The Smiley Smile Message Board

and by that i mean anthropologists and sociologists who criticized them as painting a smiley face over "Amerika". For those that don't know what "Amerika" means its a euphemism to describe cold war America as a fundamentally racist oppressive society.

It was just pop music- nothing serious, nothing important.  Until Sgt Pepper, there was no mainstream or underground press (that I've ever been aware of) concerned with rock and roll.  If anything, it was being praised for allowing black label owners like Barry Gordy a chance to compete in the market.  Pop songs were mostly about love and its problems, hardly the stuff of sociological comment, other than possibly snobbism from fans of other music.  Up until 1965, I only saw Beach Boys records in collections owned by girls.  "Barbara Ann" and "Sloop John B" were the first Beach Boys records I had conversations with my male friends about (I am an east coast guy, it may have been different on the west coast).

The question, though, seems to me to be about scholarly work not journalism. To be honest, I'm not sure if there was much scholarly work being done on rock and roll in the early 60s - academia was a pretty elitist enterprise then carried out by white men who wouldn't have considered rock and roll to be a serious research area. I have seen more contemporary articles though that say essentially what you are saying. The criticisms like the ones you are describing mostly came at the time from the folk music quarter who saw pop music as whitewashing the real issues occurring in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawdaddy!

http://www.rockmine.com/Archive/Library/Mojo.html

Greg Shaw, Paul Williams - great stuff! I hope people asking about this in the thread take these names and links and do some research and read those original publications at and around the links. The famous radio ad where Jim Morrison advertises Cheetah magazine was pulled from a Tom Maule KHJ aircheck, October '67, by the way.

Add Melody Maker in England to the list.

"Hit Parader" was another pre-Pepper magazine that couldn't be considered "scholarly" in some circles but there was still some very insightful writing about rock and pop music to be found in those pages. Not the same as Williams and Shaw and their peers, but some great writing would sneak through the more fanzine-like stuff.

There were outlets for this beyond published magazines.

KRLA Beat, which circulated the US in various top 40 markets outside LA, was also a terrific source for this scene. It wasn't all gushy, nor was it tabloid or gossip material: There were some good hard news articles on what these artists were doing, and that paper's archives are a terrific source of research. Other radio stations had similar papers and newsletters which was where fans got their news apart from the fanzines, and where some good writing though more info-based than critical, would appear.

Capitol Records had "Teen Set", which again was a different kind of journalism but still pretty damned good for music which was supposed to involve just "the kids".

How about writers like Tom Nolan, writing in the LA Times magazine his "Frenzied Frontier..." piece which can be seen reprinted in LLVS? It's damn close to the kind of writing and detail which would go into 'rock journalism' a few years later. Including Brian Wilson's admission that he had taken LSD...and recall specifically the reaction McCartney got for *the same admission* months later. McCartney's words caused a scandal at that time...Brian saying that to Tom Nolan in LA in fall 1966 didn't cause a ripple because it was such a part of the LA/Sunset Strip scene, and the words probably did not make it out of that Los Angeles newspaper magazine feature.

Point being - it was published.

How about the whole genesis of "Inside Pop", which was a respected musician like Leonard Bernstein coming out and telling people to listen to these kids and their music, and take it seriously because it was that vital and that important to pop culture. He was right: pop music no matter what incarnation it would appear in future years did indeed assume a higher position of importance in everyday life and pop culture than classical, jazz, or any other type of "respectable" music.

And there was Bernstein on national TV laying it out, with musical and lyrical examples, and David Oppenheim providing a news-journalism credibility by editing together clips of these artists in a journalistic style which CBS News would become known for through 60 Minutes.

All of this, again, pre-Pepper.

I feel it was there - not in-your-face out there but still able to be found if you knew where and when to look. It was sowing the seeds for what would become rock journalism, in the vital years 65-66-67 because the same audience reading KRLA Beat would soon be reading Ben Fong-Torres, Christgau, etc, just a few years later.

That's just more information for anyone interested in the earlier rock/pop journalism - the original request/question was so loaded it wouldn't be worth opening that can o' worms... :)

  ? Yer joking right?

The "Amerika" spelling was 1st used by the KKK during the 19th c., then taken up by the Yippies (and other leftists) in the 60's  -- the implication being that the USA = Nazi Germany. Because JFK and LBJ were the same as Adolf Hitler, these jackasses pretended to believe. ::)

He's kind of right. The rock press today slobber over Please Please Me or whatever, but that was certainly not the attitude of the time. This was just pop music, a passing fad, here today gone tomorrow type stuff. The Beatles regularly faced questions of what they'd do when it was all over in their early days!

