The Smiley Smile Message Board

A Beach Boys article in The Independent today. Please feel free to sign up and leave your thoughts.

https://tinyurl.com/y8z8jkjj

Thought it was a fresh take, worthy of being pursued further (re: "Brian's Song" and the state of longing for either the past and the present as the romantic condition; the beach as an eroding border between being "here today" and the "lonely sea", etc.

Brian invented mope rock.  It surely hurt the bands overall popularity in the long run....

 ??? ??? Just think how popular they would have been without Brian. Right. I'd be more than happy to tell you who was the most significant member to surely hurt the band's overall popularity in the long run though.

Didn't Mike invent "Transcendental  Rogaine rock for swingers"?

You should change your name to Septic Tank, as most of your posts are full of sh*t.

 :woot :woot :woot :woot :woot :woot

Septictanksthegreatest. >:D

Hey, I think your post here is a little unreasonable.

I also disagree with his view, and I can see why you wanted to tell him such a thing, but there's no use making fun of him with words that imply himself or his point of view is like excrement.

Please don't insult anyone, or in other words, treat anyone poorly with what they have said. If you think he's getting out of line, you have rights to warn or ban on him, since you're a mod. Otherwise, you should reply and show your disagreement in politer way.

You truly are a fan worthy of Mike Love!

Sometimes it's actually better and more functional for a message board (and Billy would know this as a long-time mod) to just tell someone their post is full of s**t and then move on rather than actually immediately *escalating* the situation to an "official" warning or ban.

This bit seems quite puzzling:

I learned only on the death last week of Glen Campbell that he had played guitar on Pet Sounds and gone on tour with the band. And his brand of wistful, melancholic yearning is integral to the Beach Boys mentality. Think of “Peggy Sue”, for example: “how my heart yearns for you.” Presumably unrequited.

Was this added to simply be part of keyword searches for Glen Campbell?

How his Campbell's post-Beach Boys material "integral to the Beach Boys mentality?"

And what does the *Buddy Holly* song "Peggy Sue" have to do with any of this already-tenuous comparison?

I doubt that humanity's love affair with the beach will ever come to an end.  People continue to flock to the beaches around the world to find a bit of serenity, even if just for a brief period.  Songwriters still write songs about going to the beach, seems like country music has taken the torch). 

Exactly. Watamushi, Billy has seen some fairly horrible crap go on during his (long) time of moderation in this forum. Mike’sTheGreatest post history is chock full of borderline trolling, I think most of us are fairly sick of it.

Okay, got it. It's alright if it would work well in the end.

If I was a moderator there wouldn't be any of these problems.

I'd ban the lot of you.

The mods aren't the problem.  It's those darn rockers!! 

I've had this conversation elsewhere but I don't think the article works for quite a few reasons. Trying to cite the Beach Boys' music as symbolic of a love affair with the beach, or with hedonism or existentialism is silly when some of the songs referenced,  eg Sloop John B, weren't even originally Beach Boys' songs. I Get Around and Wouldn't It Be Nice have two different lyricists who had a completely different mindset. Brian may have been a Beach Boy but he wasn't really a beach boy - he was and is a musician. His sometimes melancholy songs had more to do with his upbringing and his own nature than with disillusionment with the beach or with hedonism. Til I Die is often taken to be existentialist but the words could equally relate to a sense of powerlessness as to the brevity of human existence.

I had to write so many "HomeTown Buffet" style papers in college where you have to pick the "angle" of criticism you have to write from from Column A, and then pick the "Topic" from Column B, and then have to bulls**t you way through making the two things reconcile.

"Feminist Criticism as Explored in "Karn Evil 9"

"Derrida, Deconstruction, and Steve Urkel."

The fact that so many of these thinkpieces that use the BBs or Brian Wilson as their underpinning seem to be utter bulls**t makes me wonder how many other essays I read about things I had little foreknowledge of were also total bulls**t.

This particular article seems extra vague in its assertions, and seems like it probably could have been clearer and more interesting *without* dragging the Beach Boys' music into it. That only seems to muddy the points, especially when the writer draws in tracks that, as Ang pointed out, were not even written by anyone in the band or were songs written by difference lyricists or in different eras (the author cites "Beaches in Mind" without noting *when* it was written, which I think could have brought in a much more interesting angle on the idealization of beach imagery and all of that sort of stuff).

Theories drawn re: Brian and the Boys based on lyrics provided by good ol' Tony seems rather a weak point in terms of this yawn inspiring article.  To be so out of touch with the actual and true historical core of the apple bitten into here suggests that not much thought was given to Glen's involvement let alone the subject at hand.

Guess he's dumb.

Summer at the Beach began to subside when skin cancer began to knock us back into the shade.  Sharks didn't help much either.  And me in a speedo?


R   U   N   !!!!!!!