Buzzcocks, "Ever Fallen In Love?"

Valentine's day is around the corner, or (as it's known to us singletons) Friday. It is a day all about love, which is something that I feel I know a lot about, at least the parts that hurt. Like the rejection, the missed communications, the idiotic lusting after one person when really you should be lusting after this person over here, etc. In the game of love, I am the Cleveland Browns (or really any team from Cleveland since at least 1948, when the Indians last won the World Series. I've been watching ESPN networks to avoid the snow-gasm that is occupying local media all day, so I'm afraid a lot of my metaphors will be sports-related).

But I wear this as a badge of honor, because for every heart broken or every girl left behind in memory, I've always come away with that vital quantity that can't be gained any other way: experience. Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, indeed. Though of course in times when you're broken-hearted or you've broken someone else's heart, it sure as hell doesn't seem that way.

I guess it would be fair to say that Valentine's Day is not my favorite holiday (actually, I despise Halloween just a little more, but that's because I don't like being scared). It's at the very least one that I've always felt ambiguous about, wanting to buy into the cultural myth that it is a "day of love" while noticing that usually I've only got myself to celebrate it with (no masturbation allusions meant, though I'm sure they could be implied). Truth is, love is a game at which I have never been particularly good at. I'm riding the bench this year, no great love to speak of firing all my cylinders as the epic love-fest approaches. There is someone I like, but I won't lie: I got hurt last year bad, mostly my own damn fault, and I've been reluctant since to really put myself out there, to go for something that could be great because I'm afraid of making the same damn mistakes all over again (or some brand-new ones I don't even have a name for).

Perhaps it's the fact that it's a snow day and I don't have much else to occupy my mind (thus the trek for free access to Wi-Fi internet at my mom's place, just a short but suddenly treacherous walk up the street from my grandparents' abode), but I figured it wouldn't hurt to share with my fellow singletons the idea that this Valentine's Day, with no interest in giving off the wrong impression (because that can happen), just take a minute to wish each other a happy Valentine's Day, alleviate some of the stigma that comes from the "relationship status: single" culture we live in. Yeah, this year we might not have a special someone (or someones, if you're a player), but that doesn't mean we have to be mopey about it. Okay, maybe a little mopey, but try not to let that define our day. For me, Friday is also great because at my place of work, it's pay-day (though I'm guessing this week's check won't be so great, what with time missed due to the storm of the century). Being single isn't an illness, it's just a fact that comes when you're just too damn much for some people (keep telling yourself that, or whatever helps you sleep at night). Someday you may get lucky and meet the love of your life, but for now, just try to be good at being you. Don't worry about the fact that you're alone on Valentine's Day; you get to save the money you would've spent on your perhaps-significant other.

Anyway, let me go ahead and wish my fellow single people out there a happy Valentine's Day, or Friday if you prefer. Love makes the world go around, but sometimes it makes your head spin. Still, it beats the opposite of love every time.

The Beatles, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"

In a perfect world, this song would be as hilarious now as it was in 1968 (or maybe not "hilarious" so much as "amusing in a boy-John-Lennon-is-running-with-this-metaphor-isn't-he? way"), when it came out on the schizophrenic "White Album," the precursor to the four ex-Beatles' solo careers. In a perfect world, it would simply be remembered as the former slogan for a gun-rights group (I think it was the NRA, but John could simply have stumbled across it during his gorging on newspapers that led to several other song ideas), not as an ironic (cruelly ironic) foreshadowing of Lennon's own murder in December 1980. In a perfect world, that death wouldn't have occurred, because the dipshit who committed it (whose name shall not be aired here, because it would be what he wanted, secondhand fame) would never have thought to try. That stupid asshole would've just ended up shooting one of the guys in Gerry and the Pacemakers in this perfect world (no worries, G&TP fans; he would've been a terrible shot).

