Bulletin columnist David Jasper has had this copy of The Beach Boys compilation "Endless Summer" since the early 1980s. (David Jasper/The Bulletin)

The only good thing about losing our musical geniuses that I can think of is the way those of us who loved their work will dig into their catalogs and wax appreciative all over again. Honestly, I think we hear the work with new ears once the artist that created it is gone from this plane.

I know that the second I was done weeping over the death of Prince, or Joe Strummer, or Joey Ramone, or more recently, Sinead O’Connor and Mike Peters of The Alarm, it was in their music that I sought solace.

And so it was last week, when I learned of the death of Wilson — inarguably the main cog in what made seminal surf-rock band The Beach Boys brilliant — at 82.

That meant finding “Endless Summer” on Spotify, though I still have it on vinyl, as I have for, oh, about 43 years. Alas, without a turntable, it was to digital I turned. Even without the warm sounds of vinyl, “The Warmth of the Sun” and other songs sung and played by Carl, Dennis, Brian Wilson, along with cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine, still transport me to that formative time.

I wouldn’t tell my friends who surf, because they already have a chip on their shoulders, generally speaking, but there was a time, before skateboarding, when I wanted so badly to be a surfer. Back in ‘82, every teen in Miami — pretty famously flat except for winter and hurricane swells — was a wannabe. Seemingly every teen of the time was decked out in OP and Lightning Bolt clothes and slip-on checkered Vans, trying our hardest to look like Spicoli and friends in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

It was a look, a pose, a ruse, for sure, but along with the thought of tan beauties on the beach, etc. the independent, non-sportiness of surfing also appealed. “Endless Summer,” released in 1974 and compiling The Beach Boys’ most sun-, surf-, and beach-evoking songs of the 1960s, was the soundtrack to that brief moment.

As the artist Basquiat said, art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time. And the sound that decorated those months of my life was that two-record set. As far as I knew or was concerned, it had all their best songs. Only years later would I get my hands on “Pet Sounds,” the brilliant album said to have inspired The Beatles to swing for the fences on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and later learned just how great “Sloop John B,” “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” were, too. There is little as beautiful as that a capella moment two-thirds of the way through “Sloop John B” when their voices coalesce into something transcendent and otherworldly.

It was through The Beach Boys’ gorgeous, gooseflesh-giving harmonies on songs such as “Girls on the Beach,” the “ooh-wah-ooohs” of “Catch a Wave” that I learned to love a well-sung high note. I will still sing shamelessly along, as high as I can, to, Prince’s “Kiss” or Chris Isaak’s “Two Hearts” — thank your lucky ears that you’re reading this instead of listening to an audio report.

My surf through Beach Boys’ tunes on Spotify last week got me thinking of one of my favorite punk bands, The Queers. Specifically, how its fearless leader and only constant member, Joe King, might be feeling in the wake of Wilson’s death.

Joe Queer, as fans know him, may not be that sensitive, judging from certain material he’s put out there, but his music reveals a sweet, shameless Brian Wilson (and Ramones) fixation. The Beach Boys influence is all over their 1996 album “Don’t Back Down,” which some have called The Queers’ magnum opus. The album is full of earworm songs, surf-rock vibes and the “wah-oohs” of “Don’t Back Down,” “Little Honda,” “Never Ever” and “Sidewalk Surfer Girl.” The album-closing duet with Lisa Marr, “I Can’t Get Over You,” ends with King and Marr’s downright beautiful counterpoint, almost like Brian Wilson had done the arranging.

Listening to the album last week, I thought it no wonder that “Don’t Back Down” was one of my favorite albums of the mid-’90s. Surfing led me to skateboarding and certain corners of punk rock. I never backed down, as it were, but neither did the primacy of The Beach Boys.

There may be no greater sound to my ears than when punk bands cover the likes of Beach Boys’ “Wendy,” as The Descendents did. Punk originators the Ramones certainly appreciated ‘60s pop, covering songs like “Warm California Sun.” But The Queers took things a step further. King even delivered, on a hidden album track, a faithful rendition of “God Only Knows.”

On the 2007 Queers song “Brian Wilson,” a tribute if ever there was one, King and Marr pair again to sing a chorus that in part goes, “It’s a good thing, Brian Wilson, it’s a good thing we’ve got you around.”

It’s so sad to think that the present tense nature of that line is no longer accurate, Brian Wilson.

As you and your brothers sang, “Catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world.”

Your music has been a high point of this life. And it was a good thing we had you around.