The Smiley Smile Message Board

What do you think? In randomly pulling up some obscure BB tunes today on Spotify, the question occurred to me... excluding bootlegs, is every song from every BB album played somewhere on planet Earth at least once daily?

Has the Earth had a single day since 1992 without Surfin' (1992) being played somewhere in a far away land? Were there a couple days in 1987 where Bells of Paris didn't get played anywhere, and a somber 24 hours in 1994 where nobody on the planet listened to TM Song?

Not that we'll ever really know (unless perhaps a streaming service like Spotify - which doesn't even have all albums, like Summer in Paradise, available - makes its records public)... but what does everyone think?

In a word, no.  A check of how many times the obscure songs have been played on Spotify and YouTube will bear that out.  Aside from the more hardcore fans, nobody knows alot of those songs exist.  Also worth noting is how large their catalogue is to begin with.

I remember hearing years ago that statistically at any given time, somebody somewhere is playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

I'm playing Rollin' Up To Heaven as we speak, if that helps...

Let's each choose an obscure song and pledge to make Centurydeprived's dream a reality. I claim Crack At Your Love.

There is no way to prove this either way,  but I'd wager that every released Beach Boys song is played somewhere every day. I play music at night on my computer while I sleep. This includes many of the lesser known albums on most nights. I'm just one fan.  There are so many fans out there besides us on this board. Every album has its fans, and I'm sure that every album gets played somewhere.

Now,  lesser known stray tracks not on albums. ...I can say that it's possible that Happy Birthday America or that 80s live cut of California Girls that was released as a b-side,  or  that alternate take of What Is a Young Girl Made Of might get skipped on some days,  but stiIl get played most days by someone.

I agree with Eric.  I mainly base it on what I consider a fact: The human mind (mine, yours, Eric's :) ) isn't capable of understanding large numbers.  We can understand that we only know a few Beach Boys fans, and we can understand that between us, we don't listen to every song, ever day...

But the enormity of civilization is overwhelming to our minds, you can't possibly understand or even quantify the influence the Beach Boys have on the world today.  Just that we're on a message board talking about them is a hint at how big their presence in pop culture is...

So how many people played the Beach Boys in my city today?  Probably dozens.  How many in my STATE?  At least hundreds.  How many songs were played on the radio around here?  Who knows.  How many were played on the east coast?  How many in the U.S.A.?  How many in Cuba?  I don't know, never been to Cuba.  How many in Brazil?

How many people listened to the Beach Boys in Madrid today?  Are their any Moscow girls who like the Beach Boys?

We can't even begin to comprehend a question like that... so yes, I would assume (but not know) that every Beach Boys song is played at least once a day. 

I have my doubts that Mt Vernon and Fairway gets played every day somewhere.

I don't play a Beach Boys song every day, much less a whole album. Relative to the population of Planet Earth, almost no one has, say, SIP or the 4th of July album, or the Up The Creek soundtrack, or the Hallmark album. Given those numbers, rough as they are,, I'd say it's unlikely in the utmost extreme that every single day the entire legal catalog is played in full at least once. Even factoring Spotify into the equation.

You don't have to play one every day, as long as one of your neighbors does. 
and with Mike and Jackie keeping SIP on permanent replay as background music at home, that covers  a lot of sound

Fair enough about the Hallmark album + Up the Creek soundtrack. But if we are just talking released studio albums, I wonder how that changes the numbers. For SIP there were only ever low 5 figures CDs that were ever actually manufactured, right? Excluding burned copies and downloaded mp3s of course.

If one takes out SIP and Still Crusin (the only out-of-print studio albums), and excludes box sets, I have a hunch that maybe every song from every in-print BB studio album, '62-'85 is played once per day every day. That hunch is based on pure guessing of course. 

Maybe you just listen to a snippet of each song, every day, and that will suffice?

Let's not forget that between spotify and Youtube, nearly every Beach Boys song can be played practically instantly.

Mostly by bots.

