20/20 through Holland

[Banana]

imo Forever has cheesy, pretentious emotional lyrics. The chord pattern had potential though but the instrumentation also failed. I don't at all enjoy the guitar strumming which screams 'annoying student playing saccharine guitar songs to boost ego and get girls'

You said in the jukebox thread that Surf City was 'gay'. Now you're saying that Forever sounds too much like a song designed for seducing girls. Do you even like Rock And Roll ? Or just songs like Surf's Up, "worthy of classical legacy"..come up with some different observations besides"this one sounds gay' or this ones sounds like a some whiny guy singin to a girl..You're walkin on the fightin side of me.

I must defend Dennis and Forever.  Here is a description of the track from the June 2012 issue of MOJO: "Written with future Pacific Ocean Blue collaborator Gregg Jakobson, Forever is the perfect example of how a Dennis Wilson song works.  The lyrics read like a clumsy teenage love poem - "Let the love I have for you/Live in your heart" - but then he sings, his voice cracking as though red-raw from sobbing, locked out from the production's warm, dreamy reverb.  By the last verse those simple words feel strangely profound: a final, weary plea from a broken man who is simply trying his best."

Amen.

[Banana]

Great tracks from this period that could never have been done by a group like Bread:
Forever, Do It Again, Wild Honey, Long Promised Road, Cuddle Up, Cool Cool Water, Tears In the Morning, Break Away, Darlin', Disney Girls, Sail On Sailor, Feel Flows, 'Til I Die and on and on.  The bottom line is that they truly did retain the basic elements of what made them the Beach Boys...but they stretched out the sound.  The used it as a starting point and pushed forward in new directions.  Their audience had diminished...but I don't think it had anything to do with the quality of the music.  If the music had anything to do with it...it's simply that it didn't match what was popular.  Because they were out in the wilderness...they had the freedom to be adventurous. 

[SMiLE-addict]

I just used Bread as one example off the top of my head (and probably not the best one, admittedly). There were a dozen other soft rock groups and artists who were doing stuff at least as creative as any of the songs in that list above. This is a great example.

I think maybe one problem they had was, with such a huge proliferation of very talented soft rock bands and artists (like Elton John) coming on the scene in the late 60's and early 70's, it was very hard for them to stand out anymore.

I listened to Sunflower 2 more times today and Surf's Up also twice today. All it did was reinforce my view. For the most part it's "pleasant" stuff (for lack of a better word) but there's not much that really jumps out as being outstanding.

The last 2 songs on Surf's Up I figured out more 'technically' why the mid-60's song "Surf's Up" is so much better than its 1971 semi-equivalent "Til I Die" (and the other songs on the album, for that matter). However, it's very hard to describe just writing it out here. It's got to do with what I call "musical drama" and engaging the listener. BW did a great job of that in the mid-60's, but somewhere along the line he seemed to have lost the knack, even if his songs were technically interesting otherwise. The other members of the BB seemed to be very weak in this regard (the master of this skill is McCartney IMO). I'll leave it at that for now.

[I. Spaceman]

This board is heading straight to Hell.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Soft rock was but a small percentage of their work in this period

[Smilin Ed H]

Forever doesn't need defending, FFS.

If you're the kind of person who gets wound up because they're not listening to either 'soft rock' or endless c*ck-rock guitar solos, you're probably on the wrong board.

[Cabinessenceking]

Forever doesn't need defending, FFS.

If you're the kind of person who gets wound up because they're not listening to either 'soft rock' or endless c*ck-rock guitar solos, you're probably on the wrong board.

Don't get me wrong. Neither I particularly like guitar solos. They can be appropriate, but generally songs are way better off without imo. The comment on Forever was as MOJO put it: teeny lyrics and a bit too superficial. The guitar adds to that. But Dennis' voice saves the song from being too sappy, which makes it enjoyable enough. I would say Forever does not quite stand up to his later material however!

[Banana]

Forever doesn't need defending, FFS.

If you're the kind of person who gets wound up because they're not listening to either 'soft rock' or endless c*ck-rock guitar solos, you're probably on the wrong board.

Don't get me wrong. Neither I particularly like guitar solos. They can be appropriate, but generally songs are way better off without imo. The comment on Forever was as MOJO put it: teeny lyrics and a bit too superficial. The guitar adds to that. But Dennis' voice saves the song from being too sappy, which makes it enjoyable enough. I would say Forever does not quite stand up to his later material however!

It's become his signature song...but I agree on how it stands against his later material.

[shelter]

I'd stretch that to begin with Smiley Smile and go from there to Holland. My favourite period in their history. In my opinion, their fall from fame happened at the same time their music really got interesting!

