This is the New Journalism: they are reporters; they are actors. They catalog the rituals of Early 1960’s Southern California Teenage Life; they tell us where it’s at: “At Rincon they’re walking the nose.”
And because it is still that specific, still that tied down to that time and place and people, it can still speak its mysteries to us now: “Any time the surf is up/The time is right.”
And they sing about four speed dual quad posi-traction and make whatever that is seem as important as true love:
As they sing, this time and place and people are in the process of being mythicized, but they haven’t yet frozen into the cheap myth of nostalgia. This is all still happening in the present tense:
Plus, they bring the jokes:
Great tracks, and brilliant comments on them. I’d never thought of their music in that light.
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You knew we were entering revolutionary times when earlier groups like these no longer felt the need to wear matching clothes.
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