Thursday, July 22, 2021

The Fortunate Old Son

 



Brian Wilson doesn't like being seen much. On-stage exposure has been a problem all his life, and album covers tell the same story. His first solo album had him anxiously edging out of shot. On the second his profile is reduced to a two-dimensional rubber stamp, much like the music. Excluding the scrap-album cutouts on the crap-album Gettin' In Over My Head, he doesn't appear at all on the covers of his next nine albums.

Unlike book jacket design, getting your mug on the cover of an album is the accepted way to go, and for good reasons. The alternatives are harder to pull off. Cover art should reflect the album in a memorable and striking way and albums, unlike books, don't always contain work that is unified in theme or tone. Brian got lucky with Orange Crate Art, but his other albums come dressed in motley.

The gig for packaging That Lucky Old Sun went to one Martin Venezky (me neither), who'd done a handful of hack-work classical albums. Maybe he was hanging in the lobby, or walked into the wrong room at the right time. Whatever, he turned in a marmalade label and they went with that. Wilson already had one citrus-adjacent album, so maybe they thought - nah. Nobody was doing much thinking. The result was yet another forgettable-at-best sleeve at a time when he could have got himself back in the public eye by showing up for the cover. It's not like he was anything but one handsome dude at the time, with a patrician head adorned by an enviable thick wave of hair. The photograph I've used [above - Ed.] is contemporary with the album, and look how he looks. Better than ever, you ax me. Great shirt, too. He's on top of the Capitol Tower, L.A. in the background, and the album's about L.A. and ... oh well.

That Lucky Old Sun (which I re-yclept Lucky Old Sun because there's a kind of play on spoken words there that Van Dyke might appreciate) is his finest solo album. It's almost unreasonably fantastic, high in Vitamin Bri and arrangements that evoke Smile without ever falling into pastiche [type of nut - Ed.]. Of course, some critics clutched their pearls in shock that he didn't sing like a teenager anymore, as if there's something wrong in singing like who you are (and he still sings prettier than most).

It's an album that gets better and richer and deeper over time, like the best of Wilson's work, bursting with energy and creativity and melodic/harmonic bliss. He had help from Scott Bennett, the Wondermints crew, and Van Dyke Parks, who wrote the evocative spoken interludes that tie the whole album together like an aural Lebowski rug. It's too easy to think of Wilson as something of a shadow-puppet - he was focused and authoritative in the studio, his natural home, and although he's a team player it's a work that could only have sprung from the heart of this fortunate son of L.A.

There are some who don't like this album because of its L.A.-centricity, because they don't like L.A. and what it represents. But Wilson is inseparable from his City of Angels, almost its personification. I spent a while there, when I had nowhere else to live, and I got to know it just a little, as deep as I wanted to get. It's a strange, haunted place, brittle, un-centered, and the sense of artificiality standing in for reality, of image being substance, can be overpowering. I stood in an empty Hollywood Bowl under that translucent blue sky, and knew that the emptiness was all there was, that the city was a crust of concrete at the ocean's edge, and this is what dreams are made on. The dreams will last longer, and Brian's will never die.

 

I've blister-packed Path Of Life, the "hidden album" added as extry trx to one edition of That Lucky Old Sun; ten tracks thematically bookended, including the Great Lost Single, What Love Can Do.


 

 

 

26 comments:

  1. If you surf on over to brianwilson.com and hang ten on the timeline, you'll find a swell video of him recording this album, and some even sweller demos.




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  2. At the end of the day, this is what we hoi polloi come here for: "pastiche [type of nut - Ed.]." This alone is more than worth the price of admission.

    And the music, of course.

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    1. Eric, will you heed the need for screed? Be a come-with 4/5 Guy©!

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  3. Thank you Farq, I'm enjoying this and also Th' Isle O'Foam© recent featurette No Pressure Radio. Suitable for listening to during very hot heatwave in Southern England - sorry, I know many of you have much hotter summers than we do, but it's a shock (physically) to us.

