I hope it's not too late to add another one...actually two. Frank Sinatra did two great versions of "Something". One was a swinging version released as a single in 1970, and the other was a slower, Don Costa-arranged version for 1980's Trilogy album.

Yeah, I wish Frank had done a L-M tune as well, since I confined myself to compiling a Lennon-McCartney set.

A few other great things I found: Chet Atkins "Picks on the Beatles" album, Joshua Rifkin's "The Baroque Beatles Book", The Swingle Singers a cappella album "A Tribute to the Beatles", Johnny Cash's moving rendition of "In My Life", Junior Parker's ultracool "Tomorrow Never Knows"...and of course, I've always dug The Beach Boys' "Tell Me Why".

Thanks for all these thoughtful replies everyone!

Several of the interpretations (or renditions, if you will) that you guys have mentioned are in my Spotify playlist, and I will seek out the others. The Minnesota project yielded a wonderful reading of “Golden Slumbers” by Communist Daughter as well as a high school marching band “She Loves You” that’s aces. As for “Black America”, I totally concur. Fats Domino absolutely cooks on “Everybody’s Got to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” and Ramsey Lewis did a fantastic album of White Album covers called “Mother Nature’s Son” (his “Cry Baby Cry” is phenomenal). Otis Redding takes “Day Tripper” in a great direction. The Supremes are very convincing on “You Can’t Do That” and “Come Together”, and Ella Fitzgerald’s “Money Can’t Buy Me Love” easily beats the original imo.

There is an incredible range of Lennon-McCartney interpretations out there by the likes of Booker T. and the MG’s, Otis Redding, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Count Basie, Buddy Rich, Quincy Jones, Vince Guaraldi, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Breeders, R. Stevie Moore, Harry Nilsson, Duane Allman, Vassar Clements, Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops, 101 Strings, The Carpenters, Barbra Streisand, Peter Sellers, Bill Cosby, William Shatner and many, many more. I put together a playlist on Spotify that can be accessed in the Spotify app by typing (Lennon-McCartney) -- don’t forget the parentheses -- in the search field. It goes all the way from “Love Me Do” to “Her Majesty”. I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this stuff. What is your favorite Beatles cover? Mine might be Area Code 615's "Lady Madonna", but Spotify doesn't have it, so I had to "settle" for Dave Edmunds and Junior Parker.

similar thread:
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,14136.0.html

I find 20/20 to be their least coherent, yet it's one of my favorites.

I wonder how much coherence is really a goal with the Beach Boys. Check out the way the gentle vibe of Friends is sabotaged by (ironically) "Transcendental Meditation". Even when Brian is in complete control, he likes to keep the audience guessing. Look at the instrumental "Pet Sounds": it stands out like a sore thumb (at lest IMHO), yet it's the title track!

It's really nice that you guys have all these helpful ideas, but to be honest, they all sound terrible. I'm just glad things went how they went. The albums didn't sell, but they are filled with great music and they kept their integrity. It's more honorable to flop doing your own thing well than trying to stay relevant by changing your thing after shifting trends.

I think there is merit in both points of view.

The Beach Boys could have recorded exactly the same material and released the exact same albums, but could have made better choices of A-sides. Look at The Beatles: they released some very "out there" material from '66-'70, but the A-sides were almost always more commercial, more fully produced, and less obviously experimental (or at least less strange) than other choices they might have made during this period: "Penny Lane", "All You Need is Love", "Hello Goodbye", "Lady Madonna", "Hey Jude", "Get Back", "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Something", "Let it Be". I read somewhere that Lennon wanted "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" as an A-side in 1970, but "cooler heads prevailed". Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like cooler heads always prevailed when it came to picking Beach Boys A-sides.

- four part harmony (unless you are of Hendrix’ ilk)
- vegetables

i had already formulated my opinion before I read this thread, but it seems many share my feeling, which is that "Be True to your School" sounds a lot better without the cheerleading and faux marching band arrangement. This may be due to the fact that I first heard the stripped down version as a nine year-old on Endless Summer.

I always liked the song, however. At first, I bought into the lyrical sentiment whole-heartedly, but in later years I remember singing "bah bah bah be true to your school" in the hallway of my high school and getting a hearty laugh out of our senior class president.

i do agree that "girl or guy" is, although almost proto-feminist, a highly awkward moment.

I would guess this is a fake, but fake or not, I'd love to hear what's in those grooves!