I completely agree.

[Sheriff John Stone]

Soft rock was but a small percentage of their work in this period

But that wasn't the perception of the general listening public at that time. To many, the Beach Boys had gone soft. Smiley Smile, Friends, Sunflower, Surf's Up...that ain't the rock and roll most people associated with the Beach Boys of old. Endless Summer was.

There is a slight misunderstanding in this thread, but that's OK because the thread's dying anyway. I don't think anybody on the board is criticizing the 1967-1975 period. We love it. We get it. Some prefer it. The point that I think should be taken is that a whole lotta people didn't appreciate it, or buy it, or even know that it existed. To them, in that particular period of time, the Beach Boys had morphed into a soft rock, "pop", irrelevant band. Nobody's rating them or saying they were any better or any worse than other groups of that genre, just that the Beach boys had joined them. We were just debating WHY.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

There is a slight misunderstanding in this thread, but that's OK because the thread's dying anyway. I don't think anybody on the board is criticizing the 1967-1975 period. We love it. We get it. Some prefer it.

Well, in fact, what started this discussion was Smile-addict reviewing Wild Honey and Friends as "meh" and Sunflower, Surf's Up and Holland as worse than that. This was only the beginning of his critiques. So he certainly does not "love" it. That's fine, of course. Nobody has to like anything but I found his reasoning to be baffling.

[Cabinessenceking]

The music industry is bewildering. I have honestly no idea why H&V failed like that when Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane succeeded. Then afterwards came the rediculous Hello Goodbye and the great (but noncommerical) I Am The Walrus. I cannot explain that.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

The music industry is bewildering. I have honestly no idea why H&V failed like that when Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane succeeded. Then afterwards came the rediculous Hello Goodbye and the great (but noncommerical) I Am The Walrus. I cannot explain that.

Going to #12 in the charts is hardly a failure - many bands would kill for that - but it is lower than what the Beach Boys were used to getting, particularly from major singles. Why it charted where it did vs. Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields had little to do with "The music industry." You honestly can't see what makes Penny Lane, with its soaring sing-a-long chorus, a more commercially viable song than Heroes and Villains? I think Brian's endless tinkering with the song was a result of his understanding that his next single wasn't the hit he needed to make Smile a success - and he depended on Heroes the more the album release date got farther away from the release of the Good Vibrations smash. Furthermore, like I've said often on this board, the music buying public was, at this point, either not interested in this type of music from The Beach Boys or not interested in The Beach Boys period. Short of a song with massive commercial appeal, like Good Vibrations (a song that probably comes along once in a lifetime if you're lucky), there was almost nothing the boys could have done at this point to reach the top of the charts again, other than reverting back in some way to their pre-Pet Sounds style.

[I. Spaceman]

Select any dozen Top 10 hits from 1967, and then drop Heroes And Villains in the middle. If one can't tell why the single was a relative commercial failure after doing that, I don't know what to say. The single mix is one big muddy flatline. It has the arrangement dynamics of Good Vibrations, but with absolutely none of the sonic punch.

[schiaffino]

OK, here's an example of what I mean.

What's the difference between, say this and, say, this?

Not much, when you get down to it (in fact, the latter song is much better, IMO). The songs they were doing could easily have been songs by Bread, or any other of a number of other bands of that era.

And how many songs in the early 70's sounded like this ?

A lot! I could spend probably hours fishing up songs on youtube which were generic-sounding, semi-bluesy rock songs. There's nothing wrong with them, but when you've heard three dozen songs which sound more or less like that, it gets to be ... yawn.

On the other hand ...

What song, somewhere else - anywhere else!! - sounds like this ?

NOTHING!!!! At least not that I know of!

The great thing about the pre-1968-ish BB was that pretty much nobody else sounded like them, aside from a handful of other bands who were imitating them (such as Jan and Dean).

On the other hand, starting around 1968-ish, they gave up their unique sound and became just another ordinary soft/medium rock band. Some of the stuff was OK, but because they gave up that unique sound in favor of a more generic sound, it became a case of ... yawn.

IMO they would have been much better off if they had done something like ... become a progressive rock band while keeping their unique sound. Imagine Yes or ELP, but with a lot of orchestrated arrangements instead of electric guitars, bass and drums, and with super-complex harmonies in odd chords instead of solo voices. Or something like that. Combine CSN (x2!) with Yes, Pink Floyd and ELP, and you get the idea. There would have been no one else who sounded like that and they probably would have done a lot better commercially.

Though remark, but I agree with you entirely

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I can only be relieved that they didn't combine CSN with Yes.

