“If you know the words then just… shut up.”
In general, I found going to university in modern times to be just fine; Google Scholar makes writing research papers a walk in the park, a slept-through class is easily rectified by watching a recorded version, and lecture slides are saved to the cloud in perpetuity. So I’m usually not terribly nostalgic about what I missed; except, that is, until a recent realization that the Beach Boys had performed a selection of their greatest hits on a fall weekend of 1966 at U of M. Lucky for me (and you), the performance was captured and re-released in 2016 after the laxing of copyright laws.
Across Graduation 1966: Live from the University of Michigan, Brian Wilson leads the crew through some of their early work and meanders around the more-challenging live cuts from Pet Sounds, all-the-while mixing in his later-career sardonic wit. According to Rolling Stone, the band was in Ann Arbor to play a slate of warm-up shows before embarking on a European tour, and ended up playing three shows in two days. This was also a unique happening for those in the audience given that, by this time, Brian Wilson had largely stopped touring with the group, preferring to spend most of his time in the studio. Thus, it stands to reason that this was a rare combination of a live Beach Boys at both their most polished and experimental; Wilson decided to fly into town just for the shows in the hopes of taping it and releasing this as a live album.
Some highlights include the second-ever live performance of ‘Good Vibrations,’ a classic rendition of ‘God Only Knows,’ and a very interesting vocal arrangement on ‘Help Me, Rhonda,’ too. I’ve seen a few shows at Hill in my day, but none could come close to this.