The Smiley Smile Message Board

I have these "hipster" internet friends who don't get the Beach Boys, so I made this playlist...

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpJfYswP59L3pqoxRhIP-vGnX5BXpMaeJ&feature=mh_lolz

Excellent list.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn6iajHwGF8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGTdmLhKEBk

HiPSTERS LOVE SMiLE and PeT SoUNdS.

A better mixtape to make for them would be Beck's "Lost Cause" over and over and over, closing with "Video Games" by Black Out Band.

I'd like to make a Beach Boys surfin' mix for those who only like Pet Sounds and Smile.

YES. And a Beatles early '60s mix for those who only like Rubber Soul/Revolver onward, but I digress (seriously, A Hard Day's Night IS their strongest album track by track).

I'm sure there are a lot of fans out there that feel embarrassed by the surf-car-summer early stuff of the Beach Boys, which is a real shame. Without 'Surfer Girl' and 'I Get Around', you can't appreciate Brian's growth toward Pet Sounds or SMiLE quite as much, if you ask me.

Agreed on all of that.

Wow, it's nice to read that. I agree with you about A Hard Day's Night. I've always hesitated to say it, though, because of that Rubber Soul/Revolver AND Abbey Road crowd out there.

Another vote here for HDN - my favorite Beatles album!

I don't think any album (Beatles or otherwise) can match the one-two-three punch of It Won't Be Long/All I've Gotta Do/All My Loving on With The Beatles. Early Fabs is where it's at!

I wouldn't agree on the list as a whole. Those are great songs, don't get me wrong. But the early surf and car songs are not only an important (probably the most important, commercially speaking) part of their career but they are also great. You can't get any better than "I get around" for mid-60s Rock'n'Roll or "Surfin' safari"

Not all hipsters are good at their job.

I don't have a problem with the surf/car songs. I like it all. But it makes me sick that the Beach Boys public image is stuck in a rut. The thing I like about them is their diversity. One of the most diverse bands of all time. This list is good because it shows the wide range they had as a band.

Yeah, the whole stuck in a rut thing is a problem. For most people, the Beach Boys are strictly a surf n' car oldies band that apparently fell off the planet basically in 1967, only to emerge in 1988 as old farts with a surprise huge hit. "Oooh, 'Kokomo'! Holland...Sunflower...Friends...Wild Honey? WTF are you talkin' about? What's this Pet Sounds business? How can anything by a surf band ever rate as high as anything the Beatles ever did?"

Part of it is the fault of the Beach Boys themselves, though...

You were correct up until the "What's this Pet Sounds business?" More like "They were terrible, then they put out a sorta good album because they were blatantly ripping off THE MOTHERFUCKING BEATLES DAWG, and then Brian went insane (lol what an idiot) and then they did 'Kokomo' and Full House later."

Pet Sounds is far more sanctified and safe than ya'll are making it out to be. It is #2 even in Rolling Stone's greatest albums list, and that is the safest list of all time.

I've had a mix I've used a few times lying around somewhere, it's a chronological mix of Beach Boys songs and songs by The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, The Beatles and Love, organized by recording date. I think it helps people understand the band better when they can hear Here Today right after Under My Thumb or something like that.

Screw hipsters. Why do we have to go out of our way making them hipster CDs? Do we nedd their judgement to validate our musical preferences? Are we that insecure? Do we need to prove that there is cool music in the BBs catalogue? I wouldn't move a finger for them.

7777 topics. No one can make a new topic. This will be our last topic.

To which I always tell them, what the  :o were they doing from 1967 to 1988?  Twenty freakin' years of grass and cocaine?  No.  They had a fat man orchestrating synthesizers thirty years before LCD Soundsystem, they were making some of the best pop-rock albums of the early 1970s, and they pioneered the return to basically produced albums long before John Wesley Harding and the Beatles Get Back Sessions.  Freakin' hipsters.

Well said. Adding to that, the Beach Boys were one of the few integrated bands around when Blondie and Ricky were in the group; they had a closer relationship to that groovy car salesmen of the spirit, the Maharishi, than the Beatles did; and the band often changed and adapted new sounds on their albums, pushing the envelope - no two records sounding alike. They took real chances prior the Endless Summer.

How 'bout Surfin' Safari and Surfin' USA? Not forgetting Shut Down v.2 vs. Summer Days? i'll tell ya they sound fairly the same. No?

One of the best posts I've read on this board.

Hanging around the used car salesman did more harm than good as seen in the disasterous maharishi/bb tour. Blondie and Ricky were a non factor with the group's popularity. They were there, sang a few songs and were gone.

I meant the late '60s - early '70s albums.

Yep, ONE MONTH is a long time.

Considering that most bands put out 2 or more albums per year back then, compared to artists nowadays taking 2-5 years or more to put out albums...I wouldn't say a long time, but still....

What music do hipsters listen to? I ask because I have no idea what music is considered hip, trendy or even good these days, nor could I give a flying one. I openly admit I exist in a complete bubble when it comes to my music tastes.

Simple, hipsters listen to hip-hop. If you know what I mean.  :hat

Dubstep, is what they listen to. IDK what music they listen to though.

