Yep, Kindle version on my phone. I've learned I prefer a nice physical copy. I've also been typing all this on my phone, hence the typos and my apparent failure to communicate my thoughts on this. I don't mean to come off as petty or undignified.

Pissed you off with the punctuation comment, did I?

John who ?

Jon. My bad.

Um, no, because I actually purchased and read the book. Not sure what you're getting at. I made an observation that I still believe to be true based on the clarified parameters in my last post.

What are you on about? You said that the mid-period album reviews got given short shift in comparison to the early-period albums, which is factually incorrect as anyone with a copy of the book to hand can see. When this was pointed out to you, you started making petty remarks re people's punctuation and claiming that you weren't 'arsed'.

Have you read my last few responses?  First I conceded that that may not be the case. Then I explained that my perception that the middle albums were dealt with less was likely due to a stronger emphasis throughout the book. To be even more specific, John's heavy emphasis on the classic BB sound and the progression that led to Smile. THAT is factually correct as anybody with the book at hand can see. I couldn't be "arsed" (Smilin Ed's word, not mine) into counting pages because it was only part of a minor quibble and, given my clarification above, would be difficult to quantify.

As for AGD, he laid into me with a fallacy. I hit back with the punctuation comment. For the life of me I can't make heads or tails of his last analogy. Kinda funny that you all find my remarks petty given the comments i am responding to.

One of the more powerful passages for me was John's story about Brian and the fireworks (location 5261 of 6318 in the Kindle edition, for those keeping track). Brian is such a black box for many of us, and that story-- especially as told from John's firsthand experience-- provides such a poignant, albeit infinitely sad peek into his mind.

Um, no, because I actually purchased and read the book. Not sure what you're getting at. I made an observation that I still believe to be true based on the clarified parameters in my last post.

"Not available on mobile"  grr...

You're an author as well? My advice? Learn to take criticism with a little more dignity...

What exactly was undignified about my responses?

Hey...wow, sacred cow?

Kinda seems like that sometimes.  Of course, in this case, it may just be this forum is rife with nitpickers.  I perceived a much heavier emphasis in your book on the early material (something I appreciated because I personally don't care for much beyond Sunflower).  Skimming back thru, it doesn't seem that your self-contained treatments of the middle albums get shorter shrift, so much as your focus on the early albums throughout the book make it feel lopsided that way.  Which, again, is totally cool by me.  That focus on the early stuff is weaved throughout several chapters and is hard to quantify.  I generally find the nitpicking amusing-- a bunch of middle-age men pissing online over trivial minutiae.  I should have foreseen that out of my list of legitimate points, the only one anybody would address is the relative length of your album descriptions.

I appreciate all points of view and perspectives, and glad to hear you enjoyed the read.

Couldn't put it down!

...just a brain freeze that my editor missed as well.

I hate those.  I'm an author myself, and I was horrified when I opened up the edited manuscript (after printing had begun) and read on *page 1* that a reference to my friend John read "my son, John."  After cursing the editor I went back to the draft I submitted and yep, there it was.  I had written "son" and never noticed it through a year of working and re-working the text.  Editor should have caught that, but yeah.

Now... about the omission of Full House on that filmography list.  Come on, man!

Pretty evident. I know not to bother with your next attempt.

I'm shattered.

I also just read this, and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I noticed a couple of errors  which I wrote down but of course don't have with me to share with the board.  

Careful, Bicyclerider, you've just broken two very important forum rules:

1. Criticizing/claiming error in a book that I'm coming to understand is a pretty sacred cow here,

2. Not documenting your observations of these errors with footnotes/quotes/pics/lithographs/academic papers.

How dare you_?_

Cue the ad hominems...

What's up with that? You presented this as a review of something concrete and then you can't be arsed to check to see if what you said was accurate.  To quote that great American philosopher, B. D. Wilson: "It's a strange world."

No, I presented it as a quick review with intentions of writing a more thorough review at a later time.  In essence this was a brief rundown of my initial reactions upon finishing the book.  This isn't a journalistic effort or professional review; it's a post on a stupid message board.  You're quibbling over a minor point in a list of mostly glowing praise.  So no, I won't be arsed.

"'For a while, Wilson let the music go: "I was writing for the Boys, so I thought, 'What am I gonna do without them?'"

But last year he got the idea to bring in guest singers to finish the songs."

Sad.   Much as I look forward to this album, I'll probably listen to every note wishing it was a Beach Boys album.

Interesting that the article doesn't mention Al and Blondie's contributions.  I still hope they're somewhat significant. 

Rolling Stone:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/brian-wilsons-girl-powered-lp-in-the-studio-with-the-beach-boy-20140718

"He sips wheatgrass juice and munches on a chocolate doughnut."

Love that!

What's with the "you may be right... if you are correct" nonsense ? The guy has looked at the relevant pages of the book, something you seemingly have not.

I don't recall the descriptions of the middle albums being equal or longer than the early albums, and since Stebbins' treatment of the middle albums was a minor part of my larger point (which is that the later albums got little to no treatment), I have little motivation to go back to the book to confirm either my recollection or his rebuttal.  Thus the concession that he may be right.  It's no more nonsensical than you adding a space at the end of your sentences before punctuation.  What the hell is up with that?

If Grammys are how we determine what's good music, I must hate a lot of good music and love a lot of crappy stuff.  I've hated "I Write the Songs" since before I knew Bruce wrote it, and the Fire music from Smile gets skipped every time I play that album. 

