The Smiley Smile Message Board

Inspired by the book: Add Some Music to Your Day (giving credit to the editors:Don Cunningham and Jeff Bleiel); there's two different articles, one called 15 Bigger Ones and one called Good or Bad, Glad or Sad, the first article discusses album cuts that shows the growth of Brian (from Surfin' Safari to Surf's Up) and the second article discusses 5 songs that are (in comparison to season 3 of Star Trek: Original Series or the Beatles' take on Mr. Moonlight.) (for those wondering who don't own the book, the five songs discussed and not liked by the author: Tom Ekwurtzel (originally published in 1980) are: Love Surrounds Me (blasphemy!), Hold on Dear Brother (guilty pleasure of mine), Let's Put Our Hearts Together (eh, I'll give him that), In the Still of the Night (I'm not offended), and Bull Session With Big Daddy (that was kind of expected).

Anyways.....

I wanted to combine the two articles into an interactive thread at which everyone can voice their opinions of their Bottom 15 by the Beach Boys (which covers all albums and solo material as well.) And as I said, this is our opinions, so this isn't a thread to start a fight over how 'Then I Kissed Her is a much worse cover than School Days' or so on and so fourth.

I will give this some deep thoughts, you may begin!

I like all 5 of those songs that guy doesn't like. And why didn't he pick an actual song? A minute and a half of talking doesn't really constitute a "song" in my opinion.

I think Hold On Dear Brother is really great, I wouldn't call it a guilty pleasure, it's a fine song in its own right. I also really like In the Still of the Night, it has a great song. I've heard Marc Bolan really liked that 15 Big Ones-Love You stuff, and you can see why.

i agree

I did all my research (just looked through all the albums on my wiki-BB-book) and here's what I came up with, in no particular order:

1) Santa's Got an Airplane (when I first heard that they were going to take Christmas lyrics and put em over H.E.L.P., it sounded like a bad idea and didn't make sense to me, guess what when I heard it? It sounded bad and the use of that track didn't make sense to me for "Christmas" music. HELP is on the Way is a big enough pill to swallow, but I still enjoy it)
2) Living With a Heartache (Never was a fan, always thought it should be called "Listening with a Headache," as most KTSA tracks have no relation to each other, this one really sticks out with the rest as more a Carl Wilson solo, maybe it's the style of music I don't like)
3) Love is a Woman (most complaints have already been made all over this board and I agree with most, it's one of the most single/boring/non-creative songs on the album and Airplane should have ended with album, especially with that ending vocal tag! Take LIAW out and throw Sherri She Needs Me on there, with some overdubbing of a farty synth, of course)
4) Passing Friend (boring, waste of space on the album, a Dennis tune or Male Ego would have fit better!)
5) Chapel of Love (boring, unispired, rarely listen to this cover)
6) Ten Little Indians (boring and was a great idea for a single by Capitol because "Surfing music was on its way out.")
7) Won't Someone Dance with Me? (Bruce on Goin' Public) (Enough said if you've heard this song)
8) Let's Party (Mike Love with who knows....) (an instant skipper on the ol' ipod)
9) Surfin' on Summer in Paradise ("Yeah Mike, this is definitely what the Beach Boys woulda sounded like if they started out as a band in the 90s." ::)
10) California Energy Blues (Al on his Live in Vegas album) (Perhaps this was a preview of his soon to come, years later, solo album, but even Al was embarrassed enough not to put it on his studio/solo album....woulda been better off doing Cotton Fields or Susie Cincinatti for the live album).
11) East Meets West (zzzzzzz, the intro is startling and has a stench of 80s all over it)
12) Problem Child (bored outta my mind, the early 90s may be the worst time period for the Beach Boys which includes bad covers, Sweet Insanity, and books covered with false information)
13) Crocodile Rock (possibly one of the worst covers ever! I know we discussed this recently but what's worse: the song or the video? At least during the video, you can mute it.)
14) Summer of Love (of course another SIP is gonna make my list, a song I can't stand that Mike think's he's so good singing about)
15) Wipe Out (ah, I used to love this as a kid, but I was born in 84, so what do I know? When I watched the music video to this one, it made me realize how dated this was, even for the time it came out, only notable for having Brian's shouty backing vocals, which I enjoy, but not enough to stay off this list!)

