beach boys vs beatles

i've always enjoyed the countless retellings of the time brian was driving down pch or sunset or mulholland and heard strawberry fields on the radio for the first time. had to pull over and cry and was screming "they did it! they did it" and he was with danny hutton or jack nance or donovan in the car or something.

I have a suspicion that no one has ever pulled over to the side of the road to listen to an amazing song.

It's such a cliche.

lol it even has its own section in the sff wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Fields_Forever#Reactions_from_contemporary_musicians

The Beatles had a 5 year span of 64-69, not counting their 2 first years with no original material.
This isn't correct at all. All of their UK LP's, even the two LP's they released in 1963, were mostly original songs. Covers never outnumbered or even equaled the originals on any of those LP's, and their UK singles were all originals.

The Beach Boys from 62-72 or Surfin Safari thru Holland had more consistently of killer classic albums than Anyone Ever! Not just Pet Sounds but Surfer Girl, All Summer Long, Today, Summer days, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Sunflower, Surfs up, Holland & lastly Love you in 77.
I think a lot of those albums are underrated, but this oversells it. Those early albums were loaded with rote originals that blatantly milked "the formula" just to fill the albums. They didn't have a truly great album until All Summer Long, and by that point they were joined by many others who were making albums just as good if not better (the Stones, Otis Redding, the Who, the Byrds, etc., etc.) Personally I don't think Surf's Up, Holland or Love You are really good albums, but they definitely have their fans. Beyond that, it's really hard to make a case for the wretched music they put out post '70s - it's actually a relief that they focused on touring rather than putting out much new material.

I have this thread bookmarked and keep shaking my head about the quote at the beginning of the last post

Man, Surf's Up is easily in their top 3 or 4 albums. Perfect if it wasn't for THAT song

Yeah, couldn't they find something newer, to replace the title track?

It sounds wildly uneven to me. "Long Promised Road," "Disney Girls," "Feel Flows," "'Til I Die" and "Surf's Up" are all good-to-great tracks, and then there's execrable crap like "A Day in the Life of a Tree" and "Student Demonstration Time." The production on "Don't Go Near the Water" and "Take a Load Off Your Feat" (neither a great song) can be pretty irritating, especially "Don't Go Near the Water," and "Lookin' at Tomorrow" does nothing for me.

My five favorite Beach Boys LP's would probably be "All Summer Long," "Today," "Pet Sounds," "Wild Honey" and "Sunflower," and I'd take "Endless Summer" over all of them. (The DCC reissue, which includes "Good Vibrations" and the hit single versions of "Help Me Rhonda" and "Be True to Your School.")

I actually like all of side 2. I find "Disney Girls" at least as bad as "Student Demonstration Time", the only Bruce Johnston-led song I really enjoy is "The Nearest Faraway Place" (his two on Sunflower are OK).
Holland is my favourite record of theirs when Wild Honey isn't.

I like "Disney Girls" fine, it's middle-of-road corn, but it's also tuneful and modest. Except for "Sail on Sailor," I never liked Holland. It was kind of depressing to hear Rob Fraboni talk about that album - he gets to produce the Beach Boys, and he couldn't even get them all in the same room together to record their harmonies and apparently did it piecemeal. It's like they didn't give a shit, and Dennis pretty much didn't. IIRC, he was supposed to sing lead on "Sail on Sailor," and Fraboni had to grab him and put him in front of the mic - didn't work, he barely sang the song when he literally walked out in mid-take saying he had to go because he had like a new surfboard he wanted to try.

You know, I never really got into "All Summer Long" for some reason. Some killer, iconic singles hammocked by some pretty run-of-the-mill car'n'girl songs the like we'd heard before.

Surf's Up is dusky and Septembral. I find Day In The Life of A Tree and Disney Girls both really touching and I'd consider them for a personal best-of.

Haven't had a Beach Boys day for a while. Think I'll change that, perhaps go through the discog for the first time in years, even

Picking a top 5 is really hard. Ignoring Smile, this is the best I can come up with

1. Smiley Smile
2. Surf's Up
3. Sunflower
4. Surfer Girl
5. Friends

But I feel like I killed a lot of darlings there and was especially contrarian for not including Pet Sounds, which I do love of course

(Beatles)

I wonder if anyone would change their vote if the Beach Boys had also made their last album in 1970.

