After Sundown: The Beach Boys' Experimental ... - Scott D. Lipscomb

After Sundown 41wo significant and complementary projects were undertaken around the timeT of Pet Sounds, though to call the album Beach Boys Party! a project is perhaps amisnomer, and many critics might quibble with the label “significant.”l5 Made inresponse to record-company demands for new material, Party was an exercise inminimalistic production that was ostensibly recorded during a party at bandmateMike Love’s house. (Recording-studio logs indicate otherwise.) The performancesseem unrehearsed, the instrumental support is minimal (acoustical guitar, bongodrums, tambourine), and fooling around (laughing, affected singing, backgroundconversation) pervades every track. Compositionally, the album is a compilation offun-to-sing music composed mostly by others.16 The significance of Party is twofold.First, the seeming inattention to production niceties, the extraordinarily thininstrumentation, and the loose, relaxed ensemble would all be incorporated into thealbums of the very experimental and noncommercial period from 1967 to 1970.Here, they appear in fun; later, they accompany more complex expressions.Second, while the Beach Boys give other groups’ material bona fide performances-evenif the general performance atmosphere is hardly reverent- the twosongs of their own are given savagely satirical treatments. “I Get Around,” for example,is given new lyrics appropriate for singing by a social maladroit (“doofus” is theterm that comes to mind), not by the cool persona who throws off the originallyrics.” A comparison of the two can offer only the barest hint at the change in tone:Original lyricsI’m gettin’ buggeddrivin’ up and down the same old strip.I gotta find a new placewhere the kids are hip.Lyrics on PartyI’m getting awfully mad,driving down the street.I just don’t want to be bugged,sitting next to my sweets.My buddies and meare gettin’ real well known.Yeah, the bad guys know usand they leave us alone.The other guysare pretty toughso those other cats over there,better not get rough.We always take my car’cause it’s never been beat,and we’ve never missed yetwith the girls we meet.We always take my caralthough it’s a heap,and we never get turned downby the chicks we pick up on the street.While hilarious, the biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you treatment of their own workpresages a more coordinated rejection of their early work that occurred after “GoodVibrations.’’2f 4And it is to “Good Vibrations”-the second project of the period-that we nowturn, for it represents the most successful intersection of the Beach Boys’ commercialappeal with Brian’s artistic ambitions.18 The trajectory suggested by Pet Sounds