iPod Archives: Beach Boys go disco!!

One of the coolest things about listening to the iPod on random (technically, I've got it on alphabetical-by-title play, but with over 2500 songs, it serves the same function as random shuffle) is being surprised occasionally by a song I forgot I had, or hadn't heard in years. That happened this morning with "Here Comes the Night," the notorious disco song by The Beach Boys. They first recorded the song in 1967, and again in a discofied version in 1979 for their album L.A (Light Album). But the recording I heard this morning is the spectacular 10 minute 12-inch-single remix version of the 1979 song. The song was roundly derided when it came out and was not a hit, but I always liked it.

At the peak of the disco era, I was in my late-college and post-college days and I liked the music but never really went dancing (my discobunny days, when I discovered the gay bar scene, were in the mid-80's), so I experienced disco music second-hand, so to speak, in the privacy of my own room, dancing with myself (thanks, Billy Idol) or just tapping my foot. Most of the 12-inch singles I owned were just artificially extended versions of songs with long sections of thumping percussion inserted before the final verse or chorus.

But "Here Comes the Night," while it may have been constructed in the same fashion, seemed different. There were swirling strings, disco whistles, and old-fashioned Beach Boys harmonies in the mix (sounding like space-age 50's doo-wop), and the entire 10 minutes felt like it was recorded as a complete work, not just a 3-minute song that was given an extra few minutes in the middle by a staff of re-mixers. And in fact, if you can read the credits on the single label above, there are names listed for production, arrangement, stings, and synthesizers, but not for re-mixing. I'm not crazy about the gruff lead vocal by Carl Wilson, but everything else about the song just screams creamy disco ultra-pop production. It's the perfect heterosexual disco record, which begs the question of whether it's really disco or not, I guess. But it's fun.