The Smiley Smile Message Board

j

in a word...yes

try being a fan back in 68-70. one had to have a spine of steel to ignore the comments from people around you back then.

I don't find as many "haters" today compared to the 80's and 90's. Maybe some of the repackages actually worked. And, of course, Pet Sounds has only recently (the last ten years?) gotten the respect it deserves.

Another minor thing I have noticed is that some of the younger music fans (ages 18-28) are a little more sophisticated, and many of them are familiar with the name Brian Wilson, although not always in flattering terms...

This is definitely true--over the past decade, most indie fans have "discovered" Brian Wilson/Beach Boys while in college, or thereabouts. I think quite naturally most are drawn to the sentiments of Pet Sounds, which their modern musical favorites tend to gush about, as do most indie sites (pitchfork, etc.). It then naturally leads to the stories about Brian and Smile, both of which are also great stories, even aside from all the music. 

Well I just wanted to add my two cents. I am from Newfoundland Canada.  I know NO ONE who seriously  likes the Beach Boys. I think I am the only one who appreciates the music. We have a pretty vibrant music scene here. Just zipping around all of the local musicians/bands MySpace pages (and talking to some of them after their shows), NEVER are the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson listed as influences. And some of their lists of influences are as long as my sleeve, yet no Brian/Beach Boys. It is incredible. I am a musician myself and I cannot understand how one can skip over such a magnificent body of work.

I have many theories. First, if you are a lover of music and a musician, you will always seek good music out. It is like you are attracted to it. So, if you are fourteen and get your first guitar and you love music, you WILL find yourself towards the Led Zeppelin 4 album, for instance. And then you seek out more Zeppelin. Then you may read reviews or interviews from famous musicians. Someone may mention the Zombies. You HEAR about how great they are, you seek it out.  Good music finds it way to you. That is not what is playing on the radio, but you get it. The REALLY good stuff.

With the Beach Boys, when you mention them, it is almost a knee jerk reaction: the same way when someone says "elvis." Jokes and negative imagery is conjured up. Sad to say, but to the common passive listener, "Elvis" conjures up images of impersonators, merchandise, Vegas etc....But the fans know about the power of his voice, the legendary Sun sessions etc...Sad to say, when I say "Beach Boys", a joke image is conjured up. That has to do with Barbara Ann and Fun Fun Fun, Full House etc...Sorry, but it does. Just last night, I told a co worker I loved the Beach Boys, and she laughed and called me a "loser." Seriously. But I knew she was not in no way a serious music fan. She had no knowledge of anything really. So that does not bother me. But even serious music fans are not aware of the Beach Boys.  I really do get the feeling they are dismissed. Part of the reason is that subconcious "you are joking right?" reaction. How that came to be? hmmm...maybe the 80's and 90's did more damage than we care to admit? I am not to sure. Maybe.

I do think there has been a MAJOR shift in the past 10 years or so. It IS HIP even underground to really really dig the Beach Boys. It is like "yeah, f*** you, I LOVE the Beach Boys....you know what you are missing out on?"  When I first got into them, I READ about how great this album Pet Sounds was. I had devoured every Beatles musical note that ever existed. Then I read/heard about how Brian Wilson gave them a run for their money in the 60's. My musical soul sought out the good music.  But it is a miracle that I did, because no one turned me on to them. 12 years later, I still have no contact with anyone here who loves the Beach Boys as much as I do. So, in my own quiet way, I try to say to whoever listens, "hey forget Kokomo, listen to THIS..."

Finally, when I first got into them, I swear, I could have been listening to the most underground/hard to find/indie stuff on the planet. No albums in the stores except greatest hits. Plus, I never ever ever ever hear the Beach Boys on the radio. Not on the classic rock stations. Not on the classic rock lunch hour. Not on a station here that plays just about EVERYTHING. I can remember two times I heard the Beach Boys on the radio. I heard California Girls. ONCE. And when Carl died, they announced it on my way to class and they played Good Vibrations. In 12 years, that is all the times I have heard the Beach Boys. Now isn't that damn amazing when you really contemplate it. Yet, somehow, people know FUn Fun Fun or Surfin USA...it is somehow mysteriously in our brains. And that is all anybody really knows. I have to add on a sidenote that I am not dismissing Brian's early work. I love it all folks.   So maybe the lack of radio play has influenced people's reaction.  I am sure if they played God only knows on the classic lunch hour as much as they play Revolution or Hotel California, some people may perk up. but they never.  That is the biggest mystery to me as a fan: the lack of airplay.

