Or at least there shouldn't be. Well-made movie? You bet. Well-made Trek? There can sometimes be an important distinction. Insurrection, for example, is probably not a well-made film; it is, however, great Trek. We'll get there. As for TWOK, though, the answer is: unquestionably. 

Good performances, score, fx, etc.? (Nothing like a big umbrella) Absolutely. Too many cliches or broad strokes? Well...

...

...

I mean, on one hand, there are no cliches here, only the re-enactment of ritual, the glorious embrace of every dramatic trick in the book. We love this stuff. We need this stuff. On the other, well sure, the less beholden you are to the genre or the cast, maybe a few. If you were just a standard genre fan you might be able to guess along. New wine from old decanters and all that. But that's not the sort of thing one deducts points for; in fact, let's add a thousand just for the heck of it. TWOK rules.

2.

1979

A voyager from Earth's past returns and completely overwhelms everything in its path. Starfleet sends the Enterprise to intercept. Kirk and Spock must reconcile their respective mid-life crises, or everyone dies. A sacrifice is demanded. A new lifeform emerges.

Here's a film that was everyone's least favorite Trek film until The Final Frontier came out. Its reputation has steadily grown since then, although there are still some who stubbornly hold to the original impression it made on moviegoers at the tail end of the 70s. I'd like to see the overlap between people who still hate TMP and the people who still hate disco. I bet there's something there.

Anyway, ain't a trace of disco in The Motion Picture, although the whole thing is pretty damn 70s.

Gloriously 70s, even.

Is it a well-made movie? Well - yes and no. On one hand, I'm certainly engaged by it and admire almost every aspect of its production. I agree with whomever described it as a tone poem about self-actualization. I think there's stuff to pick at here and there, but overall I love it. On the other, it seems to be somewhat baffling to non-Trek people. Which isn't necessarily an indicator of how well-made anything is. Plenty of masterpieces (Tokyo Story, Barry Lyndon, 2001) are baffling or uninteresting to plenty of different people. Ahead of its time but perfectly of its time. Not for everyone. 

Most importantly for our purposes here, its Trek fundamentals are warp factor nine. It's some of Spock's greatest stuff, it's a rom-com where Kirk-loses-ship-then-they-get-back-together, it's got Bones with a beard and "Torpedoes... a-WAY!" It's Roddenberry's last original cast hurrah, and its Trekkiness is self-evident. It should be the standard of calibration anytime the question of Trek fundamentals is posed, even. 

3.

1986

A visitor from Earth's past returns and completely overwhelms Starfleet's defenses. It wants to talk to the humpback whales, but the whales are all dead. Kirk and the gang time-travel to 1986 to convince two of them to come back to the future to save the species that hunted them to extinction. The whales agree, and a new cetacean dynasty is formed off the coast of San Francisco.

"One little mistake."

One of many favorite Spock moments.
"Tell her... I feel fine."

Den of Geek says it almost perfectly: "There's really very little to pick at in the film. You could argue it's not Trek enough, but it's still a great story, it's an enormous amount of fun, and it nicely ties up all the loose ends from the previous two films."

Hear, hear. Except that one-could-argue-its-Trekness part. No one can argue that. People could, I guess, in the physical sense of moving their lips and emitting vocal noises, but it's an absurd argument. What could possibly not be Trek-enough about The Voyage Home? I like to think about the Vulcans and other Federation telepaths that come to talk to the whales. Do the whales know what they're getting into? I suppose it was better than being harpooned. Hopefully with the immediate threat overcome, Earth can time travel back to the past a few more times and save a few more. And let's just move along before we ask any further questions about what the people of the future can and can't do and "Say if that's the case, why -" (door shuts.) 

Catch me on a different day and this might be my favorite Trek movie. Same thing goes for the next one:

4.

1984

Spock's katra is banging around McCoy's brains like a Rigellian ox in a tea shop. To save his friend, Kirk must sacrifice his ship, his son, and his career. (Temporarily, permanently, and temporarily, respectively.) An old friend is reborn.

