The Smiley Smile Message Board

With some of the Dennis tracks replacing the lesser ones, I think Pet Sounds and Sunflower would almost be beaten...

Side 1
1. Dont Go Near The Water
2. Long Promised Road
3. Looking at Tomorrow
4. Disney Girls
5. Feel Flows

Side 2
6. 4th of July
7. A Day In The Life of A Tree
8. Til' I Die
9. Surfs Up
10. Wouldn't it be nice? (To live again)

I think the "Dennis and Brian" suite at the end would've been Amazing.
Serously, make this playlist (with the AMCB version of WIBNTLA)
And you'll see what I mean.

I would replace Disney Girls with Take A Load Off Your Feet. Still wouldn't be better than Pet Sounds though.

Come on, Surf's Up deserves to be the album closer! No matter how great WIBNTLA is, nothing can follow Surf's up, at least on the same vinyl side. Disney Girls has to stay, but one of the Carl tracks might as well go. Sorry, I'm a Carl fan, but those songs are better productions than songs (especially Feel Flows). TALOYF has to stay on the tracklist, it's a stone cold classic exercise in goofiness!

...and to answer your question, I don't think the album would quite rule Pet Sounds, but in my book it is already better than Sunflower, as it is.

Come now, I'm not a Bruce apologist by any means, but I'm not gonna shy away from admitting that Disney Girls is one of the most solid pop songs ever. They should take away Bruce's grammy for I Write the Songs and then re-award it to him for Disney Girls imo. If there's any song on Surf's Up that's to be cut for being a bit cumbersome and  dreary, I'd have to say it's Long Promised Road. I've grown to deal with most of Rieley's lyrics, but lines like "so hard to laugh a childlike giggle" and "throw off all the shackles that are binding me down" are truly cringeworthy. Carl may have been ahead of his time with that chorus, but I can't say I admire him for so desperately attempting to cram in a wannabe anthem worthy of the 80s into a song that didn't need it. Blegh, blugh and blogh. Anyway, my ideal Surf's Up would look something like this:


Side 1
1. Dont Go Near the Water
2. Disney Girls (1957)
3. Sounds of Free
4. 4th of July
5. Wouldn't it Be Nice (To Live Again)

Side 2
6. Feel Flows
7. Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
8. A Day in the Life of a Tree
9. 'Til I Die (this mix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS34TZR3SNY)
10. Surf's Up

I think with this tracklist, Surf's Up smokes Sunflower fo' sho' and while I don't think it's even close to nipping at Pet Sounds' heels, it's still a vast improvement over anything that includes SDT + LPR. And for the record, I don't mind Feet, I just don't think it works in the context of this album.

^Hey, I like that. You've got your Denny suite and Brian suite. Still missing Feet, but I admit it would stick out on that tracklist.

As usual, this is all just opinions, and I have mine too, and it jars with most of what's been said so far. I feel that Surf's Up, despite the masterful inclusion of Til I Die and the title track, is a WAAAAAAY weaker album than Sunflower, and Pet Sounds is so far ahead of it that it's not even in the same league. When you're as unimpressed by an album as I am with Surf's Up, tinkering around, removing Student Demonstration and 'Feet' and replacing them with Dennis tracks doesn't really help any, either (particularly as 99 percent of BB fans haven't actually heard '...Live Again' and don't really know what it's like, the availability of the live cover notwithstanding). Don't get me wrong, if you love Surf's Up, good for you, but for me it's a serious misfire in the quality control department, and I just can't find any love for it. If you like this album, don't read on, as I'm about to let rip on it with the true force of my feelings. Just be aware that I know that this is only what *I* feel about it, and I'm not trying to convince anybody to adopt my way of thinking, particularly if they love it.

Don't Go Near The Water has not aged well lyrically or musically for me, although it does have a lovely harmony tag. Love's simultaneously preachy and creepy delivery, and truly ghastly lyrics ('Toothpaste and soap will make our oceans a bubble bath; so let's avoid an ecological aftermath' is so-bad-it's-funny inept, as well as being so desperate in its attempt to make the eco-hippies of the day love it) make it hard for me to make it all the way through, though - only knowledge that the tag is coming does. In short, rarely have I quite literally wanted a song to reach its end so much. Moving on, although I love CW's voice, Long Promised Road is the archetypal boring 70s proggy track to me; and like Quzi, Rieley's woeful quasi-mystical mumbo-jumbo lyrics bring me out a rash, too ('So hard to drink of passion nectar; When the taste of life's holding me down' is one particularly cringe-inducing couplet, for me). 'Feet' is less-than-B-side grade material as far as I'm concerned, and feels as though it made the cut just because it was hanging around after being rejected once already from Add Some Music/Sunflower. Like a lot of people, my copy of Surf's Up is permanently set to skip the distorted, hot mess that is Student Demonstration Time, although I do have a lot of time for Disney Girls, and I'm aware people's opinions are divided on that one too, some finding it touching, others sappy. Personally, I think it's a beautifully well-realised, elegaic evocation of what must have seemed, in the troubled early 70s, like a quieter, simpler, sweeter time.

Side 2 fares a little better, but only because of the Brian tracks that should actually have been served up elsewhere, and the other stuff is, if anything, even more drecky than on side 1. Al's other song, Looking At Tomorrow, is just *there*. It's not gauche and giggly with forced, nerdy humour like 'Feet', but it's not exciting either, just competent and dull, and very much of its time. I much prefer any number of other Al songs from this period - to my way of thinking, Susie Cincinnati, Loop The Loop, or At My Window were way better, but this is just yawnsville. Feel Flows is mention-worthy only because it takes all of the aspects of Long Promised Road that I didn't like and takes them even *further* in the realm of my personal distaste. Duelling prog flute, guitar and saxophone on the boring, boring bridge with same dull old chords cycling to eternity - oh, please, kill me now, this is almost as bad as crap 70s jazz. And Rieley's lyrics - was he just mucking about, or what? 'unbending never ending tablets of time' and 'Unfolding enveloping missiles of soul; recall senses sadly'. Pardon? It would be bad enough, but for me, having this embarrassing drug-addled mierda on the same side as Van Dyke's aural poetry for Surf's Up (the track) just shows up how far the Boys had fallen in five years.

'Tree' is weird but mostly good weird - it would have made a good solid B-side. And you'll hear no complaints from me about either of the remaining Brian tracks, not just because of some unthinking Brianista-style devotion that says I have to like them because they're Brian tracks, but because I honestly believe that they stand way above most of the stuff on the rest of this turgid car-wreck. But they alone can't make me like this greasy, reheated fry-up of an album as a whole.

Surf's Up seems to be an album that excites a lot of people who got back into the band after their 'desert exile' period, when Rolling Stone started to write positively about them again, and I can see that if the album was your 'way back in' to the world of the Beach Boys, you'd probably have fond memories of it. I only came to know the catalogue in the 90s, long after all the 'hipness' wars of the late 60s and early 70s were over, and when I weighed Surf's Up against what came before and afterwards, I found it seriously wanting. I think I probably prefer Carl and the Passions overall to this, seriously (at least it rocks!), and I definitely prefer Holland. I ripped the tracks from Surf's Up to my iPod, but I broke the album up and filed the individual tracks with my non-album Beach Boys songs, just because I don't ever want to listen to the original tracks in their album order, I find it such a tedious and dispiriting listen - and Feel Flows is actually DELETED. I found it so, so boring I just never want to put it on at all*. Surf's Up is the only Beach Boys album I've done that with. To me, the cover says it all - you've got the formerly exultant native American from the optimistic Brother Records logo broken down, at the end of his rope, ready to give in, surrounded by gathering, murky, oily darkness. In my version of Beach Boys history, the album is replaced with a Surf's Up EP featuring just four tracks: Disney Girls, 'Tree', Til I Die and Surf's Up. Of course, that's pretty miserable listening too, with nothing else to leaven it, but at least the dreck is gone.

So against this, for me Sunflower seems a towering masterwork (it kind of is anyway...!), and Pet Sounds is... well, it is what it is - a once-in-a-lifetime achievement that puts most other albums in the shade. Surf's Up doesn't even register on the same scale.

Harsh, I know... but that's how I've always felt about it, right back to when I first heard it. There you go. Your mileage may (and no doubt does) vary.

MattB

* Oh, now I look, it seems that I have deleted Take A Load Of Your Feet for all time, too. If I never had to listen to that again, either, it would be too soon. (Yawns at the mere thought).

Agree totally! Disney Girls is a classic not just in the BB canon but in 70s pop. Way better than the Manilow hit.

If WIBNTLA is as good as advertised,I probably would have a tough time deciding between Sunflower and Surf's Up.  I already do to a degree.  I'd also have a hard time deciding between removing TALOYF and LAT

Not bad, but in no way superior or equal to Pet Sounds - closer to Sunflower. I think a re-worked Surf's Up could be miles better than what was released, but I feel it would have to be more of a radical reworking.

I am of the opinion that "Don't Go Near The Water" is a terrible album opener, and that "Surf's Up" should open the album - I am aware no one agrees with that!

A Day In The Life Of A Tree, the Reiley vocals kill this for me. Yeah, I know, "but he makes it sound like a tree!" I think the ultimate vault find would be a Wilson brother scratch vocal on this track.

4th of July is o.k, but a little slow and draggish. I'd put "Sound of Free" in it's place - I think it would fit well on Surf's Up.

Lookin' For Tomorrow is a little too political for my taste, not sure if I'd leave that one in on a "mix".

However, I don't think "Feet" is too bad - as it progresses, it just gets better and better, I think I'd still have that one for a little variety and a Jardine vocal.

I can't really make a full fantasy line-up, because I'd have to do one with Sunflower too - there were so many strong songs from those sessions that I'd probably end up including one or two "leftovers" on my version of SU.

So, my "ultimate SU" would contain:Surf's Up/Long Promised Road/Take Good Care of Your Feet/Sound of Free/Disney Girls/Feel Flows/____/_____/'Til I Die/Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again.

I think we have to recognize that the Surf's Up album seems to be the first instance of actual discord within the group about what material would appear on an album. That's a significant moment in the history of the band, and while the album as released had a salutary effect on their career momentum (paving the way for a full-blown mid-70s revival) it is an album self-consciously filled with extremity. Richard Meltzer wrote a bizarre masters thesis in the late 60s that was eventually published under the title of The Aesthetics of Rock, that was littered with amphetamine-laced "concepts" which mostly ricocheted instead of resonated, but he made an offhand remark about the BBs that (IMO) remains relevant--their work is "schizoid rather than eclectic". That is, it has a tendency to push against itself and its original sonic/stylistic synthesis.

Brian's lingering malaise after Smile made this more pronounced, particularly as the rest of the band took over more of the songwriting and production. 20/20 was the first "smorgasbord" LP of their career, where a series of really diverse styles co-existed on one LP. Sunflower was more cohesive, in part due to the intervention of Warners in the song selection process. (That seems to be one of the few times that a record company has had a truly positive outcome in the fate of an LP.)

Surf's Up was part of a conscious change in strategy, but a strategy that couldn't avoid being schizoid rather than eclectic, if only for the fact that Brian's music would always stand apart from everything else. Jack Rieley is a lightning rod for good and bad in these events, pushing for more "relevant" lyrics and looking for ways to give the band a toe-hold in the modality of rock as it existed at that time. The results of that were decidedly mixed, but the best moments (most of them not on Surf's Up, actually, but on CATP and Holland) did materially assist the band in getting out from behind the 8-ball of their "credibility problem" that was "shackling" them at the time.

Internal dissension seems to first come into play here, and I think almost everyone agrees that the album is weaker than it might have been. Ultimately, however, the album did what it needed to in terms of the band's career, and while that may seem too expedient a thought when a more encompassing "aesthetic judgment" is required, that's the bottom line. As Van Dyke said at the time, "If they name the LP Surf's Up we can pre-sell 150,000 copies." The album became bound up in a tug-of-war, and creating a schizoid smorgasbord--one that took as much of its allure from the most noteworthy of the "lost" Smile tracks--was the best tactic to make the band viable in the US again. It worked, but it had consequences.