Those are all the "released" songs that I'll post, I might do one on rarities because as we all know, that outtakes and rarities stay of for some or nothing.

Will have to disagree with 'East Meets West', yes it's very 1980s but to me it's a good song. Totally agree on 'Won't Someone Dance with Me?' though, possibly the worst released song in the entire Beach Boys + solo works catalog.

In no order:

- All of Summer in Paradise -- that easily eats up 12 spaces.
- "Hey Little Tomboy" - disturbing on so many levels.
- "When Girls Get Together" - so they picked this horrid P.O.S. because, apparently, they didn't have enough strong enough material to fill in that missing gap on KTSA. Tells you the quality of that album...or the quality of the band's judgment.
- "California Calling" - dippiness plus synths = angry 37!WS throwing stuff in his apartment.

1) Santa's Got An Airplane: An early bootlegged version has "HELP" as the background music (as found on Sun, Surf & Balloons) but the final version as released on Ultimate Xmas has "Loop De Loop" as the music. Want to hear something even worse? How about "(I Saw Santa) Rockin' Around the Xmas Tree" which was released on Ultimate Xmas and features one of those horribly out of synch rhythm tracks of Brian's (much like "Calendar Girl"). Even worse was the "Xmas Medley" sung with the kids that is just so offensive...wait...never mind. That track was so bad it remained an outtake!

2) I like "Living With A Heartache" and it's probably one of the few (as in a couple) of songs that I like from that album. It's the guitar playing during the bridge that I like the most.

3) I love "Love Is A Woman". Pure whacked! Makes me feel dizzy.  :P

4) I can't listen to that '85 album all the way through. That is to say I did it once and wouldn't want to bore myself so badly again. Lifeless soul sucking plastic sh*t without a trace of balls. But then that basically sums up all music from the 1980's (with the exception of say Metallica) doesn't it?

5) I agree. I don't care for any of the other covers on 15BO either. People go on and on about "Talk To Me" and "Just Once In My Life" and I just skip from "Had To Phone Ya" right to "Let Us Go On This Way" on my 2fer all the time.

6) This one is not only cheesy but kind of offensive. Well at least they may have corrected that with "The Trader" 10 years later.

7) Not BB. But terrible none the less.

8) Never heard it. Probably don't want to either.

9) Love your Mike Love quote. Really, this isn't much of a "band" project is it? Where's Brian? For the most part where's Al? Where are the real drums and instruments? This is a Mike Love album with guest appearances by (a couple of) the Beach Boys.

10) I don't have this album. I need to track it down.

11) Not worth seeking out. Even Four Seasons fans should avoid this one.

12) Another one I've been successful with forgetting about.

13) There was a dispatching job I did 10 years ago and there was a cassette of the Two Rooms tribute up there that I used to listen to. I'll say this: the Beach Boys cover was okay for what it was but it was IMO probably the weakest song written by Elton & Taupin so what can you do?

14) Summer In Paradise is just a tiny bit more listenable to me than the '85 train wreck. But songs like "Summer Of Love" can suck the rust off of a car bumper.

15) Why did they (mostly Brian) ever do this??? 1980's and 1990's were very embarrassing times to be a BB fan (solo Brian excepted).

I enjoyed reading your opinions and I hope you get a couple laughs out of mine. Thanks, Punkin!

This is hard, but here goes:
1. Wipe Out
2. Santa's Got an Airplane
3. Johnny Carson
4. I'm Bugged at My Old Man
5. Take a Load Off Your Feet
6. Student Demonstration Time
7. Beaks of Eagles
8. Rock'n'Roll Music
9. I can't even go into further specifics. There are a whole bunch on Sunflower, Love You, Passions, and those later albums that I can't even name because I haven't listened to them more than once. Sadly, I'm starting to scrape the barrel as I run out of BBs albums to collect! The above list includes ones I actually can recall. So: 8 Little Ones.

