Smiley Smile got a friend and I through a particularly intense acid trip. Carl was quoted as saying there was some clinic in Texas that played people having bad trips that album and it guided them. We were in a Beach Boy phase anyway, but it actually worked. I know there's a lot of other factors to consider there, but…

Depending on which band biography you read, Brian Wilson said it once.

I dig 20/20 quite a bit. I love how it starts with one of the most stereotypical Beach Boy kind of songs—a self-conscious throwback—and ends with one of the strangest songs in their catalog, which no one had heard before then. Not to mention the Manson song. My only gripes on that one are Bruce's lame instrumental and…

http://www.ew.com/ew/articl…

I love how domestic and simple Friends is. I spent a stoned summer afternoon washing my car to that; absolutely perfect.

That came on the Beach Boys' third LP in a year, so that early stuff always has the mixture of "label pressure for product+young talented songwriter+lyric partner" to varying degrees of success. Fun Fact: Mike Love sued Wilson in 1994 over writing credits, and that song was one he ended up being credited for. He sued…

He didn't want to do it so badly that he came up with the backing track about 24 hours after Al Jardine approached him with the idea.

Would it make a difference if the lyric was "columnated ruins domino?" Well, alright, maybe not. "Surf's Up" is one of the stranger ones, and I think Van Dyke's definition of "literal" has more to do with his bookshelf than with being straightforward in meaning, but do you really find nothing interesting in something…

Great piece! It can be kind of tricky to get a really consistent portrait of the band during some points of their career, and even among hardcore fans there's often a lot of back and forth on what's what and what belongs where. For example, I might have preferred "Sunflower" up there in the Top 5, but then again I…

Beck isn't totally wrong. He's right that speech must be protected, and the more unpopular or ignorant speech needs more protection. Christopher Hitchens believed this as well. You can't be for something only when it suits you. If you believe in free speech—and as an Americans (I'm hastily assuming most of you are),…

my mother loves that movie and my parents and i watch it every christmas. the music in that is great. good choice!

But now it might just be too heavy for Superman to lift.

What you said. Two-Lane Blacktop is something else entirely. This feels surface-level in comparison. Cool car, but lacking under the hood. I almost hate myself for typing that.

I reviewed "Lola Versus" for a local weekly last summer, and holy fuck did that movie stink. I found Gerwig to be pretty much insufferable, but I'm willing to shift the blame to the script and see this based on the director.

You should be in for a treat. I dunno what their set is like at festivals, but when I saw them in Chicago a few years ago, they played for about 3 hours and had several encores, each devoted to one specific album. KMKMKM got its own and they did The Kiss and If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, so I can pretty much die…

I wrote in a vote for "Out of This World" to be our class song (2006), and instead we got Lifehouse's "You and Me." TELL ME OoTW WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN PERFECT.

The Top is one gloriously weird time capsule for the band. What was Smith thinking when he was recording that? It sounds like the weird cousin of The Head on the Door at the Cure family reunion. Probably fitting, I tend to get really obsessed with The Top for like a week or so at a time, usually as the result of some…

I saw that, but I couldn't be sure if he was trying to express a sincere interest or just having a joke. I'll any petition if it'll help him get on, even petitions including wasteful pork barrel spending and/or violations of peace treaties.

Fuck no, anyone but this guy. I wonder why Jennings apparently isn't in the discussion at all. You'd think it'd be a no brainer. Maybe Jennings was the one who took himself out of the discussion, but he'd be a great fit. Anderson Cooper is fine, I guess. Anyone but Matt Lauer.

@avclub-14bcbd36696059065c1d20b957f6bd59:disqus You can imagine my surprise getting the notification for this today.