Since Brian Wilson’s death the good lady and I have been listening to the Beach Boys a lot. While doing so it struck me that even without God Only Knows, Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains they would still be remembered – even revered – for songs like I Get Around, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Help Me Rhonda, California Girls, Do It Again, Break Away and the arrangement on Sloop John B. And too, the slower, more thoughtful tracks like In My Room, Don’t Worry Baby and The Warmth of the Sun.

I discount here the early surfing inspired tracks Surfin’ Safari, Surfin’ USA and Surfer Girl. (Very few people now remember Jan and Dean, after all.) The ‘hot rod’ songs, Little Deuce Coupe and Fun, Fun, Fun might just creep in however.

I always had a liking for this one though, the B-side of Sloop John B.

The Beach Boys: You’re So Good To Me

Taken from one of my favourite Beach Boys albums, Holland, this is a track which apparently Brian Wilson does not like and never has. A bizarre attitude to my mind.

The Beach Boys: Sail on Sailor

Where does this stand in the panoply of Beach Boys’ singles?

Not very high if you go by its chart placing (no 29 in the UK.)

But to me it’s up there. Not as high as God Only Knows or Good Vibrations certainly, but it’s from that time when the Beach Boys were in their mid-60s pomp.

And it’s also not all that Beach Boys-y.

The Beach Boys: Wild Honey

Do It Again would have made a good title for this category.

The single represented something of a comeback for the Beach Boys and brought back memories of the early surfing songs.

As I recall Do It Again was one of the singles which featured in an unprecedented (and unrepeated) three-way tie at No 1 in the charts along with Herb Alpert’s This Guy’s in Love With You and a third one I’m not sure of but may have been the Bee Gees’ I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You.

You may remember me mentioning that one of my school mates was a big Beach Boys fan. He really liked Do It Again’s b-side Wake the World – a very short song indeed – which I include here for your pleasure.

The Beach Boys: Do It Again

The Beach Boys: Wake the World

For various reasons I was listening to “California Saga” from the Beach Boys’ Holland album this week, which, yes, is a 1970s recording. Referencing, among other things, John Steinbeck and his “travellin’s with Charley” it also mentions that at a festival, “Country Joe will do his show,” and I thought “Hmm.. I’ve not done that one.”

I don’t think Country Joe and the Fish are remembered for more than the one song but that song certainly caught a mood.

It is the quintessential musical protest against the war in Vietnam.

As this is a live version – Joe performing at a festival, Woodstock no less – it is not suitable for work.

Country Joe McDonald: Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag

Last year I started my Friday On My Mind ramblings as a result of a competition at my workplace for best song of the Nineteen Sixties. Well, the year has rolled round and this time it was the Nineteen Seventies. The same rules applied – a hit single in either the UK or the USA.

Given the tweeness of last year’s winner, Daydream Believer, there was quite a bit of discussion about what the equivalent 70s song might be. The great fear was it would be Eurovision winner, Save Your Kisses For Me. Thankfully it wasn’t. It turns out the judging panel went for overblown bombast instead. Second place went to Free’s All Right Now and the winner was Bruce Springsteen with Born To Run.

Well, that may have been a hit in the States but it certainly wasn’t in Britain.

It was a second winner in a row from the US, though. So much for British pop!

To try to sum up a whole decade with one song is impossible of course but for most pervasive 1970s song Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody must be up there practically unchallenged.

There is an argument that (much like sexual intercourse) the 60s didn’t begin in musical terms until the arrival of The Beatles. In the same way the musical decade could be said to linger until the advent of glam rock which I would date to Marc Bolan’s selling out and the release of Hot Love in 1971. The musical 70s then only spanned the brief time from 1971 to 1977, when punk came along.

Also, the 70s – certainly in its early years – was actually more the decade of the album than the single (by and large the two were aimed at different markets and barely talked to each other) so that fact alone automatically rules out a lot of good stuff.

Still, to my mind there are many, many better 70s singles than Born To Run to choose from. A lot of them will have been album tracks first I suppose.

I’ve featured elsewhere Albert Hammond’s Free Electric Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Ohio and The Beach Boys’ Student Demonstration Time.

After toying with Al Stewart’s Time Passages, I thought either Do It Again or Reelin’ In The Years, both by Steely Dan, would be a good umbrella term for a selection from the 70s. I settled on Reelin’ In The Years.

So here’s the not overblown and far from bombastic Steely Dan. (They’re still from the US though.)

Steely Dan: Reelin’ In The Years

I’ve always been a sucker for male voices singing in harmony. (I would draw the line, though, at ecclesiastical recordings.)

I know most people’s choice for Beach Boys track of the 60s would be Good Vibrations. It is a magnificent work but maybe it tries a little too hard. And it depends for a lot of its effect on the theremin. It’s also a bit hiccuppy. Not as much as Heroes And Villains admittedly but still, it doesn’t flow.

A schoolfriend of mine was a great Beach Boys fan and he swore by a very short song called Wake The World. As well as God Only Knows I also have a soft spot for Friends.

My mother used to complain that to sing God Only Knows wasn’t nice; yet to me, the song never seemed to be blasphemous. The reverse in fact.

My memory of hearing this for the first time was on the sea front at Largs but I may be confusing this with something else as my childhood visits to Largs were surely all before its release date.

I still feel there is something pure about this recording. The singing in the round at the fade out always gets to me.

The Beach Boys: God Only Knows

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Ohio wasn’t the only song to mention the Kent State shootings. Student Demonstration Time, from the Beach Boys excellent Surf’s Up album, does so too.

A (restricted access) blog which I frequent aired complaints that this is a rip off of Riot In Cell Block Nine which, according to Wiki, the Beach Boys used to play in their concerts around that time. Some might, instead, call it a homage.

The lyric does contain what I think is rather a good pair of lines in:-
“The pen is mightier than the sword
But no match for a gun (when there’s a riot going on.)” The parentheses are mine.

The Beach Boys: Student Demonstration Time