Of course we don't live in a perfect world. We live in an imperfect one, where John Lennon is dead, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" a bad joke on the part of the joker, and the song a no-no to be played during any rememberance of Lennon's passing (it's the equivalent of playing the Sex Pistols's "Belsen Was a Gas" on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz). Which is a shame, because the song devoid of such tragic context is a scream, a funny trip through Lennon's paranoid-scatterbrained late-Beatles songwriting, when he and Yoko Ono were having a laugh at the world (and his bandmates) reacting so strongly to their courtship (it just wasnt' proper!). The song itself is a collection of different verses from some other songs, put together and set to a great backdrop of good old fashioned rock grooves. John Lennon went off the farm a little bit during those years, drugs and transcendental meditation doing turns on him throughout 1966 and 1967 (heroin was around the corner, if not already on the scene, when the White Album came out in the fall of 1968). The songs from that era that were primarily his are both groundbreaking ("Strawberry Fields, Forver") and batshit crazy ("The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"). And if anyone can figure out "Revolution #9," please let me know. It sounds like an acid trip though Hades.

So yes, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is batshit crazy, but in a good way; heard outside the context of Lennon's murder, it's possible to find the humor in Lennon's wordplay and suggestiveness. But of course the context is everything; ever since 1980, it's been impossible, once you've come across the song, to hear it outside of the tragic consequences. Unless you're Michael Moore, and then you use it as the soundtrack to a montage of gun violence (including the infamous clip of Bud Dwyer shooting himself on live television) in your movie "Bowling For Columbine." I'm willing to bet that was the introduction to the song for a lot of people who hadn't heard it before, couldn't concieve that such a downright eerie thing as a John Lennon song about shooting guns could exist.

The White Album was either the first or second proper Beatles "album" I ever got, as a Christmas gift along with the first of many late, lamented CD players. My mom got it for me the first Christmas that I ever wanted a Beatles album for Christmas. Her favorite Beatles song, she told me, was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Like I said, the White Album was basically a run-thru for each Beatles' solo careers. John and Paul get the lions' share of songs, of course, but George Harrison had some good ones, and Ringo got a couple of vocal showcases (courtesy of the boys, of course). The album is a mess, a glorious two-disc mess on CD (it was one of the first double albums, a trend towards bloated grandiosity and the clear lack of a producer with backbone enough to edit the album for cohesiveness, but this is one of the few that actually benefits from such variety). When I first heard "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" (hell, when I saw the song title in the listings), I probably couldn't believe it; after all, this was sung by the man who'd be gunned down a little over a decade after the album came out. Of course, I did better than Charles Manson, who thought the proto-stomper "Helter Skelter" was a call to arms in a coming race war (that old Charlie would become a leader of, with all the glory and pussy that affords, of course). Yes, Charles Manson used the Beatles to justify his crime spree.

Taking the Beatles out of context isn't unheard of, naturally; take John's infamous "Bigger than Jesus" quote, from an old interview but given new life in 1966 when religious fanatics took the quote out of context (that he was saying that a lot of young people worshipped the Beatles more than conventional religion, an idea that isn't as bizarre in our celebrity-obsessed world as it would've been in 1966). Beatles records were burnt, concerts were boycotted, and death threats were recorded (no doubt when Lennon imagined himself in the guise of a gun-nut who gets release from shooting his warm gun, he had plenty of invective from those past threats stored away for reference). Not for the first time, a celebrity retreated from the spotlight, though in John's case it was him and the band retiring from live performances because of the uproar and also because frankly Beatles concerts were outlets for teenage girls to scream their heads off (much as a Justin Bieber show fulfils the same function today). When they did re-emerge, with 1967's questionable-concept-album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," it was a stab at something deeper than what they'd be able to do live, an album basically made for the listener at home.

Studio experimentation was both good and bad for the band, as it led them to new creative heights but also down a rabbit hole that would eventually allow the tensions that took a back seat to their schedule on the road to come to the forefront, where it would drive them apart. No, it wasn't Yoko anymore than it was Linda Eastman (later McCartney, in 1969) that drove the band apart, though that probably didn't help. The recording studio gave us wonderful songs that wouldn't be reproducable live (at least not at a typical Beatles concert in that time, hence when they did return to the stage it was on the roof of Apple Records, for the "Get Back/Let It Be" sessions). But it also gave them time to reflect on how they were growing as artists (and growing apart). Think about people that you were forced to be around for a long enough time, no matter how close you were to them eventually you'd probably have your complaints about them as well. John and Paul were the alpha dogs of the band, doomed to butt heads over John's artiness versus Paul's popualism, and poor George was marginalized to the point that he lacked confidence in his songwriting ability. Ringo was a happy soldier during much of the tumult (he was the late man to the party, but it wouldn't have worked without him), but even he started getting upset, being the first to threaten to leave the group during the sessions for the White Album.

