This song was a partial comeback for Brian after his late 1960s meltdown and disappearance from the band. It appears on the Surf’s Up album. Inspired by a late night trip to the beach where Brian contemplated his place in the vast universe (“I’m a cork on the ocean…How deep is the ocean…How long will the wind blow”)
I had read about the song in article from November 1974 in Rolling Stone, which called it “…a crazy amalgam of Berry, Bach, and barbershop.”
I guess it was the barbershop that caught my interest and sent me to Skipper’s to buy the album (which remains un-digitized, I got the song from Grokster I think).
When I was in junior high school, I was in a barbershop quartet, actually a quintet. My voice back then was not that special, but I did have a larger range, and Mr. Iddings put me in with four other guys because I could sing all the parts (or he felt sorry for me because 3 of the other 4 were among my best friends).
So they called it a barbershop quartet plus one, me being the one. We practiced before school began and I remember we had hall passes we taped to a piece of cardboard (not having access to lamination back then).
My mom was also working at the junior high around that time, washing and drying the towels for all the gym classes for District 300. I remember seeing her down in the lower level of the school as a van dropped off canvas sacks of wet towels which she placed in one of two industrial sized washers, then dried them in a big dryer, then placed them back in the sacks for pick up. It was ungodly hot in the fall and spring, warm and toasty in the winter, but backbreaking nonetheless.
For one concert we got hold of an actual barber’s chair, and also, unfortunately, a real straight razor. During one song we lathered up Gary K. and then somebody (I don’t think it was me, but I may be suppressing the memory) used the straight razor to remove the lather. Being 13-14 years old at the time and none of us had ever shaved before, we noticed rather quickly that the lather was turning pink, due to Gary’s bleeding.
As the song ended, we took a towel and wrapped his throat as we took our bows and ran to the bathroom to clean him up. None of the cuts was deep, but the straight razor was quickly taken away from us.
It’s funny, but I was quite the singer, in grade school, junior high, and high school, I was in acapella choir in high school, choir and barbershop quintet, in junior high, and in grade school I was in several talent shows (they had one every year at Eastview Elementary in Algonquin).
In 5th grade I tried out for a solo for a song called “Minstrel Man”
I want to be a minstrel man,
I want to dance like no one can,
I want to fill the throng with zest and song,
I want to hear the music of a minstrel band,
I want to parade down every street,
And smile at everyone I meet,
I want to tour all over this great land,
In a first class minstrel band.
Why do I remember every line? Jeez, there’s a bunch of drivel locked up in my head!
I didn’t get the solo (Gary K, who we would later lacerate in the barbershop quintet, did) but I was in the backup troop that had canes and straw hats that we twirled and waved.
The year Mary Poppins came out 1964, I was one of three chimney sweeps that sang and danced (with black soot on our faces and push brooms in hand) to “Chim Chim Cher-ee”. The year before that I was in and improv ensemble of 4th graders who acted out the battle of the bands between the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five. I was the drummer for the DC5 and as a foursome of 4th graders in Beatles wigs, lip-synched and air-guitared to a 45 on a record player to “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” We (the DC5) rushed out and pushed them off the stage and took their wigs, as we lip-synched and air-guitared to “Glad All Over “.
Such cutting edge satire! We killed!
In 8th grade I had a very brief thespian phase. I was in two plays. The first was Huckleberry Finn, where I played the sheriff in my great grand father’s frock coat and whiting in my hair to make me look older.
In the second play, I can’t recall the name at all; I replaced the male lead when he quit to play football or something. All the girls were 9th graders (Freshmen) and I was an 8th grader about 2 years younger, emotionally, and scared to death of girls. Before the first performance, one of the girls asked me to take off my glasses, to improve my leading man looks I suppose, and I stumbled through the performances, never seeing anything very clearly.
At the end of the play I had to hold hands with the leading lady, and I remember she wore gloves, my hands were so sweaty. At one point in the play I had to laugh, and it was so fake that half the audience imitated it.
This led to two of the greatest embarrassments of my young life. After the play was over one of the girls had a cast party at her house and they played Spin the Bottle. I was 13 and all the girls were 14 or 15 and I had major crushes on every one of them, but when the bottle spun to me, I couldn’t do it…I froze...The games, and the party, were over.
The next year I was now a Freshman, the cock of the walk. In fact we were the last Freshman class at Algonquin Junior High School, because the next year it became a middle school, and the freshmen came with us to Crown High School, they never got to be cock of the walk.
When they had tryouts for the theater club, a different teacher than the one who had cast me the previous year now ran it. And when I showed up to the first meeting, I found that we were supposed to have an audition piece. I didn’t have anything prepared, so the teacher/ advisor said, “OK, dance like Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In”. This in front of all my peers and several other teachers. I said I couldn’t do it in front of a crowd (for a theater club?). I’ve never been a dancer, before or since.
They sent out all the kids, leaving the advisors, and I still couldn’t dance like a go-go dancer. I was humiliated. I never acted again.
Indeed, when I was in high school, I was required to be in the chorus of a play or two, because I was part of the choir. I was supposed to sing and dance in the chorus for “Oklahoma”. I attended several practices, but when the play ran, I had my mom write me an excuse to get out of it. I had no problem singing in an ensemble, but I drew the line at do-si-doing in the background of a musical.
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