Andrew Hickey:

[Brian] Wilson’s post-Pet Sounds career, like his pre-Pet Sounds career, is an extraordinary mix of the bizarre, the shockingly bad, the beautiful, and the awe-inspiring, often in the same song. Wilson appears to have no filters, and while this means his music at its best is the most emotionally truthful I’ve ever heard, it also means he has no quality control. His best work is as likely to be an allegorical fairytale about a prince with a magic transistor radio, written while listening to a Randy Newman album on repeat, or a two-minute as-yet-unreleased song about baseball, or a song about Johnny Carson done in mock-Weimar cabaret style backed by a Moog set on “fart sounds,” as it is to be an eight-minute psychedelic country epic about the Rio Grande.

Every morning — and I mean every single morning — when I awaken from slumbers, my brain serves up a song. A different song each day, as a rule. Never merely a chune, as the Scots fiddlers would say, but always a song with words, and usually a pop song from any time in the past fifty years. Rarely it’s a hymn, and even more rarely a pre-Sixties pop song; but from within that fifty-year window it can be pretty much anything, including songs I haven’t thought of in years or even decades. A few times it’s been a theme song from an old TV show. 

The only exceptions to the Random Shuffle Rule come when I’ve had a song on heavy playing rotation. For instance, last year when I was obsessed with Big Red Machine’s gorgeous “Phoenix” it became my morning song on several occasions. But typically what turns up as I lift my head from the pillow is a surprise and I love that. 

This morning it was “Gates of the West” (a neglected little gem, that one); yesterday it was “Mykonos”; and that’s all I’m going to say. I’ve never actually written or (except to my family) spoken about this oddity of mine, and I’ve never made a record of the songs — I’m superstitiously afraid that any such documentation will put an end to the service. So this post is as far as I’m willing to go in self-revelation. 

But I mention it because I wonder how many other people have something like it — a central element of daily experience that no one else (or hardly anyone) knows about. Some quirk, some habit, whatever; but something that for you is a major feature of life even though no one would have any way of knowing it. 

Wingy Manone was a trumpet player and songwriter from New Orleans who lost part of his right arm in a streetcar accident when he was ten years old. For the rest of his life he wore a prosthetic arm, and at some point had one made with a special compartment for which he had one use: to stash his famously excellent weed.

Still the best.

Every serious acoustic guitarist will have thoughts about how a guitar’s body — its shape, its bracing, the woods from which it is made, etc. — creates its sound. As well they might! The funny thing is, players of electric guitars talk the same language — even though, as this video — by Aaron Lanterman, a professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Tech — demonstrates, the sound made by an electric guitar when amplified has almost nothing to do with its body.

The sound an electric guitar makes when amplified is generated by the response that its pickups make to the movement of its strings, and people naturally assume that pickups hear a version of what they themselves hear. But pickups don’t hear at all, because pickups are not microphones. They electromagnetically detect mechanical vibrations, and that’s all they do. As the Wikipedia page just linked says: “The permanent magnet in the pickup magnetizes the guitar string above it. This causes the string to generate a magnetic field which is in alignment with that of the permanent magnet. When the string is plucked, the magnetic field around it moves up and down with the string. This moving magnetic field induces a current in the coil of the pickup as described by Faraday’s law of induction.”

Lanterman explains all this wonderfully well. One interesting thing that I didn’t know before listening to his video but should have: You’ll sometimes hear guitarists talk about the “resonance” of a solid-body electric guitar, but electric guitars only have solid bodies in order to reduce resonance. A hollow-body guitar does indeed resonate, and resonate in ways that can interfere with the pickups’ ability to detect the vibration of the strings. That’s why so many electric guitars are made from a chunk of thick heavy wood: a chunk of thick heavy wood doesn’t resonate when the strings are plucked.

This doesn’t mean that different electric guitars don’t sound different — they do. But, if they’re solid-body guitars, the differences in sound don’t arise from the composition or shape of the body or (heaven knows) the paint or the varnish thereupon.

