The Smiley Smile Message Board

Basically she loves all the hits and all the earlier stuff(also loves do it again)...and he loves all the transitional stuff (pet sounds/smile sessions):)(completely opposites)
what does your parents think of the beach boys? do they love them...hate them?

Well, now you know who is your favourite parent...

lmfaooooooo.. My dad & I have a similar taste in music, he's the one who introduced me to bob dylan,marvin gaye,pink floyd, bob marley,the cure, etc.
My mom introduced me to the beach boys,beatles,the monkees,paul simon,the temptations :)

Last year I burned my dad a copy of the "It's OK" TV special and he asked "is this before or after their voices got shitty?"

So he likes the earlier stuff I guess. My uncle went to school with Carl and seems to like all their stuff. It was through him I heard BWPS for the first time.

wow ur uncle is lucky as f***. seriously.
I'm planning to go to hawthorne to see their statue since it's only 10 minutes away :)

My father loved the Beach Boys up until the point where they became "uncool" in the late 60's/early 70's. Then he sort of went through this phase where he didn't listen to them much until he attended the famous Grateful Dead concert at the Fillmore East with a couple of his friends. As many people on this board know, the Grateful Dead introduced their "California friends," the Beach Boys, and the crowd went wild. The Beach Boys were cool ever since. Since then he has loved them, although he definitely likes the Pet Sounds/Smile stuff and the material from afterwards a lot better than the early hits.

My mother only likes a few songs, particularly Good Vibrations.

it's funny how most of the girls liked the hits and pre- pet sounds era :) goes to show that most women focus on radio play. My father is a huge music freak like me and i understand why he loves pet sounds/smile.
My mother didn't even care too much about "wouldn't it be nice" .."god only knows" but she likes "sloop john b" i was  disappointed but everyone has their own taste.

My Dad doesn't like the band and thinks pet sounds and today are lame. My mom is obsessed with the Beatles.

Our parents are kinda alike, SMiLE Brian

:/ damn...my mom is obssesed with them as well that's how i get into them so much.

My Dad thought SMiLE was random sound effects, but liked Mike and Bruce live.

My dad just doesn't get it, and thinks my obsession is a tad ridiculous. I got the Beach Boys, he got bland as hell 'world music', so to each his own.

Most people I'm close to tell me "I used to think I liked the Beach Boys but now I know that I don't," ie even if they like some of the early hits they hate 95% everything else.

My mom is a general fan of the boys, nothing too serious. Dad was always a fan as well, but he passed on before I could really ask him about it, but his BB record collection included Wild Honey all the way through Sunflower, a couple greatest hits, and Mom says Carl was always his favorite beach boy.

My father listened to pet sounds and said "I guess this is their magnum opus." and i looked at him like you guessed right but check this out "smile sessions" and he said "Brian Wilson is a genius". :]

My mom likes the uptempo stuff but hates the ballads. My dad's not really interested in music.

The same thing goes for my fam :) except my mom loves "dont worry baby".

My mom listens to new country (and HATES "Barbara Ann"), my dad listens to stone-age country, so neither are too appreciative of The Beach Boys.

I got into The Beach Boys pretty much on my own through movies and T.V. shows like Look Who's Talking (the 2nd one being where I took an early liking to John Lennon), Troop Beverly Hills, Home Improvement and (dun dun duuun) Full House. My fandom was secured when I was in 7th grade and my chorus did a Beach Boys medley for our spring concert.

After that I started collecting their albums and I don't think my parents have been sane since.

My mom has put up with my Beach Boys obsession for awhile now and in the course of it has actually turned out to be a real Brianista, haha! She says things like how the rest of the band/family took advantage of Brian and stifled him and so on. I get that though; I think everyone (or at least a lot of people) start out as Brianistas simply because, well... it's Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and that conception of him and this group is the dominant historical narrative -- and we all know what it implies. I do gently try to disabuse her of her more strident opinions, noting that none of the other Beach Boys supported Dennis's rather quite (merely comparatively?) successful solo venture, that until the collapse of Smile at least (if not up until Sunflower) Brian basically did what he wanted in the studio and everyone eventually kowtowed to it, etc. So far it hasn't been met with too much success yet...

