http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frtVqCZub-0 None of the Beach Boys' famous car songs better encapsulate the feelings that lie beneath the American car culture than 409. The song, full of driving electric-guitar melody lines and equally driving drum beats, shows us, in a musical and lyrical way, both the hard-driving energy and the industrial poetry that keeps the hot-rod fringe alive, even to this day. While the melody is rich, the true strength of this song lies in the lyrics. The song begins with one line , repeated over and over, sung so passionately that one might even think that the singer could be singing about his girlfriend: "She's real fine, my 409." Immediately after, the singer begins telling us about how hard he's worked to gain his beloved set of wheels: "I saved my pennies and I saved my dimes..." After a rousing chorus, the song then continues by lovingly and painstakingly detailing the machine, detailing the car's vital statistics in a craftsmanlike-yet-poetic way: "...my four-speed, dual-quad, positraction 409..." A major indicator of Brian Wilson and Mike Love's songwriting skills is the fact that the two capture the essence of the hot-rod culture so well without ever being part of the culture (the same was true of the surf culture; in fact, the only Beach Boy who had ever gone surfing was Dennis Wilson. But I digress). However, Brian and Mike's skill as composers outweigh their lack of firsthand knowledge regarding the subject; if there was anything that Brian Wilson knew about, it was passion, and he poured plenty of it into this tune.
Alan Howell is a native of Southern California. He loves movies of any and all kinds, Hollywood, indie, and everywhere in between. He loves pizza, sitcoms, rock and pop music, surfing, baseball, reading, and girls (not necessarily in that order).