Beach Boys Grateful
What a day,
what a day,
oooo-oo
what a beautiful day
this is
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about gratefulness, which stemmed from something published earlier. This week I have been on a road-trip and listening to music in the car.
It’s striking how much the Beach Boys’ later work expresses generalized gratefulness — grateful for without necessarily grateful to. Now I’ve made an open-access Spotify playlist called Beach Boys Grateful. The selection expresses generalized gratefulness.
The love of life rambles naturally toward gratefulness, but gratefulness is only complete in gratitude — which entails not only gratefulness for some objects, but gratefulness to benefactors for those objects. Here we face a difficulty. To whom are you grateful for cool, cool water? Rock and pop music has fallen pretty flat on generalized gratefulness. The Beach Boys stand out.
The 24 songs (61 min.) are ordered chronologically, by album:
Smiley Smile (1967)
1. VEGETABLES (B.Wilson/V.D.Parks) — comedic, but a step
2. WITH ME TONIGHT (B.Wilson)
Wild Honey (1967)
3. AREN’T YOU GLAD (M.Love/B.Wilson)
4. COUNTRY AIR (M.Love/B.Wilson)
5. DARLIN’ (B.Wilson/M.Love)
6. I’D LOVE JUST ONCE TO SEE YOU (M.Love/B.Wilson)
7. MAMA SAYS (M.Love/B.Wilson)
Friends (1968)
8. WAKE THE WORLD (B.Wilson/A.Jardine) — “Say hello to another fine morning”. Enjoying having his face in the running water, he assures:
I’ll be there
when you’re
calling me
9. WHEN A MAN NEEDS A WOMAN (S.Kerthof//D.Wilson/B.Wilson/J.Parks/A.Jardine)
10. PASSING BY (B.Wilson)
11. LITTLE BIRD (S.J.Kalinich/D.Wilson/B.Wilson) —
What a day,
what a day,
oooo-oo
what a beautiful day
this is
12. BE STILL (S.J.Kalinich/D.Wilson) — “life begins”
13. BUSY DOIN’ NOTHIN’ (B.Wilson)
- “it’s a lovely night”
- “keepin’ busy while I wait”
- “sharpened up a pencil”
20/20 (1969)
14. I CAN HEAR MUSIC (J.Barry/E.Greenwich/P.Spector)
15. TIME TO GET ALONE (B.Wilson) — “Deep and wide”
16. NEVER LEARN NOT TO LOVE YOU (D.Wilson)
17. OUR PRAYER (B.Wilson) — Our hymn.
18. CABINESSENCE (B.Wilson/V.D.Parks) — “our home on the range”
Sunflower (1970)
19. ADD SOME MUSIC TO YOUR DAY (B.Wilson/J.Knott/M.Love) — “The Sunday mornin’ gospel goes good with the soul”. “You’ll hear it faintly in the distance”
20. FOREVER (D.Wilson/G.Jakobson) — “I ask the sky”
21. AT MY WINDOW (A.Jardine/B.Wilson) — “He came to my window”
22. COOL, COOL WATER (B.Wilson/M.Love) — “Cool water keeps on coolin’ me”
Surf’s Up (1971)
23. DISNEY GIRLS (1957) (B.Johnston) — grateful impressions of past times
24. SURF’S UP (B.Wilson/V.D.Parks) — “Are you sleeping, Brother John?”