This thread doesnt make any sense.

Rock n Roll was not only most prominent and prolific in the first decade (56-66) but theres countless resources to prove that it declined immensely thereafter.

From 1968 onward rock music was no longer commercially viable in the United States. There were a handful of exceptions but the revolution that Chuck Berry started had fizzled into nothing in the late 60s.

And its pointless to call that an "opinion" when the music speaks for itself.

Rock and Roll has never really declined, its just the public taste in music changes. It is asinine to suggest people in the late 1960s and early 1970s would be content with simple Chuck Berry rock and roll. Groups like CSNY captured the movement of change in the USA.

Actually, rock music really took off from 68 onward. Take a listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9bP-LbR8u8

There wasn't much of this type of music before 1968

No, you don't make any sense. You cling to this f***ed, ignorant idea that 'rock and roll' 'died' in 1966, only to be resuscitated by The Ramones and The Ramones alone. Quite frankly, I'm sick of it.

I could go about this three ways.

I could riff on your line, 'The music speaks for itself'. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So EDUCATE yourself about it. You are dismissing the greatest rock bands of all time, Jimi Hendrix, The Velvet Underground, The MC5, The Stooges, The Doors, The 13th Floor Elevators, Black Sabbath, Queen, and 1000's of other bands for absolutely no reason. I haven't even got started on everyone that isn't expressly 'rock', yet. The 65-75 era could be the greatest period ever in soul music. Kraftwerk pretty much invented electronic music in a pop context in the early 70's. Or what about Miles Davis pretty much exploding jazz? ETC ETC

Or, I could try and bemoan and empathise with your lack of a progressive attitude. If music never got past Chuck Berry, it'd be sh*t. And I love Chuck Berry. But, what makes those early Beatles records you love so fucking good is that they're expanding on that template, as artists. They're not emulating. Great art,  and rock and roll, is not about strict emulation.  

Or, I could just call you ignorant for statements like "From 1968 onward rock music was no longer commercially viable in the United States". Dude, in the 70's the record business made more than the movies. Or confused. Are The Beach Boys exempt from the murder of rock and roll in your eyes? Pet Sounds is as un-rock and roll an album as you can possibly imagine.

EXPLAIN YOURSELF, YOU CAD

I'VE NEVER DISMISSED GREAT GROUPS LIKE THE STOOGES, MC5, VELVET UNDERGROUND ETC. THERE WERE A SELECT HANDFUL OF GREAT GROUPS IN THE LATE 60S BUT THERE'S NO WAY YOU CAN COMPARE TO WHAT WAS PROMINENT IN THE EARLY-MID 60S. I EMPHASIZE THE RAMONES BECAUSE THEY CAME ALONG AT A TIME WHEN COMMERCIAL MUSIC WAS BLAND AND STAGNANT. THE RAMONES TOOK THE ETHICS OF WHAT TRUE ROCK WAS AND REINVENTED IT IN A MOVEMENT THAT REVOLUTIONIZED THE WORLD!

I'M NOT DISCREDITING ANYONE OR BEING HOSTILE SO WHATS WITH THE HORSESHIT??!

This. This is the horseshit.

It's called your opinion, stop passing it off as fact.

Either you have no idea what I'm getting at or you're just trying to get attention by being hostile. I aint the one that starting name calling and bitching.

Oh no, I called you a cad. That was supposed to be a light-hearted sign off. Can you seriously be offended by someone calling you a cad?

But, you're right. Maybe I don't understand what the hell you're trying to say. All music is bad after 1966 apart from the bands you like? Doesn't that make it a good period of music if there are bands you like in it?

I'm not offended I'm just saying that there was a great era of music in rockNroll from the mid 50s to late 60s and it got lame after that. Not everything but most of it. And I bring up the ramones cuz they were a drawback to that era of singles before excess ruined it.

ALSO- as a young dude when I was a child in the early 90s I was lucky enough to be exposed to the LAST years of the radio playing rockNroll. K-earth still played good music, now its all sh*t. The radio was once a wonderful thing now its a sick joke.

This is not true! Led Zep stole most of their music from other artists and gave them zero credit! Do some research it's out there for all to see.

