The Smiley Smile Message Board

An idea for a new thread popped into my head tonight.  I've had a cold this week, and I went to the drug store to get some cough drops.  They had a closed-circuit radio playing in the store.  A new song began playing, and I stopped in my tracks, trying to figure out this very familiar intro to the tune.  "What is this thing??" I thought. 

Then I heard Brian's voice, "Another car running fast, another song on the beach...."  It really brought a smile to my under-the-weather self, to hear this song in a very unexpected place.

So, this has me curious... what are some of the more obscure BB/BW songs you've heard on the radio... or in a store somewhere...or in an elevator...etc etc?  I'm not talking about hearing Good Vibrations on the typical oldies radio.  I'm talking about times like when I heard the Carl version of Surf's Up played on a re-run episode of the Wolfman Jack show, and I practically got into a car accident as a result.  Fire away.   ;D

I saw a movie called "My Life Without Me" for a Canadian Cinema class at college, and the lead actress Sarah Polley started singing "God Only Knows".

hearing Feel Flows on my vacation in the U.S. a couple of years ago year on one of the radiochannels on the flight from Houston to San Francisco surprised me a bit...

We have done this a couple of times but I like sharing these stories. Once I heard You're Welcome in a loop at an airport. They kept playing it over and over. I heard California Saga at a Ruby Tuesday's (who also had a Two Lane Blacktop poster up). What I Say I heard several times on the Chicago oldies station in the early ninties.  Imagination and Christmassy at a gorcery store, Santa's Beard in a store. Let's Hot Fun when it first came out . Also semi obsucre things like I Can Hear Music,  Getcha Back (when it was new), California Dreamin (also when it was new), Come Go With Me, and Heroes.  I also used to hear Darlin a lot when I lived in Cleveland in the 80's.

Hearing 'Do It Again' playing outside the airport when i arrived in Flordia on Vacation..One of my fondest memories

when i was student teaching earlier this week, i was in my class' gym class and the teacher turned on some "work-out music"...it turned out to be Kokomo...egh....i turned to one of my class mates and said i remembered when this was popular, 20 years ago...then the next song came on, it was Wipe Out...I determined it was the Still Crusin' album...wish i coulda heard In my Car and Make it Big...

I heard Darlin' in a diner/coffeeshop place once. I heard a cover of Island Girl in the mall. I heard the Wild Honey version of Cool Cool Water once in a store.

I was listening to Your Imagination in the car once, and my friend, who was also in the car, said, "Ugh, I hate this song, they play it all the time at work." Shane, did you hear it in CVS?

"Your Imagination" plays in the upscale grocery stores in town all the time. It must be part of the adult contemporary playlist of their music provider.

Help Me Rhonda at a macdonalds down here at my school. They played I Get Around on one of the commericals during one of my roommate's favorite reality shows. We were grooving along to it and me pretending I didn't know who it was  :-X I think she would be so weirded out if she knew all of this lol.

I heard a Muzak version of "Surf's Up" in an elevator once.

I've heard Your Imagination played at Kroger.   Music for old farts to grocery shop to.  :lol

Yeah I hear it at my local grocery store chain every couple months or so...people probably think I'm nuts when I position myself underneath the speaker and stand there until the song ends!

I heard the BB version of "The Lord's Prayer" on the PA system of an Egyptian Tourist Police in the Sinai Desert in 1984.

When 'Imaginations' first came out, I heard 'South America' at a grocery store. I heard 'Surfs Up' 1971 at Starbucks once.

When Smile first came out, I went to the record store to buy it, and lo and behold they were playing 'Heroes and Villains' 2004!

"I was listening to Your Imagination in the car once, and my friend, who was also in the car, said, "Ugh, I hate this song, they play it all the time at work." Shane, did you hear it in CVS?"

I heard it at a Longs Drugs store here in California.  I'm starting to wonder if several different chain grocery and drug stores subscribe to the same closed circuit music provider.

Well, apparently Your Imagination is quite the popular track, judging from the other posts in this thread.

Yeah. It was the weirdest thing ever. It was about 7 in the morning, too.

I've heard Your Imagination in probably a dozen different restaurants and stores...not sure why it's so heavily rotated on Muzak.

I've heard Come Go With Me at Kmart.
IJWMFTT at the mall and at Starbucks.
The entire "Songs we love to love" CD at Starbucks.
The enitre "Sounds Of Summer" CD at Barnes And Noble.
It's OK at Toys R Us.

Other things I've heard but can't remember where: Sail On Sailor, Do It Again, Darlin, Rock And Roll Music, Feel Flows, Surf's Up, I Can Hear Music, Disney Girls, Getcha Back.  Probably more that I can't remember right now...

I heard "Here Comes The Night" (1967 version) in a bar once... And "Wouldn't It Be Nice" in a grocery store. There's also a local radio station that sometimes plays the 1983 version of "California Dreamin'"!

