The Smiley Smile Message Board

As I was saying in a previous post -I think the average music fan dismisses their early work as throwaway surf and car songs, some of it was, but that was only a small percentage of their catalog.  The Beach Boys were working against a record company who wanted to constantly to throw 2 or 3 LP's out a year, so most of their early LP's suffer from being rushed.  Like I mentioned in a previous thread the best way to look at the early LP's is to throw away the "turd" and filler songs then combine the LPs that dropped that year.

But as we all know a lot of their early work was brillant, the LPs just werent consistant from front to back.

So here is a WHAT IF scenario if the BBoys werent under the gun and could have crafted just one great LP per year.

Beach Boys 1st album:

Surfin Safari USA
tracklisting
1.Surfin Safari
2.Little Girl (Your My Miss America)
3.409
4.Surfin
5.Summertime Blues
6.Cuckoo Clock
7.Surfin USA
8.Farmers Daughter
9.Lonely Sea
10.Shut Down
11.Noble Surfer
12.Lana

Sophmore album

Little Surfer Girl Vol 2
tracklisting
1.Surfer Girl
2.Catch a Wave
3.Surfer Moon
4.Little Duece Coupe
5.In My Room
6.Your Summer Dream
7.Be True to Your School
8. A Young Man is Gone
9.Fun,Fun,Fun
10.Dont Worry Baby
11.The Warmth of the Sun
12.Keep an eye on Summer

That sets them up for All Summer Long, Live Concert Album, Christmas Album, then the groundbreaking Today! album. 

This is what their early catalog might have looked like if they had a little more quality control over their music.

Even considering the pressure from Capitol to have something new out every other day, the early albums are fairly underrated imo. It's like yeah, they were singing about cars and stuff I really couldn't care less about, but Brian's attention to detail and craft was extremely apparent right from the get-go. I have no f*cking clue what a "surfer moon" is, but damn, what a gorgeous song.

They got better later on, I'll grant you, and I don't love everything on the early albums (but then I don't on several other albums, too). Still, there's enough really solid stuff on them all of them.

Over time, I've found that there's just no convincing most people of anything. They'll think what they want to think, and you're gonna have a hell of a time changing their perception of it - it just proves to be too frustrating. Their loss. Just enjoy it and be glad that there are so many others who can.

Edit: Just noticed "Surfer Moon" is nowhere to be found on your tracklists. NO DEAL. NEVERMIIIIIND.

Also, am I the only one who loves "Land Ahoy" and is puzzled how it's basically better than everything on "Surfin' Safari" and yet only saw the light of day later as the much-inferior "Cherry Cherry Coupe"?

Surfer Moon is on his "second album".

Speaking of that track, has anyone ever noticed that the backing track is rechanneled, but the vocals are not?

I think this is revisionist blather. Surfin USA was an innovative and edgy album in the context of its time. It was absolutely progressive in the rock realm for 1963. Its a great record beginning to end. The "turds" are some of my favorite moments in the BB's canon. You want to dissect a perfect piece of art with your latter day perspective which dismisses context and skews balance.  The "average" music fan is a subjective thing to gauge. When this album was made the average rock fan thought it was really cool, instrumentals, vocals, the whole thing. It was cutting edge, fun, hip, and perfect. Don't f*ck with the formula.

I don't think it's rechanneled? Just panned very oddly, as was common back then. I could never stomach the stereo mix of that song as is - I'd love to hear a proper job done if the tracks still exist.

Edit: Damn, listening now, it does sound like rechanneled stereo sans the vocals. Anyone know for sure?

I've loved "Land Ahoy" ever since I first heard it on "Beach Boys Rarities" in 1983. Even on that album of oddball tracks it stood out.

Reads like a Greatest Hits compilation with very little depth or context into the surf music scene at the time.  