Anyways, I ramble. Just my two cents.

My mom didn't like them until she really heard them through me, most people I know did them though on one level. The Full House era was a lot more embarresing but since Pet Sounds and Smile gained more fame, they are considered pretty hip. It's funny but the period where they were considered really uncool here (67-70) was their coolest.

Ive shown my friends songs like Surf's Up, Til I Die etc.. and they say "I dont like it" but I can sense from the look on their faces they are thinking "what the heck, this is magnificent" atleast thats the impression that I get anyway.

One thing I really hate when I meet someone and tell them "Im a fan of The Beach Boys" is the way they sometimes really sarcastically sing one of the bands songs. Some people have even sung God Only Knows to me really sarcasticly to me as if to say "what a crappy song and band". But of course it sounds crappy when THEY sing it like that. Any song can sound crap if you have a negative attitude towards it and just sing it to yourself as if though its a real crap song. Can anyone relate to what Im saying?

PEOPLE IVE MET WHO DONT LIKE THE BEACH BOYS LIKE THE BEATLES...

:lol WHAT THE HELL DO THEY KNOW?

You know, one thing to keep in mind is: why wouldn't people who say they don't like it (when given a chance to hear it) not really like it.? What if everytime you said you disliked something that I like, I would respond with, "Oh, but does s/he REALLY not like it? I mean, it's [whoever]!!" Sometimes maybe we all ought to back off a little and accept that us liking something really means nothing in the bigger picture. Of course it is good quality. But not everyone likes everything of high quality. There are plenty of VERY talented bands that I dislike. So, should their fans question whether I'm putting on some kind of act of disliking them? Of course not--it's a matter of taste sometimes.

Just a late-night thought. And now, off to bed.

I see your point. And I do agree. But I just think that sometimes people say "I dont like The Beach Boys" only because its not cool to like them. I know for people my age in Australia it isnt "cool" to like The Beach Boys so I just think people might be a bit hesitant to admit it. I mean when I tell people I like The Beach Boys people just laugh at me or say "THAT crap band". So I think a lot of people at the risk of being "un-cool" say they dont like them. Of course Im not saying everyone who doesnt like them 'really' likes them Im just saying its very possible that SOME people just say "I dont like them" so that they can be safe and not be "uncool". I mean a lot of people my age just like whatevers cool anyway so therefore they wouldnt want to like something thats uncool.

To be honest, I've got a fairly strong personality, and when people say something negative about the band, I point specifically to their greatest EARLY songs and eventually people usually admit that they're one of the greatest bands of all time. 

Me: Oh, man, I LOVE the beach boys.  I'll drive around all day listening to them.

Friend: The beach boys?  Are you kidding me?

Me: What?  You mean to tell me, you don't like "I Get Around" or Surfin' U.S.A.?

Friend: Well, they're just so ol...

Me: Good music is good music.  "California Girls" is one of the greatest songs ever recorded! I love it!

eventually they see that much like the Beatles, and a tonnnnn of 60's music, there was a spark of magic in the earliest of Beach Boys songs and almost everybody I know respect the Beach Boys, even if they're not going to listen to their music all day. 

My theory is bands *THAT* good are generally inspired and maybe even tools of god, you can hear a little bit of everything great Brian Wilson was going to become and do in his voice when he yelps "Evvvvry bawdys gonnnn surrrrrfin!"... it's kinda like how the Beatles went "YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAHHHHH" while shaking their heads on stage doing She Loves You... the band never really got better than that.  The music became more sophisticated and eventually even moved away from the mainstream, but when they were shaking their heads and screaming at the top of their lungs into the microphones, in the beginning, they were just as good.  (In my opinion). 
If you can get a music lover (i.e., a human being, everybody loves music) to see that even the earliest of the BB's or Beatles music was great, eventually it will follow that their later music was nothing short of masterful.  Play somebody "Good to my Baby" or "Do you want to know a Secret?" and tell me they don't fall in love with it. 

I have tried time and time again to get my friends into the BBs. The reaction I get is an unenthusiastic, "Yeah, it's good" (clearly humoring me) or "It's good, but it's not my thing." Then when I try to get them to go to a BW concert with me, they don't want to. Even my friends who DID go weren't swept away by it.

I have come to a few conclusions:
1. Even if a band is great, it really has to hit a person on an emotional, personal level for that person to fall in love with it. It's like any art. It's like when a group of people goes to a museum and look at a painting, and one person lingers in front of it for a little bit longer. It's a great painting, a masterpiece, but it meant more to that one person.