"Maltz! JOLLLLL ICHUU'!"

Shatner's finest acting? Possibly. Not in every scene, but in at least two places. For my money it's more like ten or eleven places, but here are two that exemplify how important his character is to making this film work. 

(1) "Jim - you do this, and you'll never sit in a Captain's chair again." I don't have a screencap for it, but it's a great moment. And he never will sit in that Captain's chair again, as it turns out.

(2) "The word? Is no. I am therefore going anyway." 

As Nimoy said in I Am Spock about this moment: "That's our hero."

Everyone involved with the art direction and production design deserves special commendation. The soundstage is like a TOS set on steroids. And everything is lit with a real theatrical eye, with the Vulcan set in particular a real stand-out. It's a great character movie. Trek fundamentals times a thousand. The ending! So much more!

"You! Help us or die."

"I do not deserve to live."

"Fine, I'll kill you later."

Search for Spock was the first (and should have been the last, certain episodes of TNG notwithstanding) place this happened:

It's said in the commentary track that the reason this works is because no one thinks of the Enterprise as just a ship; it was a founding member of the cast.

Shatner writes in Movie Memoirs that the death of the Enterprise was "an exciting and unexpected plot twist in light of a seemingly unwinnable situation (that) made the film better."

Agreed. But, it points to a new problem, namely now you've got to blow up the ship all the damn time. Like rebooting your comicsverse or having someone who isn't Thor * pick up Mjolnir, the first time it happens, it's an exciting an unexpected plot twist, but it inevitably leads to it happening again and again, at shorter intervals with less and less impact. 

* In the comics, I mean. Although I guess now it'll be a problem for the MCU. 

5.

1996

A villain from Picard's past returns and brings a Borg armada with her. After almost totally overwhelming Starfleet's defenses, they time travel to Earth's past to try and stop First Contact between Vulcans and Humans. One half of the crew fights the Borg for control of the ship while the other drinks tequila with Zefram Cochrane, the alleged inventor of warp drive. The captain must reconcile himself or everyone dies.

I say alleged inventor up here because the way he is portrayed in First Contact is Sam Shepherd as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, pretty much. No one was pretending Chuck Yeager personally engineered mach-one aircraft. Plus "Metamorphosis" established a whole different character, which shouldn't matter but kind of does to me. James Cromwell gives a spirited performance, and this movie's probably more interesting with his being a drunken hillbilly who loads up the jukebox with the incidental music from Third Rock from the Sun. But if they wanted to make him this guy, why still pretend he invented warp drive and keep him a doctor? It seems unlikely this is the same guy we saw in "Metamorphosis." Although if so, it makes "Metamorphosis" even more interesting. 

Of course, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy swore never to tell what happened to Cochrane, so no one present (including Cochrane) could reference the events of "Metamorphosis." Though frankly it seems unlikely they would never tell anyone; maybe Kirk told Picard about it in the Nexus or Picard gleamed it from his mind or whatever nonsense you want. Someone could have made some crack about shimmering energy blobs and made me happy.

Enough "Metamorphosis" talk. This is a fun movie on its own merits with great performances and nice blend of monster movie with TNG-era Trek and was a big, well-deserved hit for its cast and crew.

6.

1998

When Data goes native on a covert observation op, the Enterprise is called in to extract him. They join him instead and lead the Ba'ku (caretakers of an interphasic fountain of youth) against the conspiracy between Starfleet and the Son'a (the survivors of a failed insurrection from the Ba'ku's past) to displace them.

Most people hate this one, but I've always had warm feelings towards it. Still do. I concede most of the criticisms, even if some of them are kind of over the top. I've certainly spilled my fair share of digital ink on the topic, so I'll just quote some sections from Ryan Britt's review of it over at Tor. He speaks for me (so say we all) on this matter.