As for whether Dennis' tunes would have made Surf's Up their best LP--certainly not. Brian flew so high with Pet Sounds that it's impossible to see any combination of these songs--even with "Surf's Up" lifted from its proper context--as approaching that level. I'm as a big a fan of Dennis' music as anyone, but Dennis at his best < Brian at his best.

I agree with most which has been said here, but perhaps if one does such a radical reworking of the album one might as well put Sound Of Free as the lead track instead of DGNTW.
If something like:
Side 1
1. Sound Of Free
2. Dont Go Near The Water
3. Long Promised Road
4. Looking at Tomorrow
5. Disney Girls
6. Feel Flows

Side 2
7. 4th of July
8. A Day In The Life of A Tree
9. Til' I Die
10. Surfs Up
11. Wouldn't it be nice? (To live again)


...had been released (not necessary JUST like this) then The Beach Boys might have been held in higher regard given that the real SU went into the top 40 as their reputation in the US started to recover. Obviously WIBNTLA is pure speculation, but many praise it (even the few who have heard it) so there might have been some true merit to it. In worst case just swap SU with it... After Smile this must be the biggest load the Beach Boys ever blew (if one disregards 15BO?)

A thing that I always found troubling was the artwork on Smiley and Surf's Up.  Not the beautiful artwork, per se.  But the relationship between the music and the LP cover, to create an identity as between the two.  I would have bought anything they released, because of the vocals.  Smiley had a record jacket (a paper sleeve to keep the LP clean and unscratched) which was an assortment of album covers for Capitol Records.  Why? Al Martino, Freddy Martin, Cannonball Adderly were doing on the sleeve cover is beyond me.  It resembled a promo for the Capitol Record Club. They could have used the space to describe the artwork on Smiley so that people knew what it was.  And it did not "pop" in the record display because it was pale green.  Red lights and stop signs grab your attention with the color.  And the music was competing with the Stones, Beatles, etc.  It may have been typical of record industry standards at the time, but, not with a fledgling Brother Records, spreading its' new wings.  They could have told us about the artwork. 

Surf's Up had liner lyrics with an inner fold out of arid earth. Maybe it was to symbolize environmental impact of no water...Beautiful as it is, there was little nexus as between the music and the artwork which would compel a music shopper to buy.  

20/20, Pet Sounds, and Sunflower, etc., had photos of the Boys.  And, concrete images to make a connection to.  People have short attention spans.  And the cover is the ticket in the door.  I wished they had used the space to talk about the choice of the artwork and motivate further inquiry into the artist who did the Native American sculpture for the nickel.  That is the job of the marketing people.  And it speaks volumes about their commitment to the Boys.  

I don't think that to include Dennis' songs, they would have had to drop any of the others. It's a very short album as it is, and could have easily been 2-3 songs longer. Sure there are some weak moments, but I still think if DW's songs were on there, it would've been the same album + those tracks. 

My personal Surf's Up mix is the entire released album plus 4th of July and Adam Marsland's WIBNTLA and it's a fine album.

I absolutely agree. Dennis' music would have elevated Surf's Up to a higher standard, but no matter how good WIBNTLA is, "A Day in the Life of a Tree" and "Til' I Die" are just a completely different genus of quality.

My track order:

Side One:

1. Don't Go Near the Water
2. Long Promised Road
3. 4th of July
4. Disney Girls (1957)
5. Fallin' In Love
6. Surf's Up

Side Two

1. Feel Flows
2. Lookin' At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
3. A Day in the Life of a Tree
4. Til' I Die
5. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again

Nothing to do with SU....but pretty much ALL Capitol albums up to that point came with the Capitol sleeve depicting other albums from the catalog.

Surf's Up is one of my least favorite BB album covers - too dark and sinister for my taste.

Personally, I love the dark nature of the Smiley and Surf's covers, I think they accurately summarise the overall mood of the records, and I don't think they should be "explained", no more than any other art should be. Look at the cover, listen to the album, it will be understood as well as it was meant to be. I do think the Surf's cover accurately reflects that era of the band much more than the utterly forced Sunflower jacket, which might as well be a Peter Paul and Mary cover, and was probably designed by the same person.

I agree with you in that sense about the Smiley cover, which is perfect for that album!

I've always struggled with the inclusion of "Surf's Up" on the LP.  I understand where they were coming from when they included it..."Sunflower" had bombed and the cult of "Smile" was growing.  Why not dust off on the cornerstones of that LP and tack it onto the new album.  I think it made sense from a marketing standpoint...and it gave the song to the world way earlier than we may otherwise have heard it.  I think Carl and Desper did a heckuva job piecing together the song.

That said...it's a song that came from a different time and place.  I've always questioned whether the "sound" of the song actually fits the LP and the era in which it was created.  I don't know.  Maybe I've heard the LP so many times that I cannot think of it without it.  Maybe if "Sunflower" had been a hit...they never would have felt the need to bring the song back from the dead.

Honestly, until I actually hear "Wouldn't It Be Nice..." I can't make a qualified determination...though I like some of the tracklistings I've read on this thread.

Sorry, I explained that badly.  I did not mean to interpret the art, any more than a music critic tries to sway a readership, but to note the artist, and the name of the work.  Reflective and serious work, is not necessarily "dark" in my opinion.  

Now, the Sunflower photo is a treasure, I think with Christian in the Touring Band.  It is sort of a connector.  And, at least, as among LP's, there was name and photo recognition, no less than the observation that using Surf's Up as a title cover name.  When you are a merchant selling records, the album artwork, has value in whether or not one buys the record.  I think it humanised the band, with their young families.  It showed a certain maturity in a continuum.  Not a Shut Down moment.  

But do you see there is a defeated quality to Surf's Up, a type of wounded resignation, that is well illustrated by the hanged head of the rider on the cover?

Yeah, I do realize my thoughts on the Sunflower enterprise as a whole aren't shared by anyone else, for sure.

Kinda, but not really. I think a lot of times an album cover influences what you're listening to. Ever wonder about that? Like, what is Sunflower had the cover of Wild Honey, would you think of certain songs differently? Anyway, I think the cover projects a darker image of the songs and vibe of the album than there actually is. Tree and Til I Die, those are certainly dark tunes, but I don't think most of them fit that mold. Surf's Up (the song) isn't so dark when it's on SMiLE, why should it be so depressing on another album?

The rider is bowed but not broken, with armament of war, under his tired arm.  He is alive, not lifelessly carried by the horse.  He is weary, but not broken, as is his horse.  The return from war, is the triumph.  The survival.  This is music of survival, not defeat.  JMHO

With all those dark colors it, if it was a victory-by-survival, the mood isn't a "triumphant" one to my eyes. If he survived he was the only one. With that in mind, I am not sure I would think of it as triumphant by any sense of the word either.

I agree on certain tracks, such as Long Promised Road, Lookin' At Tomorrow, etc. But Til I Die and A Day In the Life Of A Tree aren't really triumphant songs, in any regard. And the person who has been to war is never truly the same. The young, hopeful idealist does go down to defeat by the very nature of the battle.

That is a viable interpretation. I wonder how war vets would feel about it...

But, I view survival as triumph.   We don't know that he was the only one.  

Rest and time are restorative.

It is interesting, at any rate.   And a great cover.  My sole issue was that there was no artist info.  It leaves people to guess.  It was a teachable moment.  

Well, that's true, as well. I'd much rather be a cork on the ocean, than a bottle in the gutter.

Yeah, baby!!!!

Cork Floats!!!  :kiss

As per the people saying Dennis at his best < Brian at his best

One song equals it IMO, and that's WIBNTLA, the original was apparently better and longer (2x!) then the AMCB version which is already a classic.

I think many Dennis tunes are as good as the best of Brian. Really, it is just the quantity of work, and the diversity of it, that puts Brian above Dennis. But Brian is also above Lennon and McCartney, so that is no slate on Dennis.

I agree 100% with this, had Dennis had written almost 1000 songs, He'd no doubt have written a lot more amazing music.

Didn't we just have this thread a week ago?

"Feet" is a lot of fun and it saddens me that so many people trash it or somehow think big bad Carl said, "f*** you, Dennis, your songs are shitty and it's either them or 'Feet' and I'm choosing 'Feet'. One of the more popular photos of you later in life will make you look like a muppet, ha ha ha (little do I know I'll have a bad mullet later in life oh my god no)."

I'm not going to rant for five days over a song I've never actually heard and why Carl is an idiot for not including said song I've never heard. Yes, the damn thing needs to come out already, but I'm not sure why people get so up in arms over it not making the album without ever having heard the original version. We know why it was left off and I think both Carl and Dennis were justified for what they thought was right. Carl led the band, Carl won, Carl ensured what is possibly their best song was released and that it closed the album, which it should have done with any album it was on. Dennis had several other opportunities to release "Live Again" and it never happened.

Surf's Up the album is what it is and has been for forty years. Not without flaws, but then the same can be said for basically any Beach Boys album before or after it. All Beach Boys albums are benefited by their "fluff" (they're the Gosh Darn Beach Boys, lest we forget), most albums fall flat when it's long serious-as-a-heart-attack song after long serious-as-a-heart-attack song (imo) as most people want Surf's Up to be, for some reason. I'm not sure why this one gets picked apart and criticized before all their other albums, or if I have any clue, it's to do with a song given a world of hype that no song in the world could live up to.

tl;dr chill out d00dz, Surf's Up is a fine album as is, endlessly arguing over the tracklist order of a forty year old album is hurr durr, and we'll likely have "Live Again" soon enough.


Maybe, but maybe not.

Can't we just leave any of these damn albums alone??? Or, how about we replace God Only Knows with Trombone Dixie on Pet Sounds???

Surf's Up is a perfect album and one of the greatest in rock history!

Take off the Al stuff and even SDT and the whole thing would just drag. I love Dennis,Carl, Brian but I want my Al and Mike (and Bruce) too, dammit!!!

I don't think 4th Of July is any better than TALOYF or LAT and Carl sounds drunk on it anyway. San Miguel is a good stomper, but too much Carl in the same range/vibe is cool and all, but it's not The Beach Boys. As for WIBNTLA: I'm not sacrificing songs I love for a song I've never heard....

The reason we keep picking it apart is because it had the most unused potential of almost any album in history.

But why dwell on that if the album that exists is awesome???

Surf's up vibe of the worn out BBs makes it great no matter what songs are on it.

Surf's Up is their best album period. A few Dennis songs added to the mix would have only been gravy.

Perfect album?  Hardly.  Anyone who thinks Student Demonstration Time is perfect has a very different definition of perfection than most.  I think with Dennis songs San Miguel, Lady, WIBNTLA, Sound of Free AND a great Mike Love song to replace the annoying SDT - and that's the 4/4 Big Sur which is superior IMO to the waltz version released on Holland - you can definitely construct a better album sequence.  I would drop Don't Go Near the Water, I agree the lyrics and singing are wretched despite a brilliant musical arrangement.  So drop two and add four of the five I listed - I'd probably go with Lady, Sound of Free, WIBNTLA and Big Sur. 

The thing about these fantasy lineups (they are fun and it is interesting to read other people's choices), is that I end up always thinking about the other albums it impacts. If I put the 4/4 Big Sur on my lineup of SU (and I agree, it is the superior version), then my lineup of Holland would be really lacking, and it messes up that album's continuity.

Cool, thanks for that.

Imagine if even just WIBNTLA was on it...

