OFF: Buck and Lucky Leif

[Douglas Pearson]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001 15:51:42 -0400, Michael S. Habiby
<mhabiby1 at NYCAP.RR.COM> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 10, 2001 at 05:23:40PM -0400, Douglas Pearson wrote:
>>
>>> [...] the Beach Boys were a band who had quite a bit of
>>> (mostly unacknowledged) influence on spacerock.
>>
>> Eric Siegerman wrote:
>> Really?  How so?

For starters, read the liner notes to the first Faust album ("We Like Beach
Boys"), and interviews with Kraftwerk where they discuss "Autobahn" (an
attempt to capture the *feel* of the German highway system in the same way
the Beach Boys captured the feel of California beaches and highways and
high schools).  Those are the two main "acknowledged" bits I can think
of ...

>>  I'm trying to think of examples, but the only
>> thing I can come up with is the theremin in Good Vibrations, and
>> even there it was put to a most non-spacy use.
>>
>Maybe Pet Sounds?  Very avant Guard at the time.

Actually, 'Pet Sounds' is one of the most backwards-looking Beach Boys
albums - it's a "mature" jazzy pop sound that (to me) is closer to the
likes of Sinatra/(Bing) Crosby than anything rock&roll or avant-garde.  It
does include a brief, pre-"Good Vibrations" Theremin solo (near the end
of "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"), but in that case it's almost
simulating an operatic voice (and the instrument used on the Beach Boys
songs is technically not a Theremin, but it serves the exact same purpose,
so that's just splitting hairs).

However, the unreleased follow-up to 'Pet Sounds', 'SMiLE', would have been
a *very* avant-garde album, with post-Stravinsky atonal strings, electronic
oscillators, extreme tape delay, free-form spoken/voiced segments,
experimentation with taped sound effects and unorthodox uses of orchestral
instruments, etc. (many of these segments were deemed "too weird for
release", but are now pretty readily available on bootleg).  Many parts of
it could be considered similar to the early Mothers of Invention albums.

As for other examples of the Beach Boys' "influence" on spacerock, listen
to:
"409" for the Chuck Berry riff + swoosh sounds (in this case, recordings of
actual automobile sounds, since synthesizers hadn't been invented yet!)
formula that's used on "Silver Machine" (and several other HW singles);
other BB songs using a similar formula include some very Nik-like honking
saxophone, too!
"Do It Again" for its processed drum intro
"Diamond Head" for its reverb and sound-effect drenched atmospheric
soundscape
"Feel Flows" for its very psychedelic, Floydian, guitar solo / jam break

There's also some very tasty (but subtler than "real" spacerock, of course)
modular Moog synthesizer work on the (excellent) 'Sunflower' and 'Surf's
Up' albums.  (And I didn't even get to the 'Beach Boys Love You' album
that's nearly as individually-disturbed as Syd Barrett's solo albums.)

I've made a "Beach Boys Space Medley" track that incorporates most of the
stuff I mention here, so that those who hear it can decide for themselves
(and, if necessary, tell me that I'm FULL OF IT!),

    -Doug
     ceres at sirius.com