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CindyC
YAY! I feel the same. I used to feel badly if I couldn't appreciate something everyone else thinks is a masterpiece.
For instance "Love in the Time of Cholera". I think that's such a bullshit story. The guy wastes his whole life for some girl that he had a crush on when he was a teenager, but wasn't able to get. WTF - get over it.
I know other people who think Wuthering Heights is a beautiful love story...
Are you kidding me? Sort of a similar theme to "Cholera". He can't have Catherine so he ruins everyone else's life, including his great "loves" daughter. Yeah that's true love, pffft.
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Nikolai
He gets the girl at the end of "Cholera", although they're both old. Brilliant book, I think - Marquez's last good one - but different strokes etc etc.
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CindyC
YAY! I feel the same. I used to feel badly if I couldn't appreciate something everyone else thinks is a masterpiece.
For instance "Love in the Time of Cholera". I think that's such a bullshit story. The guy wastes his whole life for some girl that he had a crush on when he was a teenager, but wasn't able to get. WTF - get over it.
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@#$%&
I think to truly appreciate Pet Sounds, you have to put the album into context. Not just into a Sgt.Pepper vs. Pet Sounds kind of thing but into the complete musical landscape of that time. Sure, it's easy to say Gene Krupa is not as good of a drummer when you compare him to drummers that played with Zappa or with Bonham or whomever. But, back then when Krupa was around, he was pretty groundbreaking. In a way, it's true that it's all been done before. We've been so inundated with pop/rock bands using a string section or some other unusual combination of instruments that it's difficult to truly appreciate the vision that Brian Wilson had for his music. I really wish Brian had gone and released Smile after Pet Sounds because that would have just blown everyone away. But, various reasons made him shelve it. There were a handful of songwriters that were miles above the general crowd of writers back then, and Brian Wilson was one of them, in my opinion. There's a Pet Sounds boxset where you can listen to the tracking sessions and hear Brian instructing the musicians on what to play and how to play it. It's just a fascinating experience.
“That ear—I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.” Bob Dylan on Brian Wilson
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CindyC
For instance "Love in the Time of Cholera". I think that's such a bullshit story. The guy wastes his whole life for some girl that he had a crush on when he was a teenager, but wasn't able to get. WTF - get over it.
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Duane in Houston
I think there's a BIG difference between "getting it" and "liking it".
I get pet Sounds, I just don't happen to like it.
Same with The Clash, most Reggae, The Band etc. etc. etc.
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swiss
Elmo, your comments are great - do you think it would help to listen to the album before Pet Sounds, then listen to Pet Sounds to fully get how radical a departure it is?
Cuz for me a song like "God Only Knows" sounds basically the same (albeit slower) as what I think of as "Beach Boys" (like Surfer Girl) but I'm admittedly ignorant of them. Also sometimes the intellectual fervor surrounding some Beach Boys' fans is a real turn-off - like my last boyfriend literally shouted and pulled the car over when I [innocently] asked about Pet Sounds: "You're just repeating the Beach Boys orthodoxy -- without acknowledging the canon!!" (wtf????? I have no idea what any of that means! we didn't last long after the Beach Boys incident)
Also, a song like God Only Knows has been played on "lite rock" stations and I'm going to have to re-train myself from hearing it as sappy.
- swiss
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HelterSkelter
Was it the Beatles or more mainly McCartney that was a PET SOUNDS freak? I don't get the whole thing either but maybe you had to have been there.... I wasn't that big on the BEACH BOYS, was more of a BEATLES, STONES, DOORS Hombre....
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Justin
I also had the same issue when I began my Brian Wilson journey earlier this year. I came to the board with the same issue you are echoing today:
[www.iorr.org]
It took me a while to "get it." I'm not sure how it happened...but it didn't come with Pet Sounds. It was a combination of other tracks from their post-Pet Sounds canon and more importantly it came after a few listens of "Smile." To me, that is the masterpeice. It's beautiful yet haunting. I finally understood the importance of "mood" and "feel" that Brian was so obsessed to create. It was then that I finally connected the dots and went back to Pet Sounds and looked at it from a different angle. Listen to it not with your brain..but with your heart...it's all about feeling and absorbing the song in a different way.
Maybe also pick up the live DVD of Brian performing the entire "Pet Sounds" album in Lodnon. It's a good DVD which elevates the music a bit more by seeing it performed...that probably also did it for me because I saw the music unfolding and then you realize the scope and size of the music which is very wide and vast.
I was in my Brian Wilson/Beach Boys phase for probably 4 or 5 months...only listened to them trying and searching for that "thing" everyone was talking about. And then it just happened.
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Elmo Lewis
Three instrumentals is a little much.