BEACH BOYS/ 1967/ SUNSHINE TOMORROW/WILD HONEY

(EMI-CAPITOL/BROTHER RECORDS) (Released July, 2017)

Historians generally put the 60’s beginning in 1965. Up to that point the band was in synch with the culture. Thus, in many ways up to this point, the group was a big 50’s rock band. Their last album was PARTY. Now came the 60’s and out comes one of the best albums of the 20^th century PET SOUNDS. However, the title and cover of animals in a zoo just don’t make sense. The consumer did know what they were buying. The music was awesome with critical appeal, but the packaging was terrible.

How can a company kill off a money maker? EMI Capitol did a damn good job. Petting can mean 20^th century sexual outer course. Or, it may mean songs with a special feeling. It did not indicate animals from a zoo. By the way, Capitol’s other big band the Beatles had THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR. Now that fits. Look, this reviewer lived through this. On campus, America was going into an unpopular war. Not only was there an anti-war movement, but discussion of existentialism, Marxist revisionism, social androgyny, and numerous other topics that were from Europe and the UK. How does Surfer Girl fit into that discussion?

Beach Boys got hurt by their own company. It would only be decades later that the public and promoters would over look the title and cover. I still recall talking with faculty of that time that they never heard of the album called PET SOUNDS. So, the sales are down and within weeks out come THE BEST OF THE BEACH BOYS. The group looks clean cut and offer up safe sex. This is the album that can be played at a youth group dance at St. Patrick’s church with the nuns watching for any heterosexual fondling.

It can sell at a gas station, big box retail place. If you hate hippies and or folks that looked that way, the Beach Boys were the all American band. Why “Louie Louie?” that was the spice of the album. If you could hear the garbled lyrics, you knew that it was a sexually oriented song! Well, it wasn’t but that was the link to something really daring. To make matters, worse the band mispronounces the title of song. The album went gold. The Beach Boys including the name and the clean cut look were just fine with Mom and Dad.

The new trend setters with long hair and some dope in their pockets thought that the group was irrelevant. It was like Pat Boone singing covers of Fats Domino, a decade before.

Now emerges SMILEY SMILE. It is considered one of the top 100 “Ambient “albums of the 20^th century and is a cult favorite. Now the group with an incredible cover can’t pull off acid. They were not only super straight, but oddly crazy. I spent my entire adulthood reworking the album* It was too late. I was teaching at a university and worked later on in a poverty program.

Overseas the group was doing great. Here they played at bowling alleys and high school gyms. If you still like the band, you kept it to yourself.

So 1967 SUNSHINE TOMORROW is WILD HONEY with other unreleased songs. Although WILD HONEY did not sell a lot (peaked at 27) it was a compliment to the Summer of Love. As Black students told me Wild Honey is sperm. My girl is going down on me is oral sex. Sock it to me is the thrusting of the other partner’s genital toward you. Numerous songs are filled with double entendres. Have you ever heard of stud bees?

 Or is it? Remember, the Beach Boys are trying to hang on to old fans and gain new ones. The wrong people on campus liked the Beach Boys. The major trend setters were elsewhere.

Further, the BEST OF BEACH BOYS Volume 2 is released at or around the same time of WILD HONEY. They go further down the rock hierarchy.  However, “Darlin’” was for many years the opener to a show and that song is from this 1967 album.

One of the oddities of life is that at the 50 year mark, many of these songs are iconic. Why? By 1975, after the war and Watergate, folks yearned for nostalgia (think “Ozzie and Harriet”/ “Leave It to Beaver”) of the 50’s. With the film “American Graffiti” the final song is one by the band. It is called “All Summer Long “The Beach Boys were back followed by originals and tons of compilations. They have sold more albums and singles than any other American band,

 And 25 #1’s were tallied somewhere on the planet. BUY THIS ALBUM.

*Please see later article on this blog, SOCIALVIBES.NET.