It's About Time: Beach Boys Poll Results

yeah, I want to compare Wild Honey to what came before but it's not going to work. i guess i want to hear all that space.

xpost

because really, Mike Love is right - most of the time people don't wanna hear new and different shit. they want you to do the same thing over and over again.

xp

^^^no

still, Smiley Smile includes stuff that they started tracking at Western, plus a few elements from the Smile sessions, so it wasn't entirely the home studio yet. Also, Smiley Smile is where they stopped using session players

right; & I mean this is still true of the BBs catalog; I think it's widely perceived as "lifestyle music" in a way that the other artists you listed, Bowie, the Stones, etc., aren't. The BBs is beach music. This isn't how *musicians* view the band; but musicians don't get you Rolls-Royces.

because really, Mike Love is right - most of the time people don't wanna hear new and different shit. they want you to do the same thing over and over again.

I think that's kind of a mischaracterization of the situation though. It's not like they were doing the same thing over and over from '62-'67. A song like Good Vibrations proved that people do want to hear new and different shit. It's just that you're not going to have a big hit with a song about chomping your vegetables which is where I think Mike Love was coming from.

'62-'67 is a fairly brief timespan, ie, it's the span of a listener's life as a teenager and the evolution was fairly gradual. Lyrically the leap from Surfer Girl to Good Vibrations was incremental and easy to digest. but after that, once they were "adults" and started going off in different tangents...

I think it's widely perceived as "lifestyle music" in a way that the other artists you listed

hamstrung by their having jumped on several bandwagons earlier (surfing, cars, etc.) audience didn't accept their jumping on other bandwagons (ecology, country rock, disco). audience only allows you one bandwagon!

Now you sound like Mike Love. The audience didn't abandon them because they didn't stick to their original bandwagon. They abandoned them because they stopped making great songs.

the problem with Smiley Smile and Wild Honey are not that they jumped on a new bandwagon, it was that the quality was lower (or alternately, the quality was sufficient but didn't live up to the hype). There was a slow, consistent build to Good Vibrations and then the rug was pulled out from under the ran base with, indeed, songs about chomping vegetables. No wonder people abandoned them.

wk = genius

They abandoned them because they stopped making great songs.

eh this is demonstrably untrue imho

There was a slow, consistent build to Good Vibrations and then the rug was pulled out from under the ran base with, indeed, songs about chomping vegetables.

seeing as how these songs are on the same album and the album STILL BOMBED I think you are missing some caveats. they were hamstrung by their previous image and made an abrupt shift that was too alarming/too random, I think we can agree on that much...?

honestly I think Smiley Smile bombed for a variety of reasons - for a lot of the general listening audience their previous image was still stuck to them and was no longer "cool", and for the other portion of their audience that was expecting Smile, it was a total letdown.

Good Vibrations hit #1 in October 1966 and was then tacked onto Smiley Smile out of sheer desperation in September 1967. GV was old news by that point and the only other track even close to resembling Brian's original intention for Smile is H&V.

I do kind of think that if Smile had actually been completed and released, it still would have bombed.

xp

rather, released in October and hit #1 in December. Still almost an entire year, during which every other major pop act was coming out with amazing new stuff. It must have been offensive to listeners to have a year-old track lead off what was supposed to be the most advanced pop album in history.

>>> this is where they started using the home studio right? smiley smile was still Gold Star & Western.

>> Nevertheless, the Beach Boys still needed to complete an album to fulfil their obligations to Capitol Records, so a replacement was hastily recorded, largely at Brian Wilson's new home studio in Bel Air, during June and July.

> this is why Smiley Smile has no drums, no echo chamber, etc.

And yet, not even the best modern electronic revefberation patches are going to make anything recorded in my bedroom sound as if it were made at Gold Star or Western....

reverberation

OK, so a barrel load of "my" songs have come up since I was last here. Placed "Let the Wind Blow" high, such a weird off-kilter feel to that song, sinister is the wrong word, the strange ascending bassline is what really makes it, I don't know anyone else but Brian Wilson who would have come up with it. And "Break Away", I think the Beach Boys themselves said that song was underproduced or unfinished (and it wasn't Mike Love this time!) but I was listening to it the other day and I don't think it is at all. The lead vocal on it is absolutely gorgeous to boot.

thinking of weird artist moves in 1967: how did Smiley Smile sell in its immediate era compared with John Wesley Harding?