His reviews of their 1967-1973 albums are as long as - if not longer - than his reviews of their 1963-1965 albums.

Surfer Girl, Little Deuce Coupe and Shut Down Vol 2 for instance get little more than a paragraph each; whereas the average length of the later album reviews is at least two pages, usually more.

You may be right.  I might be thinking of the aggregate focus on the classic sound and earlier albums.  But my larger point is that the later albums aren't really covered at all.  If you're correct that the mid-career albums get equal, if not greater attention, my point is even more valid.  I didn't expect a 2-page expose of the later albums, but some treatment would be nice-- if only for the sake of consistency.  Maybe Stebbins was following the old rule: If you can't say anything nice...

Just read Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ (Kindle Edition).  It thoroughly scratched my itch for greater Beach Boys knowledge.  That itch will return, of course, but this was a really good start.  I may write a thorough review of the book here at some point, but for now, a few quick observations:

-Love the fact that this was written from the perspective of a mega-fan.  As a budding mega-fan myself, I knew there was dirt to be dug but was not necessarily looking forward to it.  The fact that Stebbins writes with love helped the dirt go down smoother.  I also appreciate that his fandom doesn't deter him from addressing events and issues honestly.

-Stebbins curiously omits the Boys' appearances on Full House from an otherwise comprehensive list of filmography.  Especially when Full House gets 4 other mentions outside that chapter.

-Format discontinuity on album descriptions: Stebbins spends a lot of space discussing the earlier albums (understandable, preferred, crime-not-to).  Less is given to the mid-career albums (understandable, at least personally for me).  Virtually no mention of later albums like Summer in Paradise or Still Cruisin'.  I've actually never heard the former and the latter is a guilty pleasure.  They're no Pet Sounds or Smile, but I would have at least liked to read more about the context under which each was conceived and released.

-Writing style discontinuity: there are sharp differences in tone and style in Stebbins' writing.  At times his prose-- especially when describing the Beach Boys sound-- can nearly move one to tears.  Other passages read as though they were typed with a 10 minute deadline. Sometimes he moves between erudite and tawdry in the same sentence ("Instead of bending over and taking his screwing like Al did, or ejecting from the scene like David did, Mike hung in there and formulated an aggressive posture.")

-Stebbins definitely thinks more of Dennis as both a musician and a person than I do, but his portrayal of Denny as something of a tormented Brian-lite are touching and make me want to hesitate before dismissing, for the umpteenth time, the majority of Dennis' work.  In fact, while I was reading I had Spotify open and would listen to a song as I read Stebbins describe it.  (That's a very good way to read this book, actually.)  I will concede that I came away from the book appreciating Dennis and his stuff a little more.

-The edition I bought touched on the pending release of The Smile Sessions.  Here's to hoping Stebbins plans to update the book with a chapter on C50 and TWGMTR.  

All in all, it's a great start to my deep dive into Beach Boys history.

True, but there will always be that nagging possibility/idea that she was only handed a musical career because she was a known quantity as an actress.

True, but I bought her music before I found out she was an actress or realized she is hot.  Love that voice!

I liked the Boys before their cheesy, awkward cameos on Full House.  But I also liked Full House.  My kids now love Full House, and despite my best efforts to instill a love for the Beach Boys into their hearts, ultimately they came to it because of Full House.  My 8 and 10 year old now debate the order of Smile tracks and whether the Carl fly-in for the TSS version of Surf's Up was appropriate or not.  They got that from Uncle Jesse, not me.  I'm cool with Stamos.

I still think it's a match made in heaven.  Ok, maybe just for that one song.  Still Cruisin' wasn't my first exposure to The Beach Boys, but it was my first album.  A birthday gift when I was 14.  I listened to that cassette over and over and loved Wipe Out.  Still do.

Jon Stebbins' Beach Boys FAQ is also great. His album analysis' are lovely to read and my only complaint is that he doesn't really deal with any albums post-15 Big Ones in any real depth (he's also a little dismissive of Smiley Smile...  

Sounds like Mr. Stebbins and I agree on a few things, then.

Thanks all for the suggestions!  I think I'm going to start out with the FAQ and Catch a Wave.

Now that I've sufficiently listened to everything BB-related that I can find, obsessed over SMiLE, read this board daily for two years, and begun creating my own mixes of tracks, I'm ready to delve past the surface knowledge and take a deep dive into BB history.  So I need book recommendations.  I'm primarily interested (at least at this point) in the band's early history.  Where should I start?

Wild Honey? Carl and the Passions? Crap? Whoa.

Pretty much, yeah.  At least to my ears.  Wild Honey is ok, but to be honest it's tough for me to listen to anything that comes after it.

Beyond the obvious (that those albums are far from crap), I think Joe's point was that this album has a harder edge than say, the final tracks of TWGMTR.

I hope you're right.  I hope he doesn't mean what I fear he means by that comparison, which is that earlier BB sound (which Brian's latest albums have embraced, IMO) will be largely abandoned, that harmony goes to the back burner, that the "voices as instruments" concept won't apply.

Nothing can top vintage 60s era Brian falsetto.. what an amazing sound.

Also I mentioned this before in another thread that I think a huge part of the group's commercial decline from 69 onwards was that the magical Brian falsetto had disappeared from their new material!

I mean who else could sing like that? Nobody.

Absolutely agreed.  At the very least, it's why I prefer the 60's stuff to everything thereafter.