Brian's best, and Denny's best :p

Revisionist history is a perfectly valid exercise IMO. George Martin has said that one of his greatest regrets as Beatles producer was not including Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane on Sgt. Pepper's, presumably in place of Lovely Rita and When I'm Sixty-Four (he diplomatically didn't specify). TALOYF is charming but somewhat insipid (again IMO) & STD is topical, pandering, completely unremarkable mediocrity. The substitution of the two majestic alternatives under discussion (which fit in PERFECTLY with the mood of the rest of the album), in an alternate universe, would have been an undeniable improvement, to put it mildly, and lifted the album into the absolute stratosphere.

I love that GM quote, because the inclusion of those two songs would have made Sgt. Pepper beter then Pet Sounds without a doubt. I love the Beach Boys, but an album with NO BAD TRACKS AND 4 OF THE GREATEST SONGS EVER WRITTEN IS AMAZING.


Oh... wait... that is Pet Sounds :P

People should brace themselves for the slim possibility that WIBNTLA may be another "Make it Good". Lots of expert opinions on a song that hasn't been heard.

So true. And another thing is, deep in my heart I really don't want to lose any tracks. Sure, SDT isn't that great, but it's a Beach Boys track, and it has it's place. A funny little curiosity, yet one more aspect of this strange, beautiful and off band.

+1

Being able to criticize objectively is important however, asking which things about an album work and which things don't, how things could have been improved or done in a way to better suite the albums' own objectives, are ways that all of us as listeners can increase our overall enjoyment of the music. This album is done and in print, there's no reason you have to be defensive, nobody is going to take your copy of away.
I do agree with you however about the "fluff", those songs always seem to end up adding that little something extra. Surf's Up is an exception to that rule unfortunately. The fluff just isn't good, not even by Beach Boys standards. Susie Cincinnati, When Girls Get Together, even My Solution would have been made better inclusions in my opinion. In the context of the "darker" songs, WGGT could have fared a little better than it did later on.
Dennis also had two nice tracks in California Slide and Sound Of Free, the latter of which would have made an excellent opener I think...

I disagree with that. My own SMiLE compilations end SU->Prayer->GV. Sounds great.

I doubt that WIBNTLA is the masterpiece it's supposed to be. Probably falls into the "it's classic because it's unreleased" catagory. Surf's Up is a very good album, but Sunflower is untouchable. I will blaspheme and say that I would even take Sunflower over Pet Sounds. It's a tossup between Sunflower and Smile.

Yeah, but... SMiLE is not like other albums and Prayer is not a normal song, you know? In context of a normal album sequencing, Surf's Up is a tough act to follow. Such  a grand, epic, majestic piece.

...though I can dig your SMiLE-sequence. Surf's Up is the ascension. Then we'll meet the choir of angels (Prayer) and it all ends up in one massive love-fest in heaven (GV)!

Imo Sgt Pepper is riddled with mediocre songwriting. The Lennon input is very solid, but Paul provides mostly filler. Lovely Rita and When I'm 64 are horrendous, but so is Getting Better, Fixing a Hole and Good Morning Good Morning. None of those songs could possibly constitute material for the greatest album of all time. Sgt Pepper has some of the best songs, but also many subpar ones. PS simply does not having tracks lacking in the same way, so it therefore better, and I'm a big admirer of the Beatles.

Sorry buddy, that's wrong.  :angel:

Freudian slip?

 ;D

It's an unfair comparison unless you're also going to ensure that the version of Sunflower is the best that could possibly have been put out.

All true enough. I think I was just mildly irked (as irked as someone can become with a messageboard, i.e. not very irked at all imo imo imo) that we just had this thread a week ago and the amount of criticism toward Carl for not including a song most of us haven't heard the original recording of. Not to knock Adam and co's cover, I just think it's worth hearing the original before you say Carl was stuck in the past or something.


Can't say I agree there - "Susie Cincinnati" and "When Girls Get Together" never did much of anything for me (although maybe I haven't given them the proper chance), and "My Solution" is very cool/amusing but would've been better as some kind of standalone 45 or something than on any album. Just me, though. As I've said before, two albums in '71 wouldn't have been a bad thing at all, imo.

Damn right, Erik. SDT was one of the songs that convinced me The Beach Boys weren't wimpy singalong pop music for people to throw beach balls around to on July 4th (not that there is anything WRONG with that).

Because it's not.  The album that exists is unlistenable, just as a meal that mixes steak and sh*t is inedible. 

Can't blame people for wanting to sub out the sh*t for something else good, particularly since WIBNTLA and 4OJ were supposed to be on the album to start with.

I don't resemble that remark, not that it's anyone's business (and yes, I can take a joke, if it's funny). While I was engrossed in composing my comment, I reflected just long enough to think that the acronym had an odd similarity to afflictions of the unmentionables, and quickly thought "is this correct?" Too quickly, as it turns out, and thanks so much for tactfully pointing it out. No harm meant, I trust.:)

Interesting to get other perspectives, and see how polarized and black & white ways in which people see things (myself included in many cases). 4OJ and Live Again are hardly beach ball ditties either, but in a different (better IMO) sense.

Another case in point. The album is by no means "unlistenable", far from it, but there are tracks I skip over every single time I put it on, which would not have been the case with the "improved" lineup.

I love the album and wouldn't change a single thing, but I do concur that picking it apart has been made easy by comments by our favorite Socialist Bruce, and it's rather forced nature.

Bullsh*t. Surf's Up is an incredibly great record.

It's actually the beach Boys album I listen to most often and from front to back every time.

In your world, a tape of Brian farting is "great."  So I guess "incredibly great" is just one step above that.

Wait, wait wait! Someone loving the Surf's Up album: is that REALLY the mark of a rabid Brianista?? Really? Please note, he's sticking up for the ENTIRE ALBUM, not just Till I Die and Surf's Up!

If Surf's Up is unlistenable (DAAAAMN DAWWWWG), I'd be curious to hear what you think of... well, almost all their other albums, but especially their 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2012s output.

Obviously everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I'm not sure how someone could be into this band and deem an album like Surf's Up "unlistenable". Pretty extreme word, I guess, and I'm not sure if you're wildly exaggerating and you think the tracklist could use a couple minor changes or if you really find the album unlistenable.

In my world, I love The Beach Boys, and I will go to lengths to defend the work of theirs that I feel is excellent. A rarity in these parts, ironically enough. It is fairly hilarious that you think I am some Brianista, when many of the band's songs that I actually dislike are his. I don't love the Sunflower album, which is an even rarer and more potentially heretical opinion than liking Student Demonstration Time.
But I guess that's all you could come up with on such short notice, the blind-faith fanboy card. I'm just someone who enjoys great music more than being a snarky prick.

It is one of the few Beach Boys albums I never skip a track on.

I love the album, but TALOYF and STD are auto skips.

Yes, we know you feel this way.

Why is SDT so hated by so many? Granted it's nothing special, just a nice basic rocker. How many people dislike it just because Brian Wilson has gone on record as saying he does not like it?

Has nothing to do with that (didn't know that actually). It's just BORING.

It's not that... Personally I don't hate it. It's just that the lyrics try to be politically conscious so bad it hurts. Lame attempt to be hip and current. If they had done it with the original Riot in Cell Block 9 lyrics, I'd have absolutelu nothing against it. 'Cos everyone has to admit, musically it really rocks. And Mike's lead has some nice screams in it.

I guess that's the thing with fluff. I never much cared for SC either, but after listening to 15 Big Ones a few too many times it started to grow on me.

My point with the steak & sh*t reference is that even if you have great songs (Surf's Up, 'Til I Die) and good songs (Tree, LPR, Feel Flows, Disney Girls), the album is unlistenable if you include the truly awful (Feet, SDT).  Sure, you can skip those songs, but then you're not listening to the album.

OTOH, if you sub 4OJ and WIBNTLA for Feet and SDT, you have a stellar album.

I think that it's easy to see where Carl was coming from during that era.

He was the youngest brother after all, it was hard for him to take responsibility for the group. He looked up to Brian and Dennis, he took his cues from them, he counted on them looking out for him. In 1971 though, neither of them seemed willing or able to seize the reins, and filling in for his brothers must have, at times, been incredibly demanding.

Carl has a real humility about him, a modesty that really shows how he felt about the whole thing. I get the sense that he just considered himself blessed to be a part it all. He shows up on so many SMiLE songs, and you can tell that he greatly respected Brian during that whole period. Completing the SMiLE songs on 20/20 and Sunflower and Surf's Up was his baby, and I honestly wouldn't be that surprised if he was the one that kept Heroes and Villains on the 70s-era setlists.
Even later on Love You and Adult/Child Carl seems to be right by his brother's side, saying "Wow, that's really great Bri..." and you can imagine him, after Landy left the first time, calling Brian up, "Hey Bri, you wanna go work on some of those new songs today? Not today? Alright...".

That's how I imagine it anyway...

On Surf's Up I just think that Carl really believed in what he was doing. He didn't kick WIBNTLA off the album just to be a jerk, I think he was doing what he thought was best for the group. No matter how great Dennis' song was, I think Carl was right in insisting on the inclusion of the title track, it was his way of saying "here, this is what we're about, this is who The Beach Boys are". He loved that song, he might have even thought it was the best song the band had ever done.
He really believed in The Beach Boys, he had to, he was their leader whether he thought himself so or not.

...man, that was unexpectedly emotional to write. Carl was a really wonderful guy wasn't he

because it sounds very different from the rest of the record, it is basically a cover of Riot in Cell Block 9 and it took the place of WIBNTLA and 4thOJ (albeit it didnt displace them in the first place!)

OF COURSE no harm meant. Holy schnikeys man. It wasn't a criticism, and it had absolutley nothing to do with you personally. In fact I didn't even look at the screen name to see who it was. I just saw STD and giggled. Bathroom humor you know.

HOW DARE THEY?

Fishmonk has an excellent point.
Carl may have just been protecting the album, Dennis had his spot on Sunflower, and that
Still failed regardless, but including Surfs Up helped big time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Andrew state that it was an argument over placement of the songs? And that it wasn't Carl throwing the songs off, but Dennis pulling them off in reaction to not getting the placement(s) he'd been lobbying for?

My earlier statement about dissension about what would appear on an LP clearly omitted several key earlier instances--"Hang On To Your Ego" and its lyrics, and, of course, pretty much the entire Smile LP. Unless folks have details concerning the band's interactions with respect to the songs considered for 20/20, it seems that Surf''s Up is the first instance of the band as a "democracy" finding itself at loggerheads over what they would put on the record.

Once again: what is wrong with trying to be political and topical in 1971? Because Mike was bald and Neil Young wasn't? That makes it such an embarrassing attempt? Has anyone even actually listened to these offending lyrics? If Mike was trying sooooooo hard to be hip and "in" why would he tell kids to stay the hell AWAY from a riot/demonstration????

could be sarcastic in the same way that Okie From Muskogee was hijacked by the counterculture, after all they did have an abstract sense of humour...

The problem is that Mike's lyrics aren't really political. He wrote them the same way that he wrote lyrics about surfing, it's all one big put on with him. He's not writing any of those songs because he wants to express himself or his own beliefs, he's writing them in order to sell as many records as possible. His lyrics are designed to appeal to what he thinks the counterculture wants.
If you listen to concert bootlegs from the 70's era, he's contemptibly and transparently trying to ingratiate himself with the audience. "We wrote this song when we were all stoned and high man, it was groovy", he doesn't take any of it seriously.

Peace, Cat. Didn't mean to be reactionary, a bit sensitive lately for various reasons.

His lyrics about surfing are great, as well. Professional songwriting isn't just about expressing one's own beliefs, that was a lie sold along with all those terrible singer-songwriter records of the early 70's. Songwriting is a job, and one need not have the exact experiences expressed in the lyrics to do a good job with them. I doubt Robbie Robertson really had personal sympathies with the South side of the Civil War conflict, but The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is pretty incredible.
Mike Love was thinking the counterculture wanted to hear lyrics that told them to stay away from violent conflict at political demonstrations? Seriously? You really don't think that WAS his personal belief, expressed in those lyrics? Right there, he is stating something very serious, but taking the edge off of it by placing it within the context of a good-time 50's rocker.