Led Zepplin is  the ultimate antithesis of everything rockNroll was about. Ben Weasel said it best: Robert Plant is a slimy f***, John Bonham really sucked
Those greedy f*ckers, those phoney shits They made their money off idiots.  12 dollar concerts were all the rage, They bought cocaine for Jimmy Page
"Stairway to Heaven" makes me see redBonzo's buried, only three more left
I hate Led Zeppelin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrp2N_i7Axk

WE GET IT THAT YOU HATE MUSIC.... ::)

I love music, but I don't care for muzak.

Define "Muzak"

Worthless background music made for commercial value etc. sh*t you'd hear in an elevator or thats sold at starbucks. Pretty much the majority of the mainstream hit songs of the 70s, 80s to the current. No substance or historical value///

All music has value in the eye of its beholder. Your loss if you won't listen to each decade's good music.

Meh, it's all subjective. I was brought up on classical music and Led Zeppelin. They're like the Beach Boys to me, I listen to them half out of nostalgia, half because I think they're friggin great. Their music takes me to a great place....just like all great music should.

Well- the "good" music of the 70s, 80s and 90s wasn't what was on the charts. If I wanna hear good music of the 70s Ill listen to the Ramones, if I wanna hear good music in the 80s Ill listen to the Surf Punks, Black Flag, Dickies etc. If I wanna hear good music in the 90s Ill listen to the Queers. NONE of those great bands had hit records. If I wanna hear good music from the 50s and 60s there was plenty of it.

NOSTALGIA is the key word. Everything great in music is nostalgic. It was either in the past or reminiscent of it.

Why is it so important that these bands were successful? Is the 50s your favourite era because rock and roll was the dominant music? (Not really true, depending on who you ask).

And oh god, your point about nostalgia being the point of music is so depressing.

I  disagree. Some of my favorite musicians happen to be forward thinking artists, like Brian Eno, or Brian Wilson in the mid 60s. Where they great and popular back then because of nostalgia? No offense, but that argument doesn't hold water. And, seriously...even amongst people who don't like Led Zeppelin, you are the ONLY person I've ever seen criticize John Bonham's drumming.

I mean its nostalgia now. The nostalgia of past sentiment. And I never criticized bonhams drumming- that was quoting a song from a shitty group called screeching weasel- its a funny song that tells it like it is.

Oh, okay.

One thing I want to say and then will try and steer it back to the original discussion... music is subjectively good. Most people worship the Beatles; I think they put out some great music, but some of their earlier songs annoy me. I happen to love Pink Floyd, but there are others who don't like them. With that in mind, there is a very good reason why I always try to respect people's opinions even when they differ from my own.* Well, besides the fact that it's common decency. Anyway, it has been scientifically proven that no two people's taste buds are the same. It's not just how the brain reacts to a certain flavor; it's the signals the brain receives as well. That statement is concerning taste as it relates to food, but I wonder if how the brain perceives sound operates on a similar principal. I'm sure it does, but too lazy right now to look it up. :lol

*One thing about me...you'll NEVER see me post anything about how this person sucks, or that that person has no talent. Rather, I say things like 'I really don't care for...' or 'it's not my bag'. Why? Because who am I to judge someone's ability, being a writer myself? If someone writes something, and is putting effort into it, well...I'm not going to be one to piss on someone's baby.

Figuratively speaking.

I just see that there's different levels of music appreciation. The basic one is very shallow and it's what most people follow, and its a very general spectrum. I personally have a very deep level of music appreciation. Those who get it can see where I'm comin from and what it means. Those who don't- criticize my knowledge and disregard it as pretentious, condescending rambling. Music and religion can go hand in hand- for me music is my religion. For someone who is religious they would get offended by someone discrediting their god. So for me when someone discredits the beach boys or undermines their output and historical significance I take it personal.
The beach boys and beatles have been compared due to being peers and having existed simultaneously. The best way I can sum up that comparison is the beatles being quantity and the beach boys being quality. The beatles had a commercial career that no other artist or group surpassed and their legacy has been recorded as a phenomenon. The beach boys on the otherhand from what Ive noticed sometimes get pigeonholed from their peak era and not always given the whole credit that they deserve.
Conspiracy or not the beatles were a great group but certainly not THE greatest and I feel bad for anyone who can think that and not have a mind of their own. They came to the US on a rebound of the Kennedy assassination and took advantage of a country in gloom- in otherwords their timing was impeccable. I can listen to their music and agree that it was good but it'll never touch me on a level that the beach boys did. The harmony the beach boys had is an entity that puts them above any rock band in my criteria.

You take it personally when someone discredits the music you like yet you are doing the very same thing.  It's personal preference. If people dislike the BB's I think it's their loss.

