I missed y'all this weekend. This one's for you:
It's also just a great reminder of how deep the Beach Boys catalogue is. I think it's easy to forget, because of all the silly surfing and car stuff (which of course, must be distinguished from the awesome surfing and car stuff) that the band had early that are just as fun, and just as pretty, and just as deeply felt as the Beatles' early love songs. The Beatles' catalogue as a whole has lasted better because it is lyrically generally divorced from its context: "Yesterday" could have been written at any time, in any English-speaking place, while "Lovely Rita" is much more historically and geographically specific, but it's a rarity. "Surfin' Safari" sure isn't immortal, but it's a uniquely and historically contingent American geography, and I love it for that. The Beatles may have had the accents and the suits (the mop tops were German Exi cuts), but the Beach Boys are a much more American band than the Beatles are British, I think. If that limits their appeal some, I think I can compensate for the circumscription.