I for one seriously doubt that the likes of "Chasin' The Sky", "Luau", "Lady Liberty" or the Spanish version of "Kokomo" are all played at least once a day somewhere in the world. It's the ol' monkeys with typewriters scenario.

I'm pretty sure Luau gets played every day somewhere, along with all of those early recordings.

As for the later stuff...All it takes is one fan, adding The Golden Collection to their playlist on their computer and leaving it on there for years and playing it as background noise.

The Hallmark album is recent enough to be played somewhere every day.

The one release i have my doubts about is the Sunkist album.

I have my doubts about the 1993 and 2013 box sets, Endless Harmony, Hawthorne, CA, Rarities, the latest download only releases... we're talking 400 odd tracks here, each one being played at least once every single day of the year. Even if just one is missed out, the answer is "no", and that's my answer.

The odds would be astronomical.

I'm with AGD (figuratively). A lot of rare tracks are stuff you play once and never go back to. Also these days people rarely play full albums. You can play Today 100 times and always skip "Bull Session with Big Daddy". The last 100 times I've played Revolver I think I've skipped Yellow Submarine on 99 of them. Who listens to Smiley Smile all the way through, or Stars N Fucking Stripes, regularly?

You know what, I don't  play released BB's stuff that often (other than POB & Love You at least twice a week) as it's so familiar to me - Naughty me loves playing BB's Boots (unreleased and live stuff) and gets a kick from finding/hearing a live show (don't care if its a C- quality audience tape) that (I think) I haven't heard before.

It has been that way for me for around 20 years, is anyone else in the same boat ?

Thinking further on this, I take it back.  I think that there are probably tracks off of Sunkist or Hawthorne CA or other comps that don't get played every day.  But I still think that they get played at least half the days of the year SOMEWHERE.

As for the 29 official studio albums, I'd say that each one gets played in full somewhere MULTIPLE times daily.  In this day and age where you can create playlists on your computer that are 1000s of tracks long, there has to be someone out there who has Peggy Sue or Surf Jam or Slow Summer Dancin on their playlist.  I'd also say the same for both boxed sets.  These are comprehensive boxed sets spanning their career, and there are plenty of new fans that are exploring this music on a daily basis, as well as long-time fans who love playing these sets. 

It's a nice thought that somewhere in this world right now someone may be listening to Mike's "Rockin' the Man in the Boat" or Al's "California Energy Blues", or whatever that one was called. :-D

Somewhere...some fan is playing a 45, a 12 inch vinyl lp, a cassette, an 8 track, a reel to reel, a cd, a download, an oldies station with something recorded by the Beach Boys.  Chances are that every offically released song gets played by somebody somewhere almost every day.

It's easy to suggest.  My favourite albums aren't yours.  My top 20 all time Beach Boys classics don't jive with yours.  The lps I most WANT to hear don't mesh with yours.  Same with the ones I don't want to hear.

And as we self-congratulating 'experts' on ALL things Beach Boys can't agree on diddly squat...how could we ever expect those other peons to do so?  Somebody out there acrually likes "Elmer Fudd's Greatest Hits".  Some fool out there actually prefers Smiley Smile to SMiLE.  [They're under arrest. :police:]

It likely doesn't happen 365 days a year...but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens more than 1/2 of the time.

[except for the LONG version of Here Comes the Night. ;)]

don't be dissing that!

Sorry :-[

with new promotion, REAL promotion, maybe that could be a million and two seller.

WOW! just realized I'm at 6161; next goal is only 505 away

In a variation of my original question, I ponder the thought... is there BB music being played literally at all moments in time since the mid 1960s, somewhere on Earth?

Obscure songs aside, I'd tend to think the answer is yes, that every moment in time since the group became gigantically famous and sold millions of records, that there has not been an elapsed moment where somewhere there is not somebody playing a BB song. And that's quite a feat (if true, which I suspect it is).

Lessee... allowing an average length of, say 2.45 for the hits most likely to be played the most... that's tad over 523 plays per day every single day.

Hm.

Hmmmm.

In the heyday of 1963-66, possibly. In, say, 1972... I'm thinking not.