The hate people have for the early albums is baffling to me.  Surfin' Safari is at times pretty juvenile and not very indicative of their later sound but most first albums are that way.  Surfin' USA and Surfer Girl are basically perfect albums to me...and despite the borrowed tracks from earlier LP's every new song on Little Deuce Coupe is a winner.  And the highs of Shut Down Vol. II outweigh the "filler" tracks.

If you want to make personal playlists for iTunes that essentially purge half of the songs in their early discography, go ahead...but it's ridiculous to say "this is what the albums should have looked like".

edit: what Jon said

Can I get some love for the Surfer Girl album? Pretty enjoyable from start to finish. "Boogie Woodie" isn't great or anything that puts me in awe of their skills as writers/performers, but as a cutesy outro to the album, it's totally harmless and works just fine.

Edit: I realize they didn't write it, was just sayin' - something like "The Surfer Moon" DOES put me in awe of Brian as a writer, and it's far from being the band's best song.

That's because the track was recorded for one of Brian's side-projects, and was appropriated for a BB album track.

Listen to this man, especially when he uses the word "context": what sounds odd now was electrifying 49 years ago.

Any idear if the tracks still exist to create a proper stereo mix of any sort?

Count me in for the Land Ahoy love in, I also am puzzled as to why it wasn't included on either Surfin' Safari or Surfin' USA. I love the fact that the rhythm guitar part is really clear and upfront in the mix, was this part played by David or Carl? Sounds like David to me.

I love the early surf/hot rod music ,it's what drew me in. As weird as it's sounds I got goose bumps when the harmonies kicked in on Little Deuce Coupe.

Not weird at all. When I was a young kid listening to this I had no idea what a Deuce Coupe was (for all I knew they were singing about a girl whose name was 'Deuce Coupe' haha) - I just loved the harmonies.

I'd listen to them more if I could find mono mixes, but the stereo on those albums as a whole is so off-putting for me that I've never really listened to them fully, and I know I'm missing out on the stuff that wasn't a single or on the GV box  >:(

A few things that you should keep in mind:
- All the major pop artists released 2 or 3 LP's a year in the early 60s. Stars came and went so fast that you couldn't afford to keep your audience waiting for a whole year. Remember that everyone thought that Presley's career was over when he had to join the army?
- Nobody was making perfect pop albums in the early 60s. Even the Beatles' pre-1965 LP's were full of covers and others fillers.
- The average music fan's opinion about the early Beach Boys is not influenced by their studio albums, for the simple reason that the average music fan doesn't know these albums. They only know the hits.

I recently went back and sat through the whole of Surfin' USA for the first time in a long time, even something like Stoked sounds utterly cool and a lot of people regard that as filler. It might be my favourite early BB album now.

I dont want ppl to take this thread the wrong way.  It is not a put down to their early work, it is a what if scenerio if the Beach Boys and Brian inparticuliar had more quality control over their work.  I dont think you can argue that the perfectionist Brian was during this creative period that if he was given proper time he wouldnt have released a lot of the tracks that he did from Surfin Safari-Shut Down Vol 2.

To play devils' advocate if your judging the albums in the context of the times (63-64), You have the Freewheelin Bob Dylan, Times are A Changin, Sam Cooke Night Beat, With the Beatles, Please Please Me, Beatles For Sale, Hard Days Night, Rolling Stones, and Animals debut.  And for just the surf rock genre you have great albums by the Ventures, Lively Ones, and an awesome live album by Bo Diddley called Beach Party.  All I feel rival or surpass the Beach Boys LP output from this time. 

The point is if Brian had time I think those early albums would have been amazing and history would hold them a lot higher regards (Look what he did when he did have time once he quit touring, you get Today!).  I know a lot of ppl like those songs so again sorry if I offended anybody, maybe its a relatively generational thing the older fans who were around at that time really dig it and that cool, I respect that I wasnt alive at that time.  I just feel it doesnt holds up today.