I remember reading you write about that in an ESQ I think.

They played "Live at the Roxy" at a record store a few years ago when it came out.
I heard "Sail on sailor" and "California girls" on a radio-wishlist (guess who asked those songs to be played) and then they had a Beach Boys-special once with "Here comes the night" ('67) and "Surf's up" among the rare tracks. Of course you often hear more of the usual stuff like GV and Kokomo or Sloop John B. from time to time

Synchronicity: I had just bought the Surf's Up reissue vinyl they did some years ago (EMIs 100th birthday? 1997?) and in the car was explaining to my friends that despite the title, it wasn't a "stereotype" Beach Boys fun-in-the-sun album; which led me onto saying how great and under-rated the early 70s stuff is, when the car radio started playing "Sail On, Sailor" - never heard it on the radio before or since.

I have the Beach Boys set as one of my alerts on Sirius, and I've been surprised by the variety: Heroes and Villains, All This is That, Add Some Music, This Whole World, Honkin Down the Highway ...

Yeah the pay radio is much better musically.

Flippin' channels last night I caught about 2 minutes of "Forest Gump" on ABC. It's got a snippet of Sloop John B ("this is the worst trip I've ever been on") during his arrival in Viet Nam right before Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" starts up.

Life IS like a box of chocolates.

GV from BWPS at the end of Wild Hogs.....that was a pleasant surprise...

and as for movie soundtracks and mentions, we can't forget Almost Famous...........Feel Flows as a closing credits song on this movie that provided such a loving look at the hippie/rock music era.

I just watched "Wild Hogs" on DVD this past weekend and was surprised to hear the BWPS version of "Good Vibrations" rather than the more familiar original version.  I wonder how many people saw this movie in the theater and kind of cocked their head thinking something wasn't quite right with the song.

People who aren't super-fans of the Beach Boys don't know any of the words to Good Vibrations and wouldn't know that the words were different. But if you mean the fact that it was recorded four years ago and therefore doesn't sound the same in that way, they probably thought it was a cover.

Okay, after starting this thread, I now have a new one to report, which kind of took me by surprise yesterday.

On the local Sinatra/Tony Bennett/Michael Buble type music radio station:

The ALBUM version of Help Me Ronda.



Sounds like somebody's got a copy of "Endless Summer", where they accidentally used the wrong version!

I heard a muzak(!) version of "Surf's Up" at an airport years ago...

that sounds interesting....somebody should research and find this muzak version.....I respect any muzician who is hip to Surf's Up...

I was on the phone to a Travel Agent the other day when she put me on hold to try and find some seats on various flights - on comes "I Wanna Be Around/Workshop" - thought I was in the twilight zone!

When I was going back to school, I heard Little Deuce Coupe in the gas station, then at the diner I heard Surfer Girl. Twice in one day I heard them, which never happens!

Well I don't know if this qualifies but over here in Oz you can sometimes hear the Beach Boys Christmas Album around Christmas time - obviously. That's always a real treat. I don't really hear too many Beach Boys songs in unexpected places. I did however hear the Warmth of the Sun on the radio which was REALLY cool and totally unexpected especially because it's not a music station, I was listening out for the news and right before it they played the song. Really moved me as well because I was just so not expecting it. That was a few months ago, so I'm guessing the radio station had recently bought the new WOTS compilation. I'm glad the radio host played it cause I'm sure it took a lot of people by surprise, like, "THIS is the Beach Boys? ???" :)

This isn't exactly the same, but I saw a CD for sale once that was lullaby renditions of Beach Boys songs. I don't remember much of the track listing, but one of them was Surf's Up.

'Live at Knebworth' playing in my, at the time, 12 year olds bedroom. 'Sloop John B' repeated several times.

I was really shocked when I recognized it.  Back in the day when I worked at Kroger (a grocery chain), I must have heard every song off of the Stars & Stripes, Vol. 1 country album at one point or another.  Later on when I worked at Publix (yet another grocery chain) I heard "Sail On, Sailor" at least several times.  Publix actually wouldn't shy from playing deep cuts from artists.  They would semi-regularly play Paul McCartney's "Only Love Remains", a ballad off his Press To Play album which at the time I had never heard before.  They also would play an alternate version of the Beatles' "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" which I think was from the Anthology set. 

A couple of years ago BBC1 had the original version of Our Prayer playing in between programmes to a short clip of a guy stood on a rooftop having a stretch I thought it was the mutts nuts.   :)

I heard Good Vibrations at a car dealership and later the same day I heard Sloop John B at a Pizza Hut. The radio stations here play BB songs pretty regularly. In the last few weeks I've heard Wouldn't It Be Nice twice and Barbara Ann, but the one that really surprised me was when I heard the end of Keep an Eye On Summer on an AM station. Definitely one of the last songs I thought I'd hear on the radio in 2008, but it made my day ;D