The Time He Yelled "Colt Seaver!"

Ryan, again you're cognitive powers astound me. Yeah, the Fall Guy was pretty boss, I will admit to that. Not as boss as Knight Rider or the Greatest American Hero, but some solid preteen action fantasy entertainment. Also it has the second best theme song on TV (the undisputed best being the theme from the inadvertently funniest show of all time: Walker: Texas Ranger, written and performed by the Man Himself, Chuck "I Got My Chest Hair Ripped Out By Bruce Lee, Yes That Bruce Lee, So Don't Give Me Any Lip About How Tight I Wear My Jeans, Okay, Punk?" Norris).

The mention of the Fall Guy reminds me of an amusing anecdote from my days as an LDS missionary in New York City. I was serving in Washington Heights (where my cousin Jesse now lives - REPRESENT!). At the time, my companion was a small Ghanian guy named Adjei Yeboah who was a really nice guy, but... a little weird. He liked pregnant ladies. Like a lot. He would ask them if he could touch their bellies as we walked around the heavily-Dominican neighborhood, me tall and white and him, short and brown. Both of us as skinny as could be in our white shirts and ties, slacks and shiny black shoes. Anyway... where was I? Oh yeah. Yeboah was weird.

Luckily there was another companionship that lived above us in the two (three?) story apartment we lived in. Consequently, I spent a lot of time with our upstairs neighbors, Elder Hipps and Elder Higley. Hipps was from Mesa, AZ and Higley from Syracuse, UT. They were like Abbot and Costello: Hipps tall and skinny, Higley, short and stocky. (Higley, I will also add in here, was the most naive, simple man on the planet. He was as nice as could be, but... simple.)

Anyway so one night we were talking about this and that and somehow, the conversation turned to the Fall Guy. Hipps was talking and all of the sudden couldn't remember the name of Lee Majors' character. You know, the Fall Guy. The main guy. What was his name?

Well, this little episode of pop culture amnesia bugged Elder Hipps to no end. Time and time again, as the conversation moved onto other points of interest, Hipps would be heard to say, "What was his name?" Eventually, I went back downstairs for the night. The next morning I saw Hipps on his way out. "Colt Seaver!" he blurted. "I was laying in bed last night and started to go to sleep when all of the sudden it hit me, his name is 'Colt Seaver.'" Apparently he had yelled it out fairly loudly when it hit him in a bit of a "Eureka!" moment.

Now, whenever I hear any mention of the Fall Guy, which of course is like all of the time, I think of that moment or epiphany, that "Colt Seaver!" moment. In fact, I'm trying to get a law passed that will require people to yell out "Colt Seaver!" instead of the played-out "Eureka!" What does that mean anyway? It's probably Latin for "poo eater," or "Simon & Simon." I don't know. I have more important things to do. Like eat cookies. Or read comics. About people eating cookies.

Anyway, have you ever had a "Colt Seaver!" moment: a blinding moment of realization that laid bare the truths of the universe and rocked your world and also rolled you in the hay... hey hey?

Just wondering.

Deep, Deep, Deep Thoughts

Dearest brother,

I want to begin by thanking you for your most excellent, non-bogus post regarding Pet Sounds. I agree with everything you wrote, and ponder how a man so white that his fake tan cream is White-Out can continually emit such brilliance from his type pad. You rule, sir Todd.

You pose a very interesting question. I'm going to have to say of the three, Knight Rider was the best. How many road trips did we take with our families back in the day, and after passing every big rig ask ourselves, "Is KIT all up in there?" Plus, any man that would name his car "Keep In Touch" deserves the title "King of TV Stars that Perform on Shows that will be Aired on Saturdays for Eternity."

However, special accolades are due to The A-Team. No matter how devastating the explosion, car crash or fall from 100+ feet, dudes never died. A van carrying 10 bad guys could flip over 20 times, catch on fire, explode, and then crash into a boulder, but all 10 dudes would crawl out of the mauled piece of melted steel, rubbing their heads and promising that they'd get that Murdock next time, by gosh. Next time.

But Master, haven't you overlooked a show worthy of utterance in the same breath as the others?

"Well I'm not the kind to kiss and tell, but I've taught ladies plenty..."

Do you know what I'm referring to? Do you remember the guy who wound up in the hay, a hay hay? Tell me you do.

Ponderings On Ponderous Subjects

Ryan - I was just sitting here and wondering to myself things of the utmost importance. Philosophizing about the nature of the universe and whatnot. Really heavy stuff that would give most people - you know, the "normal people," like that Einstein character or that guy in the wheelchair with the little Johnny Five Is Alive voice box thing - an aneurysm just because they thought about it. Things that people like us think about when the rest of the world is too tired to think because that's what people like us do: we think. Like, a lot. About tons of important stuff and importanter stuff and other stuff and whatnot.