She does, however, think Brian -- past and presumably present -- is emotionally immature; a perpetual teenager. I don't think she's wrong and that is of course in some ways definitely not endearing. So she's not a huge fan of his lyrics for the most part, shall we say! I'm not sure what her favourite musical era is or if she even has one but I do know her favourite Beach Boys songs are, of all odd couples, "Farmer's Daughter" and "Ding Dang"! (She also really digs "Message Man" too, haha.)

A couple of my mom's  favorites include "farmer's daughter" as well..."do it again" and "lana".."i can hear music"..."do you wanna dance".."don't worry baby" & "i'm so young".

Wow!  :o  How many can say that they were at that show t all? Should be interesting to hear more about his recollections of that show. Can you urge hime te become a member of this board ?  :) 

oh jeez. i remember the first time i ever bought pet sounds (the mono and stereo combo with "Hang On to Your Ego" in the middle). i bought it with my dad at a bookstore. i put it in the car on the way home. My dad sang along with Wouldn't It Be Nice. Then came You Still Believe in Me. Then That's Not Me. No Reaction. Then there was Don't Talk. About half way through my dad yells, "What is this crap!? I want to hear the hits!" I reached for the eject button as quickly as i could. Very Upset. Since then I'm not really sure what my parents think of Pet Sounds. I know they definitely know of nothing concerning post Pet Sounds save MAYBE Sail On Sailor. I also remember after my 400th time listening to GOK and discovering that this was THE SONG, I told my mom to listen to it, and she was not moved at all by it. Yet, play Surfin' USA around her and she'll sing along. My parents don't really know music at all, and defintely are not music enthusiasts, so i don't think they really know anything of the Beach Boys other than the surf songs. Sad really.

I don't think that women generally like the nuts and bolts of recorded music as much as men do.  My wife was an original Beatles fan club member, had all the British mono lps, eps, and singles, knows every lyric by heart, and loves the Beach Boys almost as much.  But she cannot listen to sessions and false starts and breakdowns and studio chatter without getting bored.  Even songs she loves, she just wants to hear the finished product.  Same with my sister- just play the hits.  I have one friend's wife who loves the Beatles Anthology series- but only complete songs she hadn't heard before- session stuff just does not interest her.  That said- my late father always liked the Beach Boys early car songs.  My mother liked Elvis...

my Dad had a strange habit of picking ONE song he liked by any given band. He bought the early 80s medley 45 and that was the only Beach Boys music in my house growing up.  I heard it so many times that I still expect to hear the chorus of Help Me Rhonda come in at the end of Good Vibrations. weird how that medley kind of goes backward chronologically.

Mom is more of an "easy listener". she likes elevator music. she also likes Gershwin so I played her BWRG when it came out. she didn't like his voice at all.

I'm going to make her a CD of Beach Boy ballads and see if it does anything for her. not sure why I haven't done it before now. I might have given her Pet Sounds once, but it got no reaction from her.


I went to visit my girlfriend's father recently and he was a huge Beach Boy fan. He had every single original album, up to Pet Sounds. at that point he said it was just Brian Wilson "whining" and he stopped listening to them.  :-\

My mom is a fan, especially of Pet Sounds. She was the first person I heard talk about how great of an album it is. My dad and my sister dismiss them as surfing music, which they don't care for. I've heard my Grandpa say that they were probably his favorite band in college, and him and my Grandma saw Mike and Bruce a few years back.

My father owns a copy of Steven Gains' book, Heroes and Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys. The book originally came out in 1986, which was of course many years after that concert. There's a quote in the book that states that almost everyone in the audience was stoned out of their minds that night. I forget who says it. It might not be Gains, I think he's just quoting somebody who was there.

My father and his friends were not stoned that night. He says that he can't really make any definitive statements regarding whether every single person in the audience that night truly was stoned or tripping out on acid, but that it's probably safe to say that is an exaggeration.

I have shown my father this board before, and he does read it occasionally. He's more of a Kinks fan than a Beach Boys fan, even though he likes both bands a lot. He's definitely not as obsessive about the Beach Boys as I am, but I just spoke to him and he said he would join. So expect him to comment on this topic soon.

Very cool! Thanks for asking him.

