The Smiley Smile Message Board

Best show.    Royal Albert Hall

Best song on album.    Shelter

Best song live.    Add Some Music

Unsung hero.     Scott Toten

Best live lead vocal by a BB.     Al on Cottonfields

Best studio lead vocal by a BB.     Al on FHTBA

Best band member.    John Cowsill

Secret weapon.     Jeff Foskett

Most consistent BB.     Mike Love

Best legs/leaps.     Bruce Johnston

Revelation.    Brian Wilson enjoying being a Beach Boy onstage.



Thanks guys for this unforgettable year.
Thanks for making it happen. Specially to Brian and Mike.
Thank you for bringing our fantasies to life.
Whatever happens in the future, I'll treasure forever the memories of 2012.

Best (almost) No-show.........John Stamos


Secret weapon I would go with David Marks myself. Never seen him live before. A natural onstage and just seemed to add some Rock and Roll cred with the shades. 8)

Best Fucking Band- The Beach Boys! :rock :rock :rock :rock

Comeback Player of the Year - David Marks

Good idea, Doc!

Best Vocal Performance: Brian on "Summer's Gone"

Biggest Surprise: How Mike's voice came around and held up

Best TV Moment: Brian on Jools Holland, especially piano playing on "Barbara Ann"

Best Non-Hit Song Performance: "All This Is That"

Best Team Spirit Award: Brian and Mike's band members gelling and enjoying working with each other

Overall Award Of Merit: The Beach Boys 5 members, who made and kept their commitment; didn't blow off the soundchecks, smiled during the photos with guests, dressed well, played long setlists, didn't "dial in" their vocals, and had almost perfect attendance for everything.

Best omission: Live auto-tune for Brian after early shows

Best out-of-left-field setlist pick: "Pet Sounds" as showcase for Dave

Best idea Brian had for the show: Adding "Add Some Music"

Best non-BB lead vocal: (tie) Darian on Darlin or Scott / Jeff on WDFFIL

Best consistent BW performance: (tie) IJWMFTT or Sail on Sailor

Best Mike patter: Attempting to outsell Adele

Best audience member: Bubba Ho-Tep

Best Microphone Fiddler: Historical Johnston.

Best Fan at a Show: Me  ;D

Most inexplicably random song in the tour's setlist: Tie between Ballad of Ole Betsy and Still Cruisin'

Best TV appearance and interviewer: Jimmy Fallon

Who Farted Award: Mike or his spokesman this week with the ill timed 'set start and finish' announcement.

Who Farted merit : Bruce and his 'Obama' and who's our guy?' political comments.

Worst audience: Hong Kong. Ten minutes before showtime and only 100 at their seats according to the media. Ten past and the call was made. 'Fu*k em...we're starting!'

Best new board member.     The professor

Most bizarre topic.     Mafia links of the album TWGMTR

Best joke stealer: drbeachboy

Loveliest moment - the crowd going wild when Brian takes the bridge on Surfer Girl. At Every. Single. Concert.   ;D

Coolest hippie dude being in awe of hearing BW live for the 1st time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgGrW-PWeZs

Best Mistake: Al on Then I Kissed Her at Wembley  ;D

It must take a lot of effort to maintain a hippie look in 2012. I wouldn't know where to begin!

I caught Roky Erickson earlier this year. The guy next to me was literally decked out as Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. Yeesh.

BEST MIKE LOVE OUTFIT: Sunday canary yellow-based ensemble.

(http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0acwa8UdWb4Z0/x160.jpg)

Which coincidentally includes:

BEST AL JARDINE OUTFIT: The Return of The White Suit (TM)

Best scowl: Brian at Jazzfest
Best song not played: Surfs Up
Best tease: Al playing an excerpt of "Come and Go With Me"
Most powerful song live: "Summer's Gone"
Worst mistake: Not letting Blondie do SOS at least once.
Best mistake: Bruce's shorts

Great thread, was thinking of starting something similar myself.

Poignant moment among many: Carl's son singing Carl's part of All This Is That at Hollywood Bowl

Met a few audience members at my show who were not fans, but were there with their significant other.

Actually, I posted it without looking to see if someone posted it first. Sorry, Bubba!