"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" isn't a great song, but it's a favorite, much the same way that while I agree with those who find "Hello Goodbye" obnoxious and daft, I like it nonetheless because of how stupid it is (see my entry on R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People"). I was watching the documentary on J.D. Salinger and how "The Catcher In the Rye" inspired three desperate losers to shoot famous people (along with Lennon's killer, there was John Hinckley Jr. and Robert Bardo). That must've been a hell of a thing, to know that three people used something that you wrote as "justification" for murders or attempted murders, and it's no wonder Salinger kept his head down for the most part during the last few decades of his life (though in a quick aside, I think he played the "recluse" angle too well, because people kept talking about him despite his lack of publishing since 1965). If John could've known that he'd have been gunned down in a short time, one wonders if he'd have written the song in the first place (maybe "Happiness Is a Warm Bun," a ode to bakery? Or "Happiness Is a Warm Crossbow," to keep with the weapons theme?). I'd like to think he'd go for it anyway, to confront the fear that was no doubt triggered (pun intended) by the death threats he recieved for a comment that today would be a badge of honor (Kanye West probably tweets that he's bigger than Jesus on an hourly basis). I'd like to think that somehow he knew how inappropriate the song would seem in the wake of his death, and yet he'd go for it anyway. He'd confront the abyss, the relegation to "peace and love John Lennon" that negates the deeper, more substantial man behind the myth that would follow his death, where "Imagine" is over-used to the point of banality (and where Cee Lo Green would both feel the need to change the lyrics and be bombarded for it, because he's uncomfortable with the notion of no higher power). True artists confront uncomfortable truths, and the truth is that John Lennon was gunned down one night by a loser with shit for brains and a fixation on Holden Caulfield. The truth is also that "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" was a song that foretold that end, perhaps, or at the least it was the desperate laugh of a man facing mortality from nutjobs like the one who would eventually kill him, and he was raising something of a middle finger to those nutjobs, especially the one that would take him up on the song's title.

Whatever the facts are, the song deserves better than as some pop-culture fortune-teller of doom for the man who wrote it.

What the Beatles Mean to Me

This February marks the fifty-year anniversary of the Beatles arriving on our shores, storming the beaches of American pop culture and leaving in their wake a whole new landscape. What they mean to America is self-evident in the flurry of documentaries and other specials to mark the occasion when, on February 9, 1964, the Fab Four appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show." What they mean to people who came of age during their peak, and who continue to look upon them as the peak of their adolescene or childhood, is very different to what they mean to me. I missed the wave by about fifteen years, and was just over a year old when all the talk of the Beatles re-uniting was forever put asunder by John Lennon's death in 1980.

When I began to be aware of the Beatles, it was at the start of my high-school years, almost twenty years ago (way to make me feel old, passage of time. Thanks a lot). Grunge was in, and Kurt Cobain was still among us on this mortal plain, but the music of that era didn't really *speak* to me (or if it did, it spoke in a language that I wasn't yet privy to, the obsession with childhoods ruined that didn't really apply to me because, in all honesty, I had a good childhood all things considered. Not a lot of fuel for the coming-of-age novel that I would like to write, but you can make that shit up anyway). My family could tell you that, when I got into the Beatles, I got into them big-time. I remember freezing my ass off sitting outside on the porch at my house (the same porch where I still like to retreat with a good book when it's not the middle of an Arctic blast outside) with a borrowed Walkman and a Beatles tape either bought or borrowed which I could then turn up to ear-blistering volume and hold a private commune with, no one around except my concerned family members warm inside, wondering what had gotten into me, this previously sports-obsessed kid with no father around, who always had his nose in a book (even if I didn't finish the bulk of the ones about WWII or baseball that I checked out of the local library, keeping their war and sports sections fully stocked well into the late Nineties). To them, I'm sure it looked like I'd lost my mind.