2. For some people, some elements of the BBs are hard to take. One of my friends can't stand Brian's falsetto. Well, that's a pretty major part of BBs music, for the 60s, anyway. If you can't get past one element of a band or artist, like Dylan's voice or Brian May's guitar solos, then it's going to be hard for you to listen to the other parts.

3. BBs music is so accessible and so ingrained in our culture that it's hard for some people (even radio programmers, apparently) to see it as great art. Granted, the Beatles music has the same qualities, but the general consensus is that Beatles = Greatness-- moptops to psychedelic to acoustic to everything else. Brian's musical development isn't as well known. Therefore, Beach Boys =nerdy surf music that I heard on the oldies station last week or that song that played on the commercial for 409 all-purpose cleaner.

By the way, very few people know about Dennis's songs, apart from "Forever." When I ask people to listen to those, they _love_ them and have no idea that it's the Beach Boys or anything related. 

Thats interesting. I too showed some friends Dennis's stuff and they loved it. But they couldnt get into The Beach Boys. I think your points were spot on, I agree with all of them.

I played "Surf's Up", the demo version, for this kid, and he was amazed....he couldn't believe it was the Beach Boys. Still, he went on about how crappy they were.   "I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord, but you don't really care for music, do you?..." John Cale, Hallelujah

To play something a Beach Boys non-fan has never heard or heard of and have him or her like it doesn't mean that person ought to become some kind of Beach Boys disciple. I, myself, still dislike quite a bit of their stuff--especially among the earliest albums and pretty close to everything from LA on. So am I a fan or a nonfan?  And even on their better albums, I would think most people who maintain a certain distance from the material can admit their stuff is up-and-down. (I'd say Pet Sounds is the only close-to-perfect album. My next favorites are Today!, Friends, Holland, Love You, Surf's Up...and there are parts of each I don't really like. I know others will disagree with that, which is fine.)

My question is, why do we need the validation of other people for our tastes? What makes it so important for someone else to like what we like? Believe me, ALL of my friends have been exposed to more Beach Boys through me than they'd ever want to be. Most have taken parts of the output into their regular rotations, but only a bit here and there. One likes Friends, most like Pet Sounds and Smile, and a couple like Brian's more eccentric moments, like the Adult Child and Love You stuff.

As for worrying about real conversions, though, or wondering whether peer pressure has something to do with disliking it, I'm just glad they don't force their Pixies and XTC and whatever else on me. Because I think it's sh*t. And I wonder whether people on their boards are typing these exact same sentiments in reverse..."People would love [band] if they'd just listen the way we do and not worry about [whatever]."

I don't think its about the music being accepted by others as much as trying to find someone that can like it just as much as you do. If that happens, imagine the possibilities of hanging out, listening to albums, talking about the music. If you're musicians you can collaborate and cover songs or even write stuff influenced from the group. I always make mix cds of Beach Boys stuff for people hoping to find one person that will like them as much as I do, just so that we can have something to talk about that I hold very dear.

IMO the BB's best stuuf is way better than the Beatles' best stuff....but the BB's worst stuff is much worse than the Beatles' worse stuff...


the BB's are not Hip, and never will be....if they were considered to be Hip, whatever that means, then boatloads more of people would've jumped on the bandwagon....

I see your point, and as I said, I have often and (with other people--I'm not going to keep beating the same people over the head) will continue to share my preferences with people. But I also really enjoy other people disagreeing and challenging me on my taste, as I do with theirs. To me, that is as rewarding--or more--than agreeing.

Among the people who are into music fads and who think themselves hip but actually have no musical taste of their own but follow the "indie" crowd or whatever the fashion is of the moment, they of course despise or denigrate anyone who likes something as nonhip as the Beach Boys.  But those who have musical taste and explore good music on their own without regard for what their friends are listening to, always discover the Beach Boys music, whether through Sgt. Pepper or John Cale or Roy Wood or XTC or whomever.  Some of the  Beach Boys music I've found is just not to some listeners' taste, even though they will admit it's good music.  That's cool, everyone has their own aesthetic as to what they enjoy listening to.  The other group that usually gets into the Beach Boys music is fellow musicians, who can appreciate what Brian is doing better than the average listener, but even there not everyone likes it.  The band Continental Drifters had a couple of Beach Boys fans (they'd do Farmer's Daughter in concert) but the rest of the band didn't like them.

Please don't take this as a personal insult--I absolutely don't mean it as one--but I think that is a simplified version of reality.