I dislike Student Demonstration Time because I find it to be an unexciting blues performance.  The lyrics could be brilliant as can be and I still wouldn't want it on the album unless the music changed with it.  Don't get me wrong I don't think it's terrible or anything, but at a time when I love so much of their material, released and unreleased, this one underwhelms me especially in the context of the album where I love most of the songs.

I don't think i'd like it on any album - I am not a Mike Love basher, and I don't dislike it based on just the lyrics - the whole vibe of the song is abrasive. Like a harsh toke, man. I can't even describe it that well, and I'm sorry for that, it's just like those radio commercials that shout at you. Don't need it, don't want it. I'm sure at a concert it would have went down a lot differently, and I can respect that it got them some FM cred, it just doesn't do it for me at all.

The album is eclecticism pushed to the limit. Unity never breaks, for some reason, as it probably does in 20/20.

 I only listened to the album through the 1990-something reissue. I don't know if the sound was improved in subsequent reissues, but for me the main problem is of a sonic nature. So much unlike its predecessor. And I'd add that part of the reason some people repell SDT has to do with the mastering: on my CD, at least, it sticks out probably because it is mastered louder than the rest.

I think that this is really a virtue of the production.

I´ve always thought this would´ve been a great line-up and would´ve satisfied all band members creativity (well, maybe not Mike´s...)

1. Don´t Go Near The Water
2. Long Promised Road
3. Take A Load Off Your Feet
4. Disney Girls
5. 4th Of July

6. Feel Flows
7. Lookin´At Tomorrow
8. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
9. Til I Die
10. Wouldn´t It Be Nice (To Live Again)
11. Surf´s Up

Yes, the relatively throwaway TALOYF is still there, but it´s harmless really... Student Demonstration Time is the real stinker (almost entirely, in my opinion, due to it´s hateful rightwing lyrics). 4th Of July works brilliantly coming after Disney Girls and as a side 1 closer. Meanwhile, WIBNTLA comes after Til I Die - as Dennis wanted - and Surf´s Up still closes the album - as Carl wanted.

It really is depressing to think that this potentially great album was dragged into the horror which is SDT due to disagreement between two loving brothers over something as trivial as tracklisting... I really understand Jack Reily when it comes to that.

 :violin

Couldn't find the yawning smiley.

 Please elaborate re "hateful right wing lyrics."  It may be the album's weakest track, but like Mick on "Street Fighting Man", Mike seems to lament the trials and tribulations of the day while ultimately telling people the best option is to steer clear of the violence. Is that hateful and/or right wing?

Only if Mike attempts it!

The insane Mike bias is quite stupifyingly obvious and tired. Rock n Roll is littered with silly songsa and exist simply because they rock! Is SDT one such example? Perhaps! We can talk about SGt Pepper being riddled with bad writing all we want but we'd be denying the simple power such a track like Getting Better carries simply because it feels so good and Ringo and Paul really swing on it. Such details can make a lazy writing job just as important and "worthy" as a not quite as exciting yet much more portentous track such as I'm Waiting For The Day.  I think we get too hung up on who wrote what versus how the damn thing simply sounds/feels.

Altho Mike Love's reputation has undergone a nice period of rehabilitation of late... one so effective that hell, even I think he's a cuddly, slightly dastardly grandpa with a flair for pinky rings but is ultimately harmless.... sirs, it's just going too far to claim that SDT isn't anything more than a hopelessly lame, instantly dated rewrite in an attempt to be "political" that presents an apathetic solution of... not doing anything. Stay inside. Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, ah what's on the teevee? I might as well not bother expressing myself or anything, I might get hurt! It's grating. It's like a car salesman dropping hipster lingo.

There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies back in bed, upon all the apparatus, wrapping a comforter tightly around you....

I would've loved just a straightforward cover, nice change of pace in the mix and the live versions are awfully fun!

And if I haven't pissed off the person reading this, allow me to offend across the entire fan spectrum by stating that I really love FEET and love playing it. I like it more than 4th of July. I may even like it more than that amazingly wonderful unreleased track we may finally get.

(strolls off singin' "He's a rebel and he'll never ever be any good, He's a rebel 'cause he never ever does what he should...")

What's stupifyingly obvious and tired are your ridiculous efforts to prop up a lousy track by setting up strawmen and attacking the motives of people who don't like what you like.

Look, SDT is obnoxious, boring, grating and derivative all in one--a rare feat.  It's a track that is routinely skipped, and not because it's by Mike.  Some of the people who hate SDT proposed replacing it with Big Sur--a Mike track.  There's also been plenty scorn for Feet, and that's not Mike.

Just cut the cr*p and accept the fact that SDT is a massive FAIL on an album that could have been a big success.

So, I can't criticize.... the criticizm of a song I love? It's your holier than thou opinion that SDT is lame but my opinion that it is not is simply a massive denial of reality? Oh, please! SDT is a rocking little track with hilariously contrary lyrics! Is it not OK to like something even though in the hallowed halls of Beach Boys scholar-dom it's "bad"?   Sure it is!

Can we at least have a group hug over loving "feet" though, while we're here?

Criticize the criticism all you want.  Just don't try to claim that people dislike it out of some sort of misguided Mike hatred.  It's the song itself people don't like.

The lyrics of SDT advocate not getting killed, being nonviolent. If that is "rightwing" or "apathetic", then John Lennon was as well.
And oh yeah, Student Demonstration Time rocks.

Mike Love sucks.

And you know what, that's just how I feel about him plain and simple. I've heard all the arguments, that the band would have never had its early commercial success without him, that his lyrics for Chug-A-Lug are classic, that he just had the band's best interests at heart, that all the band members had their flaws so it's not fair to single him out.

And you know what, none of those arguments change how I feel in the slightest. And at the end of the day that's all there is to it. If you like Mike Love, good for you. 

The backing track itself of Student Demonstration Time is great.  The lyrics though overall are lame, and Love's delivery of them mostly even lamer.  To me it always sounded smarmy, insincere and just the obvious "Hey let's be hip" grab that it was.   If they had to record this they ought to have just done a straight cover of Riot In Cell Block #9.  
Mike Love did have some really good moments lyrically, and great ones vocally, over the years, but he was not irreplaceable, and I think had it been him that left in '63 instead of Dave Marks, it might have been a really good thing.  He, of the original members, was the most expendable (my opinion of course, as is all of what I am writing here obviously).    
But whatever, it is as it was and is.  He has at least also provided (unwittingly) a lot to make fun of over the years (the hats, the stupid stage get ups, etc) - and laughter is good, so that's something anyway.   :p

Yes, and your Bruce Willis avatar certainly indicates you are a true connoisseur of talent, personality and artistic quality. What were we thinking? 

See, case in point. I still dislike Mike Love despite your persuasive argument. It's weird isn't it?

It is a bit weird to so vioilently dislike one of the core creative pillars of a band  you supposedly love. If I hated Mike even half as muchg as some of you do, I'd have to dislike The Beach Boys as a whole. And pick apart and nitpick his contributuions, re-sequence BBs albums in your head all you  want but Mike still wins :)

Everybody wins!

Side 1
1. Sound of Free
2. Long Promised Road
3. San Miguel
4. Feel Flows
5. 4th of July
6. Fallin' In Love

Side 2
1. Big Sur
2. Disney Girls (1957)
3. Wouldn't It Be Nice (To Live Again)
4. A Day In The Life of a Tree (sung instead by Brian would be better)
5. Til I Die
6. Surf's Up

I don't think I was being fair before by trivializing the argument so much. I just don't think it's a very a productive line of discussion.

Some members here insist on framing the conversation in an absurdly reductionist way, either you like the Beach Boys or you don't. Period. You either admit that the Student Demonstration Time lyrics are good or you admit that all the other lyrics Mike wrote are bad. You accept everything The Beach Boys give to you as presented, or you're an irresponsible fan.

The Beach Boys are not this infinitesimally small, irreducibly dimensionless point. The Beach Boys are a dynamic constellation of hundreds of songs, dozens of personalities, and fifty years of history.

Saying, "I like the lyrics on Good Vibrations, but I don't care for Mike Love's attitude and personality" is not a self-defeating or contradictory statement. Likewise disliking Student Demonstration Time does not commit anyone to a general dislike or hatred of Mike Love as a human being.

It's not this either or choice, it's criticism. It's a judgement based on individual taste and general aesthetic preference. Some people might prefer Mike's lighter fare, some might enjoy the self-serious Rieley lyrics, some might enjoy both depending on their mood that day. These are critical and subjective judgements, and a judgement passed on one song, on one album, can not be seamlessly extrapolated by reductionist logic into a moral condemnation of the guy who diddled out the crappy lyrics on a napkin while eating lunch.

No album that starts with "Don't Go Near the Water" can be the greatest anything.

Well, I'm being told to cut the crap and accept SDT as a fail and I simply refuse to do so. And I'm sorry, but the criticisms of the track don't even make any sense. All we keep hearing is how, in this opinion or that opinion, is how bad the lyrics are how it, just, ya know is soooooooooo obviously a pathetic grab at being hip. Others can demonstrate with logic how the lyrics in question really don't support these assertions and a dialogue can't even be achieved because someone else just pops up stating the same tired thing. You are correct in what you wrote about criticism and opinion, but when it comes of SDT (and Mike in general) there's this holier than thou attitude that calling something lame is in irrefutable fact. This is what gets annoying. And this B.S about oh, Big Sur should have been on Surf's Up just reeks of a backhanded compliment. I mean, is there a more perfect place for that song than on Holland where it opens up, of all things, California Saga? The Beach Boys were not morons and SDT wasn't included on Surf's Up just because Mike's feelings would get hurt if it wasn't.... It's easy to bash SDT because it's Mike (and I don't buy criticizing it for any other reason) but to me, Neil Young sounds just as desperate to be hip with Ohio, as do Joni Mitchell or CSN with Woodstock. Those two songs make me want to vomit. Now, Southern Man, on the other hand is completely incendiary. Then again, the players on that track really bring it, whereas Ohio doesn't have the same power (Neil has stated that drummer on Ohio Dallas Taylor would purposefully play badly on his songs). Point I'm trying to make is that a song  can be imperfect from a compositional/lyrical standpoint but can achieve greatness through the sheer physicality and visceral qualities of it's recording..... I think this is a valid point but I'm sure this will be followed up by someone just going..... "Uh, yeah, but you're wrong, SDT sucks"

You're just begging the question.

Oh wonderfull, another topic turns into a Mike sucks thread. ::)

It's just Erik and Ian harping on this one point. They keep trying to argue away "this song doesn't really do it for me" as if that were some analytical point that could be decisively proven false. What's worse is that the argument repeats ad nauseum as

"I don't really enjoy SDT because X"
"Beep Boop, X is not a valid predicate of this subject. Query: Why do you hate Mike Love?"

Honestly you guys just need to get over it. Some people don't like SDT, I'm sorry, you're not going to logically talk anyone out of feeling that way or shame them into agreeing with you by attacking their supposed motives.

If you want people to listen to and enjoy SDT, instead of being bitter and angry that people don't like the song as much as you do, you should try a lighter touch. Explain what the song means to you, do some critical description of your favorite things about the song.

Because really, you aren't winning any converts or doing anything to make any of the posters you're arguing against agree with you. You're just alienating them from your position by being inflexible and confrontational.

^I'm not that keen on Mike's SDT vocals, either... it's not bad, but the distortion really accentuates the annoying characteristics of his nasal twang. AIWTD is a much more convinving case of Mike rocking out.

I DISLIKE FIREFIGHTERS.

