{"id":22561,"date":"2015-07-10T14:13:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T18:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=22561"},"modified":"2015-07-11T23:16:34","modified_gmt":"2015-07-12T03:16:34","slug":"love-mercy-cave-in-the-forbidden-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-mercy-cave-in-the-forbidden-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Love &#038; Mercy<\/em>: The Cave in the Forbidden Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KKlIWBsudU4\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>OK, so <em>Love &amp; Mercy Week<\/em> wasn&#8217;t the thread-a-day, gripping discussion shot in the arm to Rock Town Hall that I&#8217;d hoped it would be. Traffic to the site continues to be down, and Facebook and actual telephone calls continue to be an easy way out for even regulars to discuss threads outside the forum.\u00a0One Townsman was content to air his objections to <a title=\"Say Anything 2\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/movie-review-say-anything-2-the-healing-of-brian-wilson\/\" target=\"_blank\">my movie review<\/a> via private messages on Facebook, while <strong>E. Pluribus Gergely<\/strong>, the man who accompanied me to the movie felt his daily phone calls with encouragement for my &#8220;great work&#8221; would do the job. Offlist feedback and deep friendship are much appreciated, but that&#8217;s not why any of us drafts a post for public consumption in the Halls of Rock.<\/p>\n<p>Who knows, perhaps enough people haven&#8217;t seen the movie to focus on my follow-up piece regarding <a title=\"Dennis Leary\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/dennis-leary-as-dennis-wilson-in-love-mercy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dennis Leary&#8217;s involvement<\/a>. Regardless, as too often is the case, life (including\u00a0work) got in the way of me drafting all the excellent threads I had in mind. In case you&#8217;d like to pick up any of the projected threads that I&#8217;m not going to have time to flesh out, they are\u00a0as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Friday the 13th: Eugene\u00a0vs Murray<\/li>\n<li>Paul Dano Seals Best Performance in a Terrible Movie Oscar<\/li>\n<li>Antisemitism in Love &amp; Mercy<\/li>\n<li>Love &amp; Mercy Through the Prism of the Manson Family<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The one thread that I will complete this week is the concern I&#8217;ve had with Beach Boys worship since the late-&#8217;80s. It&#8217;s an issue I don&#8217;t believe will ever be resolved until my hot mute cavewoman of the prehistoric future drops the needle on &#8220;I Get Around&#8221; in\u00a0the\u00a0<strong>Cave of the Forbidden Zone<\/strong>.<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-22564\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/igetaround-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"igetaround\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/igetaround-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/igetaround.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I grew up viscerally\u00a0loving The Beach Boys: the big hits, like &#8220;I Get Around,&#8221; &#8220;Don&#8217;t Worry Baby,&#8221; &#8220;Help Me Rhonda,&#8221; even the overplayed (even circa 1975) &#8220;California Girls&#8221; (although the really early Chuck Berry ripoffs were of less interest to me). I was a little out of step in the mid-&#8217;70s for constantly lifting the needle on these records and playing them repeatedly. My young teenage peers were getting into &#8217;70s FM rock, like Led Zep, Skynyrd, Tull, and the Stones, man. (Not the Brian Jones Stones, which I loved, but the &#8220;It&#8217;s Only Rock &#8216;n Roll&#8221; Stones, which were better than most stuff the stoners were trying to turn me onto, but not always what excited me.) I was shut up in my room getting goosebumps over &#8220;Let Her Run Wild&#8221; and &#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t it Be Nice.&#8221; The only friend I had at the time who shared my profound love for these records was <strong>Andyr<\/strong>, the guy would would, just a few days ago, send me copious Facebook messages challenging\u00a0my profound dismay over\u00a0John Cusack&#8217;s performance in <em>Love &amp; Mercy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>This trend of being an out-of-step pussy with my\u00a0peers continued through high school, becoming even more of a challenge for me when the dudes started questioning my manhood for liking punk rock, the same dudes high-fiving with macho glee over Queen&#8217;s &#8220;Fat-Bottomed Girls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then I got to college and, within days, met other kids who grew up being told they were a pussy for loving 45s from the golden age of the &#8217;60s and &#8220;fag&#8221; punk rock. Andyr reported similar discoveries at his college. Little pockets of kids with a love for concise, creative pop songs were forming across the country in the early &#8217;80s. We&#8217;d all read David Leaf&#8217;s 1978 definitive lid-blowing account of The Beach Boys&#8217; myth, <em>The Beach Boys and The California Myth<\/em>. It went over all the things we loved about the band, and hipped us to the heartbreak and brotherly struggles beyond <em>Pet Sounds<\/em>. These friends we were meeting in a bigger pond agreed that &#8220;Girl Don&#8217;t Tell Me&#8221; was a magical slice of under-appreciated &#8217;60s pop. If you could mouth the words &#8220;Girl Don&#8217;t Tell Me&#8221; across a crowded frat basement to a cool-looking guy and if that guy could read lips and nod back at you, you knew you&#8217;d found a new friend. It was a magical time.