I think all of us are influenced more than we want to admit by outside pressures. There have been studies done about people's views of how advertising affects them, for example. Almost everyone says advertising has a significant effect on other people, but little-to-no effect on themselves. In other words, everyone thinks him- or herself above that kind of outside pressure, even while admitting that almost everyone is indeed affected by it. And conversely, even people who do to a large extent discover music through outside pressures and are concerned with their images certainly have some kind of taste. Perhaps that person just isn't interested in music in any technical depth, and thus the complex harmony in this song or that, or VDP's reference-laden lyric in this or that song, just isn't as important as a good melody and a beat you can dance to. That person has musical taste: it's just different than many of our tastes. Their tastes lead them to different music, which is fine.

Lastly, I think it's pretty safe to say the Beach Boys actually HAVE been hip among indie hipsters for better than a decade. Don't mistake their late 60s, or late 70s-early 90s, lack of commercial success and "hipster cred" for a current one. Nearly every good indie band--and many, many indie fans--will readily cite the Beach Boys as major influences.

In my experience, most of the people I know that hate the Beach Boys will think they like the Beach Boys until they hear things like Smile(y Smile), Friends, Sunflower, et cetera. Many times in the car with my mom I've been listening to the Beach Boys and she's said something like, "THIS IS CRAP! Can't you put on Help Me Rhonda or something?" The worst was my self-made Still Cruisin'/Summer in Paradise twofer with the three 60s songs at the end of Still Cruisin'. Hot Fun in the Summertime can never sound good to a sane person coming immediately after California Girls.

I think it is true to say that there is a good deal of underground BB cult admiration now and that it is considered quite cool among certain genres of the music biz to cite a BB or Brian reference.  It's a back-handed way of adding kudos to your own eclectic musical integrity.  It annoys me that media airplay is restricted to (mostly) Good Vibrations and occasionally one or two other Greatest Hits and never anything from the rest of the back catalogue.  That may have a lot to do with the touring playlists which, for a substantial number of years, kept to the more well-known tracks (rightly?, in order to please a paying audience).  The BB were cultivating their own un-hipness, knowingly or otherwise.

As for the Beatles comparison; the Beatles were considered to be, generally speaking, better looking, wittier, more articulate about their own music and influences and, of course, English which can be an asset in the American market (I'm not subscribing to this, by the way).  I've recently listened to some Beatles demos and studio work and marvelled at some of the lyrical intelligence and melodic content.  But they were not more progressive than Brian Wilson, IMO I think that their melodies were more accessible to a wider audience than Brian's, in his more off-beat moments.  Accessible, not better or cooler.

England has also been seen as somewhere more sensitive to musical progression and has a history of supporting the underdog, hence some BB support at a time when the American market all but threw them out of the water.  But even here there is a lot of ignorance of the back catalogue.  I wouldn't describe the feeling quite so much as hate, more like trying to offer coal miner a milk shake when he ordered a pint of ale.
 

People in my school love the beach boys, I very rarely meet a hater, maybe that's because pet sounds is on our course.

Sounds like a school I would wanna attend. 

A couple of my friends got kind of into the Beach Boys after I exposed them to the stuff they weren't used to and the rest of my friends just respect my obsession but still aren't into it.  One of my friends and a co-worker both described the Beach Boys as "the Backstreet Boys/N'Sync of the '60s," however.   :angry

Hm, I played some Beach Boys music at my best friends' room and he dig some songs like "Hold Me", "Do It Again", "Sail On Sailor" and "He Come Down". He is a drummer and we will build a band (with my brother) and play some Beach Boys songs. Then I played "All Alone" and in that moment his cousins came in (they are just 13 I think) and asked me if I really like this music then they smiled and said:"Is this romanticism?" Anyway later they liked at least "Fun, Fun, Fun". Yesterday I was again there and his other cousin came in played some of his music and there were songs like "Surfin' USA" and "Good Vibrations", not bad for a 11 year old guy.

People don't accept Beach Boys and Beatles in my age because they are old, sure they like hits like "Barbara Ann" and "Yesterday" but they do more accept the Rolling Stones 'cause they are rocking. I think if you would show someone the Knebworth concert the person willl like it.

That has been my personal experience also. It's so damn hard just to get people to listen to the hits. But then I get greedy and move them on to SMiLE or Sunflower or Love You and I lose them. They just can't get past 1966. And some have been fairly sophisticated music fans. They hear what I'm trying to get them to hear, but they just don't appreciate it like I think they HAVE to. It's very frustrating.

