The Smiley Smile Message Board

We need a thread like this to balance out the unpopular opinions page

Pet Sounds is pretty good
Summer In Paradise is not so good

I still am not sure what's the popular opinion on Kokomo (among us). Personally, I think it indeed is great.

The popular opinion on Kokomo is that it sucks  ;D :lol

Brian Wilson wrote some reasonable songs.

The Beach Boys could sing quite well.

Dennis Wilson was a tad unruly now and then.

The popular opinion of Kokomo is that it's smokin'; sold a million in the US and went number 1 in a couple countries - Number 25 in the UK, which is probably the same as number 1 for those chaps ("Spiffing song, deserves the top spot; reminded me of my holidays at Milton Keynes I'll have you know")

When I went to a C50 in my local area, lots and lots of people got up to dance to Kokomo, but remained still and bemused during Brian's exercise routine during Sail on Sailor.

Not necessarily my opinion.

Popular opinion: Al's voice is still fantastic.

+1 - or perhaps, it keeps getting better

Popular opinion is the unpopular thread makes better reading.

FYI, the poster called "shelter" already made a thread about them, there: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,15942.0.html
Of course, you wouldn't know it as it's a creation from Summer 2013.

Exactly. One page and one post of popular opinions. Thirty pages of un-popular.

The Beach Boys are just better at being unpopular! :lol

Sunflower is the BB album that contains the most balanced contributions from each member of the band

That just might be a popular opinon :lol

You're right, I had no idea.  :)
We still need a thread like this. What if popular opinion in a few years says that Brian Wilson is not the reasonably talented one?
If that ever happens, I think we'd need to know.

He did have the tendency to, I suppose.

Popular opinion among those named Mike Love is that it doesn't.  :-D

I don't think many people that go to Brian Wilson shows like Kokomo.

Popular opinion amongst folks like us:

The Beach Boys' material from the years 1967-1973 deserves a higher profile and respected position in the genral public consciousness.

Umm... personally, I'm not a fan of the music created in the Reilly era, but other than that, right.

Sorry...that needs to be stated in the unpopular opinions thread.

Don't derail this happy-happy feel good topic. :lol

Beach Boys is a good band. No, wait: Beach Boys is a great band!

Love You is the group's second-best LP, after Pet Sounds. This is an uncontroversial fact!

 :o   Mike Love is the most talented of the Beach Boys; without him the band would have been quickly forgotten.

The guys sported some cool beards in their time.

Personally, some of the very best material of Beach Boys was created during the John Frank "Jack" Rieley III era.  And he helped write some of them

Little known fact: Mike Love was the one who wrote Pet Sounds and Smile in their entirety.

Oh... right! Sorry! My bad! :)

Comeback with a popular opinion: Today! is one of the BB's best albums.

Brian Wilson :  I'm not a genius just a hard workin guy..

The Beach Boys were better than Jan & Dean. Just.

Correction: not "just" - a great deal better.

  Bruce, not Carl, should have been the mixdown producer for LOVE YOU.

The best tracks on the Still Crusin album are I Get Around, Wouldn't It Be Nice & Good Vibrations.

True, but I hate the fact that they were included. Very dumb move.

Edit: Also, it's California Girls, not GV.

You're right. Oops. You gave me away, Still Crusin' is clearly not my most played Beach Boys album.
Good Vibrations would be the best track on Still Crusin anyway.

99% of everything they did between 1963 - 1973 is bloody great!!

The Beatles career may have been neater, but the Beach Boys highs were higher and the group themselves and their story far more interesting.

That's right, but while The Beach Boys highest highs (which is for me the albums from Party to Friends, ignoring Party) seriously rival The Beatles, their lowest lows (Keeping The Summer Alive & Summer In Paradise) are far lower.
While Pet Sounds is better than every Beatles album, Summer In Paradise is worse than every Beatles album.

The Beach Boys' music from the '60s and '70s is better than their music from the '80s or '90s.

Mike Love, Roger Christian, Tony Asher, and Van Dyke Parks were better collaborators for Brian Wilson than Eugene Landy was.

Brian's vocal on the "Let Him Run Wild" was better in the 1965 version than it was on the 1998 one.

Movies and TV series that dramatize the Beach Boys' lives have not been very good.

The Unpopular Opinions thread is far more interesting than the Popular one  :lol


That being said, here's one:
Dennis Wilson is the second-best in terms of talent in the BB's

I'm not sure if this is a popular opinion, but I'll put it in anyway:

I find both Brianistas and Kokomaoists to be equally and incredibly annoying!