As for 'Surfer Moon' I love that song.  The Surfer Girl album is their first truely solid LP in my opinion but again does suffer from the problems previously talked about.  I actually found clips on the internet a while back from when Keith Moon did a gig DJing a BBC show.  Moon was known Beach Boys fanatic even drummed in a band called the Beachcombers before joining the Who and he lead his show off with 'Surfer Moon' which fit perfect with the lyric "Theres a moon in the sky..." haha.

Anyway I could talke about this for hrs, in fact just got my tix for the PNC show in NJ.  Lawn Seats Baby!  We all could discuss this more over some John Daley drinks and Land Sharks.  I will be the guy yelling out for Brian obnoxiously during the show haha.

I had a long car journey the other day so stuck on the first few BBs albums I'm succession. The leap represented by Surfing' USA is phenomenal. Like stone age to iron age overnight.

Again, its about context, which your rationale is badly skewing in your response. If you are serious about examining the release in its environment then you should know what you're talking about before passing judgement. There is no comparison between the Surfin USA LP and ANY of the examples you cited. To me the examples you chose just show how naive or uninformed you are. There was nothing in the U.S. mainstream even close to Surfin USA. It completely changed everything. Its the very first rock vocal album by a self contained act that sold in the millions and dominated radio and the charts for months and months. This was Lady Gaga huge in its time. Freewheelin Bob Dylan didn't make the top 20 and had no hit singles, and wasn't rock or even teen oriented. Times They Are A Changin' is an even less relevant comparison. The Beatles? Seriously? Nobody had heard of the Beatles in the states and wouldn't for almost a year after Surfin USA began tearing up the industry like Godzilla. Animals, that's a year and half later, The Stones didn't have a top-ten hit here until TWO YEARS after Surfin USA...these lengths of time in the context of that culture is like ten or twenty years now. The Ventures, Lively Ones, etc...were not vocal groups, they were not huge trends, they didn't sell anywhere close to Surfin USA and had minimal cultural impact in comparison. Bo Diddley never had a TOP 40 album in his life. I feel like maybe you're a plant and somebody is around the corner laughing at me right now. Geez those were lame examples. You obviously have little understanding how a GIANT record like Surfin USA came pretty much out of nowhere and created a new genre, self-contained teen album rock, which paved the way for everything that came in the subsequent USA teen- market years like the Beatles, Stones, Byrds, which led to the Doors, Hendrix, Zeppelin, which led to etc.. etc... Surfin USA was the first monster USA rock album that wasn't by a solo singer like Elvis, Rick Nelson or some other teen idol. Before it there was no real serious album market for ROCK BANDS. Do you understand that? It is a masterpiece and Brian loves all of it.

Thanks for that, Jon. That is some serious sh*t there with the Surfin' USA album. As much as I have read about the band, I did not realize the impact that it had on the record industry. Some very cool stuff, there. :)

"I just feel it doesnt hold up today" - this quote says it all. I'm with Jon Stebbins on this one. It certainly held up then in the time and context of when it was actually released, and the early BB albums sound great today...just because they don't meet today's criteria for the format an album should take, doesn't mean that they're any less valid.
So the early BB albums should look just as they do already !

And not just Surfin USA.

I wouldn't have the Surfer Girl LP  f*&ked about with either. Perfect as it is thank you very much!

I appreicate the response but I still think your love for this period of Beach Boys music is blinding the fact the Surfin USA LP isnt considered a great LP in the history of Rock, which was my whole point of the discussion.  The song was, yes, there is no denying that.  But all the LPs I mentioned in the previous post all came during 63-64 period and I feel are stronger LP's from cover to cover and layed the blueprint to what rock itself eventually became, while the surfing fad eventually died .  If Brian had enough time he could have crafted a truly amazing LP that could trancend rock music and not just sound like a surf rock genre piece.  Hell he did this album in little over a month!!!  You can look at that say 'wow!', to do what he did in so little time an still crafted a solid album and I agree with you. 