And in a way, I had; a chance glancing through the "Guinness Book of World Records" had revealed that I shared a birthday with John Lennon (October 9), and perhaps it was being fatherless (my biological father being a Vietnam vet who was never really in the picture, and whose absence didn't occur to me as "unnatural" except when I started to have step-brothers and step-sisters courtesy of my step-dad) that drew me into looking up to Lennon as an idol (indeed, after reading most of the good books about the Beatles and even some of the shitty ones, I still think of Lennon as the spirit-father I never had, even when he could be a dick to people and even abusive on a violent scale to the women in his life). Oddly, the first Beatle biography I ever read was one about Paul McCartney, whose left-handed bass playing style I modeled chiefly because, in the mirror, it looked like I was playing right-handed (to this day, I air-guitar that way, even though if I had a real guitar I'm sure I'd do it right-handed. It would sound terrible either way, as I am not a natural musician). I say ironically because, as I read more about the Beatles (including their acrimonious split in 1969/1970), I began to think of Paul as the asshole of the group or "the one who should've gotten shot" (a sentiment I'm sure Ringo and George might have shared with me at various points in post-Beatle life, especially when he took charge of the "Anthology" project and had an uncomfortable-looking reunion with his bandmates in a field somewhere in England to sit around and remember "when they were fab" or something like that.

In fact, I picked a good time to become a Beatles fan, as in 1993/1994 not everyone was buying into the myth yet. I even met a girl once whom I fell in love with because we both loved the Beatles (and John was our favorite, of course) and she had books about the Beatles that I'd never seen before. Brooke was my crush during my junior and senior years of high school, as the "Anthology" made it seem suddenly cooler to like the Beatles than it had been only a few years before (i.e., back when I was freezing my ass off listening to tapes of the Beatles, some of which mixed all the various stages of the band together to make for a confused attempt to make sense of their history). That history, represented by Philip Norman's "Shout" and Ray Coleman's "Lennon" and so on, became part of my history, as I became Walhalla's resident Beatles scholar and earned much derision from my peers in college my first time around because of my Beatles posters and "old-timey" music collection (by that time, I'd added the Who and the Kinks to my CD collection, along with Oasis and other English bands that seemed to be like the Beatles, but never the Rolling Stones. I actually believed in the "Beatles vs. Stones" mythology put forward by the press officers of both groups when, in 1964 or 1965, it seemed like a good idea to jin up interest in both groups by saying that they were the opposite of their most popular rival). The Animals came from another port city like Liverpool, Newcastle (port cities having a monopoly on American blues artists whose records were brought over by sailors and disseminated by music-hungry white teenagers, much as how rap became prominent because white American teens were tired of rock and sought out rap music, like my uncle did in the Eighties). The Yardbirds were blues purists when Eric Clapton played with them, becoming pop stars when Jeff Beck opened them up to the possibility of writing their own material. The Kinks were snarky before the word existed, both celebrating the quaint Englishness of their home and mocking it gently. And the Stones, when I finally let them in? Fucking fantastic, of course. The British Invasion was the best thing to ever happen to me.

I care about music because of the Beatles, maybe a little too much (as any girl who's ever recieved a mix CD in place of an honest attempt to tell them how I feel can attest). In "Rock and Roll" Lou Reed sings of a girl whose life was saved by rock and roll. That's how I feel about the Beatles, and fifty years after they came to these shores (and a little over twenty since I was freezing my ass off listening to various tapes of them, and the Who, and Pink Floyd, and the Byrds, and the Yardbirds, and on and on), I still think they changed everything for the better. Musicians could actually write their own material (so we have the Beatles to blame for Taylor Swift and her revolving door of ex-boyfriends), and make albums that were artistic statements and not just shit put together to fulfil a contract with the record company. They started their own record company, proving that just because you can make money for the big guys doesn't mean you know how to do it (I think Apple Corps survived mostly in spite of the Beatles). John's death in 1980, and George's in 2001, means that we will never see them ever reunite again (though a 1998 message board quip about "three more bullets" would actually get the job done, I still don't find it funny). But what they did for me, opening me up to caring about art far more than maybe is healthy, but still...well, for that I owe them a lot. Certainly a rememberance of them on the occasion of their fifty-year residence at the top of the charts in the hearts of fans and non-fans alike (I'd like to think that the cretins who mocked me for my Fab Four love in 1998 have since gotten married to the sounds of a Lennon/McCartney original, or divorced, or gay-married, because I suspect the lot of them were closet cases and that makes me feel better somehow). None of the other bands I like now, from the Velvet Underground to Vampire Weekend, would mean a damn thing to me if not for the Beatles. They made me less prone to want to get a haircut (when I did, it would be something resembling Ian Curtis, whose picture in his wife's memoir was my go-to on how I wanted to look for years). They made me more open to British things like Monty Python, punk rock (even though the punks despised the Beatles, I think deep down they knew how important the group was at least as something to rebel against), Manchester music (Joy Division and New Order chiefly), and on to the works of Graham Greene and Jack Higgins.