Well if you count Smiley Smile released in September, it's more like 3 months, but who's counting? ::)

But then, of course, we could credit Dylan with never making production records to begin with, and always staying stripped-down, musically. And if we credit The Beach Boys for innovations on Smile, an album never released, we should also credit Dylan for The Basement Tapes.
But really, the whole "they did it FIRST" thing is kinda silly in general. There's always someone who did something first, before anyone we have actually heard of.

The Beach Boys public image went from Good Vibrations to Smiley Smile. That is quite the departure, remember they wouldn't have heard Smile!

Depends where you lived and if you read the trades - SMiLE was written about heavily in the (especially, but not exclusive to) UK press. Of course, those were only verbal descriptions, but a lot of people got the gist of what Brian was working on. Also, the Inside Pop special with the Surf's Up clip - did that air before Smiley Smile's release?

I'd say the failure of Smiley Smile was based more on the time lapse than the actual music. Release dates were so important back then.

The Beach Boys should change their name to Geocities and release their next album on cassette or I'm dumping them

Just showed a girl my age Pet Sounds, she listened and really liked it and is planning on listening to the whole thing tonight.
And she only heard the first 3 songs!

there are now three active threads about the Beach Boys and their appeal to hipsters. just thought I'd point that out.

That's a hint that you need to make more, Aegir.

I think there are different kinds of 'hip' these days. For the most part, I wouldn't expect people into hip hop to appreciate the Beach Boys. However, people into Fleet Foxes, Edward Sharpe, M Ward, REM, Weezer, etc, ...many would be floored if they heard say, Let the Wind Blow. I have many friends as such, and they were surprised and impressed by it. Obviously, Pet Sounds is highly respected anyway. But to me, that is only the beginning. They reinvented themselves at least a couple more times.

If I tell people the BB are my favorite band, they wouldn't understand. But if I tell them that I think the BBs are one of the most creative and diverse bands, they may be puzzled, but at least it makes them curious.

Nah...Please Please Me is where its at!

I just don't understand why anybody in their right mind would hear "I Get Around" and not appreciate the Beach Boys as one of the greatest bands of all time.  I never could understand the need to hold their more moody music up as something to show their greatness.  Their greatness was on their first album.  A lof of their greatness was gone by the time they got to Pet Sounds.  If my friends acted like "California Girls" wasn't one of the best songs ever recorded, I'd look at them like they had two heads.  What kind of losers are you guys hanging out with?

Well, waaaay back before I got into the Beach Boys I'd have thought of 'I Get Around' as the cheesy old pop song about cars and gangs with men singing silly high pitched girly harmonies, as featured in the 80s movie 'Look Who's Talking'.

Don't judge me! I guess I'm saying that people are so used to the early hits that a new fan would need to stop and consciously listen to them with fresh ears to appreciate just how good they are.

I suppose that could be true.  I've always thought that 'cheezy' really meant "This is so exactly right that it's part of my life and I don't want to admit it".  The Beach Boys are cheezy like Elvis cheezy and the American flag is cheezy to Americans, and saying "I love you" is cheezy.  I decided several years ago I was going to embrace the cheese. 

EMBRACE THE CHEESE, YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.

Also since we're going all out, I like watching Glee and Gay people ought to be able to be married. 


There.  I said it.  How will I ever show my face around the car shop again?

I applaud you for your courage in writing this. You put it a bit bluntly, but I agree completely.

Honestly, I think The Beach Boys are cooler than ever before. I think people who are really invested in music, and not just fashionably apathetic readers of Pitchfork, know about The Beach Boys. I think several of the most respected and well reviewed bands today are pretty vocal admirers of The Beach Boys. I think anyone really into the music scene today is aware of this, and at least an admiration for Pet Sounds has probably rubbed off on them. If someone doesn't know about the band, I don't see that as evidence of them not being hip, but as a sign that the person I'm speaking to doesn't listen to a lot of music besides what's on the radio.

And if you point it out, it really does seem silly to discount The Beach Boys. I think to a lot of people they're a sort of novelty or one-hit-wonder type band. But if you put it in perspective for them, it's pretty easy to get them to question their own understanding.
Just ask them to list all The Beach Boys songs they can think of. They'd probably list off the usual suspects: Fun, Fun, Fun, I Get Around, Help Me Rhonda, Barbara Ann, California Girls, Good Vibrations, Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows, Sloop John B, In My Room, Don't Worry Baby. Even if that was the band's whole career (which it's not), it's still one hell of a run. To have so many songs that are completely ubiquitous can't be easily dismissed as a perversion of good taste.

SCREW HIPSTERS  :lol

Still confused. So are hipsters those people that listen to what everyone is listening to (and if so how would you be able to spot one?) or the kind of people that listen to bands that no one else has heard of?

Both at the same time.

They are people who listen to obscure/cool music mainly because they want to look cool, and less because they actually like it. Tho the term has become an unfairly pejorative one lobbed by people with bad taste towards people who are actually hip.

Hipsters are white people who listened to jazz before return to forever made jazz white.

That is actually quite a great comment.