One of the best things I ever did with the stupid huge recording budgets I had in the early 90’s when my band Medicine was on Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label was to hire one of my all-time musical heroes Van Dyke Parks to arrange and play on a song on our 1993 LP The Buried Life. Needless to say the man’s a paragon of musical integrity and one of the most unique musical thinkers of our time. Hell, just for the co-writing of Surf’s Up alone the man is among the truly greats of 20th century popular music. So here are a couple of delightful recent clips of him performing another Beach Boys classic which he co-wrote, Heroes and Villains and a key track from his perpetually under-rated masterpiece Song Cycle on David Garland’s Spinning on Air program on WNYC. Wonderful !