So I was sitting here thinking: What was better: the A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard or Knight Rider? I'm inclined to go with Knight Rider because: a) it's Hasslehoff in a leather jacket and a shirt that guarantees a peek at that luxurious chest hair, b) he's in a talking car, 3) the talking car has jet rocket things that make it jump really far and go really fast and finally, d) the car talks. But, see, Dukes of Hazzard, that was some rough stuff, what with the good old boys never meaning no harm and the jumping cars all of the time and things of that nature, and the A-Team had Mr. T and a buttload of explosions on a weekly basis. And don't even start to think about how difficult this ponderous pondering gets once you add Airwolf to the mix.*

So, you can plainly see, I'm in a bit of a bind. I need someone whose brain can handle questions of this magnitude without collapsing in on themselves and creating a black hole in the space-time continuum or something like that. Someone who can think beyond the thinking of mortal thinkers and think the thinking that needs to be thunked. Someone incredibly white. Someone named... you. Help a brother out.

*I left the Greatest American Hero out because everybody with half a brain knows that show was the bizz-omb on toast for shizzle.

On the Subject of Geniuses

Ryan, great post. I sort of had this conversation on my blog a few weeks back. Basically, I called out anybody willing to call Pet Sounds anything less than a... lemme find the quote here: "a work of staggering genius."

My cousin Jesse, who's a cool cat, asked me where Pet Sounds stood in comparison to Revolver or Sgt. Pepper's which is some heavy questioning. Seriously, how do you answer that without hurting your brain or at least losing cool points with the hipster set?

My initial response to this was as follows:

While it makes no sense, I love Pet Sounds more than either of them. There's such an amazing feeling of melancholy, even in the upbeat songs. Plus, it's sooo layered. I was listening to the sessions and it blew my mind how intricate everything is, despite feeling, at first blush, to be simple little, "teenage symphonies to God," as Brian Wilson once described them as.

Revolver is great pop music, amazing pop music (maybe my favorite Beatles album) and Sgt. Pepper's is a masterpiece, but, for my money, it's all about Pet Sounds.

Mainly because as brilliant as Sgt. Pepper's is, it feels a bit... academic at times. It's a little too self-aware, whereas Pet Sounds is effortlessly itself. Sgt. Pepper's is, to my ears, a little removed from human feeling. Revolver has some vitality to it, but in my mind, Pet Sounds is pure, unfiltered feeling. I don't know if that makes sense, but... there it is.

I think that this is as good of a beginning as any.

See, what makes Pet Sounds so special to me is something you touched on in your post, and that's the fact that Brian Wilson was, for all intents and purposes, blazing a new trail into the woods of art pop, a woods that, within the next decade, he would become irretrievably lost in for the next few decades. Let's be honest here, the Beatles weren't really laying anything on the line when they recorded Rubber Soul. Sure, it expanded the boundaries of pop music in the late-60's, but it's not too far off from the trail they'd blazed in previous albums. It's the natural conclusion to what they'd been doing (I think For Sale is the anomaly of the early catalog - a hiccup on the way to enlightenment... though it's a fun album of covers and the like, it's not really a progression at all). Take the opening riff to "Daytripper," which is fairly indicative of where they were headed on their next album, 1965's Rubber Soul.

Revolver, I think, pushes the envelope a bit. It starts to get a little more esoteric ("Tomorrow Never Knows," "Love To You") but it's still pretty much pop dressed up in a Magritte bowler hat for a little psychedelic flavoring. It stretches the sound, but not to any point where they may be doing something overly personal or adventurous. They're just doing what they do best: making the catchiest, rockingest pop music ever recorded. They're doing it on drugs, but they're not doing anything too far off from what they've been doing. At no time do they, to paraphrase the Jason Lee character in Almost Famous, "F with the formula."

Which brings us to Pet Sounds. If the Beatles were just expanding their palette, Brian Wilson was redefining his, if not discarding it completely. The Beach Boys were, and still are, known for their early surfing and hot-rod songs. They are tied, for better or worse, to the innocence of being a teenager in the early 60's America eternally and for good reason. The songs are fun, energetic and symphonic all at once. They're overblown and understated. They're a distillation of America as we'd like to be: optimistic, young, daring, enlightened and energetic. And while those songs are great examples of Brian's skill as a pop producer - a 20-something shaggy-haired and bespectacled Phil Spector acolyte who grew up with the ocean constantly ringing in his one good ear - they're just that: examples of his production talent. To use an awkward analogy, Brian's early work was putting a tuxedo on a cactus: it looks fun, but you wouldn't want to dance with it all night long. If the early songs defined so precisely what it means to be a teenager in America, what happens when those teenagers grow up? What then?

