I have to admit, I really like the guitar work on a lot of later-period songs...particularly Somewhere Near Japan, Lahaina Aloha, Strange Things Happen, Still Cruisin....

Were Carl and Al playing much guitar on the later albums? The tone and playing on some of this stuff is really good. Any idea who did play on it if it wasn't either of them?

I picked up the guitar at the age of 13 because of the Beach Boys (among a few other artists). Just for perspective, I'm 30 now. Around the time of high school, I really got into some punk bands and garage rock stuff (Ramones and Social Distortion were big favorites of mine).

Having had experience playing Beach Boy songs, I quickly realized just how similar their music is to some punk stuff. This is especially the case with their early material, with Carl and David on guitar. Take for instance "Shut Down." If you added distortion to the guitars, it'd be a punk song. Even the tempo of the original is right.

Other songs like "Surfin' Safari", Dennis' drumming and the guitars on "Surf Jam"...not to diminish these songs, but they're like punk songs without the distortion and with great vocal harmonies. As a matter of fact, my old band used to play "Shut Down" much like the original, but with a little more dirt (overdrive) on the guitars. Those chords changes are perfect and aren't all that dissimilar to a number of Ramones song.