It's About Time: Beach Boys Poll Results

TOO LOW!!!

a lot of stuff has to fit in the last 22

i dunno, i like "wild" but it's never been a big fave.

it would have fit in fine on Pet Sounds IMO

"busy doin' nothing" though! love it. just great that in the late 60s when everything was getting crazy cosmic/psychedelic, wilson was writing a song like this.

he really tapped into the come-down vibe of the '70s earlier than a lot of his contemporaries huh?

that's otm. explains the "70's radio" sound of Wild Honey someone mentioned earlier

& yeah, interesting point about it being a solo vocal (no backup vocals?). Along with "caroline no" are there others in the beach boys catalog? does "back of my mind" have backing vocals?

Think Brian is double-tracked on the "choruses" in "Busy Doin' Nothin'."

I just checked my outbox to see if I was the guy who placed this at #1. I'm not, but it was way up there (#4). This is my favorite production-wise though. I've made a handful of recordings over the years, and dabbled in record producing, and this is pretty much what I try to make most of my stuff sound like. Just so incredibly rich and lush, "he would just saturate the tape" (can't remember who I'm quoting).

P.S. it's tragic that Gold Star Studios is long gone. That place was just magic, that incredible reverberation you hear here and on most of Phil Spector classics. When you read about the "wall of sound", these were the actual walls that formed it. I can often pick out records that were made there when I hear them - its sound is just that distinctive.

xp actually he might be doubletracked on "caroline no" too. but not a vocal harmony or anything.

and yes! gold star! love listening to those pet sounds sessions just to hear the reverb, the overall sound of those musicians!
http://www.goldstarrecordingstudios.com/galler1.gif

Let Him Run Wild was my #1

for some reason it was on the first Beach Boys "best of" I heard as a child and it blew my little fragile mind

"Be Still" is just dennis singing, no backup

Hard to tell, but aren't there other vocal lines (i.e., not just matching, double-tracking) on the "Want to go and cry/So sad to watch a sweet thing die" part of "Caroline, No?"

"Busy Doin' Nothin'" was the last song I cut when trying to reduce my favorites to just 20.

The double-tracking on '60s Beach Boys records was much sloppier than the Beatles (before they started using ADT). The two voices sometimes come in or take breaths in different places. On "Be With Me", on the second chorus Dennis sings "it could set you free" one time and "it could set us free" the other; it went uncorrected.

I love the way the whole first verse of LHRW is like an extended intro that builds up toward the chorus. And check out that bass line.

Carol Kaye = God

I think Wilson's bass lines are kind of the hidden foundation of his genius, much like Paul McCartney.

Kaye is great but I think it's unlikely she wrote any of the bass parts.

it's kinda funny how the plinky plunky Fender Jaguar fit so well into the early Beach Boys sound- like the guitar was made for that band

yeah, i think kaye is a pro who could read music -- she probably didn't write her lines. obviously a great sound. but most of the pet sounds bass stuff is doubled up with a string bass too, so it's not just her.

The vibraphone part is fun to play on a keyboard, it's almost all black keys

Point taken

McCartney has acknowledged modeling his melodic bass lines from Sgt. Pepper onwards on BW's on Pet Sounds

I went to a Kaye talk/bass clinic thing several years back that was pretty fun. She's kind of a character. It's pretty wild to think that she was like a mother of a couple of kids and worked pretty much non-stop in the studio, earning more money than a doctor did at the time. All in an era and an industry that you would think would have been intensely male-dominated.

yeah, i imagine studio musicians in the 50s-60s were totally sexist bros -- kaye must've had a tough personality.

Carol Kaye wasn't the only electric bass player on the Beach Boys' hits, by the way. Just as Earl Palmer and Jim Gordon subbed for Hal Blaine on a number of sessions, Ray Pohlman played on a number of BBs hits in place of Kaye. That's standard pretty standard with session musicians, though, and probably was even more so in LA in the 1960s, when records were produced so frequently and quickly.

can totally tell when carol kaye is on a record, also did great stuff with david axelrod

The double-tracking on '60s Beach Boys records was much sloppier than the Beatles (before they started using ADT). The two voices sometimes come in or take breaths in different places. On "Be With Me", on the second chorus Dennis sings "it could set you free" one time and "it could set us free" the other; it went uncorrected.

oh man there are TONS of these kinds of "errors"/leftovers in BB mixes, conversations/talking, missed vocal cues, weird punch-ins, etc.

#22

This Whole World - Sunflower
209 points, 11 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xz5QDsYSto

love carl's vocals on that

& yeah, interesting point about it being a solo vocal (no backup vocals?). Along with "caroline no" are there others in the beach boys catalog? does "back of my mind" have backing vocals?

― tylerw, Wednesday, 17 August 2011 20:03 (53 minutes ago) Bookmark

Livin' With A Heartache is the only Boys' single with no backing harmonies. Just Carl singing a country song.

probably the catchiest BBs song with the weirdest chord changes. hits ever chord in the key at some point except for one iirc

xp

nice!

verse:
C F Em7 G Am F

A F#7 Bm7 E7 C#m

C# C#/C F#/Bb Ab7 Bbm Bbm/Ab F#maj7

break:
Bb Ebmaj7

Bb F G

ha, that's great. neat to get a glimpse into the weird little projects wilson was throwing into songs just for the hell of it, to entertain himself.
there's some story about him explaining how he wrote til i die where he says that he came up with the chords by twisting his fingers into the "coolest" shapes he could think of or something.

I wonder if it bugged him that he couldn't work a D chord in there somewhere

oh man there are TONS of these kinds of "errors"/leftovers in BB mixes, conversations/talking, missed vocal cues, weird punch-ins, etc.

I get warm and fuzzy just thinking about it. And the sad thing is, at the time I never would have believed I'd still want to hear this stuff 15 years later, and I only have a small percentage of what we recorded.

IMHO, you all need to be listening to more Beach Boys Love You.

i think there might be one or two love you tracks coming up!

I'd be surprised if there aren't tbh

my guess would be either The Night Was So Young or Johnny Carson...

god, I sure as hell hope not

I'll be surprised but not sad if no Love You tracks show up.

"busy doin' nothing" though! love it. just great that in the late 60s when everything was getting crazy cosmic/psychedelic, wilson was writing a song like this.

/given the lyric is written straightforwardly, with not a single metaphor elsewhere, I think you have to take that one literally: it's not a turn of phrase./

Again, disagree absolutely.

Just re-reading the lyrics, I have to say: violence is a real stretch here -- and sort of reeks of overanalysis. Mental abuse, sure. Bad boyfriend, agreed. But no way does this song suggest physical violence in any way. And frankly, if you imagine Mike Love singing instead of Brian, it all makes a lot more sense.

I had a few Love You tracks on my list that all got lost when whittling down to my top 20. "Honking Down the Highway", "The Night Was So Young", maybe "Let's Put Our Hearts Together" or "Good Time" would be in my top 40 certainly.

Great song, but for my money, I'll take its twin, "I'd Love Just Once to See You."

"when's the last time you baked me a pie?"

I was thinking of making a song that was just all the kitchen/dishes/food references in Brian's songs all strung together

cuz there are a LOT