Exactly! Scholarly work not journalism.  My first instinct was whether it was a term paper topic, (gave me a little chuckle, whether I'm correct or not!) which needed fleshing out.  However, on the other hand, this forum would be a great place to start to sound out some ideas.   

My sense is that the folkies, such as Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, etc., had a certain credibility with their nascent work in the coffee houses, and seemed to be taken seriously and sort of became ingrained in academia, in a way that contrasted rock coming in the "back door," historically.  These folk bands played coffee houses, folk music venues, and their existing academic connections got them on that track.  It is interesting, that the folkies, some of whom were already doing work on PBS (public educational television) (Pete Seeger) which gave them credence to be fodder for academic analysis of their work. 

My gut makes me think that the acoustic guitar was less obtrusive than the electric counterpart, making me think that the sonority of the instruments, required an ambassador such as Leonard Bernstein, who was familiar with both styles. 

JMHO  ;)

Instead of criticising music created since some arbitrary date when "good music died" or whatever -- which makes you sound eternally elderly -- perhaps a more valid criticism should be directed at record labels, especially the big ones, for not taking chances on the people they sign. At the same time, blame huge corporations for owning virtually every radio station you're likely to hear playing music that isn't publicly funded or community based, since these stations (like those record labels) also don't take chances on the format or artists played. This isn't because the music sucks, it's these companies that suck. You can even more easily today find excellent music, it just takes both more and less effort: Go to Bandcamp, trawl through the endless hordes of unsigned or independent artists. Like every point in time, you're bound to find some goodies amongst the uninspired noise.

The question the thread is whether "there were any social critics of the Beach Boys?" I took that as the position that would put the band on the receiving end of criticism.  Much of rock music was characterized, in some regard as "music of rebellion." That was directly at odds with those in power.  And, the demographic of the music is that of those people who were born in the late 1930's or 1940's and 1950's to a greater extent.  Folk music carried a "message" but, without the "stigma" in the same way of rebellion.  There was a sort of academic connection to public television, although they had major record company labels as well.

Their fans by definition would be 70 ish, 60 ish, and 50 ish, and those perhaps who latched on with Full House, or in an academic context. (That is reality, whether people diss Stamos or not)   I hope I did not leave anyone out.   It is not a band of young people any longer. Those who grew up alongside the music, in my view, know it best, since they contemporaneously experienced the social changes that drove the changes in the music.   I'm not sure whether your "elderly" comment is directed at me, or generally to responses elsewhere.  I'm amused because Beach Boys music has an "eternal youth" attitude and chronological years of life will never correspond to a youthful attitude.  

It is too bad that there appears to be a growing conflict as between young posters and "contemporaries" of the music.  There is no need.  And, I'm delighted that young people seek this music out, alongside the Boys, but there is, for me, no hard and fast black line of demarcation of any music "dying."

Music is a live, and ever- changing art form.  And, great musicians such as the Boys have kept it "fresh" where others have rested on their laurels.  

Yes, Wild Honey, it is their loss!

Hi filedepage :)

I don' think Dr V's post was aimed at you.   And I don't know if there is a divide amongst the ages here as Hypehat and RBDude are young(ish) and weren't in agreement with Kooks post about liking older music for nostalgias sake.   There are SOME songs I like for nostalgia alone, but they tend to be comedy-type songs like Incy whincy teenie weenie yellow pokda dot bikini, and that's because it reminds me when we sang it in a school concert.  But most of the music I like from earlier eras I like because it is EXCELLENT music, and the BB's are included in amongst, if not at the top of my list.  TBH I really don't care where or when music comes from, if I like it, I like it, if it's top 40 and I don't like it, I don't like it.  If it's from the guy down the road who makes his own songs but has never made a record in his life, If I like it, I like it.

In spite of everything as a retrospective the most important thing is the spirit of the music. Times goes on, fads come and go but the Beach Boys are historically known as the most timeless group to ever exist. Its sad that theres no more mainstream radio to expose younger people to their music but that spirit in their music will never be defunct. That was the most progressive era in pop culture and the mark it made runs deeper than anything.

Sometimes the "you" in a sentence, can be interpreted as "one"  such as "you might think" or "one might think" is really the same.  (The term "elderly" in the post.)  God forbid that any of us grooving to the Boys could ever be construed as "elderly." The music is the barrier to that term.  And generally, "contemporaries" of this music are generally 50-ish at the least.  What doesn't cease to astound me, is the number of my kids' friends, who love the rock music of their parents.  The staying power and "spirit" of the music (as kookadams explained it so well) is amazing. 

