The Smiley Smile Message Board

I work part time at J Crew (AN AMAZING CLOTHING STORE), and like most stores we have music playing.  Yeah it's the holidays now so the mix included Little Saint Nick and surprisingly Merry Christmas Baby.  The music that's usually played is of the more hip bands of the day and the past I guess.  Bands like Shout Out Louds, of Montreal, the Drums, Josh Rouse, the Smiths and even the Stone Roses get some play.  So while I wasn't TOO surprised to hear the beach boys, i was a bit surprised to hear "sail on sailor" and "i'm waiting for the day" to play. 

I thought that was really cool, and i enjoyed hearing the boys against the other bands on the mix. 

At one of the coffee shops near me, they played the entire Pet Sounds album...that's pretty rare in my neck of the woods.

Could you ask execs at J. Crew to lower their ridiculous prices? Thanks.  :-D

Just kidding. Yes, very cool to hear ANY Beach Boys over the speakers in a store, let alone the rarer stuff.

J Crew playing the Beach Boys doesn't seem to signal hipness, but it certainly seems to signal the trendies possibly getting into the Beach Boys, which is quite regrettable.

Regrettable? Why?
The more people listening to the Beach Boys, the better.

Exactly.

Of course, if  the Beach Boys were finally accepted on the level the Beatles are by the mass public, there'd be a small segment of fans who would suddenly STOP liking the BB because of that. Which is nuts, but seemingly every group has a certain percentage of so-called fans like that.

Let me put it to you this way...

Scene kids with emoliner, emopolish, emostick, and emoblades with crusty blood on them listening to Pet Sounds. I rest my case. :)

And besides, half of the Gen-Xers who know the BBs think John Stamos is a member. Once the modern-day emo crowd gets ahold of the BBs, sales of Stamos posters will rise, as will ratings of Full House reruns. :)

lol if you think that's the crowd that goes in to j crew

It's all relative. If they did all listen to Pet Sounds they'd probably laugh at the idea of a bunch of Middle-Aged men and women listening to it (not that I'm Middle-Aged, but from what I gather from this forum, a lot are)...As it is an album about teenage-angst (according to some critics).

Better than old farts with potbellies and emotional impotence, right?

It only figures that the hip sector would be into music, given the way the more modern indie bands like Animal Collective constantly praise The Beach Boys and subsequently rip them off incorporate elements of The Beach Boys into their music.

I'm 27...what's your point? Am I now uncultured? :)

If the shoe fits...

The correct title of the thread should be... "SO I GUESS J CREW IS GETTING MORE HIP"...hipness is an illusion like most everything else...the music of the Beach Boys is real.

Shame...just when I thought I was in with the Dada in-crowd. Oh well...time to go back to my bootlegs. :violin

I'm 26, back in the day (about 6 years ago), my friends were into the emo scene, as I went to their 'shows' for their bands, I just went as a supporter of my friends. I tried telling people that came through about how good the Beach Boys were. some of them listened to me.

One time, before a show, during the setup; I had the sound guy play the 'How to Speak Hip' album.
threw a lot of kids through a loop.  :lol

My point is that you can negatively stereotype any group of people, but stereotyping just shows a lack of understanding. Now, you're going to say, "but you just called a bunch of people uncultured, Dada!" Right, I did, didn't I? But I gave well-thought-out, nuanced reasons for why some people are uncultured. You just used some disparaging slang phrases and called it a day.

Now, if these emo kids in question refused to appreciate Smiley Smile and 15 Big Ones after you played the albums for them, then maybe you'd have a case for dismissing them so brusquely.

Smileys denote joke remarks.

'The correct title of the thread should be... "SO I GUESS J CREW IS GETTING MORE HIP"...'

 :-D

...is the right answer. Hip = nonsense. Hip = the junkyard of tomorrow. The music of our Boys is timeless. Age has no effect on it. The intro of California girls could have been thought up and recorded yesterday, as could the coda of Surf's Up.

While I get where you are coming from Don, I must respectfully disagree. The California Girls intro or Surf's Up coda couldn't have been thought up yesterday because nobodies making music even close to that level anymore.

I've been hearing The Beach Boys everywhere lately...

Their even playing mash up's of California Girls with the Katy Perry track in clubs now...