Jan Butler:

Pet Sounds was recorded in 27 sessions spread over four months and using four different studios, each of which was selected for its distinctive sound, created through a combination of the physical design of each studio and the unique consoles and tape machines available. Wilson recorded the instrumental backing track first, usually in one session, using the best freelance session musicians then working in Hollywood. This use of session musicians instead of band or Beach Boys members, and the wide range of instrumentalists used, including bass harmonica and the theremin, was almost unheard of in rock at this time. Wilson would work with musicians individually, singing or playing them the details of their part and experimenting with them to create the sound he wanted. He would then experiment with the whole band, instructing them on their relative positions to their mikes, altering echo effects, which he recorded live, and further experimenting with details of rhythm and combinations of sounds before recording a take. He would then record several takes until he was completely happy with every detail of the backing track.

This method of experimenting in the studio and working with the musicians to help realise the sounds that he had imagined was unique at the time; a combination of mixing live and composing on the spot.  He recorded the backing tracks on three- or four-track tape machines, depending on which studio he was in. […]

Capitol executives were not pleased with the finished album. The sales department in particular were worried because the production, style and subject matter were so different from the established image of the Beach Boys, with their wholesome, ‘fun in the sun’ image. The album was nevertheless released in America on May 16th, 1966. Unfortunately, despite some glowing reviews amongst American music critics, it was, by the Beach Boys’ standards, a relative flop, peaking briefly at number ten on the album chart on 2nd July, and was the first Beach Boys record in three years not to go gold.

A fascinating article about both Brian Wilson’s recording process and the ways that his musical innovations confused both The Beach Boys’ audience and their record company. (Though the record was a big success in Britain, for reasons Butler explains.) Someone — alas, I can’t remember who — once commented that the big difference between The Beach Boys and the Beatles in that era is that the Beatles were able to innovate without alienating, or even lessening the enthusiasm of, their audience. There are many potential reasons for this divergence, but surely one of them is that the Beatles’ transformation was gradual while the one overseen by Brian Wilson was pretty sudden. But make no mistake: Pet Sounds is as good as any record the Beatles ever made.

I’ve been listening to Pet Sounds a lot lately, and I’ve been listening to it on vinyl. That’s an experience that even a year ago I would have said was not going to happen. Just before we moved to Waco in 2013, I took my vinyl collection — which had been sitting in boxes in my basement; I hadn’t had a turntable in at least twenty years — to Half Price Books and sold the lot. “Wow, you’ve got some cool records here,” the clerk commented. “You sure you want to sell these?” I winced, but reminded myself that, as just noted, I hadn’t listened to any of them since Ronald Reagan was President — and said, with a sigh, Yeah, I’m sure. And that was the end of vinyl records for me.

Or so I thought. What happened? Well, gifts happened — over the years a handful of LPs, which I couldn’t listen to. And then one day I did a casual search for turntables, and realized that you can get a decent one for not much money … it took me a while to pull the trigger, but looking back I can see that it was inevitable.

My good friend Rob Miner has a massive collection of LPs, but sometimes reminds me that he’s not a “vinyl fundamentalist.” And he’s not — but plenty of people are. And I have always been annoyed by the language of such fundamentalists: they talk about “warmth” and “presence” and “depth” — What the hell is that all about? Such metaphors have zero meaning to me. I scornfully dismissed all such talk … until I started listening to music on my new turntable.

The first record that really caught my attention is this beautiful remaster of a 1959 recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons featuring Felix Ayo as soloist. I had previously heard it in a lossless digital format; but vinyl was a totally different experience. The next thing that knocked me out was Boards of Canada’s The Campfire Headphase, which in recent weeks I have listened to over and over and over again. Also: Tinariwen, Emmaar — a fabulous record. And then came Pet Sounds; and now, I fear, there’s no going back. I listen to these LPs and think: Such warmth! Such depth! Such presence!

Yeah, I’m gonna have to work on my metaphors. I really have no idea how to describe my experience. All I know is that when I listen to the records named above, and a few others, I listen to the entire album, I listen with undistracted attention, and I listen over and over. I rarely do any of those things with my digital collection; I don’t do it often even with my CDs. The sound of these vinyl records compels me. (I bought a cheap old copy of The Band’s magnificent second album, only to discover that it’s crackly as hell throughout — and I even like that. It’s a fit for the style of that particular masterpiece. I am becoming a cliché. I am becoming that guy.)