<\/p>\n<p>By the middle of the decade, another Beach Boys bio was released: <em>Heroes and Villains: The True Story of The Beach Boys<\/em>, by Steven Gaines (check out <a title=\"LA Times review\" href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/1986-12-28\/books\/bk-730_1_beach-boys\" target=\"_blank\">this prescient <em>LA Times<\/em> book review<\/a>). My friends and I devoured this book, which was more salacious. At the time, that was fine by me, as I was hip-deep in my own salacious activities. I was happy to indulge in the romanticism of Brian Wilson dropping acid and hearing music in new ways, chasing the dream of creating pocket symphonies to god. What better way to justify the trip I was on, man!<\/p>\n<p>By the latter half\u00a0of the decade, all sorts of underground music scene participants were giving props to <em>Pet Sounds<\/em> and using mail order to track down elusive bootleg recordings of the scrapped <em>Smile<\/em> sessions. &#8220;Shit, man,&#8221; one of us would say while\u00a0&#8220;Caroline No&#8221; faded out and a trail of pot smoke left our lungs, &#8220;can you imagine how great <em>Smile<\/em> would have been?!?!&#8221;<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_22565\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-22565\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22565\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/smile-1988-cassette-300x186.jpg\" alt=\"1988 Smile bootleg cassette track list.\" width=\"300\" height=\"186\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/smile-1988-cassette-300x186.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/smile-1988-cassette.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-22565\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">1988 Smile bootleg cassette track list.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It seemed\u00a01 out of every 4 Beach Boys-loving friends would shell out $30 for a <a title=\"Smile boot\" href=\"https:\/\/arkhonia.wordpress.com\/2011\/10\/25\/smile-%E2%80%93-my-first-25-years-finishing-smile\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Smile<\/em> boot<\/a> and call their other 3 friends over for a listening session. I finally heard my first <em>Smile<\/em> outtakes in the mid-&#8217;80s. Honestly, no amount of bong hits could convince me that what was in the works was any better than the extremely mild pleasures to be gained from any song from the consolation prize album\u00a0<em>Smiley Smile<\/em>, excluding the majestic single &#8220;Good Vibrations,&#8221; one of the greatest musical achievements ever committed to\u00a0tape. A few years later I befriended my close personal friend Gergs. I was straight as an arrow by that point in my life, and we agreed the unfinished works were no better sober than they were stoned.<\/p>\n<p>What was strange, to us, was that while all the newcomers to Camp Beach Boys, kids who seemed to get into the band after identifying with Brian&#8217;s psychoses and aspirations, were eating up the <em>Smile<\/em> boots while dismissing most of the band&#8217;s <em>Endless Summer<\/em> hits as readily as most &#8220;cool&#8221; kids did when we were growing up. The Beach Boys, for this new crop of fans, were Brian&#8217;s Band, for Mike Love and the rest of the squares to fuck up. In <em>Love &amp; Mercy<\/em>, the Mike Love character even complains about the perception that the band was becoming Brian&#8217;s Band, straying from its origins. The Mike Love character had a point.<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M0XNjGl-81M\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ever since that Gaines book and <em>Smile<\/em>-mania took root, the true greatness of The Beach Boys has taken a backseat to the assumption that the sounds a tripping, psychologically damaged Brian heard in his head were greater\u00a0than the sounds he and his bandmates, cowriters, and\u00a0studio musicians actually executed through <em>Pet Sounds<\/em>. I&#8217;m aware that tastes are tastes, and all that jazz, but is the\u00a0proof in the grooves of the aborted <em>Smile<\/em> sessions,\u00a0or are you locked into identifying with your own amazing, unreachable aspirations?<\/p>\n<p>When my hot mute cavewoman and I start digging around in the Cave of the Forgotten Zone and find a beat-up copy of <em>Endless Summer<\/em> and a record player, under the skeptical eye of some hipster Dr. Zaius,\u00a0you just wait until the needle drops on &#8220;Help Me Rhonda&#8221; or &#8220;Don&#8217;t Worry Baby&#8221; or &#8220;California Girls&#8221; or any of those other songs that Mike Love and the boys could rally behind. &#8220;Would a severely\u00a0tortured artist\u00a0make such\u00a0human music?&#8221; There must have been more to Brian Wilson in his prime than the blank spaces we&#8217;ve filled in since his breakdown.\u00a0The modern myth of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys begins with\u00a0Brian reaching for the sun, just moments away from his long free fall and mildly moving landing, when the fact is that the full climb to the heavens\u00a0is where the glory resides. The rest of the story is a pretty much a total drag.<\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-mercy-cave-in-the-forbidden-zone\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-mercy-cave-in-the-forbidden-zone\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-mercy-cave-in-the-forbidden-zone\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-mercy-cave-in-the-forbidden-zone\/4\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">4<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, so Love &amp; Mercy Week wasn&#8217;t the thread-a-day, gripping discussion shot in the arm to Rock Town Hall that I&#8217;d hoped it would be. Traffic to the site continues to be down, and Facebook and actual telephone calls continue to be an easy way out for even regulars to discuss threads outside the forum.\u00a0One <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-mercy-cave-in-the-forbidden-zone\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[120,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}