Sax von Stroheim writes:

The colonization of the imagination of the American Teenager: if everybody had an ocean, then everyone would be living the California dream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNypbmPPDco

Question: Does it matter that they were just capitalizing on a fad? That they wanted to be called the Pendeltones (after the Pendelton shirts in style at the time), but the record label thought “Beach Boys” would help them catch the surf music wave? That they crammed this album with surf instrumentals?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Q7vi9sTlM

Answer: No, or, better yet, who cares what their motives were? The language of the surfers allowed them to give voice to breathtakingly beautiful existential angst. “The lonely sea, the lonely sea/It never stops for you or me/It moves along from day to day/That’s why my love/You’ll never stay.” This is the first great Brian Wilson (as opposed to Beach Boys) song:

And maybe the question to begin with is missing something major. Maybe surfing isn’t a fad, or doesn’t have to be a fad. Maybe it can be an ethos, a way of life?

And isn’t that what artists do? Take the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life and mold them into an idealized image of the world. Like turning a traveling salesman’s joke into a story of melancholy longing: