The Smiley Smile Message Board

when was the first time you noticed or listened to the beach boys?


i guess it was five or six years ago. i saw the beach boys documentary: An American Band in tv by chance and in the nick of the time i fell in love

then mike and bruce came to argentina and it was a moment i wont forget

today im a beach boys vinyls collector, so if any of you want to give a present :P haha

in the beggining i didnt like the 70s and 80s albums but now i hear everything

I first got into the Beach Boys through the movie "The Beach Boys: An American Family" as I was blown away by songs like "In My Room", "Forever" etc. I then went and got my dads Sunflower/Surf's Up twofer and listened to Forever a few times and was in love with that song for a while. For some reason, and I have no idea how, I just listened to Tears In The Morning and I thought "hey, I've never heard my dad play this song before and it's pretty good, I wonder what the other songs are like" and so I listened to that twofer a few times. I don't think I could comprehend it all at first. I mean I remember hearing "Surf's Up" (the song) for the first time and I thought "wow, what was that!" I just seemed so strange to me. I mean before getting into the Beach Boys I was listening to Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine etc.. so this music was so different to me. Anyway those events kick-started my obsession with the band.

1976. Heard Good Vibrations. Bought Good Vibrations. Listened to Good Vibrations hundreds of times on one of those mono players which would repeat a 45rpm single as long as you left the arm off the central pole. Bought 20 Golden Greats and realised that I already knew most of those songs. Realised Heroes and Villains cut be cut and reshuffled and looped into a never-ending modular symphony – and did just that on a cheap cassette recorder. Never looked back!

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that it was towards the end of 2005 (I was 17 at the time) when I first watched the An American Family movie.

I watched "Full House" on TV and the Beach Boys performef "Kokomo".

Rewind to 1969 or thereabouts. I had a friend who was a few years older than me, he was in grammar school, I was in primary school. He was totally in to boys' stuff, like:

- DX hobby, which meant: trying to receive faraway radio stations on the short wave, and sending them report cards with data on reception. His proudest possessions were a double mini-LP from China, with a red and a green vinyl disk, carrying a Chinese Maoist agitprop opera about conquering Tiger Mountain; and some very dark propaganda material from I think Cambodia, that told us about the terrible war crimes by American soldiers in that region (my friend was far from a Communist, I should add, he was extremely curious).

- chemistry. He threw solid phosphorus out of a bottle onto the street. It caught fire immediately. Wondrous. He lit a strip of magnesium and that produced an intense white light that I still recall vividly. Also, he held a test tube filled with H2S gas near the kitchen stove. He promised me a bewildering array of colours if I dared to get close enough. Instead, I smelled an intense smell of rotten eggs, of course.

- radio plays and music. He had recorded an entire series of a Dutch sci-fi story, and we listened in the dark. Thrilling, gripping, stuff.

...and then, one spring day, he told me he'd just recorded a great song on his reel-to-reel. It was Good Vibrations, by a band that I as a kid had never heard of. In fact, I was a huge James Last fan at the time (true! ;D).

I was won over. A love affair started that has lasted for 40 years by now, and is still going strong.

(deleted)

The Don, have you sold the rights to your story yet? A made-for-tv movie should be in the works. :D

 :) thanks, Jonas. Fond memories came alive when I saw this thread. I never forgot the awe I felt: what is THIS? It is GOOD, no, make that: it is GORGEOUS!

Yes, I am speaking with the Coen Brothers as we write. They want to make a film about my early years in a small Dutch village. Provisional title:

'He Never Was The Same Again'

HA, I knew it !!  :lol

It was around 1984/1985. I was at my school friend at home and his mother was playing a best of lp. I fell in love instandly with the harmony's and songs. From the time i went into the army and was earning money i was collecting all the original and b##ts cd's  ;D. I now got more b##ts than officially cd's  ::)

Don't remember what year it was (and I may be totally wrong) but the first time I heard the Beach Boys was in a commercial for a drink called Orange Crush.

would have been about 1968.... and about 7 years old..

had a bunch of my sister's old lps that she didn't listen to anymore.. and one of them was
BB "Today"  . even though it was really scratchy, that record made me a fan for life!

My gawd!  And you became a fan after that????????????    :lol :ahh :spin :ahh :wall :woot :ahh :whatever :ahh :drunks :beer  :ahh :lol :ahh :spin :ahh :wall :woot :ahh :whatever :ahh :drunks :beer  :ahh :lol :ahh :spin :ahh :wall :woot :ahh :whatever :ahh :drunks :beer  :ahh :lol :ahh :spin :ahh :wall :woot :ahh :whatever :ahh :drunks :beer  :ahh :lol :ahh :spin :ahh :wall :woot :ahh :whatever :ahh :drunks :beer  :ahh :lol :ahh :spin :ahh :wall :woot :ahh :whatever :ahh :drunks :beer  :ahh

Who are the Beach Boys?

Age 6 in 1969 at my Grandmother's house in Pottstown,Pa.
My Aunt lived there(she was only 13)and had a bunch of 45's of The Monkees, Beatles and Beach Boys.
The first BB song I ever heard and still my all time favorite was "Sloop John B". Then I think it was "California Girls" and "Let Him Run Wild" not sure?  My very first Rock song was "Stand" by Sly & the Family Stone.
The greatest "gift" I got was Christmas in 1973(10 years old) when I got "In Concert '73" on LP. WOW!  Still the greatest live album(that and "Second's Out" from Genesis)that I ever received!  And Sloop and "Let The Wind Blow" steal that LP.

My very first concert was the Beach Boys in 1976 at the Spectrum in Philly during the 15 Big Ones tour! And Heart opened for them during their Dreamboat Annie tour.

Bri

I can't remember the exact order of things, but I remember hearing "Good Vibrations" on a commercial for Sunkist orange soda. When I was 9 my family was driving around on vacation and went and bought some cassette tapes for the car. A BB compilation was among them. I guess I co-opted the tape after the vacation was over, though I only had a tape recorder (not a stereo) to listen to music. I always enjoyed the BBs on a superficial level-- they made great harmonies. But the Beatles were the tops for me. The BBs didn't become one of my favorites until a few years ago when I heard Pet Sounds for the 100th time and it sounded incredibly sublime to me at that moment, where before it just sounded nice. (No drugs involved) I finally understood the whole "Brian Wilson is a genius" thing.

They seemed to be playing in my house quite a lot as i was little - the surfin' tunes mostly. Then, one fateful afternoon, i decided to get my parents cds of Sgt. Pepper and, more importantly, Pet Sounds and give them a spin. I saw Brian live not long after that, then bought Smile and was a full-on Beach Boys freak ever since  :)

If there were a 'classic threads' section, this one would be a prime candidate for inclusion. May it live long.

(Adminstrators?)

I remember hearing "Good Vibrations" on a Chrysler commercial when I was 3 or 4... My dad had the Chrysler that was being advertised, and he liked the Beach Boys, so I must have felt that something unusual was going on in that ad. I remember thinking that the music sounded nice and different from what I'd heard until then, and it's one of my earliest memories!

Great call. Perfect. Best ever.

I've posted about this a few times before here, but long story short, my mom had a copy of Endless Summer, and sometime around 1991 or '92 when I was about 6 or 7, she was on a big BB kick, and would blast it on the stereo just about every day...she'd always start with side 4, so the first BB song I ever heard was California Girls. Flash forward to 2003...I picked up a copy of Sounds of Summer...I wanted to reaquaint myself with the BBs for some reason...then I started reading about how great Pet Sounds was...I then found out about SMiLE when BWPS came out...took me until late 2005 to get around to buying PS, got BWPS shortly afterwards, started listening to SMiLE boots, then got into the 67-73 stuff...by 2006 I was a hardcore fan!

Blame my ISP for this gem. I've edited it, by the way  ;D

Ready, Steady, Go !, November 6th, 1964. I especially noticed that they made a complete horlicks of the intro to "When I Grow Up..." - even aged nine !

The first time I listened to them because they were The Beach Boys was (and not just because they were on the radio/TV) was about a day after reading Nick Kent's 1975 NME article.

I Get Around was the first hit I took notice of (and bought the single).

I didn't follow them (or buy any of the catalogue) until Pet Sounds which I purchased (along with Revolver) in a London record shop in August 66.  Then I was hooked and bought every new release and started completing a collection of the earlier records.

it seems a good question plenty of memories

thanks don

1999. I was driving one day when I heard "God Only Knows" come on the oldies station. I was immediately blown away by the key changes (I'm surprised I never noticed that song before then) so later when I got home I downloaded an mp3 vinyl rip of Pet Sounds from usenet with my 14.4 modem. It didn't all stick with me the first time but I recall also being knocked out by "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)" and playing it over and over again driving my brother and my then girlfriend crazy.

That got my curiosity going so I started browsing various BB sites at the time and discovered the Smile Research Lab where I downloaded just about everything there was about SMiLE (don't like my capitalization then kiss my a**!) as well as Landlocked, Adult Child, etc. I was drowning in fantastic music but I still hadn't made the plunge to actually legally purchasing a product.

October, 1999. Sick with the crud and called in sick to work. My package arrived from Amazon: the Smiley / Wild Honey 2-fer imported from Canada. I put it on. After the first listen I was convinced I had been robbed of my money. After another listen or two I couldn't get enough. It became the only cd on my player.

A week later I spent the first night with the girl who would become my wife. She had a cd player but only one speaker worked on it. No problem, check out this BB cd. Got to admit that "Vegetables" scared her that night but to this day we're hardcore BB junkies. Plus beatards to boot!

P.S. I now own all of the 2-fers and a lot more.

the first time i heard "bushy bushy blonde hair" blasting out of the radio speakers in '63. bought all those 49 cent 45's i could.

yep...ol' fart here..... :)

1998: I heard Surfin' USA at a laser light show in the school gym in 5th grade.

I was about 9 or 10, somewhere around '65/'66, I'm in bed with the old transistor radio wedged between my ear and my pillow listen to music before I fall asleep ... then on comes a sound that just clicked in my head and sent a warm fuzzy feeling to the centre of my chest ... the song was Wendy and the sound was Brian Wilson's falsetto. Fast forward to around '69/'70 and I get one of those "Explosive Hits" LPs and it has I Can Hear Music on it, I'm hooked! Start buying up whatever albums I could although by then anything Beach Boys related in Australia was only avaialble through budget labels such as Music For Pleasure and Pickwick and were pretty hit and miss collections. By '74 In Concert was a daily soundtrack to me life and like Andrew the Nick Kent NME article and then the Dennis Wilson "The Quintisenntial Beach Boy" article in either NME or Sounds sends me off on a lifetime tangent ... and  a wonderful tangent it is!

This thread a little blueboard for my taste, but what the hell....

1977 a friend bought a GH's album to high school. Had always been aware of the bands existence from the radio but this was the first chance to listen to tracks back to back. Must confess that listening to the harmonies was just how Brian has described hearing the Four Freshman for the first time.
While most of my school friends were into dark punk and heavy metal, I went the other way.

My first concert was the following year, and the rest is hysterical.

I heard good vibrations in my then girlfriends sisters car.

I was so impressed that I went out and bought a comp album then pet sounds, and the rest is history.  ;D

I hit my obsession phase after I bought the Today! (Summer Days) and Sunflowe/Surf's Up  albums on the same day, that was a music overload of greatness.

Oh I remember this day like it just happened...

I was about 5 and got my first casette player. I wanted tapes to play right away so I begged my mom to take me to the store so I could get some tunes to play on my totally rad pink casette player ;D

She told me I could only get 2 to start off with. First one was Elvis' greatest hits and the second one was...yes...you guessed it: Endless Summer. It's been true love ever since! :love

I swear I played that tape til it broke lol...

I had just turned 6 and my stepdad bought the Pet Sounds box set. After listening to all the songs, he started playing the backing tracks and called me over when God Only Knows was on. I remember him saying something about it being "magic" because he had "taken the words away," haha. I loved the song and made him make me a cassette tape of the whole Pet Sounds album. I also wore out a tape or two, I loved playing it.

That's my most vivid memory of when I first got interested, but I probably heard their songs before that since my stepdad is also a huge fan and has owned every album for years. I owe him everything for getting me hooked, I think it's the best thing he's ever given me ;D

It was 1972, and I was seven years old and headed to J.C.Penney's with my life's savings- around two bucks- to buy my first (non-Bozo The Clown) vinyl.  The targets were the Beatles singles- "She Loves You" (on the Swan label, I think) and "Please Please Me" (some orange label, but not Capitol or Apple, I think).  I had been obsessed with the Beatles since before I could read. My brother suggested that for variety, my third choice should be "I Get Around" backed with "Don't Worry Baby"- he personally vouched for it.  

I was vaguely aware of the Beach Boys already, but they had a somewhat low profile in 1972, and after the subsequent blowing of my young mind that resulted from that 79 cent investment, I had some trouble finding more stuff- especially LPs.  My oldest brother saw them live at the University of Georgia that Fall, and brought me his copies of the two-for-one LPs California Girls (truncated Summer Days) and All Summer Long with bastardized covers, and the collection proceeded from there.

I still have the singles, in their little carrying case at my parents' house.

1985.  I was in high school and heard Getcha Back on the radio and was hooked.  Of course I knew who the BB's were before that, and heard their classics on the radio, etc.  But Getcha Back  just sounded so good as a new song at that time.  I immediately raced down to the record store and bought the 1985 album.  A few days later I had purchased the Surfer Girl album, Pet Sounds and All Summer Long (still my favorite).  I spent that whole summer learning all I could about them.  Watched the then new American Band video, read the newly updated  David Leaf book and started waiting for that "next great Beach Boys album" written and produced by Brian which would surely be around the corner...

Sunkist...?

When Surfin USA came out. All right, I'm old. I think I was in about 8th grade then. One of the advantages of being old is that I've lived through Elvis mania, Beach Boy mania, and Beatle mania. Actually as popular as the Beach Boys were, I can't say that there was any mania attached to them.  They never got anywhere near the attention or media coverage as did E or the Beatles.

Still they were my favorite group back in the day.

I had an older cousin who bought a tape recorder - an old reel to reel - and he asked a couple of us to come up to his bedroom to hear it. He showed us how it worked, taping The Beach Boys' new album, The Beach Boys Today. I can still remember seeing the album cover. Must've been 1965. I remember listening to "Help Me R(h)onda" and thinking they were singing, "Help me run, help, help me run..."

The first time I remember actually listening to The Beach Boys was 1974. My sister gets the credit, she bought Endless Summer, and I remember hearing it eminating through our adjacent bedroom wall - the real wall of sound! Eventually, the album ended up in my room.

An American Band was the way I got into them too. Heroes and Surf's Up stuck out for me. Then I bought Endless Summer and becaome a huge fan and vinyl collector too. This was back in 1988 and you know I knew about them since 1981 or so when I got into fifties and sixties music but it was the film that knocked me out.

I've been around a while...

I remember that my older brother had the Smiley Smile album when it first came out.  He and I and my friends (I was in 8th grade) all liked the two hits but thought the rest was crap.  My brother was trying to sell it to any of us that would take it off his hands, dirt cheap, but none of us wanted it.

Fast forward to the Sunflower period.  My brother comes into my room, slaps head phones on me and says "you gotta hear this" - from a Warner Brothers Loss Leader album, with tracks by various Warners artists, including one track from the Beach Boys -"This Whole World"!  I was hooked...

I bought the Sunflower album, loved it, and started buying everything I'd missed.  Eventually bought Smiley, basically having forgotten my prior experience with it.  Played Smiley, recognized the songs and, this time around, absolutely LOVED it. 

Nice to meet you MBE!!

im  proud when i see the little collection i have with a lot of effort.   these vinyls are older than me!!! (im 24)

ditto :)

I started listening to the radio regularly in late 1962. There was this goofy, but charming, novelty song called "Ten Little Indians." The next spring I heard "Surfin' U.S.A.," "Shut Down," "Surfer Girl," and "Little Deuce Coupe" on the airwaves, and I was hooked on that amazing sound.

That's a beautiful story, friend. Thank you for sharing it.  :)

I'm 33 but most of the records I have were either pressed or recorded before I was born too.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe Emdeeh has all of our arses kicked, unless anyone here was living on West 119th Street or Kornblum Avenue in about 1960.

In 1702 I heard the Surfin Bach album. Unfortunately, I died before Brian Wilson was born.

 :lol dramatic... but you can't win 'em all, I says. You were deep into the Bach Boys then? How about Beathoven? And you had the honour of hearing Lady Lynda some 276 years before us mere mortals then...

Being born in 1978, I've been familiar with their biggest hits for as long as I can remember. The first time I noticed their music was special was when I was in a car with some friends on a beautiful day, 'I Get Around' came on the radio and we all spontaneously started singing and clapping along. So I bought a greatest hits CD ('The Very Best Of', the one with a yellow and blue picture of a surfer with a white frame around it) and left it at that for a couple of years. I was so heavily into punk rock at the time that I wasn't interested in seriously getting into any pop group. I saw that one BB CD as a "guilty pleasure", actually.

But as with most people, my musical taste mellowed with age and The Beatles became my favorite band in the world. The drummer of my band was a big Beach Boys fan. Even though he was the same age as me, he had first pressings of all their LPs. So we often had discussions about which band was better. I liked The Beach Boys, but I thought there was no way that any surf song could be better than 'Penny Lane', 'Let It Be' or 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. So the drummer then advised me to check out 'Pet Sounds' and the 'Sunflower'/'Surf's Up' 2fer, and I did. I was hooked right away. Two weeks later I sent him an e-mail saying "You were right. They're better." That was about five years ago and I've been listening to The Beach Boys every day ever since. Including solo releases, I now own about 130 Beach Boys CDs, 100 7" singles and 50 LPs.

around 1966 or 67 - I was 4 or 5 - it was Good Vibrations and I remember thinking that it sounded like the theme to Doctor Who....fast forward to 1980 and an article in Record Collector magazine  - this was the first time I knew of the whole Manson/Smile/crazy Brian thing....and that was me hooked...

June 1988. During a school bus excursion in Queensland the “Good Morning Vietnam” soundtrack was playing. Suddenly I Get Around blasts from the speakers and it immediately caught my attention. It truly was a musical epiphany for me. As soon as I returned from that excursion I tracked down a used CD copy of 20 Golden Greats and placed a tick beside the tracks that I liked. Admittedly it took me awhile to appreciate Heroes and Villains and Break Away but I persisted until every title was suffixed with a tick of approval!

It was quite difficult to buy their music on CD at that time so I scoured all the local (and not so local!) new and used record stores and found Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile and Friends on reissued Japanese vinyl. These albums took me quite some time to fully understand and appreciate but gradually snippets of certain songs would bury themselves in my brain. I found myself returning to these songs until I had absorbed the entire album. What an incredible musical education!

My curiosity as to who this B.Wilson guy and the Boys were led me to buy the Steve Gaines book which I totally immersed myself in during the summer of 1988; perfect summer reading for a naïve newbie.

I was 10 years old in 1966, and I'd heard all of the Beach Boys radio hits, but I was more into The Beatles, and that new group, The Monkees.  My parents gave me the Barbara Ann single for Christmas that year (I don't know why), but I liked the flip side (Girl Don't Tell Me) more, because it sounded like The Beatles.  I remember liking Good Vibrations, though, when I heard it on the radio.  As I got into my teens, I started getting into the heavier groups of the day, so The Beach Boys weren't my thing.  Fast forward to 1988...a friend of mine started talking about Brian Wilson one day, and I knew who Brian was and everything, but I hadn't really listened to anything by The Beach Boys in years (other than the occasional radio tune).  The next day he brought me a cassette with "Brian Wilson" ('88) on one side, and Smiley Smile on the other.  I was blown away by that tape.  I played it for anyone who would listen.  I still have that tape, but I now own all of the albums on CD (except for SIP, Still Cruisin', and the Nashville thing), and some nice footwear to boot.

Hearing I Get Around on top 40 radio back in 64 when I was 9, loving Good Vibrations when it came out, and the final thing was a combination of seeing them on TV from the London Show, buying the CATPST Pet Sounds combo, and seeing them live at the Nassau Coliseum all in 72 nailed it.

It's interesting that a few people here mention a childhood love of the band that sort of waned, and then resurfaced again in later life when they were old enough to appreciate the darker elements of the music. I was the same - I loved all the classic hits as a kid and owned a couple of comps: 20 Golden Greats and Made In The USA which was in the 1st batch of cds I ever bought.

