The Smiley Smile Message Board

Bit of a weird one for a topic but bear with me:

I haven't been listening to the BBs much at all over the last few years. I felt I had burned out on them to an extent having listened (like many here) to the catalogue excessively for decades.

The other day I was away on a guys weekend away. We rent a caravan every year and do a bit of body boarding. My friend has a cheap portable turntable and we all take some records. He knows I'm a BB nut and he bought the following along which he'd found in a charity store:

(https://images.eil.com/large_image/BEACH%5FBOYS_THE%2BBEACH%2BBOYS-555607.jpg)

His sound system is terrible and the speakers were doing really odd phasey things. I had no idea what compilation he'd put on and when Don't Talk came on I just could not place it AT ALL, other than knowing it was one of my favourite BB songs. Removed from its weighty 'Pet Sounds' context it became this shimmering, spacey, mind-blowingly beautiful piece of music. It was the only thing that actually sounded good on his sh*tty system. This moment probably only lasted 10 seconds but it was like hearing it afresh all over again and I got that amazing buzz of musical epiphany that I'm sure is familiar to many fans here. That 'holy moly!' jolt when The Beach Boys first hook you in. It's just so hard accessing that fresh 'Wow' moment when you listen to the band day in day out, getting mired in band politics, the board punch-ups etc.

But I'm here to confirm that it's still possible, jaded Smiley Smilers!!

Needless to say I'm digging out all my Beach Boys LPs again. There's a lot to be said for some of these crazy budget complications that throw all eras of the band together in one head-spinning hotch-potch. I'm tempted to buy a copy of Sunshine Dream - that one looks mental!

Same thing happened to me a couple years ago!

I played endless summer during a beach trip and went right back into the catalog.

That is one bizarre track listing.
https://www.discogs.com/The-Beach-Boys-The-Beach-Boys/release/726715

That's been the fun of listening to the Sirius station for me. Some of the songs sound so different without their context. Some fun surprises.

Yeah no kidding! It was perfect for a bbq though. There’s something refreshing about the complete disregard for historical context that these cash-grab compilations have.

I do find it frustrating that there is no really good BBs deep cuts compilation available. I wish they’d accompanied Made In California with a vinyl release.

Please excuse the self-quote. Having trawled Discogs I was frustrated that I couldn’t find a good BB deep cuts compilation on vinyl. But after posting I thought i’d Have one more try and I found exactly what I was looking for - The Beach Boys Capitol Years looks like it has some brilliantly sequenced LPs - especially the disc dedicated to the Friends / 20/20 era. As I understand it the SQ is not ideal but looks like a great set.

We were talking about this on Discord earlier and it's amazing how many BB compilation releases there are. The overseas ones tend to have more interesting (read: more random) track listings. But they generally mix the great hits in with weird cuts, or ones that did well locally (South Africans enjoyed Cherry Cherry Coupe for some reason.) Then there are various compilations with tracks labeled by the Beach Boys that were never recorded by them at all.

Could it be the phasiness of the sound was the result of fake stereo?