The Smiley Smile Message Board

So which bands do you need their whole discographies (or at least part of it) and which are you good with a simple 'best of' compilation?

I've already (almost) got the full discographies of the BBs-including solo records (glaringly obvious!!), Barenaked Ladies, Camera Obscura, most of the Beatles, The Postmarks...slowly but surely trying to build up collections of The Flaming Lips, Wilco, Weird Al Yankovic, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers...been meaning to get more into XTC, They Might Be Giants, solo Beatles.

For years I avoided greatest hits out of elitist arrogance. Real fans dug deep, real fans listened the way the artists intended. That was wrong. Artists don't know better than listeners (as often as not), and full catalogs are often as full of crap as of quality work. Plus, hits are usually hits for good reason: they're good. I was shown the light. I've still got a lot of full catalogs, but I have to admit that much of it was purchased more out of wanting the band to make a few bucks than anything else.

To be honest I have all of these artists/groups discographies :)

Best Of :
Beach Boys...they had so many fillers :[ (this is coming from a huge fuckin bb fan)
Monkees
The Byrds
The Doors (Excluding their amazing Debut.)
Prince
Michael Jackson

Whole Albums:
The Kinks (Kinks - Lola)
The Who (My Generation - Who Are You)
The Beatles (Please Please Me -  Let It Be)
Pink Floyd (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - The Division Bell)
Radiohead (Pablo Honey - In Rainbows)
The Smiths (The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come)
The Rolling Stones ..(Pre Emotional Rescue)
Led Zeppelin (I - In Through The Out Door)
Marvin Gaye (What's Goin On - Here, My Dear)
The Temptations (Meet the Temptations - Cloud Nine)

I think you'll find most / many people here have all those discographies and many more. One thing to remember here--and it struck me as I was going to flesh out my response above, is that there are a lot of people who have been listening to a lot of good music in some cases for quite a few decades who post here. Collections of thousands of albums are the norm, so horn-tooting doesn't go far. (I'm not trying to be a dick or say that you were doing that. Just a head's up.)

I was exactly like that. But I didn't buy compilations or singles bcuz I started buying music on itunes and i found that I was buying hits from compilations and then wanting the album that the hit was on and therefore i had to pay for that song twice. These days I'm a lot more into buying the full albums right off the bat because I'll tell myself that I need to get the concept or artistic statement of the whole album. Hence my liking for music from the 60's and 70's where a lot of that was being done (or at least the artists were trying). i'm sure it's just a phase or something, because I've found myself severely disappointed at some of the albums I've bought when I should've just gotten the best songs off of it or a 'best of' CD.

Dang Newguy, I swear your taste is very close to mine. You must read Rolling Stone huh? The only reason I would disagree with this is that Beach Boys compilations are very lacking in essential material. But in all honesty, The Good Vibrations Box Set (we'll call it a compilation for sake of argument) is pretty much the best songs. So something like that i could understand. But idk what I'd do if I couldn't hear All Summer Long-Holland as albums. Those albums as a whole have had great influence on the music I try to make. But to each his own. Like I said, in my opinion, you have really good taste.

to be honest i started listening to this music last year :) so i'm a little behind but for my age everyone is impressed ..my parents and my girlfriends parents always say that it's suprising that i listen to what i listen to.

thank u sir :) yes i read rolling stone magazine i have subscription to it every month :)
well gv box has everything you need and would wanna hear :]..i love all summer long,surfer girl and al the pre-pet sounds albums but for the average listener they would skip gems and call it fillers smh...please tell me what it is about holland that everybody is infactuated with...i feel left out cuz i can't see it :( ...i love the title and the album cover art and 3 songs but thats all :[...

Really, why? Seems to me your playlist is the generally accepted canon for people who dig into the history of rock and roll / pop.

thank u sir :) yes i read rolling stone magazine i have subscription to it every month :)
well gv box has everything you need and would wanna hear :]..i love all summer long,surfer girl and al the pre-pet sounds albums but for the average listener they would skip gems and call it fillers smh...please tell me what it is about holland that everybody is infactuated with...i feel left out cuz i can't see it :( ...i love the title and the album cover art and 3 songs but thats all :[...
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haha well when i first bought pet sounds i was astounded and ravenously went about searching for their albums. I read that Rolling Stone called Holland their best album of the 70's (this was before I pretty much heard anything else from the 70's). So I listened to it, and remembered that i heard Sail On Sailor in a grocery store and was like 'Man, this is the Beach Boys!?'. I suppose it was the fact that I felt I was listening to a completely new band yet it was still written by the guys who did Pet Sounds. So i probably had a bias. To be honest tho, since then Holland and So Tough have fallen to the bottom of my post Pet Sounds list. The EP on the end of Holland is pretty good, but I could do without it. Not that i don't like them, I just LOVE all the other albums. But i guess the reason is that Holland really got me looking into all their other stuff. So that's really how it 'influenced' me. And of course Sail On Sailor is one of my favorite songs of the 70's from any band.

Well because half of my friends are people that say they love pink floyd & led zeppelin but only know "Money & Stairway To Heaven" and i seem to like the obscure songs that people over look for some odd reason.

Well I certainly encourage you to keep listening, including to what the consensus says is historically great, what the current charts and sales figures say is great, and the recommendations of people you trust. As valuable as it is to go in depth into the catalogs of "the greats," it's equally important not to take them too seriously.

That's sure right, Captain!