Then I lost interest as I hit puberty. A few years later (I was aboutt 17) my art teacher (whose taste I seriously admired as he hipped me to The Velvet Underground) mentioned that The Beach Boys actually had serious cred due to this ultra cool album: Pet Sounds. I was totally fascinated as I still had a soft spot for a lot of BB stuff but had no idea they could be regarded as cool! I finally tracked down Pet Sounds and was initially slightly confused by it. I was going through weird drug induced anxiety problems at the time though, and Pet Sounds fit right into that - especially Hang On To Your Ego which i found to be a very spooky song, certainly in the context of Brian's mental health issues which I was learning about at the time. Then bit by bit I discovered the other post PS albums and it was really like finding a different band. I still think of the pre/post Pet Sounds incarnations of the BBs as different bands, which I think in many ways they are.

1974 - My friend and I were being driven to play mini-golf by my friend's older brother who was playing a cassette tape of ENDLESS SUMMER in the car. When "I Get Around" came on, I asked who it was. "It's the Beach Boys, man!" was the response like I asked the stupidest question ever. A few weeks later, I heard "Help Me Rhonda" in a bowling alley and recognized it was the same band. That ended up being the first single I purchased. By '77 I had all the albums, but the Reprise "best of" collection which contained material from PET SOUNDS to HOLLAND was the one that really made me think the band was brilliant.

I'm afraid that LOVE YOU disappointed me as did almost every subsequent release (loved PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE, however) and I stopped paying attention shortly after KTSA. When Dennis died, I figured that was the end of any attempt at sustained creativity. Read Rolling Stone's very complimentary review of BRIAN WILSON '88 and decided to give it a try. I loved it and quickly bought the newly-issued PET SOUNDS CD and all the two-fers when they first came out in '90. I've remained an active fan since.

I was born in 52 so i grew up with BB in their prime while living in southern california at the same time as BB did.. 1st time i heard them was on either KHJ or KFWB am rock stations..Spring 62 on santa monica beach..Surfin then SS + 409..My reaction was who the heck are THOSE guys..!.. By the time spring 63 came around + SUSA came out i was totally fried by their sound..I came to them cause of BW falsetto..PERIOD..I had NEVER heard a sound so perfect like that..There was no legend back then just the music.What a year that was for BB..SUSA..SG..LDC..LSN...BTTYS..IMR..Pluse the 3 hits from the year before..What a string of hits..!!....They have a spirt to their music that no one can touch..The greatest vocal group of the 20th century..IMHO..

Great story! Your so lucky to have been able to experience that. Lol I cant stress it enough, I was born in the wrong time!
Oh & I totally agree with the last part!!!

I was very lucky to grow up with the BB + the whole 60"s music invasion + the English invasion..What a time of adventure with new original sounds hitting the airwaves daily..The BB impact on popular music is no rewrite of history..In fact i believe their impact on music was more in its day than is popularly talked about now..When the british invasion came along BB were America"s best answer + when the competition got thick..They responded with even more hits + invention..The BB are truly an American ICON..They beat the odds..!!..Good for them + us..!

49 cents?   I recall somewhere around a buck....maybe 79 cents at the 5&10c store downtown.

I think FFF was the first one I actually bought.  But I have memories of a bit earlier.  My older cousin was in a band and they played Surfin Safari in my uncles basement.  I was fascinated with the vocal structure of the song, reminded me of a round or something.....and they had these georgeous red electric guitars........

yep....yet another ol' fart here.....:)

Well, my story is not too disimilar to the other recent posts but...since I, too, am an old fart (born in 1949) I'll chime in.  I first became fully aware of the Beach Boys with Surfin' USA in 1963.  I had heard Surfin' Safari on the radio the year before but it didn't leave the impression me me that 'USA' did.  I have no rememberance of "Ten Little Indians".

I soon started to call/ask local radio stations and check TV Guide for anything BB-related.  The first BB record I bought was "Be True..." about ten days before JFK was shot.

I never really looked back after that.

I'm only a semi-old fart born in 63'...

First heard the classic oldies on my friends copies of
"Endless Summer" and "Spirit of America" LPs in the
late 70's...One fateful day I was scanning the LPs at
Sears or maybe NRM and saw this cool LP cover and
bought it on sight...Yes I was a sucker for a good LP
cover and bought many LPs this way! The LP was of
course "Keeping the Summer Alive"...Which I played
the Hades out of...Loved it...Still my favorite LP even
though I know it's not as good as the earlier ones...
I guess it's nostalgia...The same thing happened with
me with Wings "Back to the Egg" on 8-Track...

And speaking of 8-tracks...during my senior year in
80-81...I would catch a ride to school with a friend
who would play the Beach Boys "Today" 8-track!

I wonder how many here still have their Beach Boys 8-tracks...:)

Monty...

I don't remember hearing the Surfin' Safari 45 on the radio, but I do remember the Surfin' USA 45.  I didn't really take notice until summer 1963 with the Little Deuce Coup 45 (in the DC area, I seem to recall this one getting a lot more play than Surfer Girl). After that they were real big in my area.

I first took interest in the Beach Boys after watching the Brian Wilson A&E special right around the time Pet Sounds was re-released in 1999.

That A&E Biography first aired on Brian's 57th birthday, June 20th, 1999.

I'd heard the BB's early hits on oldies radio and liked them (especially "Good Vibrations") but never got interested enough to buy their albums. Then, something happened one summer day in the mid-'80s when I was driving through New Mexico with a friend. We were listening to a local FM station, and Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun" was playing. Right after the part where Hendrix says, "And you'll never hear surf music again," the DJ abruptly cut the song, said "oh, yeah?" and played 30 minutes straight of BB's '60s hits. It knocked us out, and I was hooked! I wish I knew who that DJ was.

Once I returned home to Texas, I bought "Endless Summer," listening intently while wondering which hairy guy on the cover was which Beach Boy. After reading some rock record guides, I then bought "Pet Sounds" on vinyl. I liked it, but overall it was a bit too lush for my tastes at the time. Soon after that I bought "Love You" on vinyl and "Pacific Ocean Blue" on cassette. However, neither of them ended up being what I expected of BB's music, so I sold them - although several songs from LY stuck in my head (I barely listened to POB once).

Then I watched "An American Band" in the late '80s, got intrigued now that I knew the history of the band, and became captivated by "Surf's Up" and the "SMiLE" legend. I began reading and watching everything I could about the BBs, re-bought LY and POB (which I now appreciated) and started buying the rest of their albums and some of Brian's and Dennis's solo albums. My interest in the band and love for their music has grown and grown ever since.

when i was 5. so like 1992.  I remember watching "look who's talking" and loving "i get around".  Then i remember around the same time, i had a 60's music compilation, and i would listen to good vibrations on repeat.  i actually remember leaning on my couch holding the cd case and looking at "Good Vibrations".  glad that moment stuck out in my life!

i proceeded to buy the greatest hits and listened to that a crapload.  But then i stopped listening to music really, didn't get into it again till 8th grade.  listened to the boys in passing through high school.  Then my cd case got stolen so a lot of my cd's including my greatest hits were gone.  THEEN like a year and a half ago my friend bought "Sounds of summer" and hearing all the songs brought me back to like elementary school when they were all i listened to.  SO i bought the platinum collection for only 20 bucks!  then i bought pet sounds.  and it's been straight beach boys for over a year now. 

Interesting to read everyone's personal account.  No two quite the same.   And the age differences of the fans.  And there seems to be a pattern of rediscovering or initially discovering the band post ES.  And it seems a lot of people then went backward listening to post PS albums and exploring the myths of Smile and the eccentricities of Brian.  It occurs to me that the misadventures of the band over the years has inadvertantly led to their longevity.

This notion is not new but is underscored by the responses to this thread.  Happy listening everyone!

.

Like Mr. Wilson we grew up with the BB as they happened, though we were east coast folk. Bought several singles as they came out, like I Get Around, Help Me Rhonda, Sloop John B, Barbara Ann.  My dad bought us the "Shut Down" LP at Korvettes so we played the hell out of that (PS - it's a scream when you play it at 78 RPM).  WABC played their stuff to death, though I still hate Cousin fuckin Brucie and his cohorts for playing their jingles on top of  the California Girls intro.  First full LP I bought was Smiley Smile - on a recommendation from Time magazine, whose reviewer dug it.  I just thought it was ultra-trippy and cool, knowing nothing of the drama behind its creation.  Then in high school I picked up most of their back catalog at flea markets, and really dug Surf's Up on its debut.  So I never bothered with Endless Summer - didn't need it, had all the tracks already.  Worked at a MOR radio station and got a mint DJ copy of POB out of the music director's dump box, which I still have.  Followed the Boys and Brian since then but got back into it all over again when Smile came out (Brian made lots of money off me that Xmas, I bought it for everyone) and my daughter dug it, so I showed her Beautiful Dreamer (bleeping out the Darian-cam scene where Brian happily curses) and played the GV box for her on longer car trips.  We still do.  She got to see Brian do TLOS when he played North Jersey last year and sang along with the band and Dennis Diken of the Smithereens, who was right in front of us.