Not everything benefits from the viny treatment; maybe not many things do. I wouldn’t listen to Arvo Pärt’s music on anything but CD; ditto with Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. I am attached to certain jazz recordings on CD — Miles Davis, Theolonius Monk — and am somewhat afraid to find out what they sound like on vinyl … but they sound so great on CD that I’m not really tempted. (Yet?) And a lot of the ambient music I listen to seems made for the limitlessness of digital streaming. But what does benefit from vinyl benefits tremendously.

I had this post drafted when the great Ted Gioia announced that he has recently rediscovered vinyl. That’s when I knew I had done the right thing.

Rob Sheffield:

I’ve always loved CDs, and I never junked my collection, even when the format fell off a cliff in the 2000s. I cherish all noise-making gear, from cassettes to vinyl to streams. But the CD has its unique charms, especially for longer, deeper listening. No format has ever been kinder to music that takes time. It was the CD that turned Pet Sounds and Another Green World and Heart of the Congos and Astral Weeks into widely beloved classics, as opposed to cult items; it was the format that finally made Lee “Scratch” Perry a mainstream hero. An already-famous LP like Kind of Blue became a whole new phenomenon on disc. The quintessential classics of the jewel-box era — D’Angelo’s Voodoo, Radiohead’s Kid A, Missy’s Supa Dupa Fly — would have flopped as streams. 

Could not possibly agree more enthusiastically. The last couple of years I have been adding to my CD and Blu-Ray collections, because I want to focus my attention on art that (a) I own and (b) I want to encounter over and over again. 

CDs aren’t as cool as vinyl — you miss out on the big beautiful artwork and liner notes, and the ritual of playing isn’t as much fun — but the musical experience, for my money, is significantly better. 

A couple of weeks ago I compared Sviatoslav Richter’s playing of Bach unfavorably to Glenn Gould’s. I need to revisit that comparison. I was basing my response to Richter solely on his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, but recently I have been listening to his massive Richter Plays Bach set and I am absolutely blown away. 

The problem with Richter’s Well-Tempered Clavier, I now realize, has nothing to do with Richter’s playing: it’s all about the recording. The performance sounds like it was recorded in a large room, maybe even on a stage in a concert hall. The reverberations of the environment give the recording a kind of … well, almost pompous quality, a kind of unwarranted drama, given the studious (even if often playfully studious) character of Bach’s exercises. Gould’s recording technique, with its famously close miking, is a much better fit for the music. 

Richter Plays Bach is not as closely-miked as Gould’s performances tend to be, but it was obviously recorded in a more intimate environment than The Well-Tempered Clavier was — and, it turns, out, that makes an enormous difference. The warmth and intelligence of Richer’s playing just sing out. His articulation, though not as absolutely precise as Gould’s — no one’s is, Gould is precise sometimes to a fault —, is flawless, but exhibits an absolute mastery of subtle dynamics as well. And I can hear all this because the recording is so well-engineered. What a masterpiece — I really do think this will become one of my favorite recordings. 

Via Ted Gioia. “There is no genre for funky Ethiopian nuns.”

“Across the Borderline” was a big hit for Willie Nelson, and when Willie covers a song it’s usually the definitive version, but not in this case. The original, above, is the only version that matters, because the song just has to be sung by Freddy Fender, born Baldemar Garza Huerta in San Benito, Texas, a few miles from the Rio Grande. The players, according to the liner notes:

• Freddy Fender – vocal
• Ry Cooder – guitar
• Sam Samudio – organ, backing vocals
• John Hiatt- guitar
• Jim Dickinson – piano
• Tim Drummond – bass
• Jim Keltner – drums
• Ras Baboo – percussion
• Bobby King, Willie Greene Jr. – backing vocals

A Southern/Southwestern Americana supergroup! (The song was written by Cooder, Hiatt, and Dickinson.)