Haha I remember listening to SDT for the first time, the sirens were an instant turnoff, bad production call!  ;D

I dislike 'Student Demonstration Time' not for the lyrics (which aren't too bad, Mike, really!) but for it being just so obnoxious-sounding. Especially being nestled with nice, cooling little things like 'Disney Girls' and 'Feel Flows'. It's like relaxing to smooth, melodic chamber music and then some idiot comes storming in blasting Molly Hatchet.

And I don't hate Mike Love, not really. I hate what he sometimes has said and some of the "creative" decisions he's made for the band...

Brian Wilson - responsible creatively for gems such as Today! Summer Days, Pet Sounds and the SMiLE music.

Mike Love - responsible creatively for stinkers like Summer In Paradise. UGH.

It's like different eras of Mike I like over others. I'd much prefer to hang out with epic beard and stupid hats 1971 Mike than 1976 gold lame, rings and a frickin' turbin Mike Love.

Same here, the Mike I love the most is the weird-looking beardo who wrote Big Sur. Not that I have anything against the gold lame, turban-wearing, weird-looking beardo. And I'm okay with Mike's current look, too. He looks his age.

I really like "Don't Go Near The Water" but it is a serious exemplar of a mediocre song saved by production. Though the backing track is super cool -- there's so much going on in there!

"It's like different eras of Mike I like over others. I'd much prefer to hang out with epic beard and stupid hats 1971 Mike than 1976 gold lame, rings and a frickin' turbin Mike Love."

True.  I think SDT is the weakest track on the album, but this is a strong album and and I wouldn't remove any track; I would add WIBNTLA and 4th of July, however.

A little too simplistic. It'd be like if I faulted Brian for creating "Smart Girls" and claimed Mike was superior for having written the basis of "All I Wanna Do" or something.

Granted Brian is obviously the better (but then he is Brian frigging Wilson, generally regarded as one of the best pop songwriters ever), but still.

Interesting Topic, Anyhow while I was reading this topic I decided to make a video with early track listings, It was originally two parts but had to trim it to three because of Youtube's limitations with video lengths. So heres the first part

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=811yE9x6Bwo&feature=youtu.be 

SDT is corny, but it's also catchy and kinda enjoyable.  I don't mind the lyrics--my interpretation is basically "things are pretty screwed up, but rioting just makes it worse,' which is fine--not as eloquent as "Revolution," but not offensive either. 

I think that "Don't Go Near the Water" sucks, though.  Very corny, cloying song, with sometimes baffling lyrics (the water is polluted because of toothpaste?)  It's the kind of thing that gives a bad name to eco-protest songs, which is too bad. 

"Take a Load off Your Feet" is also a bit irritating, and not the strongest musically, but ultimately, it has a kind of eccentric feel that redeems it. 

The rest of the album pretty much rules, though, including "Disney Girls" (frankly, I think that Disney Girls is the third-best song on the album, after Surf's Up and Till I Die!)  If some of the songs above, especially DGNTW, could be replaced by Dennis tracks, it would be a great album, though not as great as PS. 

Well, it was a generalization. Yes, Mike has created some lovely things, Brian some crappy things. It's interesting to note that even on some of Brian's worst solo recordings, there's always something cool and interesting in there. I have no frame of reference for Mike's solo work since I've never heard any, but typically when he was in control musically on things (that I know of) tend to be pretty crappy. I don't know why, but sometime after Holland, Mike stopped writing great songs for the most part, though his tunes on TWGMTR are pretty good. It's strange that he went from something like 'Big Sur' and, with Dennis, 'Only With You', both great, to stuff like 'Everyone's In Love With You' and much of the terrible MIU album.

Hey, isn't 'Brian's Back' a solo recording? I hate that song.

You should listen to Country Love. You may never (Mike) love again

And also, even though I love SDT, it could've more of a single (which it was I think?) and not included on an album. If they were to have released Surfs up with the eary track listings before the changes, then it would've been more great and SDT somewhat brings the album down.

Just out of curiosity, what are you basing your claim from youtube that your sequence "is believed to be approximately as follows:"?

If they had just left the original lyrics in (Riot in Cellblock 9) the song would have been a brilliant cover - but the greed for publishing pushed Mike to rewrite the lyrics and I think ruin the song.  Of course they started covering the original in concert before Mike came up with the student demonstration idea - although it may have been Jack's idea in his push to make the beach boys more relevant.

Nah, a Leiber-Stoller cover would cause just as much negative reaction in the middle of a totally original, no-covers album. And it would still sound abrasive.

Yep :P based off the orignal track listings I've seen on wikipedia

You're right, there is nothing to remove. Is "Sound of free" a part of the Surf's Up sessions & could it be on the album ? Here is a list of the songs that can be on "Surf's Up" :
*Don't Go Near the Water (If you consider that "Surf's Up" is a production album, so DGNTW is a perfect intro)
*Long Promised Road (great tune, nothing much to say)
*Take a Load Off Your Feet (good song, ok)
*Disney Girls (1957) (classic)
*Student Demonstration Time (the rock tune in a cool & almost gentle album. It souldn't be between DG & FF but it's ok)
*Feel Flows (what a magnificent production and song...)
*Lookin' at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) (it's for me the weakest track musically on the album... well, next !)
*A Day in the Life of a Tree (sad & atmospheric, classic ! [great coda])
*Til I Die (beautiful & classic [great coda too])
*Surf's Up (something that everybody must have listened before dying [third great coda what a side !])
*4th Of July (again, a beautiful track)
*Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again (never heard this but I would die to hear a preview !)

Nearly all these songs are great. That's why their order is decisive. Here is my proposal :
1)DGNTW
2)LPR
3)TALOYF
4)SDT
5)LAT
6)DG

2nde side :
1) Feel Flows
2)4th of july
3)ADITLOAT
4) 'Til I die
5)Surf's Up

depressive uh ?

I cannot put WIBNTLA because as I said earlier I've never listened to the song.

Here is my vision of a best Surf's Up !

Hate is a choice.  Saying 'so and so sucks' is a choice.  In a real sense, it's libel however easy to get away with.  Saying 'so and so sucks' is not a criticism.  Saying 'I don't like SDT and here's why... [logic given] 'is' criticism.  Saying 'I don't like SDT and here's why...  'the-guy-who-wrote-lyrics sucks'?  Not criticism.

You can go on attempting a defense of these words of yours but you haven't evidenced any *criticism*.  Your intent is clearly to disparage an individual.  It's somewhat easy to prove since the board hasn't erased your posts, have they?

I'd love a instrumental mix of that song for a new boxset. The track is incredibly dense.

Fishmonk - I agree with the great capture of the Boys career overview, and the dynamism and constellation of work.  I feel pretty much the same.  Having been in college (a sophomore) at the time of its' release, STD struck a chord (pun intended) with me.  But I d disagree with your take on Mike and here's why.  His fellow bandmate/cousin was at the center of a maelstrom, with his CO (conscientious objector) status.  First, It was considered un-American, not to serve when called up, especially as a baby boomer.  Second, type of harsh tune that STD lyrics were drafted to was not the style per se, of the BB's.  Third, they were playing colleges and universities and could not be unaffected by what they saw, the killings of demonstrators at Kent State, and the unpopularity of America as they toured worldwide. 

And, I think it was responsive to a social situation that required at least some input/statement from America's Band.  The napkin back should not be so quickly denigrated.  I once bought a house at a wedding, with the agreement done on a napkin.  Had I waited for paper, the house would have been gone.  Had Mike waited for paper, his thoughts might have been gone as well.  I think that those who were on college campuses at the time with the daily disruptions and high police visibility might agree. It was awful. 

The inspiration for the lyrics came to him, and he wrote on what was available.  Those are indicia of the spontaneity of his craft. Finally, I have gotten to observe Mike more closely as he developed the Touring Band and find his way without the rest of his bandmates.  I have real respect for his work ethic, his ability to be the front man, and lead singer, and put on a show that is not solely for his contemporaries but one that is bringing in continuing generations. 

You are within your rights to dislike anyone personally but, at least give him his due.  Please.  :kiss

I Decided to post the video on my Imageshack, there two parts:

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5839/tiynxktmhmqffldkwtiqul.mp4
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/9493/ynidqipgzrhnnoivpcnvvn.mp4

Since we're now hearing WIBNTLA (finally), this thread should be used.
My personal Surfs Up track listing as of right now:
Side A
1 Surf's Up
2 Looking at Tomorrow
3 Feel Flows
4 Disney Girls
5 4th Of July

Side B
6 Sound of Free
7 Don't Go Near The Water
8 A Day In The Life Of A Tree
9 'Til I Die (Rab's mix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS34TZR3SNY)
10 Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again

I'm liking this right now. I love the way each track follows the last with this one.

Here's my personal fantasy alternate album. It should be noted that in this alternate universe, Sunflower was finished in February-ish 1970 and therefore did not include It's About Time or Cool Cool Water (the later of which was on Wild Honey in its early version!). Also, this alternate universe assumes that Smile was finished and released in 1967 and therefore Surf's Up is not on this album (and the album is, therefore, not called Surf's Up).

I have used as my main criterion for possible inclusion only tracks that were started and finished between July 1970 and July 1971, using AGD's site as my source for these recording dates.

1)   Sound of Free
2)   Long Promised Road
3)   It’s About Time
4)   Disney Girls (1957)
5)   Big Sur
6)   Feel Flows
7)   Barbara
8)   Lookin’ at Tomorrow
9)   Don’t Go Near the Water
10)   A Day in the Life of a Tree
11)    ‘Til I Die
12)    (Wouldn’t It Be Nice to) Live Again


I personally find "4th of July" overrated and feel it suffers from the same lyrical problems that, as others have pointed out, "Long Promised Road," "Feel Flows," and some other Rieley lyrics have. However, I find those two to be musically more interesting, comparatively, than 4th of July (albeit more than a little ponderous themselves), so I have chosen them over 4th of July. "Lady," although an exemplary track, properly belongs to the Sunflower era. People also forget that the demo of Barbara was recorded during the Surf's Up era as well (unless AGD's site means this to be the instrumental version I have heard on bootlegs), so I have included it as well. I think it could have been released just as is.

Also note that I have tied a few songs together thematically. The first three songs have a "personal redemption" or "emancipation" theme. Then there is the two-song ecological duo of Don't Go Near the Water and the more metaphorical "A Day in the Life of a Tree" (which still segues perfectly into "'Til I Die"). In the absence of "Surf's Up," "(Wouldn't It Be Nice to) Live Again" does make an excellent album closer (and a redemptive "answer" to "'Til I Die), judging from Adam's cover version (I'm holding out on listening to the real thing till I get my MIC). I contemplated ending the album with "'Til I Die," obviously the masterpiece of the whole album in the absence of "Surf's Up," but something about that doesn't seem quite right, and the answering quality of WIBNTLA is interesting to me.

No Long Promised Road?

I love this stuff....This will be my new Surf's Up album:

01  Don't Go Near The Water
02  Lady
03  (Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again
04  Long Promised Road
05  Disney Girls
 
06  Feel Flows
07  Lookin' At Tomorrow
08  A Day In The Life Of A Tree
09  Til I Die
10  Surf's Up

Whenever I see the word 'suite' in connection with The Beach Boys, I want to vomit. They were a pop group. Let's not try and attach 'importance' to three songs by the same guy by calling it a 'sutie', ffs.

Yeah, Brian! Stop trying to attach importance to your own material by calling it a suite! You fool, you write mere pop music!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/brian-wilson-at-work-on-new-solo-record-20130606 wrong RS article - the lengthy one where he plays the journalist tracks has one of the projects defined as a 'suite'.

i think Surf's Up is almost perfect as is... SDT is a good performance, though obviously not a great song. It's lyrics are the problem, though then again, Long Promised Road also has cringe-worthy lyrics too and that's generally considered to be good.  

I have been listening to Long Promised Road for 42 years and I have never cringed once. Just saying... ;)

Great input into the conversation!

