The Smiley Smile Message Board

Okay, so it's in a lame indie website, and i'll bet the music is terrible, but scroll down this page to check out NME's reference to Holland:

http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/10-awesome-things-that-happened-at-the-great-escape

Jacco Gardner: the best thing to come from Holland since The Beach Boys album, 'Holland'

It's not just Smile that the young hipsters are into :)

Carl and the Passions: "So Tough" sounds even cooler. Coolest sounding BBs record. Dat bass. Dat Carl.

I think for me Steamboat must be up in the top 5-10 Beach Boys songs. Such a great and overlooked tune. Dennis' best work right there.

Also that Jacco Gardner made quite a nice tune. Reminds me of the early Pink Floyd days. Not much Beach Boys influence going on. Some very nice use of vibraphone and harpsichord.

Love Holland..

I'm constantly coming across references to Beach Boys music that I think nobody knows..

Sooner or later we have to realise The Beach Boys are not as underrated as we think.

"Only with you", man I don't think even the hardcore fans give this song enough appreciation

Holland certainly resonates with today's hipsters. I live in a "hip" area of Los Angeles and there are LOTS of beards around and Holland features some damn cool beards. In fact, the whole album feels like a nicely grown-in and full, scratchy, yet warm, beard.

There are also A LOT of Mike types amongst the hipsters. Lots of tall, gawky, uptight white guys who grew beards in order to fit in. But none as cool as the man himself.

Shady - have you heard POB - Pacific Ocean Blue?

Carl did an outstanding lead, on So Tough, but Dennis' lead on POB is raw and emotion-filled.

Don't underestimate whether "hardcore" fans appreciate Holland and So Tough...

The work is nothing short of brilliant!   ;)

I play it on piano and sing it to my wife almost on a daily basis. She doesn't really seem all that impressed any more...

Shady.. Only with you one my faves in that album, followed by trader

I've friends onto Holland, sunflower, friends.. People just need to hear them because there is so much between 67-73..anytime we sitting in bar ill manage to download some hilland in jukebox

 I honestly find Holland to be The Beach Boy's greatest achievement. I don't care who did or didn't write what or what Brian did or didn't do. It is the greatest work to bear the name "The Beach Boys"

When did the flagrant misuse of the term hipsters start?

To me, hipster used to mean someone who was into jazz, smoked gauloise, read Nietsche etc.

Now it just means people who are too stupid to have interests desperately pretending to have interests...'oh check this out! scored BIG TIME at the thrift by finding this copy of 'Phil Collins' face value' etc.

ANYWAY, the NME isn't hipster, or cool, or anything...it's a desperate rag that wishes it was still 1995, so it could have a meaningful circulation again. And no, I'm not bitter because they didn't mention my band in their Great Escape OR SXSW write ups! ;)

Man, that's reassuring - I grew my beard and now I don't fit it in with any of my friends at all!  :lol

I do not have Mike Loves essential IDGAF though

I love both versions but Carl's rendition on Holland takes the cake IMO.

I love what Dennis brought to the song but Carl's voice is unbeatable, especially during the Holland era.

A couple of hipsters walk into a bar. What do they say? ..... "f*** this place, it's full of hipsters"  :lol

Bear in mind the hardcore fans couldnt give the "POB" version its due as no-one in the fan world knew of the Dennis lead vocal version until the Legacy edition came out just a handful of years ago. It wasn't part of POB first time around in 77.

First BB album I got into. Growing up in Redondo Beach and the Boys were cool again. Sail on Sailor was being played at every party.

Haha...so damned true! I'm still not shaving off my moustache though ;)

How do you drown a Hipster? In the mainstream

NME's claim to discovering Brighton is the new Birmingham in the article is the absolute definition of the modern hipster!

John Manning - you are correct with the distinctions as between the LP and the legacy edition.  Converting those LP's is on my "to-do" list.

The extraordinary cover photo of Dennis just leaping off the rack seemed a real draw to buy the LP. (For me, anyway)  Too bad Only With You was not on the LP. (In fairness, to the then-existing technology, not as much can be fit on the LP.)

Wonder if there were some constraints as it had been on the Holland LP? (with Carl's lead.)

Holland is a powerful album as well as the 73/74 concert album which I still listen to (in part) every day in the car.  The live versions are far superior to the studio versions, I think.   ;)

Great, great album.

Shout out here from a fellow South Bay kid :) :)

Definitely in my top 3 BB albums. Love the whole thing and that does include the fairy tale! For whatever reason I don't think Dennis' later rendition of "Only With You" is even half as good as the original version, even though I usually enjoy all of his lead vocals from his last recording years.

I would love to listen to a Dennis version of "Fourth of July". Carl's vocals are lacking IMO. But his "Only with you" doesn't add much, I'm afraid to say.

Carl's version of "Only With You" is the far superior version, in my opinion. 