For years, when I listened to this song I thought I was hearing the great Flaco Jiménez on accordion, because he has often played with Ry Cooder over the years — listen, for instance, to his amazing playing on Cooder’s cover of the old Jim Reeves classic “He’ll Have to Go” — but apparently that’s Sam Samudio imitating an accordion on the organ. Sam Samudio was born Domingo Samudio, but is better known as Sam the Sham, leader of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, the people who brought us “Wooly Bully.”

But the really interesting figure here is Jim Dickinson, the heart and soul of Memphis music — and the father of Luther and Cody Dickinson, AKA the North Mississippi Allstars. (Also a one-time drama major at Baylor, though he dropped out to return to Memphis.) There are a thousand Jim Dickinson stories but here’s one:

Dickinson was working at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio when The Rolling Stones were recording there. When they got to “Wild Horses” they ran into a problem. Their road manager and occasional pianist Ian Stewart refused to play the song’s piano part. This was not unusual for Stewart, who had very defined ideas of what he would and would not play, though he didn’t always explain his reasoning to others. In any case, he refused, and Dickinson stepped in — and a career was born. He was always in demand after that.

Years later, Dickinson got to spend some time with Stewart and asked him why he refused to play that song. Stu said, “Minor chords — I don’t play minor chords. When I play with the lads onstage and a minor chord comes by, I lift me hands.” So there you go.

Dickinson’s popularity as a session musician was a function not of technique — he didn’t have much — but of feel. He knew just how and when to add a lick and, maybe more important, when to be silent. You can hear his perfectly tasteful restraint on both “Wild Horses” and “Across the Borderline.”

In a wonderful late interview, he explained how, after he was well established, he met an old Memphis musician called Dish Rag who revealed to him what he had been doing all along. Dish Rag told him that everything in music is about codes. Dickinson was a bit puzzled until he realized that Dish Rag meant “chords.”

He said, ‘This is how you makes a code.” He said you take any note then you go up three and four down. He was talking about keys, not half-steps or whole steps. He was talking about the keys on the keyboard. It was a physical thing I could see. Of course, it works anywhere on the piano. Your thumb ends up on the tonic note and what it makes is a triad. Dish Rag had no idea that’s what it was, but it was a code to him. So, with a triad chord in my right hand and an octave in my left, y’know, I kind of taught myself to play. That’s what I still do … listen to what I’m playing on “Wild Horses” — I’m playing a major triad or a minor with my left hand and an octave with my right … that’s all I play. It’s so simple it works in the studio. It creates space and tension and all the things you want a keyboard to do and it doesn’t get in the way of the damn guitar because rock and roll is about guitars. So, thank god I’ve had a career because I play simple and stupid. It really boils down to the simplicity of what I do. I had a friend ask about the Stones session once, he says “Tell me the truth man, you were holding back weren’t you?” I said, “Dude I was going for it with everything I had [laughs]. It’s just all I got.”

This feels like a big one, and is certainly a harbinger of things to come. We’ve had major rock stars die young, from accidents (Buddy Holly, Stevie Ray Vaughan) or drug abuse (too many to list); and we’ve had them last into middle age only to succumb to bad habits (Elvis) and more accidents and even murder (John Lennon, Marvin Gaye). But now they’re starting to go from … well, from the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. From little more than old age. 

Of course, Chuck Berry died four years ago, Little Richard last year — and Johnny Cash nearly twenty years ago, believe it or not. But — and I don’t think I’m making a false distinction here — they were artists who made their names before the emergence of Youth Culture. Indeed, by the time the Stones and the Beatles and Dylan and The Who came around, their stars were on the wane. Chuck Berry and Little Richard are associated with the “rock and roll” of the Fifties, not the ROCK of the Sixties and Seventies — the music that defined almost everything in its time, the sun around which the rest of culture revolved. The sun that seemed permanent, that couldn’t possibly burn out. 

But Paul is 79, Ringo 81, Dylan 80. Eric Clapton is 76, Jimmy Page 77. Mick is 78, Keith 77. Pete Townshend 76, Roger Daltrey 77. In the next decade we are likely to lose almost all of those people, and an Era will have passed. It’s strange, for me anyway, to contemplate. 

So rest in peace, Charlie. You were one of the great ones. Others will be joining you soon enough.