Now that I re-read some stuff, I meant Santa's On His Way (with H.E.L.P. backing track). I can actually stand the cut of airplane on Ultimate but Santa's on his way is vomit-zone.

Also, I was considering putting Hey There Mama/I saw Mommy Kissing Santa, but I thought, Hey There Mama is an incomplete song and I saw Mommy has historical value for having Jardine's kids sing for the first time, though that backing track fits about as well has Brian could fit in a pair of 30-waist jeans in 1981.

Problem Child
Crocodile Rock
Summer Of Love
When Girls Get Together
Sunshine
Livin' With A Heartache
Passing Friend
Won't Somebody Dance With Me
A Friend Like You
Match Point Of Our Love
Let's Party
I'm So Lonely
California Sun
California Energy/Recall Blues
Speed Turtle

I actually really like that one.
It's dumb as hell and cracks me up every time.

I wish I could see outside
But he tacked up boards on my window
Gosh it's dark

I think many of the high points have been hit, esp p'head's list.

I might add:
Make it Big...possibly the only CW song I can't learn to like.

also.... Love is a Woman.....would have been better performed by the REAL Elmer Fudd! 

and......I Wanna Pick You Up.  Nice melody but the lyrics are ......sorry, I can't find the words.....

Nope - two different songs. The one that uses the "HELP" track is called "Santa's On His Way".

1] When A Man Needs A Woman
2] Sumahama
3] I Wanna Pick You Up
4] She's Got Rhythm
5] Hey Little Tomboy (ADULT/CHILD Mix)
6] Hey Little Tomboy (Winds of Change Mix)
7] Hey Little Tomboy (MIU Mix)
8] Summer of Love
9] Take a Load Off Your Feet
10] Transcendental Meditation
11] The Beaks of Eagles (The talking, the backing track under the talking is great)
12] When Girls Get Together
13] Kokomo
14] Wontcha Come Out Tonight
15] Crocodile Rock (it truly is dreadful, Carl looks like there is someone behind the camera holding a gun to him through most the video.)

1) Kokomo (It has the most odious eighties production, I think. Carl's falsetto and the baffling presence of VDP on accordion cannot save it, although it's a fairly easy choice for 'crap BB's songs', I know)
2) Lady Lynda (Vile)
3) Everyone's In Love With You (Also vile, for similar reasons)
4) Help Me Rhonda (It just drives me barmy, for some irrational reason - the chorus is incredibly banal)
5) Gettin' Hungry (Risible songcraft, to say nothing of the fact the ugly organ sound comes blaring thru the mix in the chorus)
6) Bluebirds Over The Mountain (It's like Ob La Di Ob La Da, but even more saccharine. Blasted Bruce. Also, Mike's vocals are unpleasant)
7) She's Got Rhythm (My god, that falsetto)
8. Goin' South (Or really, any of Carl's dreadful late 70's ballads. It's so annoying how his songwriting dropped off from such a promising start)
9) Peggy Sue (Limp)
10) Make It Good (Dennis' worst song by a considerable margin)
11) Loop De Loop (Sail Plane Song is just passable. This.... No)
12) Winds Of Change (Oh jesus christ)
13) We Got Love (Boring, clicheridden, played lousily..... Ricky and Blondie on Autopilot)
14) Funky Pretty (I really don't get the love for this. It's so.... uninteresting.)
15) Little Saint Nick (It's USELESS)

Funky Pretty is among my top 50 favorites from the boys.  Both studio and live versions.   Silly lyrics but such a good and infectious sound...and the shared lead vocals....

This one crosses into that grey area where some love it some hate it...like the better stuff from Love You.

I gotta say that ML writes some really bad songs, no wonder he wants to get back to collaborating with Brian.
Together they can do some magic (See Bernie and Elton)

Discounting incoherent music like grindcore/crunk/etc., Hey Little Tomboy might be the worst song I've ever heard.

