So, it's February! Perfect time to review a record called Keepin The Summer Alive, right? Well, actually, yeah! After all the album cover does depict our favorite Hawthorne natives indeed keepin the summer alive from inside a glass dome thingy amid a frigid winter landscape. If you know anything about the Beach Boys story, the volumes this silly cover art speaks are almost too obvious to mention, but were apparently lost on all involved.
It was 1980 and this was the second Beach Boys album for the CBS/Caribou label. Their previous platter: the LA (Light Album) had been something of late/mid period highpoint. Brian was in and out of the mental hospital and good ole Bruce Johnston had been brought back into the fold (after a 6 year sabbatical) to Produce. Dennis was in top form, as was Carl, and the two of them, along with Bruce, crafted some superb mature tracks. Dennis and Carl blending beautifully, and Bruce basically taking over for Brian in the high harmony department. Al Jardine scored big with his Lady Lynda (a massive hit in the UK) and Mike crammed some phonetic Japanese into a gorgeous little tune called Sumahama. Brian and Carl dusted off a gorgeous track called Good Timin, and Dennis provided a rocking bass vocal for Brian's fun take on Shortnin Bread. All in all the album was terrific. The only misstep might have been the towering 11+ minute disco remake/re-model of Wild Honey's "Here Comes The Night" Well, the term misstep basically applies if one has a built in aversion to anything disco. Otherwise, the track's burbling synths, stomping beat, and smashing group vocals are pure audio cotton candy. Sticky sweet, and oh so tasty! I mean, please, if disco was OK for Kiss, The Stones, and Lou Reed, why can't the Beach Boys take a crack at it. Put yourself in Bruce's shoes. It's 1979, sure disco is on the wane, but it's still there, you're producing an album, your friend Curt Boettcher has an idea which might have sounded silly. But wait, you've got Carl Wilson to do the lead, the Beach Boys for full group harmony and a damn catchy tune that was never a hit and is locked away in time on a dusty little album that no one remembers (in 1979 at least). So, fuck all if you're not going to give it a shot.
Alas, the record sold poorly, CBS/Caribou was pissed, and here The Beach Boys were owing yet another album.
What to do?
If you happen to be Brian Wilson: not a hell of a lot. At this point I really don't think he cared to have anything to do with The Beach Boys other than to allow the royalty checks to keep pouring in. And who can blame him? He'd already achieved plenty and was content to stay at home rather than be dragged from stadium to stadium with the inflated Beach Boys juggernaut. Of course Mike Love wanted to keep cranking out the hits with Brian, and who can blame him either? There is a film clip from around this time of the two men sitting at a piano as Brian pounds out a chord sequence, Mike spits out vocal melody and the two arrive at a song concept. It's an infectious moment. Sure, Mike is bald, Brian is gruff, bearded, puffy, and greasy, but goddamn if these guys don't make it look easy. Say what you will about Mike, (educated opinion or not) but the guy most certainly has an ear for melody. Catchy melody at that. He and Brian forged a unique and quite special creative chemistry. All those days and nights together as kids/teenagers singing Everly Brothers songs wasn't for nothing. Brian's melancholy whine and Mike's arrogant tenor perfectly compliment each other and bring out their individual strengths, while somehow encompassing the full range of adolescent (or rather human) heartache and longing. It's a magical thing indeed. And if you want to use Kokomo as a weapon to somehow invalidate Mike across the board: please remember that song was a number one hit and you and all your friends would be proud to have written it.
So there!
So, here we are in 1980, The Beach Boys have suffered yet another poor selling album! What's the solution? Well, there is no solution other than to keep on keepin on, by keepin the summer alive! Carl goes off with Randy Bachman to write a couple killer tunes, Brian/Mike bang out some winners, while Al goes and writes lovingly about those dry, smog choked, Santa Ana Winds. Dennis? Yeah, where is Dennis? Good question. Well, actually not a very good question because Dennis really wasn't anywhere. His beloved Brother studio/safe haven was gone, his drinking/drugging buddy Carl was all cleaned up, and he was basically adrift, ever so rapidly inching his way down toward the water he loved. Water that would shortly claim him.
Aside from a depressing lack of Dennis, the album, however is a sheer delight. Carl and BTO man's title track rocks along at a fine clip. Carl never ceases to amaze me. He could croon along, ala God Only Knows, like THE teen angel incarnate, and then flip some switch and grunt and growl with the best of them. "Oh Darlin" is a lovely tune even though it drags on a bit and repeats the chorus a mind numbingly insane amount of times. But who's complaining when you have Carl squeezing out the lead vocal like maple syrup on a stack of steaming hotcakes?
Then you have the Brian/Mike triad of Goin On/Sunshine/Some Of Your Love! Sure, none of these songs will get us out of Afghanistan or rid the globe of hunger, but they will make you feel like you've just scarfed down the worlds biggest ice cream cone. Goin On, for instance, is a thing of pure beauty. A gorgeous spire of sound that winds around itself again and again, forever spiraling up and up toward the heavens! Pure magic!
And what about Bruce? Did he just Produce this time? Why, no! Mr. Johnston also contributes his own brand of sticky sweet syrupy goo in the form of the album closing track Endless Harmony: a somewhat premature career capper/back slapping nostalgia fest for The Beach Boys that, in truth, comes across as something more of a tombstone. He sings of "striped shirt freedom" and boys who "make their mommas cry" while in the next breath blessing America: land of the free! From there he gathers the boys (or at least who he could get in the room at one time) around the mic for one of their magical vocal moments. Their voices locking in a series of wordless movements until a single voice takes the floor and rises into space, pausing a moment, perhaps looking down at the glimmering Southern California coastline, before plummeting back to earth, landing in a warm bed of Beach Boy harmony.
Ah, if only the real story had ended that way.
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