"In almost every way that matters, I unabashedly love Star Trek: Insurrection. Instead of space murders, revenge, and a bevy of bad guys, this movie mostly concerns people sitting around and talking about the ethics of messing with other cultures, the attainability of near immortality, and the dangers of technology moving our lives so quickly that it destroys aspects that really matter. (...) And yet, this movie won’t work for a viewer without that person already being into this weird touchy-feely Star Trek crap. "Am I really going to watch a movie about a bunch of outer space Amish people getting screwed with by Star Trek people? Is this really what this movie is about?" Yes, poor Trek lay person, this is what this movie is about. 

"With perhaps the exception of The Motion Picture, and aspects of The Final Frontier, Insurrection is the most representative of what an episode of TV Star Trek would be like if translated to the big screen. But because of its confused attempt to also be an action movie at times, it comes across a bit messy. However, if you truly love Star Trek, some of that messiness is sort of sweet. The “action” in Insurrection feels like Star Trek got a little drunk and tried to dance to a cool song, with cringe-worthy Napoleon Dynamite results.

"But maybe that’s okay. Because love is all about liking something because of its flaws. And in most ways, Insurrection is one big mess that makes me think awwww that’s the Star Trek I know and love. Because it’s not cool. It’s not focused. And some of it doesn’t make sense."

7.

2009

When a vengeful Romulan from a sideways future-present suddenly appears and overwhelms Starfleet's defenses, Kirk and Spock must overcome their own inner conflicts to beam aboard and shoot the bad guys. Punch it!

I've grown a bit ambivalent on this one. I still really enjoy it, overall. It's fun seeing these new, youthful versions of the TOS cast in a more contemporary reformulation. And it's more like an action comedy caper than anything, right down to Kirk-gets-big-hands or the eject-from-the-ship-onto-ice-planet or so many other things. Nothing wrong with that - in fact, quite a bit right. It hoovered up box office receipts by the hundreds of millions the world over.

Great casting, memorable sets, effective score, and just enough color of the familiar TOS-verse to justify the title. In hindsight, though, this signaled the end of the kind of Trek Ryan Britt was talking about up there. A lot of the good feelings I had leaving the theater in 2009 were diffused by subsequent events. While this is a great commercial for New Kelvin-U Trek, it's really just that: a commercial for a Trek they never quite delivered.

Again, not this film's problem, just a good deal of its appeal is its "Trust us, we got this" chumminess, which seems a bit insincere in retrospect.

Even the bridge to the past - nice because it's Nimoy, obviously, I'm glad he's here - feels a bit by-the-numbers. I remember people saying the same about TNG's "Unification" back in the day, but that one seems like a sweet send-off for the character compared to his "good luck, fellas" role here.

Anyone who thinks I'm slagging it off, I've put it ahead of Insurrection, sheesh. (EDIT: Narrator voice: He actually did not. Please see comments.) That might mean nothing to you, but to me it's a clear sign I'm being as objective as possible. (He clearly was not.) Here's a rare nod to conventional wisdom.

~

So much for those big-screen Treks I'd deem the good half. Next time: the rest. Hope to see you there.

The Beach Boys in the 1970s, pt. 2

Let us continue our overview of that most interesting decade of the Beach Boys, the 1970s. Up next: the top 5. 

5.

Pacific Ocean Blue - Dennis Wilson (1977)

I'd heard about this album a long time before ever being able to hear it. It was really hard to find for awhile, but a pretty nice 30th anniversary edition came out in 2007. (Actually, 2008. Guess it's more of a 31-year-anniversary edition.) 

Dennis's antics as an epic drugged-up drunk with a perpetual hard on and  a downward spiral to death overshadow most everything else, but somehow in the midst of it all he produced this minor masterpiece with longtime Beach Boys buddy Gregg Jakobson. Which got surprisingly great reviews - and still does - and sold around 200k copies, which is probably 175k more copies than anyone imagined it would.  

