The fifth album by the
Beach Boys - in less than two years!
Brian Wilson's songwriting was improving by leaps and bounds at this point, but at the same time the strain was beginning to show, both mentally - he'd soon have his first
nervous breakdown - and in terms of overall quality.
Shut Down vol 2 has some of Brian's very best songwriting -
Don't Worry Baby and
The Warmth Of The Sun are two of the best songs written by anyone in this period - but also has too many filler tracks - such as
"Cassius" Love vs. "Sonny" Wilson , simply a not-particularly-funny conversation between the band members, and
Denny's Drums which is, as the title suggests, a drum solo, and not a particularly good one at that.
Tracklisting:
- Fun Fun Fun
- Don't Worry Baby
- In The Parkin' Lot
- "Cassius" Love vs. "Sonny" Wilson
- The Warmth Of The Sun
- This Car Of Mine
- Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
- Pom-Pom Play Girl
- Keep An Eye On Summer
- Shut Down, Part II
- Louie Louie
- Denny's Drums
The band members for this album are
Brian Wilson,
Carl Wilson,
Dennis Wilson,
Mike Love and
Al Jardine. There is some dispute as to whether Dave Marks participated. If he did, it was the last album he played on.
The album is currently available on
Capitol Records as a twofer with
Surfer Girl
Previous album -
Little Deuce Coupe
Next album -
All Summer Long
The reason for the title, incidentally, was that Capitol had issued a compilation album called
Shut Down, featuring Beach Boys tracks , along with tracks by
Gary Usher and even
Robert Mitchum, in such a way that it looked like a Beach Boys album. As you can imagine, the band were not best pleased...