.
To be fair, I did include All the BB albums plus solo as part of the rules and regulations.  ;)

Transcendental Meditation, I Wanna Pick You Up, Funky Pretty, Hey Little Tomboy, The Beaks of Eagles... all great stuff as far as I'm concerned. :)

Here's my list of personal non-favorites:

Keepin' the Summer Alive
Peggy Sue
Maybe I Don't Know
I Do Love You
Fairy Tale (GIOMH, not the brilliant Mt Vernon and Fairway)
Make a Wish (GIOMH version)
Hold Me (CW)
Sunshine (Imagination)
Santa's Got an Airplane
Problem Child
Remember Walking in the Sand
California Recall Blues (AJ)
Won't Somebody Dance with Me (BJ solo)
...

Is there anywhere online I can hear "east meets west"?

If you have Spotify, it's on there (on a Four Seasons box-set). Can't find it on the Y'Tube and not sure about anywhere else.

Thanks, Its def better than I thought it would be.

Well, I forgot about Happy Endings, I might trade my view on East Meets West with Happy Endings...or they just might be equally as bad.

It's well produced and has great vocals.  ;D

Here's the thing about "Hey Little Tomboy"...it really does have a nice production, good melody and vocals....BUT....the lyrics. ***shudder!!!!***

Pretend you're the tomboy in question. Do you want a 37-year-old balding man threatening to "teach you to kih-ih-iss" and "make you feel just like thih-ih-is"? And would you want a 36-year-old fat guy with a hairy chest, beard, and poorly-groomed hair and with a smoker's voice telling you he's had his eye on you?

And don't even get me started with the spoken interlude on the "collector" copies....

I know I posted my little fantasy theory before on other forums, but here it is for those who haven't read my theory before:

"Hey Little Tomboy" was recorded in 1976, IINM, and I'm presuming it was written then. What do we know about Brian's songwriting in 1976? Much of it was under the control of Landy. It's also been reported that Brian had often tried to give Landy an older song in hopes of passing it off as a new song so he could meet his new-song-per-day quota.

Having said that, it's not unthinkable that "Hey Little Tomboy" could have been in existence for a long time and Brian just pulled it out of his head to cheat on his homework.

And the structure of the song....Mike sings a verse that ends with Brian singing in his high voice, followed by a catchy chorus, followed by a second verse sung by someone else. And for a Brian song, a pretty simple chord structure.

And Brian's line "They're doin' it all over the world" just seems TOTALLY out of place...mind you, I was born in 1974 and don't remember the mid-70s all that well, but...circa 1976-1978, was there a worldwide fad of tomboys shedding their boyish looks and habits? Perhaps it's a line left over from a song about ANOTHER fad, like, ohh....SURFING. So maybe the song dates back to the early '60s and had another set of lyrics (or an intended set of lyrics, as they might have been conceived but not written) in which a guy is trying to get his girlfriend to go surfing, maybe a girl version of "Catch A Wave." Maybe the song could have been called "Hey Little Honey," "Hey Little Surfer," etc.

Interesting points, Brian did the exact same thing with "back home" on "15 big ones" with that song being from way back (1963?) Landy really didn't know anything about music as "sweet insanity" proves.

Seriously, very little 15 Big Ones contributions was new. "Had To Phone Ya" was already a Spring song. "Back Home" was 13 years old. "Susie Cincinnati" had already been the B-side to about 43 singles in 1971 alone. Heck, I even suspect that "It's OK" might have been recycled, as it's formulaic enough to have been an early '60s fun-in-the-sun tune. That leaves "Everyone's In Love With You," "TM Song," and "That Same Song" as the only ones I don't suspect as being old.

And the thing about "TM Song" and "That Same Song" is that they're simple and quirky enough that they might have been one of those songs Landy had Brian wrote about just random little everyday things -- more of which would make up a good deal of The Beach Boys Love You.

@ 37!ws

You can say that about all of Brian's love songs. Early to mid-20's man singing to 13-14 year old girls how "it's been building up inside of" him for so long. Yet, we don't think about it that way. We put the singer at the same age to who he is singing to.

The band could have picked so much better older material instead of the music that ended up on the album. I wish "can't wait too long" was  finished and the album was more of a "15 big ones" of great unreleased material from the vaults.

That's a very good theory, I'd be willing to throw that in a book for others to enjoy.