What can I add to such a story? I figured I'd reproduce my original notes from when I first sat down with it. Some impressions deepened, others changed altogether.

SIDE ONE

- "River Song." I like this one.

- "What's Wrong." Okay, what the hell is going on.

- "Moonshine." All right, now we're talking. This one is kind of wild. 

- "Friday Night." Very cool mood going on. Crashing ocean waves, etc. of the beginning then into the druggy groove of the rest. A tad too plodding and inebriated for me, but a perfect scene in the movie. I can smell the 70s through the speakers on this track.

- "Dreamer." If "Friday Night" was one scene in a movie, this is another in the same movie, to accompany some driving sequence from behind a '77 Mercury Monarch. Should I be trying to make out what Dennis is singing? You can't make me. A little too out there with that "have a better day" section; I know drunk talk when I hear it. So far, though, this is a pretty cool side of music. Only one more to go. 

- "Thoughts of You." I like the "All things that live one day must die / even love and the things we hold close" part. The rest, not as much, but that section is really cool. It's like 4.25 stars that part, and 2 for the rest, so 3.15, meet you in the middle. 

SIDE TWO

"Time." Oh wow. Okay, as far as a Reality Show slice of Dennis and his estranged wife Karen Lamm, somewhat understandable. As a track, I don't know. Until the big break and then everything's awesome for a minute or so at the end. I'll do what I did above and split the difference: a big 4.75 for that last part and 2 for the rest (minus a quarter-point for simply aspiring to more-drunken Stevie and Lindsey Fleetwood Mac theatrics) for 3 stars. 

"You and I." Great track. It goes on a little too long - might've lopped off a bit before the nice harmonies end the song. One for the Time Traveling Advice Pile. Also: maybe the Beach Boys should have sang it together. That blend of voices would've killed it. This is great all on its own, of course.

"Pacific Ocean Blues." Another great one. Fun lyrics. Well, "fun." ("The flagship of death is an old whaling trawler / The people are rising over whale killing crawlers / You gotta holler more ... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah / Water (yeah) water (yeah) water (yeah)")

"Farewell My Friend." Pretty wild production on this one. More of a mood than a song, and nothing wrong with that. 

"Rainbows." Fine but hey whatever.

"End of the Show." Man, this guy was out there. This is the proverbial waking up on the beach after (or during) a bender and the loopy things you say and feel. Kind of fascinating. This whole album feels like he was scoring his own tragic biopic, right down to the title. Which has never happened I guess. Why not? Where's the Dennis Wilson movie?

As a song, I'll go with 2.75. As an album ender - as this album ender - I couldn't imagine a better one. The actual substance of the song seems besides the point. 

4.

Surf's Up (1971)

Man, that cover. Awesome. This and the next one are generally speaking the most well-regarded Beach Boys albums out there that aren't named SMiLE or Pet Sounds.

After the commercial disappointment of Sunflower, a somber mood hangs over much of this record. (Except for Al, I guess. Everything just bounced off that guy. He took care of his life because nobody else did.) A lot of people love "Long Promised Road," and I can see it. But it's not a fave. Mike's cuts aren't all that great on this one, either, although "Don't Go Near the Water" has been seen as a bit of meta-commentary on the Beach Boys' commercial prospects in the early 70s. I can't believe I'm not taking the opportunity to discuss "Student Demonstration Time," ("Four martyrs earned a new degree / a bachelor of bullets") but there's too much better stuff to get to.

"Disney Girls" is Bruce's masterpiece. Only the one he wrote for Barry Manilow ("I Write the Songs," ironically believed to be a Barry Manilow composition by many people) is probably better known. "Well, reality / it's not for me." Amen, Bruce. Beautifully produced, beautifully sung.