But again I chose not to do that-Im a history guy so I am constanly calculating the "what if" scenerio and since this is a forum I thought it would be a fun topic to discuss because to me as a younger fan looking back at their music its frustrating to see that Capital constantly needed a Beach Boys product in the market which led to their early LPs to be watered down.  If you look at my posts I give nothing but praise to Surfer Girl and Surfin USA but it always leaves me a bit unsatisfied and wondering "what if?" and I thought we all could try to answer that question on a Beach Boys fan forum.

Another Example would be what Surfs Up LP should/could have sounded like:
Get rid of 'take a load off your feet' and add the two Dennis songs '4th of July' and 'Carry me home' and you may of one of the best albums of the 70's not just one of the best albums the Beach Boys made in the 70's.  Again Im not sh**ing on the Surfs Up LP, I thought it would be fun and interesting to discuss this- which is the point of having a forum to discuss topics like this?? But Mr. Stebbins I would already know your answer you would tell me why Surfs Up is truly great in its present form and doesnt need to be changed. 

And Mr Stebbins you did shed some new and interesting light and offer a different perspective on the Surfin USA LP that I did not realize before but I still believe that it is more known for its title track, the brillant Lonely Sea, possibly Farmers Daughter than the LP itself.  Which brings me back to reason for the thread, just imagine if Brian had maybe 4 or 5 months to craft this LP???  Wow.

I think Shut Down Vol II is their biggest "might have been" LP. The difference between the quality material and the filler on this LP is startling. Change of title, and the culling of the filler, and this could have been one their greatest albums.

Agree with you there 100%, the strong songs are so f'in strong!  And the filler is such obvious filler that it probably the most frustrating early Beach Boys LP.  I do kinda dig Dennys Drums in some weird way haha

Carry Me Home was recorded around the time of Holland, you're probably thinking of Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again.

No. Two of my books make the point that Surfs Up suffered greatly from not having the Dennis material... and with it could have been among the greatest BB's LPs. The tracks would have likely been 4th of July and Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again. As Paulos stated Carry Me Home is more of a Holland outtake.

But to say Brian was pressured, and you wish he had more time for the Surfin USA LP is projecting something that didn't exist then. He was excited to have the platform, he worked fast, he produced a great record from beginning to end that was progressive, cutting edge, and massively successful. LDC is really the first case of Brian compromising to get product out. The first LP is weak because other than Surfin Safari, 409, Moon Dawg there are too many gimmicky songs that don't really reflect the aesthetic of the band. the reason is they were green, Murry had too much influence, and Brian not enough leverage. Surfin USA is a pure statement of what the Beach Boys were at the time, the instrumentals have as much importance as the vocal songs because the Beach Boys were bringing something cultish or regional to the masses. Dick Dale became a household name because of Surfin USA. I love the band's semi punk and primitive guitar heavy renditions. This was a radical sound for the mainstream. Surfer Girl is also a great record beginning to end, although a softer, smoother, less raw sound than the previous album. With LDC and SDV2 things began happening too fast. But still...All Summer Long...another perfect record beginning to end. Another masterpiece. And the live album was massive, important and great too. From there the genius kicked in but except for GV's the U.S. never connected as completely with Brian and the BB's again. Those early albums were important and to me they are too perfect to dismantle from a questionable perspective.

Again thanks for the insight.  For the record I always said in my opinon Surfer Girl and Surfin USA are the best out of the early Beach Boys catalog.  Just feel like it wasnt until All Summer Long they made a truly great record from begining to end, like you said before, then we get the materpiece of Today! shortly after.

The Beach Boys made such great music it just is frustrating to see that always find ways to drop the ball with some of their LPs whether it was from some of their early LPs or Smile, Surfs Up, Adult/Child, 15 Big Ones, LA Album (fully think this coulda been a very good LP if Dennis was able to get more input but maybe thats just wishfull thinking)

-On a side note Mr Stebbins Ive been trying to get a copy of your "Real Beach Boy" book for a while but cant find one besides ones at amazon for outrageous prices.  Been trying to read on up on some more insight on Dennis as you can see I am a bit biased towrds his out put to the Beach Boys cannon.