I have had some other favorite groups/artists like The Doors, Bob Dylan, Sparks, Blue Oyster Cult, Willie Nelson, and Lou Reed - and I can understand why people might not appreciate them the way I do. But I STILL can't understand why everybody doesn't like The Beach Boys! Their music is like counter-Christmas music for the summer. You have to play and ENJOY The Beach Boys at a Memorial Day or Fourth Of July cookout. Or by the pool. Or in your car. Or in bed. Or... :police:

Really eveyone I playe the 66-73 stuff too loves it. Totally opposite reactions. I have gotten  people to like the hits because of the middle years.

As someone who HATES Christmas music, I can say that for me the Beach Boys are NOTHING like Christmas music!  :)

Nobody in 'real life' that I know likes them except for me. My father, while he doesn't HATE them, he doesn't really like them either...and he's heard the non-hits (things from Sunflower and Surf's Up, as well as most other albums). He is a general music fan, so I've played him lots of BB material in hopes that he would take a liking to them. However, the only thing he really digs is the SMiLE stuff. Everything else he gives the cold shoulder.

This whole thread brings up something I have been called over sensitive about by friends. If someone goes out of the way to put down what you like is it rude? I think so. I have friends who like electro and while I never try to convert them we are pretty polite to each others tastes. I seemed to get mad when especally when I was in grade school people made fun of these groups I like. 

I think the reason that we all go out of our way to get somebody to like the Beach Boys isn't because we want to feel validated, I think it's because anybody fanatical enough to post consistantly on a Beach Boys message board probably derives a lot of pleasure out of their music, it's very spiritual and joyful... and human beings are going to go out of their way, on a good day, to try and spread something they find truly joyful with the loved ones in their life.  I don't think I try to get others to enjoy it so it'll make me feel validated, I think I try to get others to enjoy it because I find it so enjoyable myself, I'd like to see others get the great feeling I get out of it. 

In all of my 16 years as a fan (wow...that's slightly more than half my life...I just realized that!), I have made one true fan.  It's cool to have a concert buddy that is willing to shell out the cash to go to concerts (although some that we go to we get to for free!)  He only owns a couple of CD's (that I gave him as a birthday present), and you'll never find him on any of the BB message boards, but he is a true fan in that he knows much of the story of the band, and he's met Mike, Bruce, and Al.  He is probably at least mildly familiar with half the catalog, and very familiar with about a quarter of it.  So yeah, I wouldn't call him a hard-core fan, but he's a fan nonetheless, and he wasn't one before.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I totally turned my entire immediate family off of the Beach Boys somewhere between 1991 (when I became a fan) and 1996 (when I moved out).  Years after I had moved out, they would still switch the station whenever a Beach Boys song came on the radio because they had heard enough to last them 10 years!  They don't quite have that reaction now, but I don't think they're going to run out and buy any CDs anytime soon.

The vast majority of my good friends, and even casual friends, that know about my fandom are kind of indifferent to the music.  They'll talk Beach Boys with me, and ask me questions, but that's as far as it goes.  But there are very few who dislike them.  Just about everyone I know doesn't mind hearing their music, but it just doesn't impact them the way it does me.

[

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I totally turned my entire immediate family off of the Beach Boys somewhere between 1991 (when I became a fan) and 1996 (when I moved out).  Years after I had moved out, they would still switch the station whenever a Beach Boys song came on the radio because they had heard enough to last them 10 years!  They don't quite have that reaction now, but I don't think they're going to run out and buy any CDs anytime soon.

Actually my family likes them a whole lot more now then before I liked them. I was born in 76 but my parents like most the music from their own era more through me really.
The vast majority of my good friends, and even casual friends, that know about my fandom are kind of indifferent to the music.  They'll talk Beach Boys with me, and ask me questions, but that's as far as it goes.  But there are very few who dislike them.  Just about everyone I know doesn't mind hearing their music, but it just doesn't impact them the way it does me.
[/quote]
Exactly my experience.

Hey everybody, I'm brand new to this forum and this is my first post. This topic  caught my eye right away. Seems like some things never change! I was defending the BBs  in the late 60s when it was really tough to be a BB fan. I've come to looking at it like this: If some one dosen't get the Beach Boys, it really is their loss . Those of us who are connected to this music,  imagine doing without the feeling that you get from it. Without being sarcastic, I feel for sorry for anybody that dosen't hear it in a positive way, and is missing out on it.

Hi and welcome, hope you enjoy posting here. :) I agree with you there, Im just glad that I found their music as it has given me so much happiness even in the short time Ive been a fan. I too feel sorry for people who are stuck listening to rap or whatever, but I suppose we probably shouldnt feel sorry for them because whatever music makes people happy is music that is doing its job.