As are the remaining ones to talk about here: - "Feel Flows" and "Looking at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)" (Al's finest hour?) are two I used to put on mixes for people a lot, and nine out of ten reactions were "Wow, that was the Beach Boys? I had no idea they did stuff like this." Which is fair - and largely intentional on the band's part. Great tracks, both. "Feel Flows," like "All This is That", has lyrics that only nod in the direction of sense, but it's all about the feels, man, and they flow. They reach! Blaaow! Awesome songs, both.

As for the Brian Wilson funereal suite that ends the side: "Surf's Up" is a diamond, no doubt, but I'd be lying if I said I preferred this to either the official Beach Boys version (2011) or especially the Brian Wilson version from 2004. I appreciate that this was the only place to hear it for so many years, but I won't link to it. If you've never heard it, you should hear the other ones first. Any album it appears on, though, is instantly improved by its presence. It's meant to be part of the whole SMiLE saga, though, so it's a bit out of place here.

And then there's "'Til I Die." What can you say about this one? Brian Wilson. I just want to hug this guy. He had / has that effect on people, I guess. An undoubtedly beautifully arranged, performed, and produced song, but that Beach Boys Reality Show aspect I've mentioned is in especially tragic effect here. By this point in his life, Brian was definitely aware something wasn't quite right and wasn't getting better. In later interviews - although one should be careful giving too much credence to things Brian says in interviews - he said it was an attempt to express his fear of the ocean. I believe him, but there are realms of other fears in that one fear. Whatever else it is, it's the kind of thing 6 out of 5 stars ratings were made for. 

(Not to forget "A Day in the Life of a Tree." Wow. Can't argue with the sentiments or even the rather-successful imagining of what kind of music a tree might make, but still, wow.)

3.

Sunflower (1970)

The beginning of the new decade saw the band continuing the re-framing work they'd begun on Friends and 20/20. With a new deal with Warner Bros and a new manager (who later turned out to be a fraud but was nonetheless correct in his organization of the band's ideas on a few albums) Sunflower was meant to be a more focused attempt at getting across their cultural bonafides: these guys started out one place but like a lot of young people in the 60s, underwent many changes in the short time between "Surfin' USA" and the Mansons and all the rest.

Dennis had been fighting for more room for his songs, and he wrote or co-wrote four of them on Sunflower. Two of them ("Slip on Through" and "It's About Time") I like a lot. "It's About Time" doubles as a Wilson Reality Show tune, as well, or as the guy who founded Crawdaddy describes it in the liner notes, "An undidactic commentary on rock indulgence and self-redemption, also a wishful scenario regarding Brian and Dennis' sporadic troubles." The other two ("Got to Know the Woman" and "Forever) are fine, but not as interesting to me. Compare his voice, though, on "Got to Know the Woman" to anything recorded after 1974 or so,  - remarkable difference. 

Bruce contributed two melodramatic but impressive productions ("Deirdre" and "Tears in the Morning"). Brian co-wrote "Deirdre," but I think of it as a Bruce song. It's harder to tell who wrote what, sometimes, with Mike and Brian. On this album specifically, but on a lot of their stuff. This passage from Peter Bagge comes to mind:

"Brian and Mike also were both extremely fickle, faddish and compulsive. When they got into something they REALLY got into it: they’d write songs about it, create BANDS about it, tell the ENTIRE WORLD about it! Right from the start their music exhibited a very strong obsessiveness, in that their second LP was almost entirely about surfing, while their fourth LP was entirely about CARS (this in spite of the fact that they still called themselves the BEACH boys, a mere technicality that they always managed to ignore). That fickle obsessiveness continued throughout their career, and it particularly exemplifies almost everything that Brian and Mike have written, whether they’re collaborating or not.

To my ears it’s almost impossible to tell Mike and Brian’s lyrics apart. They’re both incredibly CORNY, for one thing. And funny. And gimmicky and sentimental. And they’re almost ALWAYS selling something: school spirit, cool water, yummy carob cookies, etc., etc., etc…. Their songs are always ABOUT something, which is amazing when you consider that so many of the ‘60s peers specialized in poetic vagueness, daring the listener to guess at what the song is really about, whereas when Brian and/or Mike write a song called, say “Add Some Music To Your Day,” you can be pretty sure that that song is going to be about adding some music to your day! Their lyrics are as literal as you can get. No guessing required!"