Dear, Jon - thanks for the food for thought re the above.  I initially had a negative reaction to the semi punk idea, but as you're more a fighter than a lover, I thought it best to check my opinion pre attempting a lamo broadside.

And Yeah, Let's Go Trippin', Surf Jam, even Farmer's Daughter have this great garage-y approach that go along way to defining a pretty cohesive sound across the 2 sides. Noble Surfer is almost a protest song, and there is a vocal rawness (not lyrical) to Lonely Sea that provided a precursor to the later genius!

I then went back to Surfin' Safari - if you listen closely to Chug-a-lug (just the track), you can hear the Surfin' USA opening riff behind the verses, and the organ/strat play-off in the chorus - in a gestational sense, but still there IMHO.

I think that Today has that same approach and connection you allude to - perhaps it wasn't embraced in mainstream USA, but in hindsight it provides one last chance to tune in, sans the the deconstruction goggles.  Thanks again for your perspective - While I don't have Dr Dre headphones, I do have a fresh perspective on these albums now - cheers - A

Thanks A for giving surf a chance. I am on a lifelong rant about SUSA being a punk precursor and a progressive and cutting edge fest for its time. Brian was a genius before he was a genius. The Ramones based their entire philosophy on a warped speed urban version on the Beach Boys early thing. And you're right Today was the last punk BB's record...at least side one. Or was it Love You? Either way they are punk pioneers.

Surfer girl is a GREAT album, one of THE BEST they ever did.  There's not a thing wrong with Boogie Woodie, The Rocking Surfer, or South Bay Surfer - does every song have to be a masterpiece for an album to be worthy?  Whatever happened to just plain fun?   Surfer Girl is a classic album and ought to be considered so. 
Surfin' USA too is a solid album all around - instrumentals were currency back then, particularly in the "surf" realm.  We're talking about a bunch of teenagers here too, which makes this, and all their early albums that much more impressive.   
Deuce Coupe's only drawback is the repeat of tracks from prior albums.   Shut Down, Vol 2 is a small mess, but the good tracks are that much better than anything they'd done up to that point that it eases the haphazard feeling nature of the album. 
Surfin' Safari is a timepiece and quite enjoyable on that level, it's innocent and charming in a goofy way, like watching an episode of Leave It To Beaver; it's the way we'd all like to imagine life used to be (though perhaps it really wasn't).

Kinda see where you're coming from, but to me there's only 2 filler tracks, and even one of those, Denny's Drums, is enjoyable (and a fun way to finish the album - especially, i'm sure, for all the drooling pre-pubescent Dennis-loving girls listening to the record at the time...) - the rest of the album is consistently great. Aside from the obvious (Fun fun fun, Dont Worry Baby, The Warmth...), there's In The Parkin' Lot, which features incredible harmonies and chord changes throughout; there's Pom Pom Play Girl, which features a lovely vocal from Carl (sounding ridiculously young) and terrific Mike lyrics; This Car of Mine likewise has a great Dennis vocal, is short and punchy, and acts as a nice contrast to the seriousness and depth of TWOTS; and Carl's Shut Down... instrumental is awesome, one of the group's last great surfing instrumentals. It annoys me when people play down the merit of this album.

Amen. And the  great"Little Deuce Coupe" album dissapears with this revisionist  mental masturbation?
 If someone can't get past the lyrics (if 'it's about cars or surfing, and they can't relate), I have to think they're not "getting it". I mean, the Beach Boys could have been recorded reciting the dictionary and it would have sounded great. It's all about the arrangements and the emotive vocals. How can you possibly consider yourself a fan and miss this?

Agreed. I don't care what they're singing about - when it sounds as damn terrific as a Custom Machine or a Spirit of America, who cares? But then, i don't really get why it should remotely bother anyone anyway that they're singing about cars or surfing...??? (And i'm saying this as someone who can't drive or surf).