Well that's so wonderful; I am honored.  The proximity of that award to the Mafia question is likely a reflection of my heritage I had thought was a secret. You can take the boy out of Jersey, I suppose.

As far as the other, often brilliant awards go,

best in concert musician: Dave (also comeback artist of the year, as Jon asserts)

best vocal by non-BB darian on darlin, by far

best song preformed on TV: In my Room on Falon

coolest unexpected choice for performance: tie btw. Add some music and Pet Sounds.

best Mike love patter: the last gig

most touching moment: Brian offering his hand to Mike for help off stage at Fallon show

best moment of redemptive optimism after devastation of Mike's confusing announcement about the future: reading this thread and sharing the joy with all of you right now (yuck!)

Best Dennis impersonation: John C with his long hair. Unable to see his face once he started on the skins and if you squinted in a certain light it was the 70s again.

A merit to Scott B on the last night up on Brians piano but too little, too late I'm afraid!

Vocal Surprise or Best Comeback Vocal performance: Al on Wouldn't It Be Nice.

Coolest Gig:  Bonnaroo

Best Audience Shot video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy-wbtB_3P8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u99R-zcKGQ4

Best Brian Gig that wasn't Royal Albert Hall or Wembley: Singapore

Best obscure song:  (tie) "All This Is That" and "California Saga"

Most consistent vocal:  Mike

Most consistent energy: Al

Best Band Member Lead: Darian - Darlin'

Best Dance Moves While Sitting Down: Brian - Sail on Sailor.

Most Awkward Stage Presence: Bruce Johnston

Beach Boy who most resembles your cranky uncle: Bruce Johnston

Best song never played during the tour that everyone wanted played: "Surf's Up."

Best song never played during the tour that no one expected to be played: "Cabinessence."

Best job at sounding like Carl Wilson - Darian on Darlin'

Best fashion/trend setter:  Brian-Designer shirts with track pants and runners. Who else but Brian could get away with that

Dennis yes but also Animal from The Muppets. Not the hair but just the wild abandon

Best Tour Brianism:


Interviewer: What's going through your head when you're singing "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"?
Brian: Nothing. It comes out of my throat. It comes up through my throat and out of my mouth, into the audience.
Al: Very touching, Brian.

I'd actually say that should go to Jeff Foskett on the tag of All This Is That.

Brian calling TLOS one of his favourite Beach Boys albums comes an honourable second IMO

Why does everybody act like Mike's voice was so amazing? I never heard a version of Do It Again which didn't make me wanna rip my own ears off.

"Let's... GIT TOGETHERANDOITAGENNNNN"

Greatest and 'youngest' voice - Al Jardine

Most energetic percussionists - Nelson Bragg, John Cowsill (fun to watch)

Most free musicianship (lots of rhythm & melodic variations) - David Marks, Brian Wilson (no clones of the past)

Good timing showmaster - Mike Love (I mean just 'timing' his stage words etc and making the setlist)

Best show on YouTube - Singapore

Best mistake - playing songs they don't like themselves, such as SOS and Kokomo

Best mistake II - like every year, the issue of more greatest hits cds

Best song on new album - Shelter yes

Best song live - Marcella

Unsung heroes - all backing musicians

yeah he starts the show pretty weak, it sounds as if it takes a song or 3 for Mike to warm up, then his voice is good for most of the time (also his bass voice in the harmony part is stunning good, and good in the mix), then with the last songs like SUSA and FFF his voice has become way to nasal for my taste.

His bass vocals were great when I saw him. As for his leads, can't fault him for them - it's not like we criticise Brian for not being able to sing the same as 1966. Or even 1980!

He also sounds awful on Isn't it Time. So I dunno. Sorry folks, I just don't hear it.

Best job at sounding like Carl Wilson on this tour: Carl Wilson on "God Only Knows"
Best job at sounding like Carl Wilson while not being Carl Wilson on this tour: nobody
Honorable mention for doing "Darlin'" justice: Darian Sahanaja

Best Guest Surprise Appearance: Taylor Mills (@ Darien Lake, N.Y.) (and her lead in to Marcella).

Truth 8)

Jeff sounded pretty bad at the Eugene show.  I think Darian was doing that part, atleast doubling Jeff.