Bagge's theory bears out on the Brian and Mike compositions on Sunflower, which are "Add Some Music To Your Day," "All I Wanna Do," and "Cool, Cool Water." (It does with the ones Brian wrote with Al and Carl on this one, as well.) I can do without "Add Some Music," but the other two are classics. "All I Wanna Do" is one of the all-time greats. "Cool, Cool Water" is a SMiLE outtake, which was originally named "I Love To Say Dada" and was stuck in Brian's head for years.

Come on in, the water's fine.

2.

Love You (1977)

"I believe in giving people what they deserve. People deserve a little bit - let's face it, life is hard and records don't hurt anybody. Everybody deserves what we have and we have a lot of music and we fucking think, 'Share it. Fucking heck, share it. Don't hold it into yourself.' It's just that if you give to people, you'll be rewarded someday."

 - Brian, Rolling Stone, 3/10/77

Fucking Heck indeed. Okay, so I'm probably out of my mind on this album lately. I joked to my wife when I heard it for the first time only a few months ago that I had to be careful with this one, I could end up loving it and it'd probably warp my brain if I listened to it too many times.

And well, here we are. This is a fun Arthur mash-up someone made of hearing the album for the first time. It's fairly accurate. ("When do they stop (farting into the microphone)?" makes me laugh.) I'm glad I captured my first impressions, which I'll get to in a minute, because I hear this one totally differently now after 20 or 30 listens. (And there'll be 20 or 30 more!)

I'm not entirely alone in responding to something on here. Elton John loves it. As does Peter Buck, who summed it up pretty well: "Love You has an utter lack of pretension. The brilliant production and studio mastery of the past is gone; in its place is a kind of raw honesty that is the antithesis of the traditional Brian Wilson production. The spontaneous nature of the recordings is clearly audible. Vocals go flat, instrumental mistakes are made, audible interjections from the back up singers flat lead vocals, Brian's new hoarse voice is to the fore and the whole thing is sounding nothing so much as an incredibly spirited demo sessions for a Brian Wilson solo record." The lyrics were the source of much mockery, then and now, but I agree.

The reason why it sounds like a Brian Wilson solo record is because it is, more or less. No one in the band was happy with 15 Big Ones, but their record deal - both the advances on their last couple of records with Warner Bros and their new deal with CBS - required a certain amount of production and songwriting from Brian, or no one got paid. He felt both trapped and responsible (and out of his mind) about the situation. So this was a bit of release valve for him: hey, do whatever you want, Brian. And what he wanted to do was play with minimoogs and do stuff like "Honkin' Down the Highway." Like Al said, the album should've been called The Beach Boys Love Brian; it was done (begrudgingly by some members perhaps) to help restore his confidence. And "to keep him from sitting on his ass and going insane."

There's so much more to this album than the above - I haven't even mentioned Gene Landy - but I want to get to the songs. I see no reason not to do this song-by-song.

"Let Us Go On This Way" - The first few seconds of this are incredibly metal. I could've used a lot more of that. The whole synth-pop attack of the album is to my ears very interesting for its place and time.

"Roller Skating Child" - The "round and round and round we go" part is cool; like the above, I could've used that a few more times. The rest is what, an ode to teenage lust? Shouldn't this be a Dennis song? To make it worse, Brian said he was inspired by watching his daughters' barely-teenage friends when they came over. Brian is undoubtedly like Charlie Kelly on Always Sunny, who writes a whole musical about empowerment without realizing the lyrics are incredibly similar to pedophilia and other things. The version on Adult/ Child is much less creepy. 