"lift the jeweled scepter when the weight turns the smile to a frown" is such a bad lyric

I love threads like this. I figured since we've now heard WIBNTLA, that I would share my fantasy tracklisting. Sorry if it's similar to someone else's ( I didn't look at all of them).

Side One:
1. Sounds of Free
2. Don't Go Near The Water
3. Long Promised Road
4. Disney Girls (1957)
5. Take A Load Off Your Feet
6. (Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again

Side Two:
7. Lookin' At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
8. 4th of July*
9. A Day In The Life of A Tree
10. 'Till I Die
11. Surf's Up

*I was hesitant about including "4th of July" as it's not one of my favorites (it's very slow and a bit depressing). I thought about replacing it with "Lady" or putting "Sounds of Free" in it's place and making "San Miguel" the lead off track. Then I remembered that this was just a fantasy tracklisting and I stopped worrying about it.

Still, any way you look at it, Dennis is well represented.

My final track listing after much deliberation (  :lol):

Don't go near the water
Long promised road
4th of July
Disney Girls
Fallin' in love
(Wouldn't it be nice to) Live Again

Feel Flows
Sound of Free
Lookin' at tomorrow
A day in the life of a tree
'Til I die
Surf's Up

Side one is pretty Dennis-tastic. I was going to switch places between WIBNTLA and SU but after hearing Live Again (and felt it lived up to the hype and then some) it still gets over shadowed by the full on majesty of Brian's songs, that it does a disservice to Dennis to let his song wrap up the album.

Sorry Dennis, but I think Carl was right on this one and I wish your pride hadn't prompted you to withdraw your songs from the album. It could have been the best album of their career as a band, but for that.

My final track-listing for Surf's Up:
1. Don't Go Near The Water
2. 4th Of July
3. Long Promised Road
4. Take A Load Off Your Feet
5. Disney Girls (1957)
6. Student Demonstration Time
7. Feel Flows
8. Lookin' At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
9. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
10. 'Til I Die
11. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again
12. Surf's Up

Had Surf's Up been released with this track-listing, it would definitely have been considered one of the greatest albums ever, with Pet Sounds, The Smile Sessions, and Sunflower.

A bit late on this thread, but no, no way that SU could have been the greatest.


Ooooooh yes it can! It should take at least seven seconds of pause though. ;D

But I do find it fascinating how, with just the addition ("Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again") and subtraction (maybe "Take A Load Off Your Feet" or "Student Demonstration Time") OF JUST ONE SONG, how much improved or different the album feels. I'm having problems thinking of another Beach Boys' album where that might be true. And, to think how close it was to happening, if sequencing was really the issue...

So was the issue that Dennis wanted WIBNTLA after "Til I Die" and the rest of the band refused? I'm going to try that sequencing when I get home tonight. For years I've used Adam Marsland's version of WIBNTLA as a 'placeholder' for the real thing in hopes that it would finally get released, so I'm looking forward to trying this out.

To me Fallin' In Love should be with Sunflower.  And I'd consider using H.E.L.P. Is On The Way (maybe over Feet).  Barbara is another possible track.  One song I just don't get is ADITLOAT.  I just don't like it.  Why would they use Jack to sing (if you call it that) when they have 6 lead singers, all of whom could have done it way better?  I'm sure it's about the lyrics, but it's never been much for me.  Once I make my version of SU, I'll give it another spin.

One of the thing that's really striking about A Day In The Life... is how much Jack sounds like older Brian. I always see it as evidence that Brian wanted to sound the way he became.

Funny you said that. I always pretend it's Brian singing even though I know it's not.

Surf's Up is a great album and one of the BB albums that i could connect the most with when i discovered.. but now, knowing all the tracks there was around and realize how much better it could have been, in my top the album just goes without a doubt after Sunflower, Love You, Holland..

But with a changed tracklist, adding Sounds Of Free, 4th Of July and Live Again, and pretend stuff like SDT never happened, yeah definitely one of their strongest.

I think it would've easily have been absolutely one of their very, very greatest albums. This running order works for me:

1. Don't Go Near The Water
2. Long Promised Road
3. Sound of Free
4. Disney Girls (1957)
5. 4th Of July

6. Feel Flows
7. Lookin' At Tomorrow
8. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
9. Til I Die
10. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again

Slightly longer than usually gap, maybe ten seconds for the sheer beauty of the preceding TID/WIBNTLA double-whammy to sink in, the listener thinks Wow it can't get any better than that - and then...

11. Surf's Up

The fantasy Surf's Up thing is great but if you had to be a stickler to the facts, as far as I'm aware

1- WIBNTLA and 4th of July were the two definite Dennis compostions originally put forward with maybe Lady as a third.
2- SDT was always set to be included even before Dennis pulled his tracks. It didn't replace anything.
3- TALOYF was the song exhumed from the vaults after Dennis had his hissy fit (nothing on the 'Landlocked' reels was set in stone to appear on the next album).
4 - Sound of Free was never considered to appear at any time.

Is this about right? Correct me if I've got things wrong. Paging Mr.Doe.........

It would make sense that "WIBNTLA" and "4th of July" were the songs to appear on the album, considering the tracklisting.
Sunflower has 12 songs and  Surf's Up would have also had 12 songs, had Dennis kept his compositions on the album.

I think the fact that Rieley's vocal is so rough and vulnerable is almost the whole point and I think it really adds to the song. Had Carl or someone sung it sweetly it wouldn't have worked so well. What you hear is what Brian wanted. Of course if you don't like it that's fair enough, just giving my own interpretation of the song and why I love it so much....

It's a metaphor for reaching the pinnacle and not finding the happiness you expected when you got there. Also, the lyric is "So hard to lift the jeweled scepter, when the weight turns a smile to a frown". It's Jack's imitation of Van Dyke. More like poem set to music. Just thought "cringe-worthy" was a bit strong, is all.

Lots of long songs on SU. I don't know if it would have room for 12 songs. Maybe 11 would be doable.

SDT was an important track for the Beach Boys -- it got them some much-needed FM play. In my fantasy alternative history SDT would have been released as a single only -- the  band would still get the airplay, but SU wouldn't have been weakened by a cut that was OK for its era, but that has subsequently become very dated and cheesy.

My updated fantasy Surf's Up album after hearing WIBNTLA:

1. Sound of Free
2. Long Promised Road
3. Lady
4. Disney Girls (1957)
5. 4th of July

6. Feel Flows
7. A Day In The Life of a Tree
8. Till I Die
9. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again
10. Surf's Up


Make Lookin' at Tomorrow a B-side to LPR single.

OK, I'll bite, why cheesy? Lyric completely misunderstood, I'll grant you, or has the meaning of cheesy changed? I know that in here, it is a second buzzword, just next to "creepy". ;)

I think you 100% correct on that... My track tracklisting is just a fantasy "if I were in charge of the beach boys in 1971, this is what I would have done"

Otherwise I would revise my track-listing thus:

Don't go near the water
Long promised road
4th of July
Disney Girls
Student Demonstration Time

Feel Flows
Lookin' at tomorrow
A day in the life of a tree
'Til I die
(Wouldn't it be nice to) Live Again
Surf's Up

 ;D

I love Rieley's lyrics, think they fit the songs to which they're set perfectly. He was a great manager for the group: right place, right time.

For me Rieley was inconsistent as a lyric writer. Most of the lyrics of LPR are good enough I don't always notice them 'cause Carl's singing is so damn good. His lyrics to Feel Flows definitely fit the spaced out feel of the song, since the words are pretty spacey too. Steamboat is pretty good I guess.

"So hard to lift the jeweled scepter" is a ridiculous line but I don't mind it. I guess he wrote the words of A Day in the Life of a Tree and I'd say it's his most successful lyric. 

"Cheesy" -- defined by the Urban Dictionary as "Trying too hard, unsubtle, and inauthentic."

"For What It's Worth" covered the same basic subject in a more subtle manner, by making the cops vs. kids situation feel more universal. Mike's lyrics were too on-the-nose for my taste.

Agreed about "A Day in The Life of a Tree." The lyrics for "Long Promised Road" are unwieldy, clearly written by someone who was not going to have to deal with singing them himself. It says a lot about Carl as a vocalist that he was able to deliver those lyrics, with all their consonants and syllables, in such a beautiful way.

I've got to say, with WIBNTLA, we would have had three of the Wilsons' best songs ever on Surfs Up: "Long Promised Road," "Till I Die," and WIBNTLA.

I almost feel as though "Wouldn't it be Nice to Live Again" is the natural evolution of what Dennis was doing when he wrote "Forever."

It's worth noting for clarity's sake that the correct title is "Sound of Free," and not "Sounds of Free."

Thanks. Sorry to be anal about one letter, but it actually makes a significant difference in the title to me.

Landlocked
1971

1. Don't Go Near The Water
2. 4th Of July
3. Long Promised Road
4. Take A Load Off Your Feet
5. Disney Girls (1957)
6. Student Demonstration Time

7. San Miguel
8. Feel Flows
9. Lookin' At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
10. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
11. 'Til I Die
12. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again


If we're talking fantasy tracklistings, "Surf's Up" came out in early 1967 on Smile. :)

but still Brian cracked and wrote Til I Die?
nah I kid ;D

Sure.  The only difference is he held it together for a few months more. :lol  Then they still pulled back but released Le'd In Hawaii instead of Smiley Smile. ;D

No. Pet Sounds is the greatest hands down. forever.

The Beach Boys - Landlocked (1971)

SIDE A

01. Don't Go Near the Water
02. Long Promised Road
03. Take A Load Off Your Feet
04. Sound of Free
05. Disney Girls (1957)
06. Student Demonstration Time
07. Feel Flows

SIDE B

08. Fallin' In Love (Lady)
09. Lookin' At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)
10. A Day In the Life Of a Tree
11. 4th of July
12. 'Til I Die
13. (Wouldn't It Be Nice) To Live Again
 

I will want to compile my own version with the new song available, but not sure where I would place it compared to other albums.  I will say that the following songs would definitely make it (in no particular order):

Disney Girls
Long Promised Road
Feel Flows
4th of July
Wouldn't It Be Nice (To Live Again) -> assuming it reaches even half the level of the cover version
A Day in the Life of a Tree
'Til I Die
Surf's Up

And with regards to the lyrics complaint, it's not very convincing to someone who doesn't pay any attention to lyrics in the first place.

Can someone elaborate on the root of the idea that Lady would have turned up on Surf's Up? Is there an interview or tape reel or some other bit of contemporaneous evidence? My recollection is that Sound of Free was never considered for Surf's Up, although it may have been for sunflower??? I can't remember...

Well, Desper compiled that famous tape with finished songs as a first step to the next album. Lady was on there, but only TALOYF and Welfare song made it from there to the final lineup, and, if you will, Til I Die.

Well, what you wished a year ago actually happened. Played that backing track recently & indeed it's great! One of the highlights of the set, for sure.

My choice
Surf's Up :

Side A

Long Promised Road
Don't Go Near The Water
Lookin' At Tomorrow
Student Demonstration Time
(crossfading beep sound and next intro)
Fourth Of July
Disney Girls

SideB

Till I Die
Feel Flow
Take A Load Off Your Feet
A Day In The Life Of Tree
Live Again
Surf's Up

Don't go~and Feel are weak to me as the opener.

Listening to a revamp tracklist of SU with WIBNTLA replacing Surf's Up and 4th of July replacing Take A Load Off Your Feet, the album now feels more complete as a statement of the dark side of post 60s hippie idealism. Sunflower was the light side of it all and now this is the flip side.

Yes, the mood is more depressing. No Sunflower-era outtake here to lighten up the mood a bit. Themes of ecology, race wars, Vietnam, unemployment, student protest, yearning for simpler times, etc. take the forefront. This is not the Beach Boys of the idealized American dream of ''fun in the sun. Surf's up, indeed. In that regard, IMHO, it now joins the rank of albums like What's Goin' On and There's A Riot Goin' On as a stark and soulful portrait of early 70s America.

