Just a suggestion to Beach Boys fans.
You don't really appreciate the 'Summer Days (And Summer Nights!)' album until you realize that it tells a story.
The first few tracks describe a whirlwind teenage romance, and 'Girl don't tell me' picks up the story again at the beginning of the next summer.
I'll leave you to discover the rest.
But I will say this: 'Girl don't tell me', 'Help me, Rhonda', 'Let him run Wild', and 'You're so good to Me' pack an awful lot of plot into just a few short, unbelievably brilliant songs!
Just a suggestion to all you 'Pet Sounds' and 'Beach Boys Today' and 'Good Vibrations' fans out there!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. One more thing- this album, I believe, was also a final practice album of what he had developed on Beach Boys Today! before attempting Pet Sounds, especially regarding practicing it on more energetic and dynamic tracks (as opposed to the ballads on side 2 of Today!, which even Pet Sounds could scarcely be expected to improve on!), much as 20/20 was for Sunflower and Carl and the Passions- 'So Tough' was in integrating Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar into The Beach Boys for Holland (both in very artistically satisfying and interesting ways with many brilliant individual tracks- and in 20/20's case more like Friends and Wild Honey before it than Sunflower after it (if not quite as lofi), and on a less artistically satisfying way, how 15 Big Ones was practice working up to The Beach Boys Love You in 1977, Brian Wilson's legendary pioneering synth-pop masterpiece which I recommend to any New Wave or synth-pop fan (I can scarcely recommend 15 Big Ones in the same way- this was artistically satisfying only in that in it Brian gained badly needed practice (given his state of mind in the mid-1970's and the pioneering nature of the work) for creating The Beach Boys Love You!)
(The fact that Brian could produce something as brilliant as The Beach Boys Love You so soon after his state of mind- for years- in the mid 1970's is a testament to the massive scope of Brian's talent, the power of the human mind to heal, and the power of having that entire 15 Big Ones album to practice before creating The Beach Boys Love You! Given Brian's state of mind in the mid 1970's, that 1977 album is practically a miracle, and not a small one at that! (The sounds Brian gets out of those synths are incredible, and incredibly new and different!)
((In the same way, 1964's All Summer Long and Christmas album were practice leading into Beach Boys Today! in 1965!))