"Mona" - My first reaction was "It sounds like Dennis and Brian are literally singing this through sleepless cocaine tears on a 54 hour harrowing bender." And I'm not entirely sure that's not accurate. And yet! I kind of love this one. 

"Johnny Carson" - One of the more notorious tracks from the album. I like to imagine someone showing this to Johnny sometime and wondering at what point he said "What the hell is this? Turn it off for God's sake." As for the rest of us, it has been suggested  the lyrics and repetitive structures of the song are metaphors for his own position in the band ("the network makes him break his back...") and inability to change his situation or explore the direction he wanted to. And I'm sure they are. All of Brian's songs seem to have this parallel track of autobiography, often tortured. And yet! Even with all the above, I kind of love this one.

"Good Time" - A leftover from the band's earlier days. The lyrics and vocals are kind of silly. And yet! The basic vocal blend and bass line of "she'll do the dirty boogie" section, everything going on before and after that too, hits my brain quite agreeably. 

"Honnnnk-in'! Honkin' Down the Gosh-Darn Hiiii-ighway!" - Aforelinked. Man! Another one I'm sad to say repeat listenings made me eventually embrace. "I guess I've got a way! With! GII-R-RRLS!"

"Ding Dang" - Okay, here we are. This is some kind of chords/boogie-woogie inversion of "Shortenin' Bread" that bewitched Brian. There's a great anecdote up at the album's wiki page of Brian heading over to Roger McGuinn's house, copping some speed, and then sitting down and playing nothing but "Ding Dang" for hours. Roger eventually went to bed and when he woke, there was Brian, still ding-dang-ing away. We're back in Carcosa, folks. Those of you who wish even more of this excitement are encouraged to seek out "The Saga of Shortenin' Bread" on YouTube. 

"Solar System" - Here's another notorious track. "If Mars had life on it / I might find my wife on it" and "Neptune is king of the sea / Pluto is too hard to see" either land with you or they don't. They didn't land with me at first, and then, like every track on this damn album, the switch was flipped and I gave myself over to Brian Wilson's Tour of the Solar System. 

"The Night Was So Young" - An earworm of a song. This part especially gets in there and then you find yourself singing it on the bus or in the shower or while waiting to pick up your kids and then everyone looks over at you. Maybe that's just me. Brian could've made even more millions as a jingle writer had he had Roger Sterling to guide him. I love how it fades out while they're singing a new verse, like okay, that's enough of that. Brian should do an album nowadays that fades it back in and then just goes back into "Ding Dang" for an hour or two. I'd buy that three times.

"I'll Bet He's Nice" - "Oh baby oooo / I bet he's twice." What? And yet! Awesome. My video for this would just be Brian, crying, playing at the piano, singing this surrounded by everyone who are not unsympathetic, and the camera would just slowly zoom in until it was way too uncomfortably close, and then zoom into Brian's beard and fractals and all the rest.

"Let's Put Our Hearts Together" - I don't intend to cover the whole Brian / Marilyn / Diane love triangle. It's a weird one. Here he and Marilyn try to outdo Dennis-and-Karen/Lindsey-and-Stevie, as filtered through Brian's unique sensibilities. Probably the only track on the album I haven't Stockholm-Syndrome'd myself into loving. This next one, though:

"I Wanna Pick You Up" - Is this possibly the most gape-at-the-speakers track of a band that recorded dozens of gape-at-the-speakers tracks? And yet (the name of the album should actually be And Yet) I can relate to the feelings here. Not the words - good lord - but any parent could. (I shouldn't say that - my wife sure can't. My kids seem to be very amused by this song, though. Later in life they'll probably think I have dementia when I tell them it was my love of them that allowed me to see beyond the weirdness to the nobler emotions of our Man Child Brian. Hell, they'd probably think that now if they could read this.) It's mostly interesting as a window unto the fractured psyche of its composer and raises some peripheral tragedies about his inability to raise them beyond the initial phases of their life.