While you can hear echoes of it in the two albums preceding it ("In the Back of My Mind," from the Beach Boys Today, "You're So Good To Me," from Summer Days (& Summer Nights!)), it wasn't until Pet Sounds that Brian managed to find the balance between the maturity he and his band mates were facing and the lush symphonies in his head. Which is why, to me, it's so much more revolutionary than any of the Beatles late-60's output, which, while staggering, lacks the depth that Pet Sounds has, both sonically and emotionally.

Pet Sounds was an artistic gamble. Brian decided that he'd marry the complex, mature themes of the life he was going through to the baroque pop he'd been hearing in his skull. For a young man whose entire career was based on fun songs about girls, cars and surfing, it was not only unprecedented, but slightly self-destructive to release an album of grown-up "symphonies," especially when all the record company wanted was an album of fun songs to get the kids' cash. It's like a butcher all of the sudden deciding he's going to start selling cupcakes. It doesn't bode well for his business. And for Brian and the Beach Boys, it didn't. He had gambled and he had lost.

Pet Sounds was, for all intents and purposes, a commercial flop in the United States. It gained popularity in Britain, but the Beach Boys are America's band. For Brian, who didn't tour, didn't leave Southern California, this probably didn't matter. He'd opened himself up, in an unbelievably intimate way, to the world, and America - his world - had completely ignored him.

This explains why his next project, the beleaguered Smile saw him retreating further into the hipster posturing that the Beatles would perfect on Sgt. Pepper's. Imagine the feeling when the family and friends who comprised the Beach Boys, and whose careers rested on Brian's ability to write them profitable pop songs, returned from tour to hear the psychedelic Gothic road-trip that was Smile. Imagine the rejection when those closest to you tell you that your masterpieces just aren't that important to them. It's like Woody Allen's character in Stardust Memories: "I liked you earlier surfing songs better."

I think that the best example of the difference between Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's can be surmised by a look at the album covers. On one hand you have the Beatles all dolled up in their psychedelic band-leader outfits, surrounded by counterculture icons from throughout time. They want you to know that not only are they totally "now," but they're "then." They're Poe, they're Dylan, they're Marilyn Monroe and W.C. Fields and Walt Whitman and James Dean. They're artists. They're poets. They're icons dammit! And they're clever icons! If there's anything that separates me from the genius of Sgt. Pepper's, (and it is a genius album, don't misinterpret my critique for dislike... it's mind-blowing, but distant) it's the sneaky feeling that "these guys really want to let me know how clever they are."

Contrast that with the cover of Pet Sounds: five guys at a petting zoo, not altogether comfortable with having baby goats jump all over them. There's no elaborate scenery, no hip culture references, no Pendelton shirts or surfboards, just the Beach Boys, now a little bit older, a little bit cooler. The Beach Young Men. Just the Beach Boys trying their damnedest to hold on to the last fleeting moments of youth before the totality of grown-up life and all the madness it entails comes crashing down on them. And if that's not art you can identify with, then I don't know what is.

Basically, Sgt. Pepper's is the cool kid you'd want to be seen hanging out with; Pet Sounds is the kind of guy you'd sit up all night talking to about whatever young people talk about anymore.

Anyway, so yes, I agree with you. In my usual long-winded, comma-heavy, rambling way. I'm sure there are holes all through my argument, but it's after 1 a.m. and I'm sleepy. And also, yeah, I'll go on Antiques Roadshow with you if you go on America's Next Top Model with me. Remember to shave your legs. Peace out.

Who is this Beetles you refer to?

OMG (G standing for goodness, of course). This will probably be the only time I ever publicly put down the Beatles, or at least not treat them as though it were their heads on Mount Rushmore.
Rubber Soul is better than Party!, or for that matter any Beach Boys album pre-Pet Sounds. However, Rubber Soul was the blood in the water the great white shark needed.

"In December 1966, I heard the album RUBBER SOUL by the Beatles. It was definitely a challenge for me. I saw that every cut was very artistically interesting and stimulating. I immediately went to work on the songs for PET SOUNDS."

That's a Brian Wilson quote as found in the liner notes for the CD version of Pet Sounds. With Rubber Soul, Brian realized that albums didn't have to have throw-away songs, realized that the bar had been risen, realized that it was ok to be an artist instead of a pop star. And he was more than up to the challenge.

The reason the album is called Pet Sounds is because that's what he heard in his mind: pet sounds that he wanted to share with the world. Until Rubber Soul, musicians focused on producing 2-3 great songs, and then mailed the rest in to the labels. The Beatles gave him permission to explore the pet sounds and attempt to press them to vinyl.

Pet Sounds is all Brian. The other Boys and a bunch of studio musicians helped him produce the sounds, but they were all sounds that he heard in his head long before they were uttered into microphones and blown into trombones. This is the main difference between Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds could have been done with an entirely different set of musicians (this is proven with the recently released Smile). It was Brian that orchestrated the album. Sgt. Peppers, on the other hand, was more of a collection of requests to George Martin.

