Monday, March 26, 2012
Do You Wanna Dance?
The Beach Boys, Today! (1965) It's difficult to imagine oneself as a teenager in a small town when this special album was new & yet had the power to grab attention away from the hipper Beatles, Stones, Animals, etc. We didn't hear it in terms of the tremendous influence of Phil Spector on Boss Beach Boy Brian Wilson, as it is always discussed now. It was years later that I realized my love for this LP wasn't just about the incomparable music, but also that the record was so completely (& honestly) framed within a world of teen relationships not yet afflicted by cynicism. The album has joy, anticipation, insight, & beautiful ballads of love & insecurity. Who except poets believe any of this anymore? & we know we're fools. Last month I went back to The Beach Boys, Today! for solace & to get some sense of the sentiment & ideals we felt & the self-contained world my girlfriend & I created for ourselves where adults hardly mattered at all if we could help it.
The opening cut of "Do You Wanna Dance" is brilliant. The Bobby Freeman original was one of the few Fifties songs you'd hear at parties in the mid-Sixties, & this over-the-top version supplanted it (Plus Dance, Dance, Dance, the side one closer & also a hit single). Dancing at private parties among friends, especially in backyards dimly lit by strings of Christmas lights, was far more uninhibited & ecstatic than at public dances & record "hops." Brian captures it. I have non-specific memories of arriving at a house at twilight, hearing music blaring from the back yard (some improvised loudspeaker system), smelling the hot dogs & hamburgers, walking up the driveway. Usually some big guy or two hanging around there who'd nod you past. Crashers were always a concern, their bad vibes could kill a party in ten minutes. You couldn't make a grand entry into these parties, they were bathed in perpetual dusk, crowded & noisy, mysterious at first; you slid into them.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The opening cut of "Do You Wanna Dance" is brilliant. The Bobby Freeman original was one of the few Fifties songs you'd hear at parties in the mid-Sixties, & this over-the-top version supplanted it (Plus Dance, Dance, Dance, the side one closer & also a hit single). Dancing at private parties among friends, especially in backyards dimly lit by strings of Christmas lights, was far more uninhibited & ecstatic than at public dances & record "hops." Brian captures it. I have non-specific memories of arriving at a house at twilight, hearing music blaring from the back yard (some improvised loudspeaker system), smelling the hot dogs & hamburgers, walking up the driveway. Usually some big guy or two hanging around there who'd nod you past. Crashers were always a concern, their bad vibes could kill a party in ten minutes. You couldn't make a grand entry into these parties, they were bathed in perpetual dusk, crowded & noisy, mysterious at first; you slid into them.
Labels: growing up, Karen Battell, love, music, video
