It's About Time: Beach Boys Poll Results

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"?

"Fun fun fun" ?

Neither of those count here - Honkin' is late-period and Fun Fun Fun is more about a girl than a car. I'm talking the Shut Down/Little Deuce car songs. Chevy Chevy Coupe and all that dreck.

I'm only against the songs for political reasons

Here's what mine would have been.

1 She Knows Me Too Well
2 Child Is The Father of the Man (Brian Wilson: Smile, if we're citing official releases only)
3 Til I Die (Endless Harmony version)
4 God Only Knows
5 Cabinessence
6 Don't Worry Baby
7 The Little Girl I Once Knew
8 Girl Don't Tell Me
9 Forever
10 This Whole World
11 Never Learn Not to Love
12 Sail On Sailor
13 Wonderful (Good Vibrations box version)
14 Heroes and Villains (Smiley Smile bonus tracks version)
15 Wouldn't It Be Nice
16 The Warmth of the Sun
17 Breakaway
18 I Can Hear Music
19 Good Vibrations (Endless Harmony live rehearsal version)
20 Our Prayer

2 Child Is The Father of the Man (Brian Wilson: Smile, if we're citing official releases only)

man, i dunno if there's been a poll done on smile sessions/bootleg tracks, but the original of that has been doing it for me over the past few days in a big way.

sinister-sounding chord progression

ch-ch-ch

etc.

amazing song

like buzza, i find it hard to appreciate the "finished" version of smile that got released several years ago...but some of the original tracks are something else...

Smile is a bit like Abbey Road in that it's got loads of brilliant little "bits" that work really well as a piece, but I couldn't just vote for a 1:30 min instrumental or whatever in favour of something off of Sunflower or Wild Honey, no matter how much I like it. That's why I tended to go for Smiley Smile vershes.

Was listening to the "official" Smile the other day, for the first time in years, and it is amazing. I know its impact is dulled by the myhtology, by the bootlegs, and by it coming out 35 years late, but it's a remarkable piece of work. Not "best album ever" or anything, but remarkable.

I suspect that had it actually come out it would have completely destroyed the Beach Boys: surely the hipsters would have spurned it and the chart buyers would have been puzzled. And Mike Love would have walked out and formed his own band to sing the old hits at county fairs.

I think the official smile is great

rarely put it on tho

challops time: if it weren't for the voices, it might have turned out 'better' than a messy complete 60s version.

Official Smile is really really amazing. Good job, Brian and Wondermints!

Totally gonna listen to Smile! now...

it gets such a bad rap all-in-all, but it is amazing no matter how you view it.

voices bug me

but anyway

ch-ch-ch

Does it get a bad rap? Reviews at the time were euphoric.

yeah, but everyone moans about the vocals and how it's underwhelming somehow because really it's not all that different from the original demoes save a few bits here and there.

all a bit of a nonsense really. i think it's the fact old Brian and a bunch of guys finally finished it instead of allowing it to carry on in rock mythology forever. Somehow by being able to walk into a shop and buy this album in a nice white CD package with SMiLE written on the front, destroyed the mystique for a lot of people. No matter how good it was, it was never going to be the real Smile. Never ever ever - so it's a psychological issue for a lot of people.

Nah, the voices are fine IMO. Especially when in "Heroes and Villians" Brian sings "I've been in this town so long", and now that he's an old man and you hear it in his voice it makes it an extra extra sweet moment.

xpost for a lot of people

yeah i'm not bothered by the vocals at all. also what's incredible is how close the re-recorded versions sound to the originals. i thought they'd used the OG ones for a long time.

Love the sound of the '04 Smile.

I've never really listened to it, personally

think I heard friends' copies once or twice

the vocals are lacking

listen to the original sessions

xxxx times better

there really isn't a lot to it though dell. plus Brian's voice is kind of great considering he was singing like this by the mid-70s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrbzTBosjA4

yeah i can appreciate his diminished voice in those late seventies records, but it doesn't serve the smile material well imo

i watched a recent dvd concert of the zombies and their voices are knackered - and they didn't really do drugs in their time, so it's remarkable really that Brian can croak a word out, let alone perfor whole concerts in front of people. anyone know how much mental and singing coaching he had to go through to deliver his return?

Well he probably hasn't smoked a cigarette in years, for one thing. Makes a huge difference if you're a singer.

watching Brian muddle through some celebrity-studded rendition of California Girls (or maybe it was Good Vibrations?) for some Grammy Awards performance was so sad... he totally can't do those falsetto parts anymore, just made me think "jesus, why are they making him go through this"

I dunno, it's hard to know if he's just being taken advantage of or if, ya know, he doesn't really mind spending his old age in front of crowds of adoring fans? I'd say his post-smile albums are evidence that he's making his own decisions...pretty sure that disney album wasn't some record exec's idea...

I was capital O obsessed with the Smile sessions in 03-04 and getting to hear the official BW version, first recorded live (still remember the concert date, February 20, 2004) and then on official CD was mind-blowing, but I have never listened to it once in full since then. His voice is just not up to the task and the original recordings allow a nearly complete reconstruction with the Beach Boys in prime form.

Saw him live on the That Lucky Old Sun tour (the album, by the way, was damn good) and it was indeed a sad spectacle, though also one of the great concert highlights of my life. He brings a lot of people a lot of joy but you have to wonder to what extent he wants to be doing what he's doing. My guess is that he wants to continue making music but that he would not subject himself to the rigors of touring without pressure from handlers. But who knows what's going on in his head.

Nothing but love here for the 2004 Smile. The show I saw in SF on that tour was one of the best I've ever seen - brought me to tears.

guess mike love was following this thread!!

from today's fb feed
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6189/6070367007_dc50899797.jpg

didn't want to tell you guys this ... but: Hi, I'm Mike Love. Do you have any questions for me.
http://www.the-beach-boys.com/mikelove/mikelove.jpg

How many hats do you own?

can you show me some weirdos

who makes the best apple juice

I own more hats than you can possibly imagine.
Weirdos follow me everywhere.
Best apple juice is Musselmans
http://www.beachboysband.net/BBBNEWS/MikeLove_Kokomo.gif

mike, i am sorry for the delay in sending you dominic p's book. will get it off in the mail within the next couple of days. got caught up in beach boys fever and decided to re-read that jawnt! ps as a personal favor to me, pass it on to shakey when you're done

will get it off in the mail within the next couple of days.

that sounds weird, bt you know what i mean

It's OK. I am just going to destroy the book anyway, just as I have burned all the Smile mastertapes.
Best,
Mike Love
http://withfriendship.com/images/h/36667/Mike-Love-picture.jpg

all of the seersucker, but w/o the crucial sucker, or seer

Mike, do you think your vocal on "Surfin' USA" is better than Chuck Berry's on "Sweet Little Sixteen"?

of course the first non-beach boys baseball cap i've seen him sporting is "usa".

Mike, does it make you feel better that after all the hatorade, Belle & Sebastian--in their classic "I Love My Car"--declared that they "...even love Mike Love..."?

Euler,
Chuck Berry can blow me.

C. Grisso,
Who the fuck is Belle & Sebastian.

Best,
Mike Love
http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/Mike_Love_1.jpg