I like plenty of rap. Every genre has its great, its good, its mediocre, its bad and its awful.

I dont disagree with you BUT generally I find most rap (esepcially mainstream) to be pretty unbearable (for me anyway). I like some rap too like Run DMC etc.. but artists like Eminem and 50 Cent etc.. they just dont do anything for me.

I was born in the same year...funny how our experiences with our family are so opposite...

I don't think my folks knew what to make of it. My father being anti hobbies in general I don't think got or understood it. He actually yelled at me one time to turn off the SMiLE dvd because "he couldn't stand it"  ::)

My mom has had to embrace it like it or not. I drag her to the shows and conventions and she has a much easier understanding. She'll always be a bigger Beatles fan then a Beach Boys fan but through me she dug Pet Sounds and digs stuff like Friends.

My sister just misses the point. It goes right over her head. I don't think it is too hip hop for her or not modern enough to her I guess.

I don't really talk it to my other friends as much. When I started I talked about them till the cows came home but I found they were annoyed. One of my friends even had the nerve to call them ugly  :angry I have given up on converting too because the only time I ever made one he just never played it. 

I don't find people that hate them. Those people usually have different tastes and what not. I do find people though who only know the really basic or just really
not educated enough  about them. I think liking the BB/BW has to be your own experience. I found my own way to like it. Once I did though, there  was nothing like it and hasn't been since in my life.

I've got to say, I find most mainstream ANYTHING pretty awful. I can't think of more than 15 or 20 major-label new releases I've bought since the late '90s, and I have probably bought well over 750 albums in that time.

Yeh I agree with you again. Though I like some mainstream stuff most of it is pretty poor. I just find that a lot of maintstream rap is always shoved in my face and I really have a strong dislike for it.

Yeah it is ironic. Taste is so subjective though it's hard to know what anyone won't or will like.

I suppose that I have a bit of a pet peeve. When somebody asks me who my favorite band is, I tell them the BBs, knowing what their response will be. "Oh yeah.  :old wish they all could be California Girls :serenade and we'll have fun, fun, fun til my daddy took the t-bird away  :banana every body's gone surfin, surfin USA."    :thud :wall :angryI always have to say, Yeah those are good songs, but that's not why I like them.

Just because it's not on a major label doesn't mean it's not mainstream. Of Montreal is pretty mainstream, if you ask me. They're on the same label as Puffy AmiYumi, who I would definitely consider mainstream.

I would say O.M. is quite mainstream as far as indies go, that's true. They're certainly enjoying great success (relatively speaking), and I'm glad of it. But there is a world of difference between an Of Montreal (or even the Shins, for that matter) and someone who gets real major-label backing. Justin Timberlake, Avril Lavigne, Nelly Furtado. It isn't even close.

And I can say I wish bands like Of Montreal WERE major label. I wish more majors did offer big deals to more good bands...but they don't, sadly.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA  :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

Very Creative...that is my vote for post of the year!!!! MTR Rules...but let me guess....I know FUN FUN FUN is not the reason they are your favorite band, but don't tell me it's L.A. Light Album or Student Demonstartion Time ....  just kidding....Great Post.

Or Pitter Patter  :lol :lol

It looks like raiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin.......

Are these smileys BB personalised or something?


 :thewilsons :brian :tm

It could be, but on my post, I meant for it to be the person that I tell I am a Beach Boy fan to. They always start singing one of the famous songs and say "they're pretty good". I just get a bit frustrated because the Beatles aren't thought of only as the guys that did Can't Buy Me Love, She Loves You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, etc...

I feel ya....  I get the same jive from people.... I get the look when I say I'm listening to the Beach Boys on my mp3. Sometimes I just want to say, "Here, listen.....this is called 'Sail On Sailor, or 'Surf's Up'...." I also feel glad, like it's my own personal listening experience that few of us hold dear....I suppose us Beach Boys fans are actually real cerebral types of people, in a sense....maybe I'm wrong.

The Beach Boys' curse is that they made it big on a fad, surf guitar, and would therefore always be associated with that fad no matter what creative turn they took. But the surfing image was also a blessing, because they were so famous in the early sixties that they had enough clout to survive lack of backing by their labels and take artistic chances and consistently surprise the most devoted fans at least until 1980. Jan and Dean couldn't shake off that clean-cut surfing image either, and their way out album "Carnival of Sound" was never released. Had the Beach Boys made straight-ahead pop like Tommy James and the Shondells and progressed from there they might have enjoyed more recognition today, but would they have lasted as long and would the labels have supported their every whim?

