By Jim Fusco:
Well, I’m finally back up and (sorta) running again after almost a week without my laptop! The hard drive just crashed out of nowhere with no chance to recover my files. So, I got a new (bigger) hard drive and I hope everything will run smoothly from now on. I tell you, though- I bought Apple products for their reliability, but the hardware hasn’t always been kind to me. I just thought that quality hardware was the reason for the high prices. I guess you don’t always get what you pay for. In my opinion, it’s still better than Windows because a Windows machine will still die on you, but it’ll be even more difficult to work with when it’s still alive.
This song goes out as a request. “The Lonely Sea” by the Beach Boys is a great early tune that doesn’t get much credit because it wasn’t a single. But, Beach Boys fans know (and love) this song. I think it’s a good one to do solo because even though the Boys had background “oohs”, this was a Brian Wilson song through and through. A great chord progression goes along with this song- simple, but powerful. As I mentioned in a previous post, Brian Wilson always had a knack at coming up with a great chord progression. This song is surprisingly dark sounding for a song written by a guy in his early twenties.
Of course, “The Lonely Sea” is one of those songs that really sounds like a period piece. What I mean by that is, you can tell this song was done before the Beatles became popular in America. Songs from the early 60s and late 50s had breaks in the middle where the lead singer would just speak a few lines. Most notably, you can hear that in the Elvis Presley song “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”. It’s a great song, but you can tell the era in which it was recorded/popular. “The Lonely Sea” probably wouldn’t have sounded the same even two years later, once the Beatles changed the sound of popular music forever. The Beatles had a way of setting trends. I will always admit to that. Brian Wilson, though, had a way of pushing the envelope, musically. He didn’t necessarily change his style all the time, but he was working on perfecting his songwriting style the whole time. He would add different instruments and experiment with different chord progressions and harmony parts. It was happening from the start- songs like “The Lonely Sea” can be written off as a teenage love-sick song, but it’s got a sound that you just didn’t hear on the rest of the “teenage” music in the early 60s. And, you especially didn’t hear it from surf music groups, like the Beach Boys music was labeled.
I hope everyone’s been enjoying the Laptop Sessions and will continue to tune in every day for more acoustic cover songs here on the best music blog on the Internet! There will be plenty more Beach Boys cover songs to come.