tadcranky

Wednesday Video: The Beach Boys, Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi

I've got kind of a fascination with the Beach Boys. Not the current Beach Boys with the guy from Full House sitting in on the drums during Fourth of July, but the Beach Boys of the 60's, led by Brian Wilson, a guy with such tremendous musical gifts that he inspired people like John Lennon and Bob Dylan. A guy who was awkward around other people, and scared of his dad, and took a lot of drugs and spent much of the 70s and 80s in bed. A guy who wrote songs with parts for finger cymbals and triangles and vibraslaps and all those other scorned percussion instruments that I ended up having to play in high school. And now he's been back for a while, and he's outlived his younger brothers, and he has an odd look about him, but he's making music and touring and probably doesn't have the slightest idea who the guy from Full House is.

This a clip from a 1976 Beach Boys special, where John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd are the Surf Police, and they drag Brian out of his bed to go surfing. While it's played, of course, as a joke, Brian really was bed-bound at the time, and it was apparently not an easy skit to film. At the end of the clip, the Beach Boys are playing (without Brian, of course), and it's cool to see Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson, and not so cool to see Mike Love doing whatever he does all over the stage. And the guy from Full House isn't there!