It's About Time: Beach Boys Poll Results

the 60s really were such a weird decade

ready to throw my baggies into my woody after that clip

those pants are something else.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chf=bg,s,548000&chxl=0:|1962|1963|1964|1965|1966|1967|1968|1969|1970|1971&chxs=0,F7F7F7,14.5,1,lt,FFFFFF&chxt=x&chs=560x280&cht=lxy&chco=FFCC33&chds=15,100,0,4736&chd=t:-1|123,668,1800,1405,4736,369,630,411,778,224&chdlp=b&chls=6&chma=5,5,0,25&chtt=ILM

nope, no drop off in quality there at all

lol when you have "experts" like crut voting surprised the peak wasn't 1964

Obviously 1965 was their peak!

Got the most votes from me, edging out 1966. '64 placed third....

(points out that numbers skewed by only one album & one single released that year vs. 3 albums each in '64 and '65)

Kinda surprised Sandy/Sherry/She Says That She Need Me didn't get any votes. I strongly considered it. Like "Good Timin'", probably another case of the ultimately released version being less interesting than the earlier mock-ups heard only on bootlegs.

I prob woulda voted for it if I thought someone else would

only looking at the top 40 is misleading. lol yeah pet sounds got a lot of votes. but here's the vote breakdown by album:

album votes
Pet Sounds 119
Surf's Up 63
Smiley Smile 60
Summer Days 46
20/20 44
Sunflower 39
All Summer Long 38
Shut Down V2 37
Wild Honey 37
Other 34
Today! 34
Friends 33
Surfer Girl 33
Single / B-side 19
Holland 13
Surfin' USA 11
Love You 10
Party! 8
Surfin' Safari 8
Holland 5
Little Deuce Coupe 5
Smile 5
Carl and the Passions 2
LA 2
15 Big Ones 1
Christmas Album 1
Keepin' the Summer Alive 1
MIU 1
Still Cruisin' 1

post-pet sounds votes: 317
pre-pet sounds votes: 221
other (pet sounds + other): 172

same thing done by points:

other 4089
post 7054
pre 4964

the pre/post splits are mindboggling to me

wait I fucked up the holland combine the 13+5

I was counting by points and I was counting by when songs were first written or recorded, not released. So Surf's Up counts as '66, not '71. At least for the purposes of the debate over whether or not the Beach Boys songwriting took a decline. I only did the top 40 because after 40 songs I got tired of looking up the year for each one.

I mean it seems pretty unambiguously clear to me that Brian was at the peak of his powers around 1966 and then hit a major slump and never recovered. It's not just "lol people like Pet Sounds" but that basically every song from later albums that was highly ranked was something left over from the Smile era sessions or a song like Do It Again that he had written years earlier.

well, he lost his marbles pretty much for good around that time, which made it difficult to create comparably 'complete' works. if you look at the post-pet sound albums, relatively few songs fit the description 'new, complete brian wilson work' and the ones that do tend to have gotten votes in this poll.

late beach boys material is interesting because a. he lost his capability to deal w/ the world but not his musical talents b. the rest of the band, esp dennis were talented in their own right, and started to contribute substantially. the albums are chaotic, messy but still have brian wilson's touches. there's just more material to sift through.

I'm not gonna argue that 'had to phone ya' is a better song than 'california girls', but there're a lot of strange things to find in it.

basically if you weighed the results by *quantity* - brian's quantity of released output pre-pet sounds to the votes it got prob isn't substantially higher than post-pet sounds. you're approaching this from the POV that he ran out of ideas / lost his touch instead of, ya know, went crazy. while remaining uniquely talented. that's why I've always been so obsessed w/ rare stuff - his ear for melody never left him, just his capacity to 'finish' substantial, radio-friendly works.

could this song (given better production) be playing on classic rock radio station right now? absolutely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rNLiHVQsU0

could this song (given better production) be playing on classic rock radio station right now? absolutely



I'm not sure I buy the theory that everything post '66 that we liked/voted for was written pre '66. "'Til I Die" is 1971, and that's top 5. "Sail on Sailor" is 69 or 70 IIRC, as is "This Whole World" (which I didn't vote for but which is awesome). "Break Away," "Busy Doin' Nothing"...the list goes on. The Smile stuff aside, this isn't Rick Nielson who had some bag of songs he reached into (and was "Do It Again" really an older cut? I hadn't read that anywhere).