Holland is easily in my 3 favorite Beach Boys' albums...and I'd agree that it is one of the coolest, hippest sounding of their records, along with So Tough

That's insane - there's like, absolutely no scene here, even the musicians I know here complain about it. Their hack had one too many beers down at The Great Escape, I reckon.

Hope everyone who loves Holland has the 100th edition of ESQ.

http://www.esquarterly.com/merchandise.html#spring2013

I don't know why people like this record so much. It just sounds like a dull 70s rock album to me...

It's because we're dull, 70's rock guys.

What other 70s rock record sounds even remotely similar to "Funky Pretty" or "Radio King Dom"? I'd love to hear it!

The album's sound is very much of its time, but listen to the songs. The most gifted guys of their time singing some of the greatest songs of their career (aside from Brian). I think that's enough reason.

There's certainly an element of that, and it's the band's most overrated album, but... other than Carl & The Passions, and bits of Surf's Up there is no other record that I've ever heard that has the particular sound that Holland does. That combination of 'futuristic' squelchy Moog with 'rootsy' banjo and steel guitar is an absolutely unique sound to this period of the Beach Boys, and it suggests whole roads not taken in popular music.

Half the album is, frankly, dull sludge, but the other half more than makes up for it. And even the dull sludge was *ambitious* dull sludge, which can't be said of any Beach Boys album after 1979. Their reach just exceeded their grasp.

Andrew, I am proud of you. That sounds just like what a 70s Rock Reviewer would write. :)

What exactly counts as dull sludge? The only song I'd say is a bit on the dull side is Leaving this town, but even it really takes flight during the spacy solo section. And just for the record, I absolutely refuse to count Beak of the Eagles as DS! Love it, spoken words and all.

But when it comes to dull sludge, CATP is quite another story...

Leaving This Town, Steamboat and Beaks Of Eagles were what I was thinking of. The main problem with Beaks Of Eagles is the poetry. The bits by Al are quite nice, but I find Jeffers' poetry fairly revolting.

Holland is the last truly great Beach Boys album. I'll qualify that by saying that there are moments of greatness in their later output, but Holland was the last time that all of the elements were in place.

Holland and CATP I just always merge as a single work, notwithstanding release dates.  It seems to fulfill a vision of Carl, reflective of his socio-political philosophies.  Steamboat is sort of analagous to literary "onomatopoeia" with the instrumentation replicating the sonoric slogginess of a Steamboat, reminiscent of the Mark Twain authorship era in American Literature.  It's probably OK as a studio release, but, Leaving This Town, I think is an absolute masterpiece, particularly performed live on the 73/74 Concert album.  The pinnacle of their backing band, was that era as well. Amazing talent.

The collective work of Ricky, Blondie, Carl and Mike captures the essence of tortured lost love, whose anguish is unrelieved by a geography shift.  Holland provided the opportunity to metaphorically reflect from the other side of the Atlantic, in a more open and worldly context, having left behind the accoutrements of their formation and stereotype. (Girls/cars/surf) And, the natural place for its' AirPlay - fm radio.

Brian's idea for a whole album like "Mount Vernon and the Fairway" would have been an interesting release.

Little Armenia???

 :hat

You're no "Lady" for making this statement, Xoc!!! Even though there is more than a grain of truth in it...overall, the songs are a bit too Moog-y and mid-tempo. I would have to say that it's a record that produces one of the most variable responses for me--sometimes I will let it play through and really enjoy it; other times (a good bit more often) I will skip through it and listen to only two or three songs.

I will say that "The Trader" might just be the most underrated great song in the BB canon--Carl's best solo songwriting for the band. Using the "internal to each album" ranking system it grades out in the Top 25 of all BB songs, a ranking level that I suspect would be astonishing to most.

According to the polls, Holland and Love You have identical rankings (4.21 out of 5; oddly, this is also the average for Wild Honey). What I've taken to calling the "Masterpiece Quotient" (MQ)--the percentage of the votes that place the record at 5 out of 5--is 43% for Holland, 54% for Love You (a different kind of 70s record to be sure).

I prefer the Dennis solo version mainly for it's more upbeat ending.


Holland's my second favourite Beach Boys album, it's the album for BB fans who can accept music from the group which doen't sound like typical BB's music. I think Leaving This Town is awesome.

I'm really, really glad that people think Holland is cool. But for me personally, man, I just find it incredibly boring. I like the cover, but it is drab and sets the whole tone for the record. There's not a song on it that I love....

I used to be a hipster, drank Metaxa, smoked Gauloises but read Thomas Mann instead of Nietsche.  Man, those Gauloises will kill ya!  :3d

Steamboat is a fantastic track! You cannot throw it down next to BOE and LTT

Yes I can. It's about two minutes too long, Carl sounds tired and it's mostly just two chords. It's better than those two, but it's still a comparatively weak track.