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    1. No Pressure Radio was easy to assemble - a wealth of good source material. But try this:
      https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/search?q=low+tide
      An album that shouldn't work, but does. It's a swell sunbathin' soundtrack!

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    2. Lovely, I'll have a listen, thanks.

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  4. The Beatles made me aware of pop music. Listening to Love Me Do and Please Please Me was fun. But hearing California Girls on the radio was more than fun - it showed me what pop music could do. That intro was more interesting than anything the Fabs had come up with, subtly revolutionary, utterly original. The next one to tattoo itself onto my young mind was God Only Knows, the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. It sounded like nothing else. It sounded like heaven. Then Good Vibrations came out, and that did it. It connected and transported me to somewhere else and I could never go home again.



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  5. thanks for music and for link hint!

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  6. Thanks Farquar I have always been attracted to excentric's Brian Wilson and Scott Walker are two that come to mind

    Regards

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    1. If the term "genius" has any application to pop (and why not?) then Wilson qualifies. His "eccentricity" is something else. I don't really think it's the right word. There's something of the pose in it, affectation. Wilson is deeper than that. He survived parental abuse, drugs, and depression to do what he did and get where he is. Behind that soft image is a real tough cookie.

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  7. Passed this one by in the past (no doubt due to some AllMusic hack) so thanks for bringing it to light and providing the opportunity to give it a proper listen!

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    1. Here's what the hack at allmusic has to say: overripe ... awkward ,,, overwrought ... turgid ... over-emphatic ... etcetera etcetera.

      I know these "critics" have their own careers to think of, and like to position themselves as independently objective voices, but when they get paid for garbage like this - garbage that does influence people to keep away - something is wrong with the system.

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  8. I saw Brian in concert a couple years ago. It was interesting that he was seated at his piano when the curtain opened, and later closed. Wouldn't be surprised if he has knee trouble. But what do I know? Good concert, made better by openers, the Zombies.

    Art departments may be inexplicable, or nonexistent, or powerless. I like your stuff.

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    1. Brian's got a US tour lined up for late summer, and Europe next year. He's cuddling up to eighty years old. I'd still go to see him. Last time was for the "Presents Smile" tour, and I can't remember him standing up to take a bow then. The thing about Brian's concerts is it's a chance to pay him back in some way. He's going to give as much as he's able, which is going to appear a little subdued, but the feeling of love from the audience (and the band) is something very special.

      brianwilson.com has had a re-vamp, and it's a great site, lots to listen to and look at.

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  9. Thanks for the this one. I could use the tranquility at the moment. It's funny that it comes from someone who's so anxious in his own life.

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  10. Anyone want the album demos? BW with the Wondermints.

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    1. Th' Four Or Five Guys© are the lazy-assediest slobs on th' internet, Steve, and even turning on their desktop speakers is too much for them these days. There's also that ADD thing they have going which means they've clicked away to the Tori Spelling fan forum by now. So allow me to accept your kind offer on their behalf!

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  11. TLOS album demos here - 7 days and then it's all gone. Nothing radically different, but nice to have.

    (Whilst I'm here - Orange Crate Art by Parks and Wilson. Highly recommended.)

    https://we.tl/t-joYK3Umbrt

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    1. I pinch your claws. Orange Crate Art a big favorite here on th' IoF©.

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    2. OK, but mandibles are right out!

      Heard the 25th Annivrsary OCA? The bonus album of instrumental versions is stunning.

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    3. Yes, I have this. I think it's VDP's best writing since Song Cycle.

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    4. You are a chap of excellent taste.

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  12. Thanks for this, Farq. I've been away for a bit too long. Nice to see the Four or Five still throwing down the jive. Re: Mr. Wilson, a few years back I bought that DVD of himself and the Wondermints, etc. doing that concert in London. Flipping wonderful stuff.

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