The Beatles still rock my world, as much as the time that I finally heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as more than just background music. That was my turn-on song, as it happens, and yeah I know they recorded their fair share of crap. Everyone's favorite band has a b-side or even an album that you'd rather not get brought up when you're trying to make the case for them as important (I think "Sgt. Pepper" is overrated and the "concept" album is bullshit, if that helps). "Run For Your Life" comes to mind, or the cover of "Mr. Moonlight." But it's too easy to pick apart the misses, too easy to ignore the hits that still hit on an emotinal level. Any group that can put out "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" on the same single has to have done something right. The Beatles matter to me, their story is essential to understanding popular culture in the postwar period, and they just fucking rock. I feel sorry for you if you don't get it, but I'm also a little envious. If you've never really listened to the Beatles, you're in for a journey of discovery. Trust me on that one. We've only got Paul and Ringo now (and as evidenced by the Grammys collaberation on some bullshit "new song" of Paul's, there's not much left there to get excited about), but the music itself is better than anything else about them (even if you share a birthday with one of the dead ones and wish he'd been your dad). The Beatles still matter. How the fuck could they not?

Curtis Mayfield, "Pusherman"

No special life-lesson observations here, just want to point out that this song was blasting from a pizza parlor that I passed on my way to work yesterday (walking down the street), because the snowstorm put my GRE test on hold and well, after waiting for the ice and snow to clear out enough to risk driving, I figured I couldn't use the weather as an excuse to lay out of work (I must say, I am not missing much of daytime TV when I'm at work. The hours I'm at work are much more wisely spent than they would be if I were at home, watching ESPN's First Take for the simple fact that I can't decide who's more of a horse's ass, Stephen A. Smith or Skip "I wrote books about the Cowboys" Bayliss. Probably Skip, if I had to decide with a gun to my head. God, what an ass).

Like I said, my GRE test is delayed, by almost a month (Feb. 24th is the make-up date they gave me, which I hope works with the college I've applied to grad school for). If not, hey, there's always next spring (2015). I've had to wait this long, shit, I can stand to wait longer.

Anyway, I need a nap because I feel like it would be nice to have one (driving to work this morning was potentially a mistake because I was woozy from something or another). No drinking or anything; I just think I'm sick. Tis the season for that, assuredly.

Anyway, go find this song on YouTube or ITunes (I might have to purchase the Superfly soundtrack asap, I had this from iTunes but I don't have iTunes anymore). Trust me, it's the perfect motherfucking song to get your swagger back with, provided you don't slip on any ice and bust your ass. And I didn't slip on the ice (though I did notice an awful lot of dog turds on the sidewalks downtown. Thought you were supposed to pick that up, pet-owners...somebody's being lazy). Anyway, gonna take a quick nap then get myself home so I can relax a bit and start prepping myself for the GRE test now almost a month ahead of me. Unless it snows again.

God, I hope it doesn't.

Anyway, good day to you all! (and if you haven't read the book already, seek out The Fortress of Solitude, this is a fantastic book!)

Warren Zevon, "Excitable Boy"

My GRE test is coming up this week (Wednesday, at 12:30, so of course now they're saying there might be a chance of snow the night before), and I've checked out three books from the local library and read the math sections front to back (I'm pretty sure I can handle the English stuff, but I won't neglect to look those over too), and I can safely say that I hope they grade on a curve...a very large curve.

In all seriousness, the GRE isn't really a test you can study for; either you paid attention and learned all that stuff in your math classes during middle school, or you didn't. In my case, it's about fifty-fifty, though I will say that looking thru the books this past week has been good refresher-style practice on the sort of stuff that might (I stress "might") show up on the test. It's just something that has everything to do with whether I get into grad school, no pressure whatsoever...wait, why is Queen and David Bowie cueing up in my head?

The horror, the horror...

I am given to exaggeration and hyperbole, naturally, so in the long run I'm guessing the test will be merely a prelude to my glorious entrance into grad school in the fall, provided my application meets with approval...shit, my application! Knew I forgot something!

I kid, but I know from past experience nothing is in the bag. I don't care how much I try to say "meh, it'll be alright," I'm hard-wired to stress about such things, either on a grand scale or a mini-grand scale, until the ordeal is over. For that reason, I have chosen to distract myself with another book that, like Moby-Dick, I always meant to get around to but never had found the time for.

