We Love the Beach Boys: "Salty Water" by Mark Wirtz

Detail of Something in the Air by Jack Vettriano, 1992

The name of British producer-musician Mark Wirtz is usually invoked in connection with his ambitious psych-pop experiments in the late '60s, particularly the unfinished Teenage Opera project (which spawned the Keith West hit "Grocer Jack (Excerpt from A Teenage Opera".) In the '70s, Wirtz moved to Hollywood to find solo success on Capitol Records. Surprisingly, things didn't quite work out, and Wirtz's solo work - excellent records full of "plastic pop" evoking ABBA and 10cc in equal measure - barely made a dent in the charts. These records, Hothouse Smiles, Balloon, Cartoon, and Lost Pets, were out of print for years but were recently re-released in a neat two CD set. Except for the inclusion of a couple more recent compositions and the fact that the four records are shuffled together pretty randomly, I am very happy with this collection of psych-tinged '70s-style pop.

Wirtz's last record of the '70s, Lost Pets, was an unfinished project that got shelved when his collaborators got called away to tour with Toto (I'm not even kidding!) A few years later, Wirtz's daughter had a close call with her severe allergies and Wirtz, deciding that his priorities needed to be changed, gave up making music. Which brings us to "Salty Water", one of the completed songs from the Lost Pets project. It's a great piece of late-1970s "We Love the Beach Boys" pop - at first, it just seems like generically pleasant harmony-heavy pop, but the bridge at the 2:50 mark momentarily recreates that Surf's Up vibe I love.

"Salty Water" by Mark Wirtz