I'd say the well dried up closer to 1974-75.

After six weeks of very little or no work done in the studio (as the band was busy touring), the band got back to work on May 26, 1968, when they first began working on "Do It Again" at Brian's home studio in Bel Air, California. The session, produced by Brian and Carl, first listed the song as being called "Rendezvous". After Brian had run the band through a demonstration of the song, the band began recording the track using guitar, organ, bass and drums, with Mike singing his vocal during the initial takes of the track. At first Mike sings the lyric "and surf again", however this is later amended to "and do it again". After the band recorded the basic track, they overdubbed backing vocals as well as adding a guitar and organ insert and a new guitar solo. Further vocal work by Brian, Carl, Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Bruce Johnston and Al Jardine was done on the track on June 6 again at Brian's home studio.
Further overdubs to the instrumental track were made at Brian's home studio on June 10. John Guerin playing drums, tambourine and wood blocks on the overdubs, Ernie Small provided saxophone overdubs and John E. Lowe provided woodwind overdubs.
Reportedly[citation needed], during the mixdown Stephen Desper, the engineer on the album came up with the drum effect heard at the beginning of the track. Many believe that this sound added to the commercial success of the single. Desper explained that he had:
"commissioned Philips, in Holland, to build two tape delay units for use on the road (to double live vocals). [he][who?] moved four of the Philips PB heads very close together so that one drum strike was repeated four times about 10 milliseconds apart, and blended it with the original to give the effect you hear."
On the fade of the song there are some hammering sounds which originated from the Smile workshop session.

last line is interesting!

Noted it upthread!

I'd say the well dried up closer to 1974-75.

love you is 77 and it's not even controversial at this point to say that there's some great stuff on that album

I absolutely adore Love You -- but more as a piece than as an example of top notch Brian songwriting.

Also, I'm not saying Brian didn't have his own bag or that he didn't pull from it occasionally -- just that he kept adding stuff to it until the drugs (and then Landy) took over.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BehindTheSounds#p/u/8/ofByti7A4uM

more youtube stuff - this series using pet sounds sessions is pretty watchable

I'm not sure I buy the theory that everything post '66 that we liked/voted for was written pre '66.

I never said it was everything. I made a graph ffs! Showing exactly how the points were distributed by year.

I may have misread the chart then -- I thought it was the year songs came out. My bad if so.

well, he lost his marbles pretty much for good around that time, which made it difficult to create comparably 'complete' works.

well of course! which is why I thought it was absolutely crazy that people have been arguing that there wasn't a decline in output.

basically if you weighed the results by *quantity*

No, not really. The results of the poll are essentially a measure of quality too, right? Which is why I ranked them by points. People like some of the post-Smile stuff but not nearly as much as they like what came before. If I only counted the number of votes for each song while ignoring the ranking then that would be a measure of quantity, but we've already qualitatively ranked them as best as we can.

I may have misread the chart then -- I thought it was the year songs came out. My bad if so.

Basically I took the top 40 tracks, figured out when they were first written or recorded, then sorted them by those dates, and added up the points for each year. So each year gets a score that also takes into account how we ranked the songs.

Here's the data I used

1962
38 Surfin' Safari 123
123 points

1963
31 Surfin' USA 146
11 In My Room 338
26 Surfer Girl 184
668 points

1964
6 Don't Worry Baby 531
7 I Get Around 468
14 The Warmth Of 250
15 Darlin 241
27 She Knows Me Too Well 178
36 Fun, Fun, Fun 132
1800 points

1965
8 California Girls 396
19 Girl Don't Tell Me 214
21 Help Me Rhonda 210
23 Let Him Run Wild 203
33 Kiss Me Baby 141
37 Guess I’m Dumb 125
40 Barbara Ann 116
1405 points

1966
1 God Only Knows 788
2 Surf's Up 782
3 Good Vibrations 627
4 Wouldn’t It Be Nice 588
9 Heroes and Villains 374
10 Cabinessence 346
12 Caroline No 302
13 I Just Wasn't Made 274
20 Don't Talk 213
29 I Know There's An 153
30 Sloop John B 149
34 I'm Waiting For The 140
4736 points

1967
16 Let The Wind Blow 225
32 Can’t Wait Too Long 144
369 points

1968
24 Busy Doin Nothin 198
28 Do It Again 173
35 Friends 137
39 Little Bird 122
630 points