Disc and Music - Saturday, September 17, 1966

WHO'S 'BIRDMAN' pecks BEACH BOY
 "WRITTEN FOR an audience sympathetic to Brian Wilson's personal problems" — that's Pete Townshend's considered opinion of the much-praised Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" album.
The Who's "Birdman" went on to expound: 'You've just got to listen to the words—like "I'm searching for places where new things can be found but people just put me down."
"It seems that now Brian Wilson has left the Beach Boys to be a record producer he wants to do these fantastic, way-out LP's and they want to do all the old stuff."
Pete's outburst is pretty surprising as one of the Who's favourite standards is" the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann"—they have even included it in their new LP.
"Yeah, the Beach Boys' sound used to influence us a bit when we first started," agreed Pete. "Keith Moon likes all their surf stuff and we once met two of them—Bruce Johnston and Mike Love.
"We do 'Barbara Ann' on stage because it gets the audience going.
"But the Beach Boys' new material on the LPs is too remote and way-out. It's written for a feminine audience."

This seems to me to be a classic case of psychological projection, because Townshend himself is starting to lean in a more personal and less macho songwriting direction, and rather than embracing that, he is projecting it onto Brian Wilson. Of course, he was only 21 years old at the time and was certainly mindful of the Who’s hyper-masculine Mod fan base. Although Townshend is claiming here that the Beach Boy influence is a thing of the past for him and The Who, the ironic thing about this is that Townshend’s writing would grow increasingly personal and less knee-jerk macho in the years to come. in fact, within a year of this article he wrote and recorded “Sunrise”, a beautiful song which is at least as sensitive and feminine-leaning as anything on Pet Sounds.

Interestingly, Pete’s appraisal of internal tension within the group is prescient: "It seems that now Brian Wilson has left the Beach Boys to be a record producer he wants to do these fantastic, way-out LP's and they want to do all the old stuff." Here again, Townshend would experience similar tension in The Who, as he would try and break new ground on album projects while the rest of The Who (particularly Daltrey) struggled to grapple with each new direction.

Pretty much everything to do with "Don't Talk" on the Pet Sounds Sessions set: particularly the piano demo, the isolated strings and the unused backing vocals.

Over the last few days, a very bad head cold left me virtually deaf in one ear for a (mercifully short!) period of time.

First of all, I would say this is a more serious handicap than many realize, because you can hear sounds but you don't know their point of origin. Imagine hearing gun shots and having no idea in what direction they are coming from!

I was listening to music at one point during this spell, and I thought about BW, because without the benefit of spatial hearing, the quality of the sounds took on a more prominent role. For instance, I felt like I was perceiving the pitches and their relationships (i.e. harmonic content) more clearly than i would with two ears. The right brain thing is an interesting hypothesis, but i would definitely say that hearing out of only one ear invites the brain to perceive qualities of sound more acutely than it would otherwise, in the same way (albeit less dramatically!) that the brain is able to hear more clearly when deprived of sight.

I love just about everything about this track, and agree that it is emblematic of what’s best about Smiley Smile.

Question: I wonder how rehearsed versus spontaneous the laughter at the beginning was? I have heard a spoken word recording from the Smile era in which Brian directed the participants in the style of laughter he wanted to hear. If I had to guess, I’d say the laughter was rehearsed, although it sounds genuine enough.

Another question: what IS the instrument that plays the descending melody at the end of the song, heard prominently right after the upwards slide guitar part? To me it sounds a bit like a harp, but also reminds me of glass bottles.

I saw this thread a few days ago and thought "Lonely Sea" is probably in a minor key.  So I just played the song and strummed along on the guitar with it and lo and behold, it's in D flat MAJOR, at least until the bridge where it goes to A flat minor before it changes back again before the next verse.

My point?  I am amazed by Brian's ability to make a major key song "feel" like a minor key song.  And why is Brian Wilson the only musician that ever composed anything that brings tears to my eyes?

I had the exact same experience and reached the same conclusion. While I hadn't really thought it through before, I think this is an importnat reason that I can tolerate so many repeated listenings of Beach Boys records.

Country Air is definitely my favorite of the ones listed here in terms of how is goes from minor to major and back again.

A ha! That one actually ends in minor. Very rare for a BW song, so far as I can tell.

One of the great things about Brian's songs is how much they explore harmonic and melodic possibilities while still usually staying anchored in a major key. A musician I know once remarked that it's very easy to write a cool sounding song in a minor key but a far greater challenge to write a cool sounding song in a major key. "Here Today" opens up with and spends a good bit of time around the second chord in the key, which is minor. But if you play out the notes of the melody, you'll notice that it stays in the key of A major throughout, and I would say that the entire song is also in A major, even though all those minor chords in the verse might trick your ear into thinking otherwise.

Of course, starting out in minor keys and ending up in major happens in a lot of great BW songs, as others have mentioned. "Good Vibrations" is probably the best known example. All of the songs mentioned in this thread that I am familiar with end up in major. I thought maybe "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter" ended in minor, but a close listening reveals that just before it fades out completely, it's back to major.