In this case, it's Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, which as well as being an apt metaphor for my GRE-studying living conditions, is pretty good so far. I have circled around this one for a few years, only getting a few pages into on various tries before throwing up my hands in dismay. So far, though, I'm a hundred and twenty pages in and it's not too shabby.

Anyway, Wednesday can't get here fast enough, but then again it can. I respect the GRE test because I fear it, but I know I won't sweat the English sections too hard (unless I've been wrong to focus on math and get to the English test after receiving an emergency lobotomy that reduces me to a drooling mess). Anxiety is both a blessing and a curse before a test that could have serious impact on your life and future plans. But once the test is over, I can sit back, relax, and kick myself for the questions I know I got wrong. Stupid fractions, why you gotta be messing with my flow?

Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger"

In 1996, at the height of "Oasis-mania," I opined to anyone that would listen (and most everyone else) that if guitarist and main songwriter Noel Gallagher put out a solo album, I'd buy it. He finally obliged me in 2011, with "Noel Gallagher's High-Flying Birds." I have yet to buy said album.

Whose fault this is, is debatable; clearly, sixteen-year-old me is no longer the same guy as thirty-something-year-old me. But Noel took so damn long to leave Oasis behind (by my reckoning, 1997's Be Here Now was the last listenable Oasis album, and not by much at that). Sure, you could say that the band *was* his band anyway, and that letting nasal-voiced little bro Liam be the main vocalist for the group was his way of heading off blame for when the group's music declined. Perhaps Noel's voice, used sparingly on lead vocals for such songs as "Don't Look Back In Anger," was better in small doses anyway, and a solo album by him might have ruined it.

Perhaps I need to get out more, talking about a band that hasn't meant anything to anyone over the age of twenty since about 1999...

Anyway, "Don't Look Back" came on the radio today, either before or after a gigantic bird almost collided with my windshield while in mid-flight (I'm not sure what the damage would've been, but I'm just glad I had my wits about me to slow down and let the vulture or whatever it was continue on its low-level buzzing of the highway), and it put me to mind of my adolescent interest in a band that, honestly, time has not been kind to. When they first came to my attention, on the crest of "Wonderwall," I was just getting into the Beatles, and it seemed like Oasis were like the Beatles (they were from England, they had accents, and Beatles hairdos). Of course, hindsight proves that Oasis weren't the Beatles; they weren't even Gerry and the Pacemakers. But it was a good run while it lasted, wasn't it?

Noel took over the band that was essentially Liam's, on the condition that he'd write all the songs. I can only imagine how bad Oasis' songs were before the regime change, but listening to the actual lyrics of "Don't Look Back," I'm struck at how much they suck. The song is fantastic, musically; but the combination of the music and lyrics is a bit like a really awful hangover mess: you go to bed with the beautiful guitar work, only to wake up to the ugly-as-sin lyrics in the cold light of day.

Man, that near-bird collision really shook me up...

But Oasis were part of my childhood, of feeling left out of the social norm (though that was a blessing in disguise) and needing something to cling to pop-culture-wise that spoke to me, or seemed to. I guess it's why tween girls like Justin Bieber, he of the ever-changing-haircuts and burgeoning career as a rehab patient in countless downward spirals and comebacks. When those girls get older, they'll look back at the amount of time they spent looking up to Bieber and wonder what the hell they were thinking. For me, Oasis is the albatross of my musical education, a group that I can't really believe I ever liked, but that I like all the same for the few fleeting good things that they did (terrible lyrics and all). In terms of artistic relevance, they're just a shade beyond fellow Mancunians the Hollies (Manchester really has produced much, much better bands). But in terms of taking me back to my childhood, they're tops.

Perhaps if that bird today had been a high-flying one, I wouldn't have been prompted to write all this...

The Beach Boys, "Darlin'"

I was perusing the bootleg section of a small record store on the last day of 2013 (the same day that I bought Talking Heads' Fear of Music album) when I came across a curious-looking artifact: a CD with the same color scheme and design of the Beach Boys' landmark 1966 album Pet Sounds, but by Charles Manson (he of the "Manson Family murders of 1969" fame). The "album" was a collection of songs old Charlie did in the pen (namely, San Quentin) where he's been locked up since the Nixon administration.

