“God Only Knows Mr. Wilson, Surf’s Up”

The Beach Boys “The Smile Sessions” came out on October 31st 2011, a little over a month after my son was born. Listened to this with him for about a year straight. Good, good, good vibrations.

It’s Brian Wilson’s finally completed masterpiece, his answer to The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album.

Brian literally lost his mind in 1967 trying to compete with The Beatles and the album was never finished properly until they finally went back to the original masters and pieced all of this psychedelic masterpiece together in 2011.

There as so many layers to this album, so many sounds, so many harmonies. It’s glorious.

He actually released a solo non-Beach Boys, Brian Wilson Presents “Smile” album in 2004 with an orchestra. Excellent, but straight forward. Doesn’t have the weirdness and the bells and whistles. My “music professor” from college Tim, really just my friend Tim that opened up a lot of doors by sharing his experience and record collection with me, hipped me to the story of Brian Wilson. Was working at the Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ when Brian Wilson released that version and toured with an orchestra. My friend Tim went to the show with one of his girlfriends. Pretty sure she was a lawyer. Pretty sure her name was Julie. Show was actually not sold out the lawn was sparse. The Arts Center holds approximately 17,000 people so even so thousands were there. It was just a slow show beerwise. Just looked up the setlist, August 12th 2005, he played 43 songs that night! How was that just about 20 years ago already!?! Was a beer runner at the time and stole some beers from the fridge, put them in my belt line like an adolescent boy would do, and snuck them out to the lawn. Was sitting there with Tim and his girlfriend on the lawn, at night, enjoying a beer and Brian Wilson presenting “Smile” when my boss at the time, Clete, walks right passed me while I was drinking on the job and basically grabs me by the ear and made me clock out for the night. Didn’t lose my job though!

God Only Knows Mr. Wilson, Surf’s Up 🏄‍♂️ 🎶 🌊