Brian Wilson has died

But positively, and optimistically, I do think things are passed on, even if we don't quite understand how.

From Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

'''

"I saw [Buddy Holly] only but once, and that was a few days before he was gone. I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and I wasn’t disappointed.

"He was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. I was only six feet away. He was mesmerizing.

I watched his face, his hands, the way he tapped his foot, his big black glasses, the eyes behind the glasses, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood, his neat suit. Everything about him. He looked older than twenty-two.

Something about him seemed permanent, and he filled me with conviction.

Then, out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened. He looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something.

Something I didn’t know what. And it gave me the chills.

I think it was a day or two after that that his plane went down."

'''

Though Dylan loves to self-mythologize, if I'm going to believe anybody alive about how a baton, or muse, or torch, or access to transcendent beauty might be passed on, I'd choose to believe him. Especially given the context in which he implied this unusually (for him) sincere thing: "take this and run with it."

Even reduced to something as material and measurable as 'influence', I think that's worth a great deal of optimism. We won't get another Brian Wilson. That's very, very sad. But his work remains - even if his time doesn't. Bob was of another time to Buddy. There will always be young people.

I used ‘bizarro’ to point towards both the surreal inverted-ness, but also to reference the Superman character, to try and link that part of the sentence to 1950’s USA, and Wilson’s childhood.

To me (it’s a subjective experience, of course) there are compositional aspects that create this feeling. In the early hits, for example, there’s an astounding lack of low-frequency sounds (bass guitar, kick drum mixed low, etc). It’s very much mixed for tinny radio - partly a product of the time, but also very much due to his arrangements. As if to say: ‘no darkness here’.

And equally (though I don’t think Brian was writing lyrics, but an arrangement of the sounds they create is enough for me) lyrically, even the early stuff is batshit weird:

“When some loud braggart tries to put me down, and says his school is great, I tell him right away: What’s the matter buddy? Ain’t you heard of my school?”

“A bushy bushy blonde hairdo”

Etc. I think the early work goes beyond ‘Americana’ into something weirder, but non-cynical. Very fever dream technicolor, and I think anticipates a lot of the work ‘darker’ Americana artists, like Lynch, who another commenter referenced, would later do.

Another commenter mentioned that Wilson’s father was, by many accounts, incredibly, incredibly cruel, and I think that’s perhaps not irrelevant to the uncanniness of Wilson’s work. Maybe there was a conscious choice to write only about the beautiful parts of his milieu, but that’s impossible to know.

A song like “In My Room” is terrifyingly beautiful / uncannily sincere in its optimism, given what we know about Wilson’s childhood. A lot of people, especially artists later in the century would, I think, find its hopefulness bizarre. And very moving.

That’s a very long version of what I was trying to say, or point towards - the usual cliches about the impossibility of writing about music apply!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_My_Baby#Effect_on_Brian_Wil...

I suspect it is precisely because the song is very odd in many ways that it is so interesting

I am not the biggest fan of Wilsons stuff but you could never accuse him of just phoning it in.

(Not to take anything away from Brian's actual genius!)

the clever timpani line in this track will sound familiar to anyone who has ever heard Pet Sounds :) I thought it was a very appropriate appropriation of a famous Brian Wilson track.

https://willyrodriguez.bandcamp.com/track/rosemary

(for anyone listening who is not versed in Pet Sounds, it's the famous drum line from "I'm Waiting For the Day")

Maybe this opinion is a little dated - Burial started a couple of decades ago now - I'm sure there's someone smart and younger capturing the sonics of our current moment accurately. But Burial is a truly great composer.

I really despise the (unintentional, totally forgivable) YouTube-comment-vibe of "When these giants pass away who replaces them? Who are the Brian Wilsons of today?" - it's very "Like this comment if you like REAL music, not [young pop star]."

It takes decades and decades to understand who captured a time period accurately, and whose work anticipated and influenced the art that was to come. Burial is probably the wrong answer!

It takes so much time for an artist to become revered as a "giant". It requires deep historical understanding and deep critique. There is plenty of very beautiful music being made. Naturally none of it sounds like Brian Wilson's - it isn't Brian Wilson's.

I don't think anyone wants to see Burial inducted into the "Rock n Roll Hall of Fame" at this time, or playing the Sunday Afternoon Legends slot at Glastonbury. Ditto for (most of) the other names mentioned in response to GP.

Innovative and masterful craft rarely makes itself immediately apparent to its audience - it's not an instant-gratification commodity - the audience must also work to reveal it. Takes time!

She enjoyed some widespread success during her short life, but since her death, the style of music she helped pioneer has exploded in popularity. The extremely popular "brat" album from last year contained both explicit celebration of her name and homage to her style.

But she's dead now. Her music still inspires me.

He's dead now, too. His music will continue to inspire me.