chart performance:

Today! US #4 UK #6
Summer Days... US #2 UK #4
Pet Sounds US #10 UK #2
Smiley Smile US #41 UK #8

Interesting that Smiley Smile didn't "bomb" in the UK at all. Likewise, all of the late '60s albums charted much higher across the pond

#14

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Beach_Boys_-_Dance%2C_Dance%2C_Dance.jpg

The Warmth Of The Sun - Shut Down V2
250 points, 12 votes, One #1 vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70psCljGnXM

I'll say it: this song is overrated

^crazy

you monster.
i think this is classic, think i put it fairly high on my ballot.

like how it fits in with the early beach boys concept w/o being a surfing song.

Didn't vote for this *looks at ground, shame-faced*

hauntingly beautiful. this is the pinnacle of the development of the Surfer Girl / In My Room idea IMO.

I also think it's pretty damn psychedelic

this sounds like it should have been the one hit of some obscure band who then died in a mysterious accident before it was released. only one or two songs in their career are anywhere as dark as this.

I was just about to write something about Dance x3!

great track, lots of weird Four Freshmen chord changes that border on easy listening. I rank this ahead of Surfer Girl for not aping Disney.

My #1 pick.

Music this gorgeous simply hasn't been made either before or since.

Love this song, but the extra percussion on the third verse seems a bit out of place to me.

They abandoned them because they stopped making great songs.

eh this is demonstrably untrue imho

What's an example of a post 67 single that you think should have been a big hit?

seeing as how these songs are on the same album and the album STILL BOMBED I think you are missing some caveats. they were hamstrung by their previous image and made an abrupt shift that was too alarming/too random, I think we can agree on that much...?

no, I don't think so. as skip pointed out, it was an album without a real single.

I do kind of think that if Smile had actually been completed and released, it still would have bombed.

I don't think so. If they had held back Good Vibrations and released it along with the album, I think it would have been a big hit.

yeah but it did well in the uk, i think the image thing is key, "rock" culture had started in the US and the beach boys were not part of that

please kip mike love

Hate to blow the UK's trumpet but they also made "Forever Changes" a Top 30 album, maybe they had just had good taste? I also suspect Brian Wilson was much more respected and taken more seriously in the UK.

Incidentally, how awesome is your band when "The Warmth Of The Sun", "Don't Worry Baby", or "God Only Knows" have to be relegated to the B sides of your singles?

yeah but it did well in the uk, i think the image thing is key, "rock" culture had started in the US and the beach boys were not part of that

and they were a part of the uk's rock culture? I don't know, I don't think this "uncool, not a part of rock culture anymore" theory quite holds up. The top selling album of '67 in the US was the Monkees! Who I guess were cooler and more rock and roll in a way, but still.

What's an example of a post 67 single that you think should have been a big hit?

"Add Some Music to Your Day"
"This Whole World"
"Cabinessence"
"Break Away"
"Long Promised Road"
"Feel Flows"
"Surf's Up"
"Sail On, Sailor"

I'll say it: this song is overrated

lotta what ifs for the beach boys in the smile era -- what if they had played monterey?
(answer: they probably would've come across as kind of lame?)

Don't know, how did the Association go down?

the uk had a much more pop as opposed to rock orientation (and i'm using rock as the heavier, self-serious culture that came from rock n roll). the monkees fans were kids and teens. the kids and teens who grew up with the beach boys were listening to heavier stuff and left the beach boys behind by the time of smiley smile (and yes it was also way too weird to ever be much of a pop smash)

association did not go down too well

The Beach Boys would never have rocked hard enough to stay with the times in 68-70. So it was going to happen at some point. Even at its 40-minute, coherent, primped best, Smile would still be a bit lame compared to say Jimi Hendrix. In the end, maybe it's not surprising that "Good Vibrations" ended up a one-off, 3-minute slice of overworked genius, not a basis for some larger and more important movement that would ripple through the culture.

association! kinda proto Devo here. kinda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOtHPCcH7cc

Love that band

#13

I Just Wasn't Made For These Times - Pet Sounds
274 points, 11 votes, One #1 vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX4py6AdIYQ

prob my favorite from pet sounds

think this was my highest pet sounds tune? (kind of forgetting what i actually voted for now)
but anyway! so good. the bass line, the percussion, the "sometimes i feel very sad" part, the theremin! perfection.