The Beach Boys left a huge impact on the music industry and have inspired many modern artists in today's industry to make music. Early on in the Beach Boy's career, their music was all about having a good time and going to the beach and surfing. It was a simple, like-able, and commercially appealing image that thousands of fans would grow to fall in love with. The image was even in their name. You didn't even have to listen to one of their songs to know what they sounded like. One look at one of their early album covers said it all. Clearly, their main goal was to appeal to a large audience. Considering this was the early 60's and surfing was becoming extremely popular, they filled that goal quite well.
Brian Wilson was the leader of the band. He was the creative force behind all that was The Beach Boys and can be claimed to be responsible for most of the hits they came out with. Brian Wilson was known for having a great ear for harmonies and was greatly inspired by his favorite group growing up, The Four Freshmen. Brian Wilson wrote some of his most experimental and brilliant arrangements when he wrote Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds was written in response to The Beatle's Revolver which also proved to influence Brian Wilson to push his creativity to break away from their old easy-going beach image.
Pet Sounds is rich in instrumentation and ran with Phil Spector's idea for the 'wall of sound'. The arrangements were complex and really stood out amongst other songs that were out at the time. The album also played as a whole rather than a collection of singles; A first for the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson was keen on writing lyrics, alongside lyricist, Tony Asher, that were deeper than anything they had previously done. The songs dealt with issues beyond love and really touched down on a psychological level.
As an audio engineer, Pet Sounds struck me as an impressive work of art. In contrast to some of their earlier releases, there was an obvious amount of work and thought that was poured into Pet Sounds. Listening to the session recordings showed how brilliant Brian Wilson's direction really was. The album is pieced together like a puzzle and the arrangements work together perfectly to create some outright great music. Pet Sounds was definitely a milestone in music history and is worth a listen to any lover of music and audio engineering. It's impressive in both mindsets.
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I thoroughly enjoyed Raul Garcia’s post on Pet Sounds. It was nice and to the point which I enjoyed. There wasn’t any filler material, which made it easy to read. His knowledge on The Beach Boys was quite clear. He gave enough background information for anyone to be able to come and read this blog and relate to the story. I also liked the fact that he paid attention to the session tapes because I find those to be better sources than any documentary. The one criticism I would have is that he may have accidentally mixed up Wilson being inspired by Rubber Soul and not Revolver, which wasn’t released until a few months after Pet Sounds. All in all it was a great post and will more than likely read more of his posts.
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