I Don't Know Where But She Takes Me There

My nephew hates the Rolling Stones. I can't say I blame him. I used to as well.
After all, the only thing he knows of the band is probably that they're old and shamelessly charge a huge amount of cash to see them. And my nephew has to hear adults berate his bands and constantly hear the eye-rolling line "None of the bands out there today could even touch the Stones."

But hopefully, he'll get into a garage-like band. And that band will gush about listening to Let it Bleed. And hopefully, that'll be enough to make my nephew pick up the album. I could try to nudge him closer to the Stones, but discovering something on your own is far more rewarding.

That's how I discovered The Beach Boys. Like my nephew, all I knew of the Beach Boys was that they were on TV thanks to Sunkist. And, in the age of Axl Rose and Motley Crue, the Beach Boys were squeaky clean. They were safe. It was the type of music a youth church group would play in a skit that involved the teenagers of today. It was the stuff that had all the danger of a "Saved by the Bell" episode.



... then college hit.

As I learned more about rock (and by taking "The History of Rock"), the more I learned how little the Beach Boys embodied that squeaky clean image. Brian Wilson was a drug-addled genius with severe bouts of depression. I also learned that "Good Vibrations" actually SOUNDED like a symphony. Like a symphony, there was a structure to it that routinely looped back onto itself. This three-minute ditty that sounds effortless took five months of recording time, 90 hours of tape and about $300,000 in today's dollars. Or $100,000 a minute. And worth every dime.