"Airplane" - Another one I wish I knew about in my Mix Tape days. You can bet I'd have found room for it. Brian comes in in all-caps at the end before that jaunty call-and-response that ends it. 

"Love Is a Woman" - And then it all ends with this Randy-Newman-esque number. My initial impression was "This is how the Beach Boys say I Love You? Sheesh." Like all the above, repeat listenings unwound my mental defenses completely. I have a distinct memory of seeing Brian perform it on a rerun of SNL (I was obsessed with SNL reruns in high school) and thinking "Jesus! That was goddamn awful." Thirty years on, I'm much more interested, particularly in how tight the band is in that performance especially on the "1-2-3, 4-5-6" parts. 

I wouldn't recommend this as anyone's entrypoint into that band. For that matter, neither did Brian/ does anyone. (He did suggest it would make a good second album, after Pet Sounds, for the aspiring Beach Boys listener, but let's pretend he didn't.) But I'm here to attest if it's your 10th or 11th Beach Boys album and you listen to it a good few dozen times, it'll be one of your favorites for life.

1.

In Concert (1973)

What's that? You just want a Beach Boys album that doesn't need all these other considerations? You kind of like the old classic tunes but like a more contemporary (or contemporaneous, I guess) sound? You love good singing, amazingly tight arrangements, and huge rock theatrics? You're not opposed to weird stuff or stuff you don't know, but you'd prefer something a little more accessible than Love You or Pacific Ocean Blue or any of the rest? Friend, I'm with you. This is the album for us. 

The Beach Boys had a hell of a reputation in the late 60s and early 70s as a live act. This double album captures them at the tail end of that touring group - newly revitalized with Blondie and Ricky - and just before their renewed fame and wealth in the mid-70s. A unique intersection, to say the least, and this is the lightning-in-a-bottle often spoke of but rarely seen or heard. Rare is the live album where the live performance is the definitive one; here we have seven or eight of them. As well as one ("We Got Love") that only appears here and is one of my favorite Beach Boys tunes.

On one hand, Brian is nowhere on this record; this is just the live act. On the other, his indelible stamp on the songs he writes is everywhere. Especially "Sail On, Sailor," the intro song, which opens about as evocatively of the 70s concert atmosphere of legend as anyone could hope for. I can see the smoke rising above the crowd and smell the weed, I can feel the vibes. This was never a song I particularly cared for until I heard this In Concert version, and now I can't get enough of it.

The best songs of Carl and the Passions and Holland sound so great here, but none moreso than "Leaving This Town," which I must have listened to a hundred times in the past few months. What a perfectly realized mood this song achieves. What a great groove and organ solo and all the rest. When it comes to all-time favorite Beach Boys songs, it's either this or "I Get Around." Or "All I Wanna Do." Or "Do It Again." This is a conversation I have with myself a lot.

Speaking of the older stuff - most of it less than ten years old in 1973 - the uptempo "Sloop John B" and "Help Me Rhonda" sound wonderful. "Heroes and Villains" sounds better here for my money than anywhere. The rest are all great, too. I'm not a huge fan of the studio version of "Let the Wind Blow," but the take here is fantastic. Faithful to the way Brian wrote it, but much better, I think. 

Although Carl later beat himself up for how he handled the band in the early 70s, the musical evidence from Sunflower through In Concert clearly shows he had the right idea. Maybe he shouldn't have been in charge of picking the managers, but his musical leadership of the group during stormy periods was sound.

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And there we have it! While we're here, how about one last link to this fantastic cover of "Guess I'm Dumb," a Brian Wilson song he wrote and produced for Glen Campbell (who briefly replaced him in the live band until they settled on Bruce Johnston). The Wondermints also had two or three of the guys who helped Brian on his solo albums in the 21st century (and helped finally get SMiLE together) so they deserve the eternal gratitude of all Beach Boys fan/ sentient lifeforms everywhere.

Thanks for reading!