Now where is the Vanilla Fudge nostalgia site?

EDITED YOUR OWN RESPONSE?

How goes the divestiture of the collection?

I've always somewhat heard the Beach Boys on and off because my Uncle was a fan of their surf period. Years after he passed, I went looking through his cassette collection. I popped the tape into...no joke, a 1990's model 2-XL toy robot (remember that young people of the board?  :lol) and was hooked. That Heroes and Villains track in particular got my attention and that's how I would eventually learn about SMiLE.

In the late-1970s or early-80s, when I was about 10 years-old, the band performed at a big sports stadium in my east-coast home-town — it was so close to our house that I think we walked there — the local radio stations hyped the show by playing back-to-back B-Boys hits for days in advance.  (This was the first big concert at this stadium since Three Dog Night many years before — the 3DN audience had apparently flipped-out & did some damage.)   
 
Seemed like everyone in town was there — so many people that they couldn't all fit inside.  My older brother brought binoculars & I used them to get close-ups of Al & Carl a few times — "So that's what a Beach Boy looks like," I thought to myself.  They closed the show with "Fun, Fun, Fun," & that ending part that fades out on the record seemed to keep playing in my head like a loop, over & over, as we walked back home on that late-summer night (I just remembered: it was, in fact, the last day of summer before school started again, the next day).

When we got home, my dad said, "It's late.  I was beginning to wonder how long The Beach Bums could play."   :lol

 :lol

I really loved reading this thread again since so much has been added since I posted on it 2 months ago or so. And I think I've got a grasp on the Heartical Don's age (SIC) which is wild to me since he is probably my favorite poster on here. Listening to Legacy's Bambu right now and unwinding getting ready for bed and more work tomorrow. But it's so cool we all here have collectively discovered the majesty and splendor of the Beach Boys and yet we all have so many different opinions and backgrounds. We all find something totally different in it that we love. Maybe there is something spiritual here?

I first remember listening intently to "Don't Worry Baby" on the jukebox at Silver Ball Gardens pinball arcade here in Berkeley in about 1975, not knowing it was the Beach Boys, just the most heavenly sounding music I had ever heard. Every time it played I just sat or stood still wherever I was and soaked it in. Then remember hearing "Surfer Girl" in a
Kay-Bee toy store at the Glendale Galleria with my grandfather and really digging it. Asked for Endless Summer (on cassette) for Christmas that year and wore it out (literally wore off all the writing on it, along with "The Essential Jimi Hendrix"). Later read about Pet Sounds and the Smile enigma in the Rolling Stone Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll
while using it as a textbook for a "Rock & Roll History" college class (community, of course) and was completely hooked. The teacher wanted us to pay special attention to the changes and production on "When I Grow Up". Never forget seeking out old vinyl "Dance Dance Dance" (Today) and "20/20" and the epiphanies they afforded (early 80s). Good memories. :3d

The first BB album reviews I read were in Dave Marsh's Rolling Stone Record Guide in the '80s (very different from RS's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll). Marsh generally liked the pre Pet Sounds period (maybe because of the Spector influence), but he pretty much downgraded or downright trashed everything after the mid '60s (e.g., giving PS three stars, 15BO one star and LY three stars).  Unfortunately I let his writing influence my thinking the first time I bought LY - a big reason I didn't give it much of a chance back then.  After the '80s I pretty much forgot about the guide until last year when I pulled it out and thumbed through it. I guess I didn't realize it back when I was a teenager, but when I read the guide again, I noticed that if Marsh didn't like a band or its albums, he would really hate on them, sometimes even writing personally insulting things about them. I threw the book away.