They Get Around

Some time in 1964-65 Brian Wilson set pen to paper and wrote the words "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older / then we wouldn't have to wait so long..." Well, Brian, you got your wish...and then some. Take a gander at the photo above; Wilson and his (still-living) Beach Boys compadres are all now pretty long in the tooth. And the album on which "Wouldn't It Be Nice" ended up - 1966's Pet Sounds - is now 46 years old. That's pretty amazing in itself, but the thing that really blows me away is the above image, particularly the juxtaposition of the words "Stream and Download" with a photo of today's Beach Boys looking ready to rock your face off (or at least lull you into a sublime slumber on the lawn of your local outdoor ampitheater). Because if there's a new Beach Boys album available for streaming and downloading, that means these guys have been alive (and working!) long enough to see the rise and fall of about 12 different types of recorded music media. And that's just nuts. If you'd sat these guys down in their living room in Hawthorne, California in 1963 and explained to them that some day their music would live in the ether and be playable on computers the size of postage stamps, they would have called you (in the parlance of their particular milieu) a real gone daddy. Yet here we are. Here's hoping that Brian and his pals live to see the day when we experience their music via microchips implanted in our heads. Wouldn't that be nice? ~ Tim