Beatles here too, and in terms of '60s bands, the Velvet Underground and the Stones too for that matter. The Beach Boys would be right behind with the Who, the Kinks, the Byrds and CCR, but honestly ranking like this feels kind of pointless, they're all great bands - I'd rather focus on their best work than nitpick over the faults.

Speaking of which, I'd probably drop All Summer Long in favor of SMiLE had it been "finished." Brian Wilson circa 2004 isn't the same as him circa 1967, but what they put out in 2011 based on the 2004 template makes the case that what they had was very close to an album that could be considered finished, even if Brian had envisioned a whole lot more work. Some of the lyrics used to finish it in 2004 didn't feel all that necessary, IMHO - "Blue Hawaii" felt like the only song that needed substantial work, and even in its unfinished state, it sounds like the old recordings had the framework and more.

And I should add, YES, it does live up to the hype. It was kind of tough to listen when I first heard the bootlegs, but when I heard them put together based on the 2004 album (this was before the definitive 2011 reissue), it was kind of miraculous - like it really needed to be sequenced correctly and pruned of the extraneous bits to make everything come through, and it really is brilliant. I don't know if he'll ever admit this, but I think that's what happened to Christgau. He consistently dumped on that work for decades and then he listens to the 2004 album and suddenly lo and behold it's an A+ work of genius. He says it's mainly due to the new vocals, but I don't find that convincing at all.

"don't worry baby" is better than any beatles songs but i prefer the beatles overall

That is sort of my take, although at some point I kind of finally burned out on The Beatles. Although I can still listen in moderation, I guess.

"Don't Worry Baby" is probably my favorite Beach Boys track, even before Carl Wilson died. I remember flipping on the oldies station (104 around Chicago) that Sunday while I ate a late breakfast and read the Sunday comics, and then two songs later, they play this while mentioning "you probably heard by now" etc. I hadn't been a Beach Boys fan for that long, but the band felt really gone after that, with two original members dead and Brian far from his former self. "God Only Knows" is right up there too, and Carl sung that.

But "A Day in the Life" is probably my favorite track period, I'm still amazed by it.

the best thing about The Beach Boys was their sweet Pendleton shirts

Did the Beatles ever team up with the Fat Boys? No? Case closed, I guess.

Did the Beatles ever let a tremendously coked up, vacation-wear Jimmy Page rend a hole in the fabric of space and time during a corny bar band version of "Lucille"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpL-eVpgJpY

I've never been a Beatles fan per se but they're still several orders of magnitude better than the Beach Boys, whose music I actively dislike save for 'God Only Knows' and 'Good Vibrations'. Everything else can perish in a fire.

But have u heard about a little place called Kokomo

Pom do you know “til i die”?

it talks about falling onto rocks and ones soul being killed

'Kokomo' is hilarious, ergo I don't hate it.

I agree that 'Til I Die' is one of their finer moments.

ITT: Tell The Beatles to Fuck Off

So grateful to my parents and older sister that I could grow up in a household uncontaminated by the works of Paul McCartney.

Don't have an older sister but cosign.

One of my favorite and most underrated Beach Boys songs, in a depresso 'Til I Die' vein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO_LX-m74uw

xpost Yes, I will cosign as well. I heard a lot of 'oldies' growing up but weirdly didn't hear hardly any of the post-Help Beatles songs until I was an adult.

love it, reminds me of chris bell xp

Almost certainly my favorite Love vocal.

I never thought "All I Wanna Do" was depressing, it's very nice but basically a 1964 ballad with some weird keyboards and phasing on the vocals.

In my more provocative moments, I might be inclined to say that Blondie Chaplin's tenure is my favorite BB era

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D10_uNfCW4Y

That is an excellent song, and so much better than the two Fataar/Chaplin songs on Carl and the Passions, I'm surprised they came up with it.

I would go so far as to say that Holland contains the personal best songs of everyone in the group except Brian:

Dennis - Steamboat
Mike - Big Sur
Al - Beaks of Eagles
Carl - The Trader
Blondie/Ricky - Leaving This Town

"Beaks of Eagles" is terrible though.

I love the recitations, and Charles Lloyd's flute.

Poetry recitation and flutes, I'll pass.

'Poetry Recitation and Flutes, I'll Pass' is my favorite Mike Love song.

Poetry recitation and flutes, I'll pass.

LMAO

It's a prose recitation, really.

I love it. I love the whole "Jardine the eco-lumberjack stuff"

Big Sur is very sweet too.