The Beach Boys – I just wasn’t made for these times

May 17, 2015 3:56 pm Published by

When I was a kid, My uncle Paul had (to this day) the biggest private record collection I have seen in my life. When I was a very young kid (5 years old) he showed me how to clean vinyl, how to put it on the platter, and then how to adjust the equalizer. He then pointed to the stacks of records, and said “go for it.”

Among the things that stood out were The Who’s “Tommy”, Elton John’s “Goodbye yellow brick road”, and The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.” I had full access to that collection for over a decade. During that time, one record seemed to stand out, “Pet Sounds.”

Of the tracks on that album, “I just wasn’t made for these times” stood out as something magical. It had arrangements I hadn’t heard before. It also sounded like a song that never meant to be heard. It sounded like a whisper. It changed the way I thought about what a song was. It wasn’t just sounds and words strung together to make something groovy, it was a new approach to writing. Something so scary that I knew I would never be able to fully grasp, much less achieve. It set the bar unreasonably high.

I thought it was appropriate to start this project with a track that started me down this road.

Years later, I became a fan of Michael Penn and Aimee Mann (separately). I ran across this video one day searching for an original copy of the Beach Boys version of this video. I am sure Michael Penn and Aimee Mann will show up on this list sooner than later, so let’s discuss them then.

Either way, they brought out a new shade of this song, and I dig it.

 

Categorised in:

This post was written by sergio_101