Makes me think about the Add Some Music To Your Day book about the newsletter essays folks used to write back in the day (without messageboards on the internet like this.) I'd like to take the most vital information on here and turn it into a book...profit goes towards our paypal account from the main board link.  ;)  The biggest section would be the last section devoted to random questions.

Basic track recorded 10/74, with Roy Wood, Nick Pentelow and one other dude from Wizzard (Mike Birney ?) - Roy on drums, btw.

Ouch

Though I love the backing track to Had to Phone Ya on 15BO, I think Brian shoulda just used the American Spring track and thrown BB vocals onto it and it'd fit on to The Beach Boys Love You album like poop on stink.
It's OK was at least a year or two old because it was to be on the "Caribou 74" album.

Anyone naming anything done before 1980 is completely full of shit. Anyone naming anything from the 60s is just completely stupid. There, I said it.

"Sumahama."

Actually, the track and background vocals are quite nice. I'm just not thrilled with the overly nasal lead vocal. I just wish all of Mike's later vocals had the same quality as those on Love You. There, he sounds more like his old self.

15 little ones? more like 15 :rock

I liked "East Meets West" and "Wipe Out" as a kid. It's almost embarrassing to listen to them now.

>: (

I'm the same with Wipe Out.

Though the rest of Still Cruisin' is less embarrassing. I still love Make it Big and In My Car. Island Girl is good for being the caribean style that would later ruin and make a cliche noise for the Beach Boys. Somewhere Near Japan's really good too.

You could really assign the same argument to most of late 70's Brisongs. I Wanna Pick You Up being one of the fan favorites, methinks.

Really?

Let's see your defense of what we've mentioned?


I'll give or take some songs from the 80s with the ones I mentioned from the 70s.

I've once bought into the theory of Brian's intentions of singing I wanna Pick You Up to a lady his own age, like a fetish or something, but Brian's got enough eccentricities to be singing about that subject in a sexual tone, I'm sure Brian had wanted to sing something like this for as long as his kids had been born; the Beach Boys Love You is the perfect place for that material.

You may say it, but then you'd be wrong.

I totally agree

In reverse order
Released songs only


1. County Fair
2. Ten Little Indians
3. Cuckoo Clock
4. Going South
5.  Oh Darlin (Carl version)
6. Be True to Your School - S&S version
7. I'm Bugged at my old man (I like the 1977 version, but hate the original)
8.   School Days (esp. the back up vocals...the aural equivalent of having Rosie O'Donnell drill you in the ass with a ladle while singing Dan Fogleberg 's "Longer" *)
9.  Crocodile Rock
10. Problem Child
11. She Says that She needs Me
12. Carl's two albums (tie) (only going to use one space for this)
13. The Power of Love aka Save the Day aka Fairy Tale- all versions
14. Happy Endings



And the absolute bane of my existence....








15. Speed Turtle





*that image will haunt your dreams forever :lol

Oh! You named songs from the 60s and 70s! You might have offended one person with your opinion

To be honest, I almost put 'Don't Hurt my little sister' on there in place of Ten Little Indians, but everyone else seems to love that song, so in this case it might just be me :lol

Hmmmm, here we go in no particular order:

1) How She Boogaloed It
2) Student Demonstration Time
3) Everyone's In Love With You
4) Won't Somebody Dance With Me?
5) Here Comes The Night (Disco version, although not really a fan of the original either)
6) The Grammy
7) Summer Of Love
8) Remember (Walking In The Sand)
9) TM Song
10) Santa's Got An Airplane
11) A Thing Or Two
12) Let's Put Our Hearts Together
13) California Calling
14) Crocodile Rock
15) Take A Load Off Your Feet

I feel like I'm about the only person is enjoys the TM Song, the song, not the whole argument thing.

The lyrics to TM song are a little trite, but Al sounds great singing them. The backing track (minus the sax, which I love, BTW) would be right at home on Friends.

Songs that could have been finished and  put on 15BO included 'Good Timin',  'River Song' and 'Angel Come Home'!

Put those on the album and more oldies the public wanted because of endless summer. This album could have bought more time for the band to make new material that was great.