So it's Saturday (or Sunday) and you take this course seriously enough to log on on the weekend. I'll try to keep it entertaining and worth your while. For 10 extra credit points, go here to view the lyrics to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. analyze either "You Still Believe in Me," "Don't Talk" or "I'm Waiting For the Day" within the concept of the Pet Sounds album. You may use other lyrics on the album to make your statement, but include a detailed analysis of one of the three songs mentioned. The ten extra credit points will be awarded if your paper is turned in on Monday. If you read this without the time to complete the assignment by Monday, turn it in by Wednesday for 5 extra points.

Or for an even more energetic project, due in your journal and also worth 10 points: Analyze these lyrics to the most complex of Brian Wilson's songs, "Surf's Up:"

A diamond necklace played the pawn
Hand in hand some drummed along, oh
To a handsome man and baton
A blind class aristocracy
Back through the opera glass you see
The pit and the pendulum drawn
Columnated ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping?

Hung velvet overtaken me
Dim chandelier awaken me
To a song dissolved in the dawn
The music hall a costly bow
The music all is lost for now
To a muted trumperter swan
Columnated ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping, Brother John?

Dove nested towers the hour was
Strike the street quicksilver moon
Carriage across the fog
Two-Step to lamp lights cellar tune
The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne

The glass was raised, the fired rose
The fullness of the wine, the dim last toasting
While at port adieu or die

A choke of grief hard hardened I
Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry

Surf's Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children's song

Child, child, child, child, child
A child is the father of the man
Child, child, child, child, child
A child is the father of the man
A children's song
Have you listened as they played
Their song is love
And the children know the way
That's why the child is the father to the man
Child, child, child, child, child
Child, child, child, child, child
Na na na na na na na na
Child, child, child, child, child
That's why the child is the father to the man
Child, child, child, child, child

In case you didn't know it, at the time the man was crazy, to use the common language, delusional and rich at the same time; an ominous mix. He'd filled up his bedroom with sand to emulate the beach, and never got out of bed except at midnight to go to the recording studio. For one take on "the most famous album never released," (Smile), Brian hired classical musicians and required that they all wear firehats along with their tuxedos. When the Santa Ana winds kicked up that night in Los Angeles and a brush fire began to burn out of control in the San Gabriel mountains, Brian was convinced that he was responsible and burned all the analog tapes of the day's work. Keyword: crazy. You figure out the lyrics, put it into context, write a paper, but more than that listen to it.