thoughts on 2001 reissue of Pet Sounds?
I’ve had the Beach Boys on the minds since Monday night’s Brian Wilson show.
Let’s all assume you all have the mono + stereo + bonus tracks version of Pet Sounds (and you should, it’s the 2nd best album ever after all).
Two questions immediately come to mind:
- Do you listen to the mono or stereo versions of the tracks or both? The mono’s the original, but is it the way it was intended to be heard forever and ever?
- “I Know There’s an Answer” or “Hang onto Your Ego”? Same music but different words.
Come on, these are important questions here. Personally, I go mono (but sometimes I leave it on to play through the stereo too) and I think “Hang onto Your Ego” is better, mostly because I love the way that title line is sung in the chorus.
Since Wilson is deaf in one ear, he mixed everything to be heard in mono. But I listen to stereo whenever I can just to hear as much instrumentation as possible. To me, getting as much out of the album as I can is the main thing. Mike Hate (Love) rewrote the lyrics to “Ego” because he didn’t like the “hippy” lyrics. Mike’s lyric is good too, but ‘Ego’ is what Brian intended people to hear, so I put it into the rotation.