Cross-pollination: The Popdose Guide to the Beach Boys
My latest article for Popdose — and one that I’m pretty proud of — went live yesterday. It’s the Popdose Guide to the Beach Boys, a piece I started putting together this past spring. It’s a lengthy read (make sure to check out both pages), although I would have been perfectly justified in making it twice as long as the finished product. And of course, as soon as it was published I thought of a dozen things I wanted to say or change. But that’s life as a writer I suppose. Still, the response has been overwhelmingly positive thus far and for that I’m grateful.
One of the aspects of writing the Beach Boys piece that I enjoyed was the chance to really dig into their later 1970s output. I’d avoided a lot of it since I became a fan about a dozen years ago, mostly because of the albums’ poor reputation. As it turns out that reputation was largely deserved, but I did come away with some cool nuggets. The M.I.U. Album from ’78 in particular was a lot better than I expected it to be.
Also, I made my second appearance on Jon Grayson’s Overnight America radio program — this time to discuss the Beach Boys piece, as well as Popdose reviews of the new Coldplay, the new Ben Folds compilation, and a new Justin Bieber book. You already know my thoughts about Mylo Xyloto of course. If you want to check out my appearance on Overnight America (and you know you do), listen here or click here to go to the show page.