ALBUM: Best of Beau Brummels (1981)
MVC Rating: 3.5-$$$
I was a sucker for these Rhino Records compilations of obscure and semi-obscure music.
The company put out ‘best of’ compilations of records by one or two-hit wonders like the Left Banke and Beau Brummels. I will review BB here but wait for the ‘L’s” for Left Banke. Rhino also picked up obscure but good original albums – not just anthologies and greatest hits. One of those was the Beat Farmers, which I earlier reviewed.
‘Laugh Laugh’ is Beau Brummels’ biggest hit and arguably, their best song. It has a sweet little melody driving along bittersweet lyrics:
Don’t say you can get any boy to call
Don’t be so smug or else
You’ll find you can’t get any boy at all
You’ll wind up an old lady sitting on the shelf
Laugh, laugh, I thought I’d die
Funny laugh laugh, right? No not really, but they’re working on that irony thing.
This was a big hit and deservedly so, I suppose. They get compared to the Beatles a lot but I’d put them more in leagues with the Kinks, in their early British Invasion stage. They seem like they could have done one of my favorite Kinks’ songs, ‘Nothing in this World Can Stop Me Worrying ‘Bout That Girl.’
But surprise! The Brummels were from San Francisco. And their later stuff starts turning toward a little psychedelia-tinged country.
Their songs are from a different time and place. ‘Laugh Laugh’ and ‘Just a Little’ and ‘You Tell Me Why,’ are songs you probably say you don’t know. Then you hear them.
Then you say: ‘Well, yes.’
Then …”well maybe.”
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.