[BergenWhitesMoustache]

I listened to Sunflower 2 more times today and Surf's Up also twice today. All it did was reinforce my view. For the most part it's "pleasant" stuff (for lack of a better word) but there's not much that really jumps out as being outstanding.

What is your view again? I've read and re-read this thread, but I think you've been quite shy in revealing your true thoughts.   

That genial ribbing aside. When I first heard Sunflower, I thought exactly the same thing- this sounds a bit 'typical seventies' or something. f*** knows what I was thinking. I was 16, and like absolutely everyone else of that age, no exceptions, was an opinionated tool without a flipping clue!

[MBE]

While Surf's Up has a few moments that come off odd, I came to really love the album overall. Sunflower grabbed me from the moment I first heard it in 1990 or so in an original pressing. Man is it good. By the way get the original or later seventies pressings on vinyl or you really haven't heard them.

[Don Malcolm]

Good points, Mike. Stephen Desper's mixing/mastering work reached an amazing peak in that time frame, and even to eighteen-year-old ears in 1970 it was clear that the songs on Sunflower and Surf's Up were in a different "zone" than anyone else at that particular moment. Now as to whether all of those songs are at the same level of BW's best work, the answer is clearly "no." But Sunflower represents the pinnacle of a "democratic" band, pulling together to find a common ground of expression, prior to the influence (good and/or bad) of Jack Reiley, who would change the dynamics of the group's recordings and the type of material they would attempt to assimilate into their "sound."

Jim Miller in Rolling Stone noted that special sound quality on Sunflower, and while only about a third of the songs are in the top echelon of BB compositions (IMO: "All I Wanna Do," "This Whole World, " "CCW," "Slip On Through"), the rest of the material is elevated by the production values and the album showcases the evolution of Dennis as a viable "replacement" for BW, with a group of tunes that are, as a whole, just under the top echelon in the BB oeuvre. I remember some other RS critic suggesting that "Slip On Through" was a "clumsy, pseudo-Rascals kind of thing", which seems to be moving in the direction of the type of thinking that's been prominent earlier in this thread. It took about five listens to it for me to realize that the critic (whom I'd read before getting the album originally: he was reviewing the single) was full of sh*te. [EDIT: However, the guy was right to praise "This Whole World," which is a better song that "Slip On Through" in that it's probably one of BW's ten best...]

[I. Spaceman]

I love how production, mixing and such are always mentioned before the songs when folks praise Sunflower. Very telling.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I love how production, mixing and such are always mentioned before the songs when folks praise Sunflower. Very telling.

I like the majority of songs on Sunflower and have no beef with people likeing it (though I'd personally never rank it ahead of the earlier stuff)... but I feel this way about the 'Surfs Up' album. The great sound achieved by Steve Desper and the presence of a SMiLE track disguises the fact that many of the songs are merely "average". Slap "Light Album" production values to it and see what you've got.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I love how production, mixing and such are always mentioned before the songs when folks praise Sunflower. Very telling.

I like the majority of songs on Sunflower and have no beef with people likeing it (though I'd personally never rank it ahead of the earlier stuff)... but I feel this way about the 'Surfs Up' album. The great sound achieved by Steve Desper and the presence of a SMiLE track disguises the fact that many of the songs are merely "average". Slap "Light Album" production values to it and see what you've got.

Agreed.

[SMiLE Brian]

I honestly cannot get into surf's up though holland as albums. I like certain songs but the BBs just seemed not quite quite right as Jack Rielly's "hippies" in my opinion.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I personally really like Carl & The Passions and Holland but I don't listen to Surf's Up as much.

[Don Malcolm]

Three "average" songs on Sunflower: "Tears," "Dierdre" and "At My Window."

Two "above average" songs: "Add Some Music," "Our Sweet Love."

Three "very good" songs: "Forever," "Got to Know the Woman," "It's About Time."

Four "first-rate" songs: "This Whole World," "All I Wanna Do," "CCW," "Slip On Through."

Of course, YMMV. But that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I said the songs as a whole don't measure up to the best of the earlier material. But that doesn't mean that all the songs are "average."

And production always mattered with the material, at least up through Holland. After that, things did get spotty...but it wasn't just the production that lost its way, the songwriting in the group suffered--when talking about BB LA, keep in mind that Dennis tossed in a couple of songs from his planned solo material to add some needed quality to what is at best an "average" group of tunes. Those who think the songs on BB LA stand up to the top two-thirds of the tracks on Sunflower should probably rethink their position. Smile-addict's point is a lot more on the money regarding the post-Love You material than he is about the 20-20/Holland period.