Brian's falsetto sounds awesome in a club when you're drunk by the way  :hat

apparently you have never been to austin, tx !

i think the "hip" reappraisal began around 2000 when the '70s 2fers were released

Ha ha - I have to take exception to this. I think Animal Collective are one of the few bands that actually takes the Beach Boys legacy and builds upon it, creating new music that is forward looking, not pastiche. For evidence of this, look at how many bands are now ripping AC off, especially since Merriweather Post pavillion. My patience for BB soundalikes has really worn thin over the last few years but I do find AC are much more than rip off artists.

Point taken. Funny: you are right. I hadn't foreseen that my post could be interpreted this way, but it certainly can. I meant, of course, that the California girls intro and the SU outro aren't specifically reminiscent of 1965/1967 or any other year.

But yes, it's hard, nay, impossible to think of a contemporary artist who could have dreamt up something of a similar quality yesterday. Assuming that pop will continue to be a vital force, I don't find it too exaggerated to say that it's going through a rather thin phase nowadays.

I gave up hope on modern music years ago. With the exception of the odd BB's related release (and some of those are purchased simply because I'm a completist) I don't own any modern music. I think the most contemporary album I own is from 1992!

I know they will  have transcended to acceptance if I ever hear songs from Love You at JC Penny.  :lol

Nothing in 18 years has struck your fancy enough to buy?

That's a long time. My daughter's entire lifetime.

Oh yes, kids everywhere bored as hell in JCPenney stores while their mothers sort through low-quality, high-priced merchandise to put on their maxed out credit cards listening to Johnny Carson. You know the BBs would have made it then!

What is hip?

I watched both the recent Stones DVD releases  on cable recently....

That stuff was the hippest of the hip in the late 60's early 70's when the Beachboys were floundering.

And I liked it back then.  But I don't really care for it anymore.  It seems pathetic and phony now....posturing and pretentious. 

   The Scorcese Stones , with all of their back up and guests, don't hold a candle to Brians or Mikes bands here in the 21st century.   I will, however,  give it to Charley for still thoroughly thrashing the drums at this point in his life.

The Beach Boys will NEVER be hip!

especially not in today's climate.

The # 1 no no in hipster-dome is earnestness: meaning what you say/write/play/sing: Believing what you say/write/play/sing

The Beach Boys are about as earnest (in the good way) and honest/emotionally available as popular music is likely to ever get, therefore they will never be hip...... Which, of course, MAKES them hip (at least to nerds like us)  :p

I know that to be true, but I have to wonder about it given how popular Neutral Milk Hotel is/was with the hip sector and the way the content of those songs was; that was basically Jeff Mangum expressing his grief for Anne Frank over an entire album.

No 2011 grammy nominations yet for Brian so he is still hip to me!

I completely agree, but that was still some time ago and quite a different (and more sensitive) hip sector than what we're dealing with now. Today is the day of the uber Hard Hipster (Ed Saunders would appreciate that term) who are deeply cynical and are uber consumers. They have no room for The Beach Boys other than for shallow and limited kitsch appeal.

Or maybe I'm just an out of the loop old bastard  :p

Lei'd in Hawaii is hip.  :afro

Yeah it is.

Hell yeah... I hate to say it though, but 99.9% of the world probably think we are just a bunch of dorks who listen to weird music. They are all wrong of course...Hot Girls LOVE the Beach Boys, they just don't know it yet. That is where opportunity knox...  :wink

You might very well be onto something  :-D

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 ;D great photos... give me new hope at my age.

That you too might be able to slowdance with Mike Love?

Speaking of playing songs in the workplace.
In the kitchen I work in, someone brought it in a radio to play Christmas music, and rather than in past years, I've brought in a couple of cds, I just burnt a CD instead, but it's great, because it's like I make everyone at work listen to Child of Winter!  :lol

I tried including a wide variety that wasn't being played, I added a majority of Spector's Christmas album, Paul's Wonderful Christmastime, Brian's Christmasy/What I really Want for Christmas/On Christmas Day/the Christmas Song, and just a couple from the original BB Christmas album (I'd been bringing that in the past few years).

Oh and the Beatles' Christmas Time is Here Again!

Of course! What else did you think of?

The BBs have been hip with underground musicians since at least the 90s...Thurston Moore praising PS in IJWMFTT, the Smiling Pets album, various covers and tribute albums over the last 15 years or so featuring all sorts of "indie" artists...and the latest wave of "hip" bands like Wavves, The Drums, Best Coast, Sleigh Bells, Grizzly Bear, etc. who are influenced at least somewhat by the BBs and other early 60s artists.

Don't forget The Wondermints.