It's rumored that during the recording of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! John kept telling Martin that he wanted to "smell the sawdust." Take after take John said "I don't smell the sawdust," until Martin did something right, and John was satisfied.

Brian knew what he wanted. The Beatles knew they wanted cool sounds, but they didn't know what sounds they wanted, or for that matter how to create them. Pet Sounds is a deliberate execution of an idea; Sgt. Peppers is an attempt to create the same magic that's found in Pet Sounds. It doesn't reach the same level because its foundation is not based on an idea, it's based on the desire to have an idea.

There would be no Sgt. Peppers without Pet Sounds. There may not be a Pet Sounds without Rubber Soul, either. And there definitely isn't The Wiz without The Wizard of Oz.

Seriously, I challenge any of you to listen to Don't Talk (Put Your Head on my Shoulders) with headphones without crying. Personally, I cry for several reasons, but mainly because it is so beautiful and perfect and somehow makes me feel happy and inadequate at the same time.

Here's a quick quiz: on page 4 of the CD version of Pet Sounds, is the dude standing behind Brian:
a) a bus driver
b) a line cook at a hamburger joint Brian frequented before Radiant Radish
c) Tattoo's father

The answer, of course, is potato.

Dylan, do you agree with my post? Also, would you be willing to go to Antiques Road Show with me and bring something heavy that takes both of us to carry but is worth nothing, like a table from Target? I would love to go on that show, yo.

Ryan, Your Diary Is MINE!

First off, you already know the answer to this question: I'm a Mario man all the way. I absolutely suck at Halo. Within five minutes I'm running in circles and shooting at the ceiling. It's pathetic. It's like watching a deformed octupus trying, unsuccessfully, to solve a Rubick's cube. It's just... really awkward.

Oh, and just a little clarification: Optimus Prime is not dead. He's just taking some time off as a semi-truck. Travelling, clearing his head. Taking some "me time." Trying to "find himself." He looks good. He's lost some weight, seems a lot more tan and content. He said to tell you "Hi," and to ask you if you have that 20 bucks you owe him. I dunno.

Here is my question to you, Mister "I'm sooo tired" Ryan: Who would win in an alleyway knife fight: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Pet Sounds? Brass knuckles allowed. Puerto Rican cockfight rules: no biting or hair-pulling or "yo momma jokes."

Discuss.

More than meets the...White album clues

Have you been reading my journal? I knew that lock wouldn't keep prying eyes out!

Here's my answer:

Optimus Prime
Paul McCartney
Bruce Lee

If it weren't so late I'd write more. But I will end with a question: Super Mario Brothers or Halo?

Ryan, Another Great Question

Scooters are great and all, but I was wondering, can you saddle a tiger? A green tiger with yellow stripes? Because maybe I watched a little too much He-Man growing up, but that'd be an awesome way to get around when I'm old. It's guaranteed to keep you safe and will come in handy in bank and post office lines, the two natural enemies of old people in the wild.

Now I have a question for you: if you could brinng three people back from the dead for use in a no-holds-barred cage match against Gehghis Khan, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and Skeletor, who would you choose and why? Clock's ticking...

Scoot your Boot

I agree, that was a dumb question to ask you, given the fact that both of us despise music and all. What's next, rank Woody Allen movies or Salinger novels? Let's talk motorized scooters.

When I get old and cannot drive, I am going to purchase a motorized scooter. And a helmet. And a scarf. But not at the same time.

What form of transportation will you use when you can no longer navigate your automobile?

My Three Songs

Ryan, this is a great question. First off, I'd start off with something that would get people going. Something that would help that morning frappucino do its job. I'd probably start off with, I dunno, "Danger, High Voltage," by Electric Six. This would possibly make people crash their cars if they were listening on the commute, or maybe start a fistfight with their cubicle neighbor if they were at work.

Next up would be "Panda," by Swedish psychedelic rockers Dungen. This would make everybody who hears it start burning stuff: buildings, kittens, clouds. Anything and everything, really.

Then I'd slow it down a little with some Rage Against the Machine, doing their anthem, "Wake Up" which would send the listeners into a violent spasm of destruction that would end with the entire world becoming a smoking crater. It would not be pretty.

Either that or a three song Huey Lewis & the News set that would have roughly the same after-effects.

And that's why I can never submit my three-song set to any radio station. Ever.

Start

So this is the inaugural entry for our new blog. We'll share thoughts, jokes, and Vienna sausages in this forum.

Here's a good one. The Boulder radio station KBCO is playing song sets. Listeners send in three songs, and the station plays them. Today someone chose "God Only Knows" and "Good Morning Good Morning" by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the third song. What would your 3-set be? Here's mine:

"Jealous Guy"
"Pride (in the name of love)"
"Power of Love" -Chicago

I'm anxious to read your next entry, Dylan.