Of course, anyone who knows their pop-culture history should know that Manson and the Beach Boys intersected oh-so-briefly during the late Sixties, and that Manson harbored dreams of being a folksinger or rock star (when he wasn't harboring dreams of race war and mass murder). Dennis Wilson, the free-spirited drummer of the group, even let Manson and his "kin" crash at his home for a time. Fortune did not favor the insane, however, and the Beach Boys were not on Manson's hit list when the shit hit the fan.

For my money, this is just one of the many aspects of the Beach Boys' collected history that make them the most interesting band in American musical history. Not the most important, mind you (that honor belongs to the Velvet Underground), but the most tabloid-friendly of the whole Sixties bunch. Brian Wilson may get the biopic treatment soon, and I imagine a whole new generation may be exposed to his brilliant pop melodies and songwriting prowess. Or they may be scared off by the Reagan-era "Kokomo," which led to recurring guest-starring roles for the BB's on temporary drummer John Stamos' Full House.

In fact, I first heard about the Boys in the late Eighties, when they always seemed to crop up on TV shows singing about fun in the sun and the girls they saw on the beach (though at this point in time, they were already pushing fifty as the median age for their individual ages). There was nothing cool about the Beach Boys twenty years ago, when as all aging rock stars of the Sixties they were still striving to be "relevant" by jumping on the synthesizer train to Hitsville, USA. If you can remember Starship's "We Built This City," you know what I'm talking about. I've always been a narrative junky, however, and as I read more about pop music and the Beach Boys in particular, I had to admit that Brian Wilson and company were compelling even when a lot of their music might not be.

The Wilson brothers, cousin Mike "No, I just like wearing hats, my hairline isn't receding" Love, and high school pal Al Jardine first made music together in 1962, and from the outset they were managed by Murray Wilson, the tyrannical father of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl. Brian Wilson couldn't handle the fame that engulfed the group and, on the verge of a European tour in 1964, had a mental breakdown and had to go into seclusion (leading years later to his manipulation at the hands of a glory-hound psychiatrist who surprisingly enough isn't named "Dr. Drew."). The group turned to Brian as songwriter and arranger, and the situation worked for quite a while. There was Pet Sounds, "Good Vibrations" (salvaged from the abortive SMiLE sessions of 1967), and countless other hits. But the Sixties passed the group by, and the Seventies weren't much better. By 1983, Dennis Wilson was dead, and Carl would follow in 1998. Last year the Beach Boys reconfigured because "hey, fifty years have passed and we need to make money" (I'm sure that was the sole reason to force poor Brian Wilson back out onstage). They've been riding the nostalgia gravy train for so long, even the hipster ironists who "embrace" them can't tell if they're the ones being ironic or if the band is.

A few years ago, during my "everything I write must be GENIUS" phase, I penned a slightly bizarre hard-boiled mystery short story for National Lampoon which featured Brian Wilson (circa 1966) as a special helper to the LAPD, with Darryl Gates (the police chief at the time of the Rodney King beating, but in my story a lowly detective) as his reluctant sidekick. They were on the trail of what was going to turn out to be the Manson Family, if I'd seen the story through (I was so pleased with myself over the execution of the detective noir set-up that I didn't bother to think ahead to how to make it convincing. This might be why I don't write mysteries). It never got beyond the rough, rough draft stage, and on some level I'm fine with that. But when I read Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, it occurred to me that maybe there had been something in that idea (at least the burnt-out detective, though in Pynchon's case, Doc Sportello had nothing to do with pop music except as a listener). I might try and revisit that someday, or at least leave it up to someone who can take the idea further than I could.

Like a lot of people, I wish the Beach Boys had never recorded "Kokomo," and if you ask anyone with half a brain if they like that song you'd be hard-pressed to find a fan of it even then. I love Pet Sounds, I love the version of Smile that Brian Wilson released a few years back, and I like "Darlin'," a song about which I know very little. But it's a good one, and the best Beach Boys songs help you forget the endless cash-grabs, the nauseating association with Reagan's "Morning in America" crap, and Mike Love's seemingly endless collection of baseball caps that don't actually feature team logos on them (always seems to be some fishing buddy's savings and loans or something). Then again, we're talking about Brian Wilson, the man who penned "Don't Worry, Baby." I guess he can do whatever the hell he wants.