Beach Boys
“Vega-Tables” (Vocals Only)

This is probably my favorite (I should start a site called “This Is Probably My Favorite”, since that’s a pretty common form of thought for me!) Beach Boys song. Not necessarily the “vocals only” cut, which is to me pretty impressive. But just in general. It, the song, has really accreted the whatness of the group for me. Silly, fad-diet-nutritious (which is to say, like have you read the Steve Jobs biography where fad dieting and Indian guru-hunting go hand in hand? — like that, is what I mean), innocent, technically thrilling. There’s nothing about “Vega-Tables” I don’t like. And I even really like vegetables!

I’ve had the odd snatch of Beach Boys Smile-era song stuttering around my brain for the last week. Since the box set came out. There’s almost no other sort of way to think about the Beach Boys, I think. Collage-like, an assemblage. I mean… It’s like, for all the structural integrity (an engineer’s precision!) of Gravity’s Rainbow, it is a supremely episodically sloppy read, and that’s sort of how I’ve cognized all the various Smile-stuff, since I was in college to today.