Toward the end of the Box Tops' career, they toured with The Beach Boys, and a friendship developed between the two groups. [Alex] Chilton bragged years later of having spent time with them at the Charles Manson ranch, and talked of writing a song called "I Slept in the Same Bed with Dennis Wilson and Charles Manson". However, after a couple of days the "weird vibes" drove him away, but he stayed in touch with a Beach Boy or two over the years and almost recorded with Brian in 1973 after receiving a middle-of-the-night phone call from the living legend requesting he get his pipes down to Brother Studios pronto.

The above is a quote from Jon Tiven's notes on the back of Rhino records' The Box Tops Greatest Hits LP, released in 1982. Anyone care to comment on the veracity of Tiven's claims? I assume this is all from his memory.

By the way, I am probably very much in the minority at the SSMB, but Big Star's 3rd/Sister Lovers (original PVC release) is right up there with Pet Sounds for me both in uniqueness and life-altering impact.

• for me, the harmony is the biggest tangle.  it's easily the most avant-garde (for want of a less pejorative term) stuff brian ever attempted.  it's bizarre, illogical, dizzyingly complex, yet it sort of makes sense.  it presages the sort of thing that miles davis ended up doing on bitches brew - combining several tonal centres at the same time - and is the sort of thing charles ives would have been proud of.  (as for the bass line - C F E Eb D Eb Ab Db - god knows where that came from.)  but here's the thing: brian never did anything as far-out harmonically as this before or after.  apart from MOLC, which FBABTW resembles (and with which BW combined it for BWPS).  so what exactly is the relationship between the two pieces?

Coincidentally, I had this recording on last night and was working out the vocal harmony on the piano. Wow! I was reminded of a whole-tone approach a la Debussy, but it is definitely something else! The three-part harmony on "Transcendental  Meditation" is, I believe, similarly adventurous.

I've noticed that cohesion within an album seems to be a desirable trait with a lot of members here. With that, which record shows the most cohesion, and which the least? What kind of cohesion (arrangements, musical style, lyrics/story, sound engineering, creative vision, etc.) matters to you? How important is cohesion, any way? If you ask me, 20/20 is more than a bit of a crumble, but very tasty!

A lot of the dudes that love classic rock would probably punch their radios out if it went from "Won't Get Fooled Again" to "Wouldn't it Be Nice."

tee hee! I just tried this out on y
ou tube and it actually works pretty well in a post apocalyptic, pick up the pieces way.

Isn't Curtis Mayfield the man who did shaft theme song?

Curtis Mayfield is the extraordinarily gifted singer, songwriter and composer who scored "Superfly" and led The Impressions. Here is an example of why the comparison to the orchestration in "Be with Me" is apt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNV1Y01xNk8

"Shaft" was scored by Issac Hayes, who is another extraordinary arranger. Check out his version of "Walk on By", one of my favorite all-time covers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqR4CZj0mJQ

Probably my favorite Dennis Wilson-led track. The orchestration is breathtaking. The paucity of backing vocals is an interesting choice that works out very well. To me, the arrangement is a overall bit more majestic in style than anything on Pet Sounds (not to say better, just a bit more pompped up with the trumpets and such), although the cello parts sliding up to the fourth at the end certainly are reminiscent of "Let's Go Away for Awhile". There are hints of  darkness here that are certainly not characteristic of Brian Wilson...this is definitely pure Dennis. My guess is that while Dennis was very much under Manson's influence ("sometimes the Wizard frightens me" he said around this time if I recall correctly) he wrote this on his own. My wife once remarked that this track reminded her strongly of Curtis Mayfield's work (another great orchestrator), and the horn charts especially sound like vintage Mayfield. Check out the instrumental backing from Hawthorne Ave. (disc 2, track 16). Soooo good.

Beethoven Symphony number 9 (not very obscure, but it's the closest thing I can think of in musical spirit)

If it weren't for the lyric, I would go with "Don't Talk"...the music just seems to profoundly ache in a beautiful way.

"Disney Girls (1957)" is my choice. Despite the apparent optimism (I've got my love to give/A place to live...), the lyric and music together pine for a lost love and a lost time, and produce a nostalgia that seems profoundly sad to me.

"Diamond Head" is astonishing. Definitely among my most favorite BB tracks.

I've noticed that people sometimes seem to discount the group's instrumental output, but to me several of them (along with a lot of the backing tracks) are totally essential listening.

VERY difficult question, but leaving aside classical music I'll say the Duke Ellington Orchestra (wonderfully inventive instrumental harmonies and fantastic sounds...not unlike Pet Sounds-era backing tracks). My dad used to listen to a lot of big band stuff, and that's how I first got into it. "Mood Indigo" instrumental version is a great example of their earlier work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiOEzDiL6as