For the past 24 years, Tim Hinely has been documenting the worlds of indie, punk, power pop, garage rock, and beyond in his self-published ‘zine Dagger. A peerless supporter of the above scenes, and the world of rock mags both big and small, Hinely is equally loud and proud about the things that he absolutely loves and the things that he can’t stand. In a word of waffling online writing that rides the fence lest the authors lose advertisers or hits to their pages, Hinely’s ideals have become far too rare, and should be celebrated.
I blame it on the neighbor kid, Scott Baker. This was in the mid-’70s in suburban southern New Jersey (Linwood to be exact). He was a few years older but had a sister my age and a brother a year older than me so we all hung out and played sports (that family was real big into sports). In between trading baseball cards and pickup games of whiffle ball, discussions of music would occasionally creep into the conversations. He told us about a band called the Electric Light Orchestra that we had to get into. “You have to get the record Ole ELO. It’s the best!” I bought that record and he was right, I was quite smitten with that band but it was his next suggestion that sent me over the top: The Beach Boys’ Endless Summer!
This was a two-record set that was basically a greatest hits. I had seen double albums before, my sister and I had fought over the Barry Manilow live record but this record was…cool. The cover was neat: a very colorful drawing of three of the guys in the band (two with bushy beards) hiding behind trees/bushes with a big wave coming up over top of them. Listening to the songs I assumed that they all had to surf (little did I know) and the songs! Wow! It was one hit after another: “Surfin’ Safari”, “Surfer Girl”, “Catch a Wave”, “The Warmth of the Sun” and “Surfin’ USA”. That was just side one! There was still three more sides to go and they were all just as great. And the songs were short, too. Usually under three minutes (for my gnat-like attention span). If I wasn’t at home listening to this record on my parents’ hi-fi (as my mom used to call it) then I was over my pal Keith Filling’s house listening to it. Listening to this record in Keith’s room while paging through the middle school yearbook to check out the cute girls was about the best fun any guy this age (12) could have.
According to my calculations the record was released on 6/24/74 (when I was 10) but I’m thinking I bought my copy at Sears sometime in the summer of 1975 at the ripe old age of 11. Oh, I didn’t mention what other songs were on it too, one that became instant Beach Boys favorites in days/months to come: “Fun Fun Fun”, “Wendy”, “Girls on the Beach”, “California Girls”, “In My Room”, “Help Me Rhonda”, “Let Him Run Wild”, “Don’t Worry Baby”, and my all-time favorite, “I Get Around”. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered the true songwriting genius of the band’s leader, Brian Wilson (and their masterpiece, Pet Sounds) but the songs on Endless Summer were more than enough to satisfy my 11 year old brain. From this point on, as I aged, I would go through phases of pop, then classic rock, then new wave and punk and on and on. Each phase holds some special/classic moments but this pre-teen Beach Boys phase was among the best.