After listening to WIBNTLA for the millionth time, I took a stab at making my own Surf's Up tracklist:

1. Sound Of Free
2. Disney Girls
3. 4th of July
4. Don't Go Near The Water
5. Wouldn't It Be Nice To (Live Again)

6. Feel Flows
7. Fallin' In Love (2009 mix)
8. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
9. Til I Die (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS34TZR3SNY)
10. Surf's Up (TSS)

The album opens with a song about children being drawn to the sound of free - then the album closes with "a children's song". The harmonies at the end of Don't Go Near The Water segue perfectly into WIBNTLA - and that is a phenomenal side 1 closer.

I used The Smile Session's Surf's Up instead of the '71 version. Can't pass up having Brian's vocal on this fantasy mix.

If I can remember to tear myself away from GTA V (and iO7 when it comes out later today!!!) I'm going to try these Landlocked tracklists.

Surf's Up never really made much sense to me.  To hodge podge.  But I've never tried to address it for some reason.  So I can't wait to try everyone's tracklists.  Gonna finally fix this album!!!!!!

This tracklisting works for me right now:


1) Sound of free
2) Don't go near the water
3) 4th of july
4) Feel flows
5) Disney girls
6) Lady (Fallin in love)
7) Looking at tomorrow
8  Long promised road
9) A day in the life of a tree
10) Til I die
11) Wouldn't it be nice to live again

I tried to keep all smile-songs and fragments from later albums, so of course "Surf's up" had to go. Also no real rockers on the album since I eliminated SDT, but I like to overall mellow and darker feel of the new running order.

Interesting but far too Dennis heavy for me. This is the version I burned the night I got MIC.

Don't Go Near The Water
4th of July
Long Promised Road
Disney Girls
Student Demonstration Time
WIBNTLA
Feel Flows
Looking At Tomorrow
A Day in the Life of a Tree
'Till I Die
Surf's Up

That is simply one of the greatest albums of all time

After trying a ga-zillion different sequences I have settled on:

Don't Go Near The Water
Long Promised Road
4th of July
Disney Girls (1957)
Student Demonstration Time

Feel Flows
Looking At Tomorrow
A Day in the Life of a Tree
'Til I Die
(Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again (my own edit with longer intro and earlier fade out)
Surf's Up.

Bonus tracks at the end... Dennis' other two songs and Feet ending with Desper's remix of 'Til I Die.

Done. I aint fiddling with this anymore.  >:D

I wanted to add Long Promised Road to my list to even it out, but also wanted to keep it under 10 songs.
______

I've been listening to Surf's Up era songs all day - can't believe how cohesive they all sound. All the Dennis material, Bruce's song, Brian's tunes, Al's song - they all have the same feel to them, yet they have their own distinct style. Pretty impressive.

That's exactly the track listing I go with. It just works.

(deleted, my tracklist was dumb)

I was wrong. Here's the actual final tracklisting:

Side 1:
01. Don't Go Near The Water
02. Take A Load Off Your Feet
03. Disney Girls (1957)
04. Lookin' At Tommorow (A Welfare Song)
05. Lady (Fallin' In Love)
06. 4th Of July

Side 2:
01. Feel Flows
02. Long Promised Road
03. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
04. Surf's Up
05. Til' I Die
06. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again

I'm glad Dennis's songs didn't make Surf's Up. Too slow and boring.

4th of July? More like 4th Nap Today.

loool

What about WIBNTLA?

It's too boring. And also slow, apparently.

Well, that's me told.  :thud

  Honestly, I can see your point re "4th of July". It is good but not great. But to extend that opinion to "WIBNTLA" and "Lady" is a lapse in judgement and taste.

 The SURF'S UP album has fascinated me since I heard highlights included on TEN YEARS OF HARMONY in 1983. My custom version never loses  the original ten. Take ANY of those tracks away and SURF'S UP is no longer SURF'S UP. "Feet" never seems to get much respect but its goofy ambience would be in sync with either SMILEY SMILE or WILD HONEY. I do not have any serious issues with SDT either.

 One of the best album covers of all-time btw.

I like Surf's Up just as it is and wouldn't change a thing. Denny's songs wouldn't have been an improvement in my mind.

It's mostly the attempt at ecologically-conscious lyrics that turns me off. With maybe the exception of Tree, all the lyrics for those songs feel a bit strained and artificial. River Song feels totally genuine because Denny wrote and sung it like he really meant it, whereas DGNTW feels like a trashy attempt at getting in at what was hip more than anything. I spose Rieley could be the one to be blamed for this, but nyeh

I loooove DGNTW. It is sooo catchy, even if it is pretty stupid.

Also, the tag is brilliant.

I like listening to it (agreed that the tag is very nice), but the lyrics aren't great. Especially Al's part, which is almost cheerfully stupid. I love how he just grins while singing it in the video.

The lyrics are really dumb. A 10 year old could have wrote them I feel. The song is really good though, and it is quite catchy. I appreciated it even more when I heard the instrumental version on MIC. Really a great arrangement.

I always found it funny (noticeable on the 2-fers especially) that Cool Cool Water from the previous album comes right before Don't Go Near The Water on the next album. First they extol the virtues of water and a year later they're telling us not to go near it.  :-D

You don't think adding Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again would've improved Surf's Up? ? ?

Nope. A sideways move at best in my opinion.

4th of July is what opened my mind to the possibility that there existed good BB material post-Smile.

Different strokes I guess.

:lol

My take is that it should have been a double LP, and room for all the BRI "principals" to submit their work.   ;)

The addition of WIBNTLA and 4th of July and exclusion of SDT and Feet would have made it an album of unparallelled depth and melancholia. A majestic, lovely, seamless, angst-infused masterpiece, if a little one-dimensional.

Agreed ^

Though keeping Student Demonstration Time in among all the other much subtler songs is interesting. I don't love the final version on the album, but I like the contrast between it and, for example, Disney Girls.

Agreed, minus the 'one-dimensional' comment.

I think they should've released SDT as a single only, a) to keep Mike happy, and b) because, as has been mentioned, while it may not have aged well, it did recieve a lot of radio exposure at the time.

Surf' Up (with 'Feet' staying in, simply to lighten the mood):

1. Don't Go Near the Water
2. Long Promised Road
3. Take A Load Off Your Feet
4. Disney Girls
5. 4th Of July

6. Feel Flows
7. Lookin' At Tomorrow
8. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
9. Til I Die
10. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again

(extra couple of seconds pause to allow the stunning double-whammy of tracks 9 and 10 to sink in, and then...)

11. Surf's Up

So Dennis threw a tantrum and pulled his tracks from the album? Carl and Jack should have over-ruled him and included them anyway.

People can argue all day, but SDT "charted" #10 in the Boston market, where there are a ton of colleges.

Another one, hit about #90, Til I Die. And, although, "taken as a whole" it is masterful, SDT was the ONLY single, that got any real airplay.  It was a harsh but necessary song, to be included.  Riots all over the US college campuses, for the war, race riots, demonstrations to end the war, and people need to read the history, contemporaneous to the release.  It was a reflection on American society, at the time.  Art and music generally do reflect society.  ;)

Exactly. You've just completely proven my point. As a single, it was spot-on. As an album track, it was too of its time and we didn't need it.

Some bands entire catalogue hasn't aged well - we should be grateful that with the BB's, it's only a relatively small proportion of their output.

It is impossible to separate the two.  It was a consciousness-raising album. STD is harsh, but in the mix and gives the album some "punch." And, even retro Disney Girls -1957, it looks at a slice of society, both "as it is" (in the 1960's and early 1970's) and the retro Disney Girls to a more early Baby Boomer "coming of age." (Society as it was.)

People have a short attention span. And they were weary of waiting for SMiLE. They were also weary of waiting five years, for Surf's Up (the single, as featured on the Bernstein special, Inside Pop.)  On first listen, people didn't realize it was the Beach Boys on SDT, but for Mike's lead.  It was a departure of style and substance.  Later, in an interview, with just Brian, he chats about Lieber and Stoller.  It fits.  The LP was #15, in the UK, and #29 In the US, despite now being considered #154 of the 500 Rolling Stone ranked albums of all time.  

They also forget the the Boys worked and toured with bands like Buffalo Springfield, (CSNY) and other anti-war music spokespersons as-it-were, and must have discussed these social implications and impact of music on politics, giving a voice to young people.  They are a very socially responsible band.  They were pioneers with clean water issues, ecology, etc. Most of these bands, were, including The Beatles, with Give Peace a Chance.

It could have been a double album.  Remember, it seems that Jack nixed a bunch of stuff, and this album is a classic, but did not hit a home run when released.  Critical acclaim is different from sales and airplay.   ;)

Don't you mean 'as well as being considered #154 of the 500 Rolling Stone ranked albums of all time'? 154 of all time is pretty impressive!

Yeah, I hear what you're saying but still my point stands: in hindsight, had SDT been a single only, it would've been perfect in pretty much every respect.

However, this I felt was just plain wrong: "People have a short attention span. And they were weary of waiting for SMiLE. They were also weary of waiting five years, for Surf's Up".

People hadn't been waiting 5 years for Surf's Up - if anything they'd entirely forgotten all about it and moved on. The wait for Smile ended in 1967, when it was officially announced it was scrapped. The appearance of Surf's Up in '71 was a pleasant surprise for music fans, and one which helped promote the album.

Nay-nay! We waited for SMiLE for 37 years!  And we waited for Surf's Up since we heard it in 1967, although recorded in 1966.  STD only charted in a "few" markets.  Boston was a huge college market.  In fact, David Marks was studying music at Berklee at the time.  It was "always coming" according to the Touring Band.  Boston was one of those fm-driven markets. You'd hear Beach Boys in Harvard Square boutiques.  A huge surprise, given the general and overall public perception. 

And, while it might have been "shelved" behind the corporate veil, not once, did I ever hear that pronounced.  In a lot of the LP's there are songs that reportedly don't "fit" such as Sloop John B on Pet Sounds.  But, as the listener "interprets" it, maybe they "find" a fit.  Music isn't much different from literary analysis.  The reader interprets what they think the author means. And, it is important to keep the lens the same, knowing what was going on in that era, I think.  ;)

You seem to be so completely misunderstanding everything I'm saying that I'm finding it hard to respond.

Disney Boy 1985 - here's how I explained SMiLE to my youngest son, when it was released (Brian's 2004 version) - he was the same age as I was when Smiley came out.  I said, "Imagine waiting all this time?" And he "got it."  For a Beach Boys album to be #29 in the US, was abysmal back then, even if NOW, it is regarded as #154.  It is sort of fixed in a generation, but it was extraordinary competition, in an extraordinarily musically rich time.  Otherwise, it is studying the work in a vacuum, if you just confine the music to the music, in isolation, without what "drove" or inspired the work, such as war, racial issues, ecology, and the human psyche.

The only analogy I can make is that for a long time, I studied French lit, mostly 19th century.  In order to do that, I had to learn stuff that went on, historically, such as the first workers' unions, and, what were the trends and wars going on at the time.  And, lucky for me, that is how the literature was taught, in an historical context, alongside all the painters, and musicians of that time. It is a package deal, as art and politics and music in a society all intersect.  And it did with our Boys.  

We can disagree, and that is fine...it is all good.   ;)

No, #29 for a Beach Boys album in 1971 wasn't 'absymal' at all - in fact, given that their previous album had failed to make the top 150, charting at 29 was nothing short of miraculous. Top 30 after years of chart duds and playing to crowds of 200 people was an incredible turn-around.

As for telling your son about Smile and so forth, er... great, but what's that got to do with what we were talking about?? Your replies to my posts don't seem to bare any relation to whatever it is I've just being saying.

I said that, in hindsight, 'Surf's Up' would've been a better album minus SDT and that it would've been wise to release it as a single only, and you're talking about French literature and the human psyche.  

