As you check back with this site, you'll notice that I am including more and more in the way of links and web tools, and as I learn to manipulate the net with more confidence, I hope to embellish your learning experience with pictures and cool sites and info-mation that will help you to take a step toward the next level of learning. With everything you do, I encourage you to take that step, broaden that horizon, enter the next level. google will always appear at the top of the page, and the links in the sidebar are active, just click and go.

Pet Sounds

With that in mind, I want to connect you with the concept of the Concept Album. Over the years, despite the advent of new technologies (CDs, MP3s, DVDs), the term has not changed. We don't call them "albums" any longer, but the term "Concept Album" has remained in the vernacular. In Rolling Stone magazine's recent issue featuring the top 500 "albums" of all time, the first and second spots on the list were both considered concept pieces. The Beatles' groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which fills the top slot (the Beatles hold five of the top ten slots), is considered by many to be the first concept album. It is not. Despite all its "firsts" (first gatefold cover, first album to include lyrics, first "run-out" grove, first decorated inner sleeve...), it is not a concept album. The Beatles are indeed masquerading as the "Lonely Hearts Club Band" and introduce the album as if it were a traveling show, but that concept accounts only for three of the albums interconnected tracks (another first). The topic is nonetheless up for argument. There are those who point back to the 50s and Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me,

a collection of songs dedicated to the world's great cities ("April in Paris," "Chicago" and "Autumn in New York"), and I can't deny their point, but I look instead to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds as the true benchmark for the concept in modern music. There's never been another record to compare (Rubber Soul, its inspiration, is close; Sgt. Pepper, its response, misses the point), and certainly no album has been as picked apart, analyzed and discussed endlessly by the audiophile. Brian Wilson has created an unequaled patchwork of teen emotions and intrigues: adolescence, dating, rejection, family values and rules; indeed he has painted the most vivid example of teen angst in all of music. The emotional depth in the music is ages ahead of its time. And this is a surfing band! Just wow.

An album that could only be improved upon if it included "Good Vibrations," written and produced during the same sessions, Pet Sounds is the penultimate concept album, as well as the first.

Note that I have included a link to the Gashlycrumb Tinies. Just click on the link to view the slideshow. As well, I included a list of concept albums that range in genre and style and includes works recorded between 1970 and 2001.