The Beach Was The Place To Go

The Beach Boys “Do It Again”

“Do It Again” is a Beach Boys single from 1968, at the tail end of the most critically celebrated and commercially successful period of the act’s career. I’ve never gone too deep on The Beach Boys, so even in spite of it being a modest hit that appears on a lot of their greatest hits compilations, I never heard it before a few weeks ago. I encountered it while listening to a recent episode of Andrew Hickey’s A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, and the experience of hearing it for the first time was a little profound. It’s not just that “Do It Again” is a great song, but that it feels like a Beach Boys song made to my exact specifications. I have no idea how I avoided this song for so long, but finding it now felt like a miraculous little gift.

“Do It Again” is essentially the result of a post-Pet Sounds/“Good Vibrations” studio wizard version of The Beach Boys self-consciously trying to reconnect with the carefree surf music that was their bread and butter in the first phase of their career. It’s basically the best of both worlds – simple, innocent joy rendered a little bit strange by studio experimentation. (Check out the severe delay effect on the drums!) It’s everything I like about The Beach Boys compressed into a little over 2 minutes – unusual sounds, sweet harmonies, earnest happiness tinged with vague melancholy.

Mike Love’s lyrics are extremely direct and openly nostalgic for aimless days spent at the beach with beautiful girls. I don’t think Love had anything to say besides “Remember how fun that was? Let’s get back together and do it again.” But even if he sounds optimistic, there’s a sense in the music that it may not be so easy to get back, and that recreating happy moments from the past isn’t as satisfying as just finding new happy moments.

The song feels more poignant now, nearly 60 years after its initial release. Sure, people still hang out on the beach in California and there’s plenty of surfers, but Love’s utopian vision of the Southern California coast is particular to the mid 20th century. It’s post-war boom time USA, not too far out from the cultural creation of the teenager. It’s a vision of California as the promised land, a triumphant paradise at the end of Manifest Destiny. It’s kids goofing off at the edge of the continent, looking to the horizon and expecting even more. I think if I could have experienced something like that – a triumph you can feel but don’t think too deeply about to consciously understand – I would only dream of getting back to it too.

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