 Once again, I insist that the best SURF'S UP contains the original ten tracks plus WIBNTLA and either 4TH OF JULY or LADY. There you have it, the definitive 70's Beach Boys album. Yes, this SURF'S UP is among the top 3 Beach Boys' albums of all-time.

Take off SDT and add WIBNTLA and both 4th Of July and Lady, and you've got a perfect album!

Disney Boy 1985 - #29 in the States, was awful for the Beach Boys. Sorry, if you don't agree with that. It was #15 in the UK, IIRC. Their work did better outside it the States because of the historic dynamic.  One can't create in a vacuum.  You need ideas, and some came from the campus riots, race riots and politics in general.  Brian seemed to addresss the personal reflectiveness of the human condition.  And, telling my son, gave him a context of how long the Smile project was unfinished/unreleased.  And in the meantime , The Boys had not disappeared into obscurity.  They kept touring. I think it kept them viable.

They didn't hide when times were rough, because the times had changed the dynamic. It wasn't an era of Fun, Fun, Fun. It was a time of aggressive campus police, locked down campuses, senseless killings and, just ugly under any standard. And, a war that the nation was sick of.  And exactly why SDT was an essential release.  The Boys took a stand. To  their fans in college, it was important. In 1971; it mattered.

Yes, some people woke up to the awesomeness of the work, but, not during the time it was released.  Yes, overall #154 in terms of the big 500, is great, but, not for 1971, when it mattered more, in terms of recognition and appreciation.  It was the fm station airplay, which slowly helped turn the tide. 

And, in terms of the 19th century French lit analogy, George Sand ( a woman writing under a man's name) connected to Chopin, Liszt, Marie D'Agout (another author) Balzac, Flaubert and others, corresponding, and meeting frequently.  It is not unlike the discussions seen on Bernstein's Inside Pop, were you can see Graham Nash, in the Hollies then, later in CSNY, discussing the impact of youth and music.  Janis Ian was writing at 15 about the social stigma of interracial dating. Society's Child.

These bands, did interact to a certain degree while touring, and certainly exchanged ideas.  The influence of Maharishi as between the Beatles and the Boys, shows that they discussed ideas, philosophy, perhaps world peace, and music. It isn't much different as between and among the various centuries.  JMHO   ;)

I honestly can't get what's so good about the Surf's Up album cover. Everyone seems to like it, for some odd reason, when it's really nothing earth-shattering. Maybe I missed some fact about the cover that would reveal its good features? What I see is a guy with an arrow sitting at the horse leaning forward as if he's just about to fall out.

Wiki is a wrong source for checking up these things. Except for Pet Sounds, only Sunflower & Today (2012 update) made it to the RS list. Unfortunately, as it's a really great album.

First, thanks to RangeRoverA1 for catching that error.  My apologies to all for not digging beyond wiki.  Live and learn. 

The RS list has #2 - for Pet Sounds, #267, for BB Today, and #376 for Sunflower. Surf's Up isn't there. (Unless I missed it.)  My first thought is who would be motivated to, as a "contributor" go into wiki, link it to the RS site, and credit it as #154?  Who does that ?

The cover, though, Cyrus Dallin's Appeal to the Great Spirit is the logo of Brother Records.  The Surf's Up cover is the "End of The Trail" and also Native American theme, by James Earl Fraser.  I find the use a metaphor; as the Boys had been caught in a vortex of sorts, and were at a low point, but, neither dead, nor broken.  Still alive, battle-weary like the rider. At that point, it was not unlike the status our Boys. Under the radar but still chipping away and working, which ultimately paid off. 

Detention for me!  ;)

I'm only going to respond to the first sentence of your reply, as the rest just seems to be extracts from a book you're writing - good luck with it!

Anyway: No, you're wrong, 29 wasn't an awful chart position for the Beach Boys in 1971. Had an album made 29 during their commercial mid-'60's heyday, then yes it would have been pretty awful - however, as you keep strangely ignoring, in 1971 they had just had several years of flop albums, some not even breaking into the top 100, and as such the respectable sales and Top 30 chart placing of Surf's Up was both a relief and a real accomplishment.

  

 Number 29 was a very solid chart placement for The Beach Boys in 1971, an opinion shared by most fans, critics, the record company, and the guys themselves.  If your previous four albums had tanked at #151, #68, #153, #126 I'm guessing # 29 would look like gold. Despite the loss of Dennis' tracks, Jack Rieley did his job well in 1971.

This is, clearly, unarguably, correct. Sorry filledeplage, I don't know what you're talking about...

A #29 placing in 1971 would have convinced the guys that their career wasn't over. The Surf's Up album must have been the last roll of the dice for the band. It's strange that it's success didn't motivate Brian to contribute a bit more again.

Disney Boy 1985 - Surfs Up was #15 in the UK. That is from bellagio.  SU was #29 in the US, was and is inconsistent with even with the Party album which was #6 in the States.  It requires an historic context, that is largely absent.

This is an American Band, releasing music in their own country, during a war, assassinations of RFK, MLK, race riots, college unrest, and the music coming out of the States was a reflection of that.  If one looks at bellagio and compares 20/20 at #68 in the States, with #3 in the UK, is the context important? You bet it is.  And it begs the question, why?

Even Friends, in the UK was #13, when it was #126 in the US.  Same music, different social circumstances.   ;)

Yet again you're replying to things that I never even said or even mentioned.
What has the UK chart position got to do with anything? We were talking about whether Surf's Up's chart peak of 29 in the US was a success (which it was) and now you're changing the subject, again.
I think. To be honest I'm utterly baffled as to exactly what point(s) you're trying to make. What exactly are you getting at? Why are you comparing the chart position of Party! to an album released six years later - what's your point?
And please don't start replies by saying things like "Disney Boy - Surfs Up was #15 in the UK. That is from bellagio", which of course instantly creates the impression that I'd been disputing Surf's Up reaching 15 in the UK, whereas in fact I'd not said anything of the sort.

I think she is implying it took endless summer and the oldies to put them back on top.

If so, what a strange convoluted way to go about saying something relatively straightforward...

Filledeplage: Will you at least acknowledge that #29 was a vast - vast - improvement on #151, #153 and #123?

My question and my right to ask it, following the board rules of this forum.

In my opinion, it seems like filledeplage always feels she has to like provide "context" (or at least in her view) and that those of us who weren't around just don't get it.

Also can't stand that she calls them "the Band." Last time I checked Levon and Robbie aren't in the Beach Boys.

Context or the "backstory" of the, then, occuring events always important. The Pete Seeger thread supports that.   

If this is a BB/BW forum, it isn't any other "band" but those connected to the BB sphere.  No offence to the music group entitled "The Band." No offense is meant to them.  Or, you.

"Acknowledgment" is the same demanding "admit" term used earlier. 

Is any member on this forum, obligated to respond to a "demand?" I think not. 

Didn't notice that in the rules for the board...

No, #29 is only numerically ahead of those other rankings.  After Range RoverA1 kindly pointed out the claim of Rolling Stone #154 greatest 500, the ranking, at least on wiki, which can become "edited" then "sourced" lose credibity. 

My Band BB/BW etal, are top of the heap. No, if it is higher abroad, than in the US, then, I think the problem is something "other than the music."  Could have been promotion, or marketing or social climate.

And, I asked "rhetorically" -Who would go into wiki and insert that erroneous ranking? (paraphrased) There was no one who came forth with any reply.  It wasn't directed at anyone personally, and that is the difference. 

We have a different position.  Reasonable minds can differ.

The lightbulb just went on. After all this time, I only just now looked closely at the "filledeplage" moniker and made the "beach girl" connection.

In other words, yes #29 is a vast improvement on #151 and #153.

I don't understand why it is so hard to say that comparatively speaking a #29 ranking is a vast improvement over one of #153.

It's seems as if filledeplage has written a thesis or something, only some of it doesn't hold up to questions and facts. I don't want to be seen to be picking on her or anything, I just didn't get (and still don't) the point(s) she was trying to make and requests for clarification only seem to result in ever more confusing statements.

If one was around in 1971 and into the beach boys one would know how big the surfs up lp was to the group. It was the lp
  that broke them into the FM radio big time . sdt and feel flows were the songs played the most. Jaws dropped when people found out who recorded those songs. They fit in well in 1971. The lp was given a major promotion. Cashbox had a front page story about how the lp
 demand exceeded the initial pressing and another 50,000 copies had to be pressed....this was in the first two weeks after its release. Cashbox had it at number 22. Fans, record company and the group were very happy with the results. To say otherwise would be an error.

That is awesome Steve, I bet you felt vindicated after you were made fun of liking the BBs in the late 1960s.

All of 1971 was a great year to be a beach boy fan.

(http://s28.postimg.org/dygfwn2j1/Untitled_1.jpg)

Ha! Filledeplage has gone strangely quiet on this topic... Perhaps she looked back through her own posts and thought, 'Jesus, what am I talking about??"

Maybe she stopped because she thinks there's nothing to add further to this circular discussion.

Not really - it ended with several people directly questioning her line of thought on the subject and me asking her a perfectly reasonable question. That's leaving things up in the air, not neatly resolved. In fact, it was just getting interesting. I'm all for people having opinions but stand by what you say, don't just vanish from the conversation once people start questioning your reasoning, especially when your reasoning seems to directly contradict known facts. That's like me saying 'Dennis was actually born a girl and had a sex change' and then when people ask me what's led me to this bizarre opinion I just don't bother responding.

I thought we came to the conclusion that your poor spelling and piss-poor sentence structure led her to misunderstand what you were trying to convey?

Well, in fact you both have been strangely quiet on this topic. Please stop stretching the "I'm right, now please admit it" attitude. Filledeplage apparently has given up trying to make her point. Perhaps she gets your point, perhaps it's simply ignoring the topic because she doesn't want to stir up this discussion again and again. And by trying so, it starts becoming childish. No board rules that forbid it, but common sense also helps. Points were made, opinions differ and you both made clear you were not going to change your opinion, so now please move on.

Could you please highlight one single spelling error in my above post or on any other post in this thread for that matter? Hope you could understand that piece of Queen's English. Thanks Doctor.

Our Mod ask us to drop it and that is exactly what I intend doing.

In other words, there weren't any. Pretty pathetic cop out, man.

And with that - I move on...

Edited.

 :brow
Very weird exchange on your part DRBB.

Indeed! I was going to edit my original post after Smile Holland's comments, as they seemed to re-stoke a fire that had already began to die out, but Disney Boy beat me to the punch and posted quoting my post, so that killed that idea. I should have just stayed out of the fray to begin with, so my apologies.

I guess i should have used capital letters... :-\

With "move on", I meant to go back on topic, not "move on to the next off-topic heated discussion"

No more provoking, and no more personal insults, please! (and now immediately, and that also includes continuing this off-topic nonsense in the Remembering Carl Wilson thread)

Is an apology not enough for you? I rarely question you guys, but I would hope that you read my post above yours. Like I said, I was going to delete (edit) my post, but after it was quoted in Disney Boy's post, it was too late to do so. As for the Carl Wilson thread, I didn't start that off-topic stuff. Either way, Disney Boy and myself are good. No more nonsense from either of us. :)

Yes the apology is appreciated. I just wanted it to be said. You might have noticed the mods are getting a bit more soft again on the boardrules. A couple of months ago this would have caused a temporary ban or two, you know...

My Surf's Up Album (With Lead Singers)
1. Sound Of Free (Dennis)
2. Long Promised Road (Carl)
3. Fallin' In Love (Dennis)
4. Lookin' At Tomorrow (Al)
5. Feel Flows (Carl)
6. Surf's Up (Carl/Brian)

7. Don't Go Near The Water (Mike/Al)
8. 4th Of July (Carl)
9. A Day In The Life Of A Tree (Jack Rieley)
10. Til' I Die (Brian/Group)
11. Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again (Dennis)