Holland, The Beach Boys, 1973

“He just sat in his camper and wrote all that shit.”
    - John Steinbeck’s son on Travels with Charley

Sitting in the Netherlands, the Beach Boys wrote touching tributes to California. "Sail On, Sailor" is so beautiful and evocative and sad. So’s "Steamboat." "California Saga (California)" is a favorite of mine. I hear human-ness and deep caring, something unusual in the rock of that time. The mainstream critics don't like this album very much -- “a shitload of drivel” says Mark Coleman in the Rolling Stone Album Guide.