Okay, my post was a bit contradictory, I meant "lack of promotion", not "lack of backing". The labels backed their albums, but didn't always promote them properly.

I wonder how much differance it would've made if they were called the Pendletones. Even if they still did Surfin USA, Catch a Wave, California Girls, etc.

The Pendletones just sounds so 1950s-esque. They'd've been even worse off in my opinion.

This is an interesting thread.

I grew up in the 90's and I was totally into the Beatles and John Lennon. I had a friend who was always trying to get me to listen to the Beach Beach boys but I always snorted condescendingly at him. The extent of my knowledge of the Beach Boys at the time was 1) Barbara Ann, Surfin' USA, Help Me Rhonda 2) They (Mike Love) was on Full House at least once - a TV show I despise to this day and 3) Kokomo - a song a hated. Not to mention I hated living in Salt Lake City at the time and the fact that they recorded a song in homage was no help.

Then I was reading a book about Pink Floyd founder, Syd Barrett and how the author was making comparisons between him and Brian Wilson, which peaked me interested and about the same time I read the famous quote from Paul McCartney about God Only Knows being the greatest song ever written and these things piqued my interest. To cap it all of, one of my favorite groups, The Flaming Lips, listed the Beach Boys as one of their biggest influences and I realised that alot of the things I liked about them were things they'd taken from Pet Sounds. So I went out and bought Pet Sounds on CD. I thought it was great but I quickly forgot about it.

Then in 04 I heard an interview/review of BWPS on NPR and I loved what I heard, ran out and bought it. LOVED IT!!!! began collecting other CD's until now I have the complete (as far as I know) Beach Boys Catalogue and I have searched out for every fragment of the original SMiLE sessions and recreated it using the BWPS as a model.

Now my love for Brian Wilson's music absolutely eclipses any of my other musical tastes. If my 32 year old self now would have told my 16 year old self that the Beach Boys are my favorite band I think I would've jumped off a bridge.  :lol

One more thing of note, I now am also a huge Dennis Wilson fan. Funny thing is that there was this song used on the TV show Northern Exposure which I had been searching for 7 years to find. When I did I discovered it was called DW Suite, dedicated to Dennis Wilson. :D

When I was dating this one girl, whenever we would go anywhere in my car we would listen to the Beach Boys. She was none too pleased.

But then yesterday I saw on her last.fm page that her recently played tracks were I Know There's An Answer, God Only Knows, That's Not Me, et cetera. So I said to her, "Oh, so now you DO listen to the Beach Boys. I see how it is."

Her response? "ughghgh. GET OFF MY BACK! i like their popular songs, not ones about brian wilson's son on his knee."

The fact that she likes Pet Sounds but hates Friends is worse than if she were to just flat-out hate the Beach Boys.

Couldn't have hated them that much if she remembered a lyric from "When a Man needs a woman" which certainly is one of Brian's more obscure numbers. :lol

Well in her defense that is one of the lesser songs on Friends which as a whoile I think is terrific.

It's one of my 10 favorite Beach Boys songs. Love it.

Yeah, When A Man Needs a Woman is one of my favorite songs.

Sad thing is when a friend and I walked outside to go to class it was raining and I actually sang those words out loud and we both laughed  :-D

Aw, does everyone really hate Pitter Patter? I actually kind of like that one...

Personally, I think "Pitter Patter" is the best track on MIU; it reminds me of the Wilson/Jardine collaborations from 8-10 years earlier.

I just have a love/hate relationship with that song. Sometimes its funny and other times downright disturbing  ;D

I liken the Beach Boys music to Asian food, there's something for everyone
if you take the time to read the menu. You can't say that for many artists.

Well said

Unfortunately I have noticed there's not a lot of love for the Beach Boys.
Just the other day I was with a bunch of friends, wearing a Beach Boys T-Shirr, and they started going on about how the Beach Boys sucks (FYI one's a Kiss and Queen fan, the other is obsessed with Eminem). I tried showing them WIBNTLA, All I Want To Do (Live MIC version) and Hard Times. Within seconds they thought it was sh*t. It certainly didn't help that they happened to notice Disney Girls on the Surf's Up tracklisting and started laughing uncontrollably (Damn You Bruce Johnston!).
But they're just teens. Even with adult music fans, I've noticed they're a bit of a laughingstock, and are rarely taken seriously. It's sad, really. But I've learned to ignore ignorant comments about the Beach Boys.

