The Smiley Smile Message Board

I.E. fun fun fun instead of shut down vol2, California girls instead of summer days? With ten tracks instead of the orig twelve and instead of the four BBs on the yacht its the five w bruce in like 68..

In 1977 that was your best bet for getting those original albums.  And, all of them were re-channeled fake stereo.  Though I must admit, the Duophonic Beach Boys today sounded pretty good.

I used to have the cassettes with these and when I got the Cd I was shocked to hear that they had more songs..lol.. Cassettes were strange because they only had a certain amount of space allowed on them... I'm also wondering if the reason they took off these songs was to make them releases cheaper, like the Elvis Camden releases..

it was widely reported in music magazines at the time that lp's by the beach boys and other groups/artists would be rereleased with fewer songs because it saved the companies a lot of money in royalties.

These were the versions of the albums available when I started collecting them in the early 80's. The exceptions were: the Beach Boys Christmas Album, Beach Boys Concert, Party, Pet Sounds, Smiley, Wild Honey, 20/20 and Friends. So instead of buying the abridged versions, I just hunted through the used record stores for the earlier pressings.

I treasured the all-mono Be True To Your School Capitol album from the 1980s because it had the cast-offs plus the single version of the title track.

Did these early abridged releases with alternate covers sound as good as the abridged Capitol greens from late 70s/early 80s which had basic versions of the original covers?  We're they the same masters/stampers?  There were also MFP UK releases of the early albums with different covers.

The reissues of pet sounds & smiley smile had different titles and covers, the australian/mfp renditions.

I remember when I got into the Beach Boys as a youth, it was 1980, and there were certain LPs that were easy to find and ones that weren't.  It went about like this:

SUNFLOWER - impossible to find.
SURF'S UP - everywhere in the $3.99 cut out bin.
CARL & THE PASSIONS - also nearly impossible to find.
HOLLAND - widely available, but at full price and without the bonus disc (even though the cover still claimed it was there)
15 BIG ONES - fairly available and sometimes in the cut out bin.
LOVE YOU - everywhere, for cheap.  $1.99
M.I.U. - like LOVE YOU but less so.
L.A. - The current album at the time, and very widely promoted and visible
KTSA - even though more current than L.A., not so much.  Kind of there and gone.

I seem to recall the post PET SOUNDS albums were rereleased in original artwork (but without gatefolds and such) in the early '80s.  Before that you were stuck with the twofers that Warners put out.  

As for the Capitol stuff, there were myriad cheap comps and knock offs and 10 track versions of discs everywhere.  

I had a similar experience as Adam except LA and KTSA were almost unavailable in Ohio.  I ran into Sunflower at record and CD outlet in 81 or 82.

When I was a kid most stores had various greatest hit/best of comps...as far as the abridged ones go I ran into the summer days titled california girls w the cover photo from 68 w bruce, the close-up twofer of surfin.usa&all summer long, the US version of live in london erroneously titled 69 and I could find several of the single orig albums on cd..