Any track which samples a steam engine gets my vote for sheer radness, but I love the lolloping rhythm of the track - that and Blondies slide break, so damn cool.

Funky Pretty always seemed a bit, idk, aimless? Compositionally,  I guess. I love the burbling synths, but the song sounds like the product of a dude smoking incredibly strong weed for three weeks except for the crucial distinction that it sounds boring. But I do love me some Holland.

Hype! I'm surprised you find Funky Pretty boring! I can kinda see where you're coming from, but I've always seen it as kind of a cosmic masterpiece - one of the few Brian Wilson songs that seems bigger than the song itself, if that makes sense. To each his own though 8)

The tune has so much atmosphere, that it almost epitomizes the whole Holland concept. When I look at the Holland cover, Steamboat is the first thing that I think of and start singing. Great tune from Dennis, imho.

Man now I really want to make that transition that u describe but I'm jamming the Stevie Wonder on the vinyl - now THOSE are cosmic moog masterpieces!

What an album.. I mean totally different but brilliant. Trader, steamboat, sail on sailor, brians weird tracks? I mean goddam what a different out of the box album.  I listen to it through and  I'm glad there are others who appreciate

I think Holland is probably the most listenable Beach Boys LP from beginning to end. Not the best or even in the top 5, but it has a consistency throughout, the quality level never sags. Its a mature and competent statement. For once the quality control was splendid.

Do you think maybe a problem with "Funky Pretty" is that it has "Funky" in the title, which leads people to expect it to be something it's not? I don't like funk much, so I love "Funky Pretty" because it's not very funky, not in spite of that fact. It's just great melodies and stirring vocals all the way through.

How did the hipster burn his mouth?

He ate pizza BEFORE it was cool.

Definitely a primo-stoner album of the early 70s. We would alternate between Beach Boys and Stevie Wonder for hours. As someone mentioned above, Holland and CATP are basically the same album. I always felt that Funky Pretty, great tune that it is, was not quite right as a closing cut. ( I always think of Laurel, my own Funky Pretty with her long brown hair, when I hear it). So I mixed Holland and CATP with Cuddle Up as the closer.

They should've closed the album with Mt. Vernon and Fairway. It's really unfortunate the fairy tale was included as a separate 7" record. Not a cool move by Carl or whoever had the final say here. I like the way that Mt. Vernon seems to sabotage the serious nature of what's on the actual album. Mind you, I love Holland from start to finish, wonderful album, and still I think it benefits from the quirky humor that's added with Mt. Vernon (and, to a lesser extent, Funky Pretty).

Holland is great but it took me longer than say Sunflower to get into. I just wish Brian and Dennis sang a bit more on it since their voices were still clear.

Hmmm... ummmm... never mind. ::)

+1 ..... I only disagree in that, to me it's at the absolute top of the Beach Boy heap

Come on. The Beach Boys had a pretty good record of releasing filler-less albums pre-Holland

Holland's alright, though I honestly think I prefer Mt. Vernon and Fairway  :lol

I think that was a great move by Carl. The fairytale would have completely unbalanced the album but including it as a 7" allowed people to hear it without it really affecting the reputation of the record.

I think Holland is rightly revered as one of the band's best albums. I remember one of the BBC documentaries from a few years ago lavishing praise on this album in particular and rightly so.

But isn't Mount Vernon & Faifrway a part of Holland?

I dunno. I think it is. Kinda like how the "Something's Extra" 7inch that came with Songs In The Key Of Life is still a part of that album.

In the "Holland Improvement" department, while residing in the stratosphere of all BB albums, I was often left wondering (and a bit cheated) as to what those tidbits of sonic beauty on Mt. Vernon may have sounded had they been fully realized by Brian or Carl or both. If they were meant to be only fragments, then so be it, but they were pure genius in every respect. Are there tapes in the vault? Were they from other or future projects? Brilliant music.

You are absolutely right, even as " Fairy Tale Music" on the GV Box Set the music is just stunning.

Oh hecks yeah. Some of the little tidbits on there are great. I wish the whole thing had been longer.

Old Surfer, I knew that you can be better than just state over & over negativity about Mike & Bruce (mostly the former). So, very well said! Go on in this direction.

All of this times infinity

No one here think the Mount Vernon 7inch is a piece of sheer perfection as-is?

Although a bit silly, the narrative could be a statement from Brian about the dismal state of radio playlists at the time. The music, while brillianr, is a major tease indeed.

Agreed. My "go to" for the "Mount Vernon and Fairway" material is "Fairy Tale Music" from the '93 box set. You're left with the music and the singing and none of the narration.

I had a dream where the song fragments were padded out, there was a Beach Boys version of "Sweet Mountain" and a completed version of "Can't Wait too Long" with the whole 1973 synth aesthetic was the album's lead single. It was bitchin' and had me dreaming of alternate timelines for the whole day.