In a gazillion years would I  ever have listened to the music of my parents, ( as a steady diet) the real 40's stuff, and to be sure, they thought it was pretty great.  One of my kids saw the Stones a few years back, and came home with that concert "afterglow" and told me how awesome he thought the music was and how he really "got" why they were so huge, and lasted. 

It is a true adventure to explore this music.  But, as was also posted above, it shouldn't be ever taken personally if others don't share the same passion, as everyone has a right to his/ her own tastes.  It is the great beauty of the iPhone/iPod/mp3 player.  No one even has to know...

That post which asks about "social critics"  - I'm still not clear about what the question means...

Using your logic, Chuck Berry should have sung songs about slavery...

America is spelled "Amerika" in Swedish (and most likely in a lot of other languages as well), so it probably was not some fringe group who first used that spelling.

For your reference - a very old poster (The Swedish America Line):

(http://web.comhem.se/~u98400668/genealogi/utvandrarna/amerikalinjen.jpg)

20-somethings who complain about music from the '90s (or '60s) being REAL MUSIC compared to music "these days" are just as conservative (probably a better choice of words) as people who lived through the '70s and don't listen anything beyond 1975 and stuff like that. In both cases it's ridiculous and obviously ignorant.

I'm just thinking that the OP was asking if the BB's music in the 1962-65 days had any kind of "backlash" as was more obviously the case from 1968 on. As you pointed out, there was little academic interest in rock music--indeed, not much interest in studying popular culture in general--until the mid-70s. Such a time frame isn't in sync with what the OP was asking, so I think we can set that aside. So the question might be rephrased: were there factions who were negatively disposed toward the BBs music during the 62-65 time frame?

My recollections of the BBs reception in the pre-PS era is that by '65, a certain faction of fans (general fans, not BB fans) influenced by the continuing wave from the British Invasion had decided that the BBs were too soft, too "pretty." It seemed as though Brian wasn't worried about this much, as he began to write more songs that used someone other than Mike as the lead singer. Sales weren't affected much (SD/SN was a big summer hit in '65) and let's face it, rock critics were not yet in their ascendancy until the advent of Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone. It wasn't until '66 that a genuine "rock press" sprang up and people began taking sides.

I know so many people who venerate Pet Sounds and dismiss all the previous music out of hand, however. They are the ones who were caught up in the "hip" movements of the 60s' second half--fortunately, it seems that virtually all of the younger posters here are free from that rankling phenomenon, and can judge all of the BB's music on its own merits.

I would assume by "social criticism" that the question is, were the BB criticized in the media for celebrating a hedonistic lifestyle with scantily clad girls and young men wasting their time doing things like chasing girls, surfing, racing hod rods, etc. I don't know if that happened or not-people generally think of the BB as very white and very square, but a half naked girl was the same in 1962 as they are in 2013, and that was the subject of a lot of their early songs. Maybe by the early 60's the whole rock and roll is the devil's music thing had played out, at least until the whole drug thing started later on.

This is an intriguing question. (And probably someone's homework)  :lol

But, I'm thinking that the Boys had a film connection, especially with America's sweetheart, Disney's Annette Funicello, an original Mouseketeer, groomed by Walt Disney for his Mickey Mouse Club TV show, in 1957, in "The Monkey's Uncle," singing the Sherman Brothers music in 1965.  They (Sherman Brothers) won best musical score in 1964 for Mary Poppins.  They could not lose as this movie came on the heels of an enormous blockbuster brand.

With this perceived alliance, with a Disney project, they might have escaped ax-grinding as against early rock music, in general.  And while "hedonistic" in general, it was almost an "accepted hedonism" as it was a Disney connected brand.  Annette was in many beach-genre movies, but with adherence to Disney's request that she not wear a bikini, while off the Disney payroll, as it were.

Up until late '66 early '67, there was no major division within the audience of young white pop music listeners. Top 40 AM radio was the only game in town for pop, and you'd hear the Beach Boys next to Marvin Gaye next to Frank Sinatra next to the Animals. It was all just pop music, no place for music snobs.

The music snobs -- those who might look down on the "hedonistic" music of the Beach Boys -- were tuned in to jazz, or folk, or classical, or maybe "easy listening" stations.

Yeah, that's also something I was thinking about.

Poor Annette...MS is a horrible, horrible disease.

