The Smiley Smile Message Board

Seems like things have gotten very slow on the board…looks like about two or three posts on average the last week. Is it because people are on vacation or just not much new to discuss till the next archival release drops? Just curious.  I admit that I don’t post much myself lately but when I do post often seems like there are few replies for days at a time

I still check in every day. There is simply no news

I think there are three active boards these days.
Smiley Smile
Endless Harmony
The Beach Boys Today

I think the main posters from the three boards all used to post here. Now things are splintered.

I preferred it when everyone was all in one place as I like the diverse opinions of people that are active on all three boards. Sadly though inevitably not everybody can get along.

Yeah I get it…the summer is when I have a lot of time to read all the posts and maybe I just notice it more then. As you can see from my book and website, I am more interested in the history…so I tend to respond more to those topics than others

I see what you mean but SmileySmile really is the best community.   ;)

I'm still here, just not moved to comment in recent threads. I check this board at least twice a day.

I am still here

More like: "The bored", perhaps?....

Its only August .... things will start to pick up soon as we start fantasising about this years copyright extension release ... and then start complaining ...  :hat

One of the best Norm Macdonald moments (https://youtu.be/bKmadR4Ye54?t=322) :lol

As for the activity on the forum, I think there's not much going on in The Beach Boys world so things are slow here. A forum is as strong as it's community - I think there are a lot of passionate fans here, but sometimes we don't get caught up in the minutia of Beach Boys fandom (which I do miss from some of the posters who have left here). I see good dialogue on other forums, but it's usually just the same ol' "favorite album" "what hour of the day was the saxophone played on Shut Down", etc etc. Nothing wrong with that stuff, as I love talking about favorite albums and love reading about Beach Boys trivia. But I think this forum really buzzes when there are new sets/albums/books being released...and sadly there's not much of that going on right now.

Legendary!
The guy had a great taste in music as well (imo). He was even friends with Billy Joe Shaver, I believe.

I have, for the most part, been away from the board for most of the last two years. The constant fighting simply got to be too much for me. Today is the first time I've logged in in I don't know how long. I'm hoping things have become a little more civil. If so, I'll start coming around more.

Like everyone else here, I love the Beach Boys. I suppose I'll continue to lament the loss of my hero, Carl Wilson, until I meet him in the hereafter.

Having followed this board over the last 12 years or so, things have noticeably slowed down. Of course back then there were several releases, notably MiC, Smile Sessions, the group reunion and album, + Brian was still putting out albums, so overall things were more fresh and discussion was good.

But I also noticed many obscure topics being discussed by people who clearly knew a lot about the group or had direct connections with people who knew the group and this gave some very interesting reading. I feel this part has disappeared from the board, especially over the last 2-3 years. Even when Sail On Sailor box dropped, there wasn't much discussion here. The beach boys subreddit however continues to be quite active.

Yeah, after 15 or 16 years it sometimes seems like there is nothing left to say but then someone posts something that makes me want to respond…..so I still enjoy it

Anybody pre-order the coloring book yet? Whoever orders the book can download and print one of the pages. Woo-hoo!

That’s the best I can do for now    ;D

I regularly check and contribute to the EH board that remains pretty active.  A lot of former posters that either left this board or were kicked out have made their home over there.  So even if there are not a lot of new Beach Boys-related topics to currently engage in, there is still healthy discussion to be had. 

This board has had little if any constant fighting or interpersonal squabble types of issues at all for the last 5 years. The members who post here are civil and respect the rules of the forum, again in the past 5 years there have been essentially no reasons to ban anyone except spammers. This is a good group of people.

If you have any examples to suggest otherwise please show them. All that constant fighting and bullying stuff you mentioned is gone and has been gone.

So I did an experiment. Most boards log visitors and member log-ins on a 24 hour time scale, and the stats on the visits and views are tallied from a 24 hour time frame. This board's range is always set to 60 minutes. 24 hours ago, I set the time frame to 24 hours, or 1440 minutes instead of the usual 60. And the board tally right now for guest visits is around 5,300. So whatever those people are doing, there have been 5,300 guest visits in the past 24 hours along with the member log ins. You can see it on the bottom of the main home page.

This board is set to 60 minutes because the stats widen the screen and people in the past complained about having to scroll sideways, so the 60 range is more manageable.

But I just wanted to show that to suggest people are visiting and reading, and perhaps not always logging in and posting.

And I agree with those above who said it may be because nothing is happening, and talking about which matrix numbers are etched into the runoff grooves on a 45rpm of Ten Little Indians may not be the most interesting or pressing thing to discuss. The posts generally pick up when something happens, and there just isn't much happening. And for some longer term fans, some of it becomes rehashing discussions that were in Yahoo Groups or the old Smile Shop 20+ years ago. It is what it is.

This is a great community and a great group of people. Without having to moderate bullies or blowhards multiple times each day as was sadly the case until 5 years ago or so, the board is everyone's canvas to discuss whatever they want, or to sit things out until some news or new discoveries actually happen, but it has been generally problem-free and that's a testament to the members here. Cheers!

Nice turnout today with 60 members online!

Not meaning to be a wet blanket here, but I wonder how many of those guests were bots. It would be great if all the visitors here are human.

Haha, who knows! I'll take the bots any day over some of the human nonsense we used to have to deal with on a daily basis here, all the bots want to do is sell real estate and cheap airfares to Kuala Lumpur. 

I’m back after 6 months without internet access… will be here more often now.

Welcome back!

Great….clearly there are a lot of people who look at this board….but actual posting has declined…sometimes days go by with maybe one or two posts

Billy! It’s great to see you back here. Missed you!

I check in every couple of days, because scanning through Recent Posts here is still the most efficient way of seeing if any real consequence has happened recently in BBs-world, which these days means deaths and news of archival releases.

Glad to see you back, Billy!

There's nothing wrong with a relatively quiet board--it's clear that when topics that push past the well-traveled topics pop up, we have the same level of engagement as was more commonly the case in past years. As GF noted, fewer clashes and less focus on agendas involving revisionist history might mean fewer overall posts, but the peace of mind that has ensued is a welcome tradeoff.

We've been blessed with a tremendous amount of unreleased material in the past 5-6 years that has given us a much better sense of what was happening with the band in what is arguably its most interesting period: 1967-73. That in itself has resulted in a reduction of speculative posts/discussions that probably accounted for 20-30% of the overall traffic.

We are really in legacy mode at this point, with hopes that some kind of grand synthesis might occur from those who have more active control over things. We can hopefully look forward to a big project from Ed Roach, which will give us new access to "in the moment" events and a set of untold stories that can give us more context into the band's complicated dynamics. We'll see just how useful the latest "official" biography will be when it's widely available, and we can hope that some final kernels of creative fire are still at work with Brian as he retires for the second time from the road.

So it's all OK...and, as Mike sings in the last verse of that song: let's enjoy while it lasts.

So happy! Realized that you hadn’t been online for a number of months and I was getting worried.

Thank you!

Appreciate it… I’ve had some personal struggles this year and was without internet access for the past six months