Welcome!

Welcome to this brand new blog dedicated to The Beach Boys. Over the course of future posts I will provide whatever insight, trivia, opinion and analysis I can offer on anything from individual songs to entire albums to what was going on offstage.

Born in 1971, I am too young to have experienced the band during their early peak years. Actually, my earliest exposure to their music may have been from the Sunkist television commercials in the early 80s that famously used “Good Vibrations” for their jingle.

Having been raised on a fun diet of 50s doo-wop and the harmonizing of Southern Gospel quartets, I was primed at just the perfect impressionable age to become a Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fan. When those Sunkist ads hit, I didn't stand a chance.

The pop music scene of the early 1980s experienced the so-called Second British Invasion. It was during this time when my peers at school were deciding that to be cool they had to like the songs that Casey Kasem told them were in the Top 40. But you could have found me digging through my Dad's oldies compilations looking for anything that said “Beach Boys”.

I remember discovering “I Get Around” in this way. And “Fun, Fun, Fun”, perhaps “Surfin' USA”.

I was on my way. Everything about the band that I was learning as a 11-, 12-, 13-year old was fascinating to me. But still my interest in the band didn't extend beyond listening to what small handful of songs I could get my hands on, perhaps because my interest couldn't expand.

The Beach Boys weren't exactly in heavy rotation on the radio and this was way before YouTube or iTunes. Heck, this was before I had an allowance, much less the ability to drive to a record store and buy my own stuff. Maybe I just wasn't made for my time.

So I languished as this creative, imaginative preteen, biding my time for the freedom of a driver's license and money in my pocket. I wasn't mourning my lack of more Beach Boys material, I was living a normal life with my interests being pulled in all kinds of directions.

But the seed had been planted. It would lay dormant for many years, but now, as a 40 year old full-blown Beach Boys and Brian Wilson fanatic, I can clearly see its earliest origins.

at seed would start to sprout in the Summer of 1985, but that shall be the topic of my next post. Soon after that, I will begin a detailed examination of all The Beach Boys' albums.

Please join me on this journey and celebration of a Magical Californ-I-A where the summer is endless, the music ranges from goofy to brilliant, girls named Wendy and Barbara Ann have hair that's soft and long and everyone is drinking Sunkist.