Well put. BTW, I'm actually going to be 35 on 13 August, and when I first joined the wacky world of the Beach Boys internet community back in 1996, I was one of the younger BB fans on the net. Hell, my nickname back in those days was 'kid'.  I've noticed in the ensuing years that there are now fans of the BB online who were born after I became a fan in 1995, and that just blows my mind. Now my daughter is becoming obsessed somewhat with the BB, but seems to be more of a fan of Brian himself.

To add to this, I admit that my love of the 80s music does stem from nostalgia a great deal.

I'm 27 and I got into the Beach Boys when I was 6, in kindergarten. Any $ I got then all I wanted was records and discs// On xmas of '93 or 4 I wanted the good vibrations boxset and now I still got it along with every LP, CD, dvds books etc. All my possessions center around the BBs!

Bringing this back to the OP's question: YES THERE WERE. social critics of the Boys - mostly from the with-it hippie-types back then.*

After Smile failed and Rolling Stone dissed the BB as has-beens, many rock critics and writers fell right into line to echo that idea.  Underground press-types liked to say: The BB were over the hill, reactionary.  Too white.  Or at least white-bread.  No soul (obviously never heard "Wild Homey").  We were all told that the Hip Kidz were rebelling against school, while the BB sang about "be true to your school", cars 'n' girls, how quaint, how old-timey, how un-socialist workers party,  buncha football hero jocks, etc. etc.

This was years BEFORE Mike joined the GOP, BTW.  We are talking "Smiley"/"Friends" era for this kind of talk, which only stopped when the Boys reinvented themselves for the early 70s.

To be fair some perceptive journos never gave up on the Boys during this critical drubbing, like Lester Bangs.


*(I resemble that remark)

Nah, I think what it all boils down to is that the American music consumers just totally stopped caring about rock and music in general from 1968 til 74. The UK were buying Beach Boys albums like crazy.

Dr. Tim, I think that the original poster meant the very early days in the early sixties; the calm before the proverbial storm, later in the decade.  ;)

None of them to my knowledge (save Bruce) have said much about politics one way or another. And that's a good thing because doing so risks alienating half your fan base. With that said, there are things inherently political in music even if it isn't intended to. There early stuff may have sounded rebellious but it was clearly in a wholesome type of way and very much a soundtrack to the pre-revolution America of drive-in movies, malt shops ad nauseam. The more "raised fist salute" type of music seen in stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHfB63ln1Ig , didn't come until the last two or three years of the decade.

But even if the sort of anti-cold war America views didn't come into the mainstream until the late 60s, its not like it came out of nowhere. The areas where that type of mood existed were in a select group of areas like the East Village of Manhattan, North Beach in San Fran, as well as in some universities (Columbia, UCB). So my question is if a lot of the anthropologists and sociologists (think of someone like Hebert Marcuse) criticized them for their music being a homage to cold war America.

Firstly, the early to mid-sixties weren't "pre-revolution", because there was no revolution, period.

Secondly, why do you associate malt shops and drive-ins with the cold war? There were cultural currents shaping American society during the 50's and early 60's that had nothing to do with cold war politics : for instance, the rise of the suburbs, the automobile, the teenage consumer with money in his pockets.

Thirdly, early 60's anthropologists and sociologists would have been middle-aged academics. Marcuse was in his 60s! Adorno's writings on music concerned such figures as Stockhausen and Boulez. Sociologists and left-wing cultural critics had no idea that the Beach Boys existed.

There's no way they "had no idea" about the Beach Boys, it's just that academic sociologists didn't give a sh*t about pop music for teens, which is what the Beach Boys were. Can you even picture Adorno listening to "I Get Around"? Well sure, but I bet he'd be miserable and scowling, haha.

Yes, they (Buffalo Springfield/CSNY) absolutely did! Their music was timely, powerful and "For What its Worth" almost became a mantra for the anti- war effort as well as "Ohio"

They continue to write and perform music to raise awareness about serious social issues. 

Paging Jon Stebbins here but I'm sure in his book, it was said that Dennis got a lot of stick from other surfers early on in their career. Maybe he was seen as 'selling out' ie, surfing is our thing and you've helped make it popular to the masses
Possibly, the criticism they received wasn't in print form, but word of mouth?
There is still a culture amongst fans of certain bands, The White Stripes spring to mind, that once a band has become 'everybody's secret', they have sold out and aren't as good

They are truly legends, its awesome that you saw them in their prime.

Thanks, and can you imagine seeing Buffalo Springfield and The Beach Boys on the same night? 

And, they are all still in their "prime!"

More amazing, even.  ;)