People I know ask me to put them on all the time when I'm playing music. It swings both ways. Old Folks Stuff vs. Classic Songs of Summer

And everyone I know loves WIBNTLA.

I think the Beach Boys are much more polarizing than many other artists from that era. The vocal harmonizing thing will put off many listeners right off the bat. I don't try to get anybody into the Beach Boys unless they're expressing an interest, or have a love of the hits already.


If I was a teenager and my friends (a kiss, queen & an eminem fan) were taking the piss out out of my Beach Boys t-shirt, well - I can't think of one BB song that's going to reverse that situation. Even if one tiny part of them is illuminated by the music - some isolated and lonely molecule of good taste swimming in a vast sea of retarded conformity - you think they're going to admit it to you!? Nice try though. In that situation I would play them the best 'worst' BB songs I could think of: Songs I love but that appear so lame by conventional teen standards that they actually exceed their wildest and worst imaginings of what Beach Boys music could sound like. Songs like Crack At Your Love or Belles of Paris. Play them loud and taunt them as you do it: "How d'ya like this muthaf**kas? This sh*t owns Eminem."

Alternatively, ask yourself if you want the whole world to be into The Beach Boys? That's what The Beatles are for. The Beach Boys will always be a cool, niche thing. That's part of the appeal for me.

The Beach Boys are incredibly corny and I don't think the doo-wop-inspired harmonies help to mitigate against this fact for a lot of people. The bands that have been inspired by them, both in the '70s up to the present, don't often sound anything like The Beach Boys -- either because these bands don't sing merely about love songs, don't have doo-wop-inspired vocal harmonies, use a different kind of humour... there are a number of reasons you could select, basically. Obviously I appreciate these things about The Beach Boys in varying degrees at any given time but I can also completely understand why someone wouldn't like these factors as well -- and I think that's why the Holland era Beach Boys (and possibly also Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue) may have gone over so well with folks who would not have previously considered themselves "Beach Boys fans".

same here!  I convinced my mom to take me to C50 and she loved it, she was even crying  :lol.  she's not as crazy about them as I am but she still appreciates the music

A friend of mine whose taste I respect once said to me, when I asked her why on earth she hated the Beach Boys, words to the effect of: "you know what? I think maybe in fact deep down, I do actually like them."
Then again she could well have said that to get me off her case!

I would hardly place any stock in in the opinions of a Kiss fan.

Now, now... :lol

When I was in my teens and early 20s most of my friends were punk rockers and hard rockers. Most of them hated the Beach Boys, except some of the punk rockers. Especially the ones who played instruments and listened to the Ramones. But I occasionally got nasty looks when I mentioned the name Beach Boys. I became one of those "I don't give a f*** what people think, I love the Beach Boys" kinda people. I think one of the problems with the BBs is that many people think they were too light and that they were sorta like a bearded Sha Na Na, playing oldies. I've always considered the Beach Boys to be both a mainstream AND an underground band. There's so much material to dive into, it's just that not everybody wants to give the BBs a chance. I once asked "Metal" Mike Saunders (former writer for Rolling Stone and member of Californian punk band Angry Samoans) if he ever liked the Beach Boys. He said, "No". When I asked him why he answered "I didn't like the way they looked". Bad answer, but that's what he said.

Meh. I never bothered about what anyone else likes. Music speaks to people in different ways. What speaks to one person doesn't speak to me, and vice versa.

I do think there is a tendency in entertainment these days to equate "gritty" with "good." Edgier material gets more cred than something that's considered pretty or nice. I think it's a false assumption, though. Too often the "edgy" one winds up just sounding predictably cynical and is just as tastelessly bad as the syrupy sweetness he claims to disdain.  The Beach Boys aren't gritty, cynical, or edgy and to those who prefer their bad music with a bad attitude, they will always be a point of ridicule. Their sunshine pop and psychedelic vibes are too hippy-dippy for them, and that's okay with me. I prefer to listen to music that doesn't inspire me to punch out my cat.

Luckily for me I don't have to worry about haters too much.  People I work with hardly know anything about them and right now in my life, I don't have friends. So basically, I get to enjoy all the great music on my own and I can listen to it as much as I want.  :lol

This band is a perfect example of that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhjG47gtMCo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhjG47gtMCo)

Ummmmm….yeah.   :o

This pretty much sums up my feelings on the topic … Although I would have phrased it something like this:  "I could give a flying f*** less what anyone else thinks of the Beach Boys."  I love me some BB music; always have and always will.