Darian just nails it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBZZImdmgBo&feature=related

At the shows I saw , Mike started off flat and weak but by the end of the first set and the car songs he was sounding the best I have ever heard him since at least 1980. He was on fire.  He would start to come around around When I Grow Up.

At the show I was at, "When I Grow Up" was the song that made me think, "Wow, Mike Love can still sing."

Most excitable fans. Us!

Do a search on youtube today for the C50 tour and there is hundreds of hours to choose from. But remember after the grammy show how we dissected every second of what was, in hindsight, a pretty pathetic couple of minutes of badly recorded song snippets? :lol

Best mime act: Bruce on Wendy and Add Some Music.

Darian doubles/d Brian on that one, although whether they swapped parts around a bit if Jeff was having an off night, I don't know. Jeff did a wonderful job on that on the three shows I saw, though, and I'm not usually the biggest fan of his falsetto.

If you think that's good, you should hear him doing Let Him Run Wild, which he does with the Mike & Bruce band (and did for I think just one show on the reunion, the Albert Hall show). He's absolutely spectacular on that.

The Restraint in the Face of Severe and Overwhelming Temptation Award - Joe Thomas, for not leaping to his feet and praising the Lord Jesus, weeping profoundly and pledging his worldly servitude to the glory of Brian Wilson when BW started casually assembling 80 hours of sessions into a beautiful, moving and elegaic suite, 'just like Smile', in front of him.


The 'oh no, we totally didn't need to know that, you bastard' Award - Joe Thomas, for not telling anyone he has had 80 hours of Brian Wilson demos sitting on his hard drive since 1998.

Performed in Australia as well.

If Brian was singing the Carl part on "All This is That", then it's tripled. Listening to the video and remembering the concert, it's Darian prominent in the mix, from my ears. But from "that makes....." part, it's just Jeff I think. And it doesn't sound like Carl.

In any event, one of my very fav BB songs and I loved hearing it at the show.

Great idea for a thread. From my view, the whole year was great until the "Mike fires the Beach Boys" stories came out. Highlights:

Best singing: Al. If you keep it clean, your voice will hold up better, but Al's has held up freakishly well.

Best long overdue moment: David Marks, for getting his due. He helped create it all but was gone before they became "America's Band." Now he got to take their victory lap before packed houses, and looked like he was loving every minute of it.

Most surprising omission from the setlist. "Vegetables." With the success of the SMiLE box, I figured "Surf's Up" might make the cut but "Vegetables" certainly would.

Best celebrity fan: Jimmy Fallon. Opening his show with, "Ladies and gentleman, THE BEACH BOYS!" going into "In My Room" and then giving so much of the time to the Boys was a great advertisement early in the tour.

Moments I wish I'd seen: The Royal Albert Hall show and Calsaga joining the Boys on stage. That clip of "All This Is That" was tremendous (thanks to whoever shot and posted it) especially Jonah channeling his father and Brian enthusiastically singing on a song he had nothing to do with originally and thanking "The great Carnie and Wendy" at the end.

Best time to be following Beach Boys tweets on Twitter: The day they played at Bonaroo, when a ton of young fans who probably went into the day thinking of them as old farts, posted things like, "WOW! The Beach Boys are f-------- awesome!"

Unsung hero of the tour: Brian's doctor and/or chiropractor. I saw the Boys on May 12 and was sitting on Brian's side of the stage. Seeing how he had to be helped up the stairs and how poorly he moved in general, I didn't know if Brian would be able to finish the 50 shows. Instead he did 75 and was hungry for more.

Obviously, it couldn't be perfect, since Dennis and Carl weren't there. But if there is a Heaven, I'll bet they had a conversation like this:

"Wow, Dennis, this is amazing. The guys sound so great. It's great to see Dave back, Al sounding amazing and Brian really enjoying himself. And they made sure were were remembered. They really did it right."

"Absolutely, Carl. I'm so glad they got back to- -- Wow, check out the rack on the blonde in the third row."

 

I think the Wembley show was just as great as the Royal Albert Hall, and i'm not just saying that because it's the only one I attended! :-[

Oddest Interview Moment: Bruce wiping his snots on the hotel room drapes

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