1969
18 Break Away 222
25 All I Wanna Do 189
411 points

1970
5 Til I Die 569
22 This Whole World 209
778 points

1971
17 Feel Flows 224
224

not all of the voters were super familiar w/ their later career, so to pretend like this is scientific is silly

ultimately you're trying to convince people who like music not to like that music anymore, and excel graphs probably aren't going to do it

Yeah, I don't know why I said Do It Again was written years earlier. I must have been thinking of something else. I counted it as 1968.
xp

ultimately you're trying to convince people who like music not to like that music anymore, and excel graphs probably aren't going to do it

no way! I'm not trying to convince people out of liking stuff they like. that's stupid. I'm not even saying they didn't make good music in the later years. I'm just trying to counter the people who were acting like I was some kind of insane challopsy Mike Love stan for daring to say that there was a decline in the band's songwriting.

and you're probably not going to convince me otherwise by saying that the voters were dumb and not as down with the BBs as you.

yeah well I never said "voters were dumb" and I attempted to get as many ballots as possible, regardless of their composition. I do think there's a pretty high correlation between 'consider the beach boys one of your favorite bands' and 'spends more time listening to post-pet sounds material' and if you limited the ballots to people who consider the beach boys one of their favorite bands, the later albums fare considerably better than they do w/ casual fans.

You guys are both right. The core period is the artistic peak, but the latter period is just more interesting. The same guy is the creative driving force of the group and the same genius ideas are bouncing around in his head, filtered through not only drugs, mental illness, and one of the strongest and quirkiest personalities in pop, but a decade of experience in making and creating music. For those willing to dig, the post-Pet Sounds period is a gold mine, if a somewhat tainted and incomplete one due to Brian's inability to 'finish substantial radio friendly' works. Personally, I would take the first six albums over the six core post-Pet Sounds albums (Smiley, Wild Honey, Friends, 20/20, Sunflower, Surf's Up) in a heartbeat even if all conceivable bonus tracks were included, but I get why people dive headlong into the latter period.

Christmas Album 1
lol, that was me

Wow I never heard "Do It Again" before. That song is awesome!

Little Saint Nick deserved some love.

it's a pretty good song

also 'lonely sea' which only got a late ballot

another good one, one of my late cuts. Though where were the other votes for No-Go Showboat???

prob not in my top 40 but that's def a song the live-mike-love-boys should brush off

Mark Prindle on Little Deuce Coupe:

three out of the six great songs you'll find on here are songs that you likely already own - "Little Deuce Coupe," "409" and "Shut Down (Turn Off, the b-side of The Little River Band's "Lonesome Loser" Single)." The other three are worth owning, but at what cost? At what cost, I beg of you?

The answer is five billion dollars. For "No-Go Showboat" alone. Anybody who doesn't like that song has the evil of a thousand demons coursing through their very soul.

Wait, I was the ONLY one to vote for "The Lonely Sea"? Given that I feel like it's one of Brian's most perfectly formed ballads that's kind of stunning to me -- and given how early it is, it actually seems to validate skip's theory about "hardcore fans" liking the late period more.

"No-Go Showboat" and "Custom Machine" are both great songs from the LDC album. Love all the lyrical details about hot-rodding culture, set to the most complex music on the album.

I like "Lonely Sea" - probably the first of their slow/introspective songs, it's just that later efforts built on what was done here and were better IMO, like "In My Room" from the next album.

I think alot of us like "Little Saint Nick" but it's hard to think about Christmas songs in the sweltering August heat. Love the second verse where Santa's sleigh is reimagined as a four-on-the-floor candy-apple-red hot rod - "when Santa hits the gas, man, just watch her peel!" - so uniquely Beach Boys

Just caught up on the rollout after a vacation. Thanks iatee - great stuff. My ballot:

1. God Only Knows
2. ‘Til I Die
3. Heroes and Villains
4. Good Vibrations
5. In My Room
6. Forever
7. Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)
8. Surf’s Up
9. Sail on Sailor
10. Guess I’m Dumb (Glen Campbell)
11. You Still Believe in Me
12. Then I Kissed Her
13. California Girls
14. Long Promised Road
15. Darlin’
16. This Whole World
17. I Get Around
18. I Know There’s an Answer
19. It’s About Time
20. Feel Flows

I seem to dislike most car songs by this band. No Go Showboat is dreadful.

"Honkin' Down the Highway"?