My mom likes the early hits, but isn't really aware of their post-66 output except for Kokomo. My dad hates the BBs with a passion, but also only knows the early hits. He uses the tired "BW sings like a girl, therefore the BBs are 'f@g$(homophobic slur/UK slang for cigarette)'" argument. He's kind of a macho guy, and I think was put off by the striped shirt/clean-cut image...and could have possibly been also put off by all the Brian's Back hype when he was a teenager.

My dad had a cd copy of Endless Summer I found when I was about 13 in 1991. Although, neither of my parents are big fans, they seem to like it ok. I took them to the Brian Wilson SMiLE concert and they seemed to enjoy it. They have heard BB music because I play it a lot. But I don't think either of them are really into it. My dad likes classical music, River Dance, Manheim Steemroller. My mom likes Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, and Christian praise and worship music. :)

My mother thinks that Brian plays with the Beach Boys, and "I Loves You, Porgy" bugs her, because it's supposed to be sung by a woman... :police:

...she's 80...

so i made my mom a CD of mostly ballads and she's been listening in her car.

"I love that CD! I didn't know they had so many slow songs!"

very satsifying  :)

There are two Beach Boys experiences at the Fillmore East that stand out in my mind. The first is their appearance as headliners in 1968 with Creedence as the opening act. I did not attend the show, but a friend was in attendance. At this point the Beach Boys had become "uncool" as the underground music scene was in full force. I asked my friend about the show and he replied that Creedence was great - the audience loved them - but the Beach Boys were booed by a hostile crowd. He dismissed the Beach Boys as passe and unhip.

Fast forward to April 1971. I'm attending a Grateful Dead late show at the same Fillmore East with two of my friends. As Scott mentioned previously, none of us were the least bit stoned (despite the report in Steven Gaines' book), and we were enjoying a typical ultra-long Grateful Dead late night show. The Dead late shows at the Fillmore started around 11:30 pm and often ran until the wee hours of the morning. My recall (40 years later) is that towards the end of the Dead set, Jerry Garcia (with no warning at all), announced that he'd like to introduce "another California band". The Beach Boys appear to resounding cheers, including mine. Getting a nod of approval from Garcia and the Dead instantly made the Beach Boys cool in the eyes of the partly stoned audience.

The Beach Boys played an excellent seven song set that included: Searchin, Riot In Ceil Block #9, Good Vibrations, I Get Around, Help Me Rhonda, Okie From Muskogee and Johnny B. Goode. The Dead came back onstage to join the Beach Boys near the end of the set, which further increased the Beach Boys' hip quotient. The bands played Okie From Muskogee and Johnny B. Goode together.

At the time it seemed like yet another fantastic evening at the Fillmore East, my all-time favorite concert venue, but it was actually an historic occasion that changed the image of the Beach Boys forever in the FM/underground world. It was great to see a band I had admired since the beginning become relevant again right before my eyes. 

Robert, thanks for becoming a member of this board and taking the time to write some recollections of that time. Great to hear these stories from a time when most weren't even born yet. I certainly wished I could have been there to watch this gig.

FYI you can listen to that entire concert here - http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/grateful-dead/concerts/fillmore-east-april-27-1971-set-2.html (http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/grateful-dead/concerts/fillmore-east-april-27-1971-set-2.html) Jerry Garcia introduces the Beach Boys during the track, "Searchin'."

Neither of my parents like the Beach Boys much... although they don't mind CATP and POB

Both my parents like the Beach Boys just fine but would be bemused at the level of my obsession.
They only had one BBs record in their collection. "Good harmonies" remarked my dad. My dad had never heard of Pet Sounds till the '80s- I surmise he was off travelling the world when it was released, thar's usually the explanation for gaps in his 60's pop knowledge. I think I managed to surprise him by playing him a late'60s album track once. "THIS is the Beach Boys?".

My mum likes me to play "Don't Worry Baby" and "Rhonda" for her on the acoustic guitar.

HOLY CRAP I FEEL OLD READING THIS!!!! Your parents were the same age at the same time I was when I started listening to the Beach Boys (1973). It started because believe it or not, I had a crush on a girl named Rhonda. My brother handed me the Best Of Volume 2 and said listen to help me rhonda. I forgot the girl, I kept the music. Then I  heard Kiss Me Baby and Please Let Me Wonder. I was gone then!