No, this isn't a joke...

Sure is.

Here's one: they were a group of sufficient singers.

"The Beach Boys highest highs (which is for me the albums from Party to Friends, ignoring Party)"

Er, so shouldn't that just be 'the albums from Pet Sounds to Friends', or am I missing something....

Today to Friends (ignoring Party)
 I'm sure I wrote Today
 damn my fingers   :-\ :-[
I'm an idiot

what's wrong with 20/20, Sunflower, Surf's Up, Carl And The Passions: "So Tough", and Holland?

All Jardine's production of  "Cottonfields" was better than Brian's. "Airplane Song," not so much, but YMMV.

When Carl Wilson sang in his soft voice, he had one of the most beautiful voices ever.

"Heroes And Villains" although good was not the right choice for a follow up to "Good Vibrations" as a single.

"Solar System" has terrible lyrics but nice melody and chord changes.

The SMiLe Sessions box was probably the best boxed set (packaging, content, etc.) ever for any particular album released or not.

"Barabara Ann" sucks.

"God Only Knows" is one of the finest constructed compositions of the 20th century. Same goes for many of the other Pet Sounds tracks.

Stack-O-Tracks was a huge blunder on Capitol's part.

Sunflower was the perfect album released at the perfectly wrong time.

They are good too, especially Sunflower. But I feel Today to Friends was their absolute peak and was when they only could be matched by The Beatles.

If I was to rate those albums......
Today 4.5/5
Summer Days 4.5/5
Pet Sounds 5/5
Smile (does this count?) - 4.5/5
Smiley Smile 4.5/5
Wild Honey 4.5/5
Friends 4.5/5

While they continued to put out some pretty good stuff in the 70s, I don't think any of those albums are on the same level as what I consider to be their peak.

Range Rover is the watcher and reminder when some poor schmuck inadvertently brings up a subject more than once.  Why is that?     God help us if we must search the archives for originality or redundancy each time we feel moved to start a thread.

"Stack-O-Tracks was a huge blunder on Capitol's part".

Explain please.

Per Stack-O-Tracks: Beach Boys popularity was declining when Capitol rushed this release out with packaging that reminds me of those old Sing Along With Mitch Miller albums. Perhaps the thing would have worked better in chronological order (the songs) but was there really a demand for this sort of thing in the first place? I believe it only hurt their reputation more. And (correct me please if I am wrong) isn't this when they lost the multitracks for "Do It Again"?

Big "No" to these

& affirmative nod to these.

1st, it isn't only me who directs the original poster to a similar-titled thread. F.ex., I've seen Pretty Funky doing so, or The Real Beach Boy once referenced 4-5 topics simultaneously. 2ndly, I've no idea how you could interpret my reminding as a hint at others' stupidity. It's only made for good, I just try to be useful on this board, that's all.

So what would have been the right choice?

I wonder if the opinion that "Barbara Ann" sucks really is popular, even among the members of this board...

"Heroes & Villains" sounds like an epic album track, not a single made for dancing. I bet "Look"/"Song For Children" with lyrics and vocals would have made a good single. Either way, some of the band members expressed regret on putting out H&V as a single in the form that it was when it was "finished". It's a record made to stop and listen to. Bottom line: where is the catchy chorus like in every BB hit? There isn't even a chorus. I still want to make it clear that I love H&V, it's just I don't think it was a good choice for a follow up single. To answer your question, Micha, I don't think they had anything from those sessions worth making a single out of. If you think otherwise, I'd love to hear your ideas.

Now, "Barbara Fucking Ann" is one of their most famous songs and one they play every night whether you're seeing the M & B band or Brian Wilson or any other incarnation. I think most of us here would have loved it if the big hit was one of their own compositions like "Little Girl I Once Knew" instead, but....
.....there is one good thing about "Barbara Fucking Ann". It caught the ears of Britain who fell in love with the BB after that. Take a look at Andrew's excellent site concerning UK release dates and you'll see what I mean (http://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/UKcharts.html (http://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/UKcharts.html)). And that got them all ready for Pet Sounds.

But I think it is safe to think that there are a lot of bad feelings about this song.

I don't agree that a single needs a chorus you can sing along to. If properly structured,  arranged and recorded, H&V could have been a good follow-up. I agree that there are no other songs from the SMiLE sessions fit to be a single, except, disagreeing with Brian himself, "Surf's Up". But alas, Brian's energy wasn't sufficient any more to get that song in a releasable state.

I love "Barbara Ann"! :)