You must hold the sleeve upside down. Not many people know that.
Apart from that: 4 points.
It is the Beach Boys attempt at a The Band album, and not unsuccessful.
CLF.

I gave it a good 4. It is unpretentious, sometimes mediocre, yes, but not incompetent. The voices of Bri and Denny have a particular charm, although you can hear Mike losing it to nasality on Everyone. Highlights:
It's OK
Had To Phone You
Just Once In My Life
In The Still Of The Night

and yes, the sleeve is awful. Montreal Olympics, anyone?

...I heard this strangest of rumours. It is said that a tape exists of some '63 sessions, where Brian is returning from the bathroom and heading for a bottle of cold Coke. He is humming to himself, and very, very clearly the main theme of 'Surf's Up' can be discerned, as well as 'Woody Woodpecker', somewhat later. Then someone (Mike?) shouts from afar something like: '...straying again Bri?'. Brian suddenly stops and audibly opens a bottle. All the while this tape has been running, which now stops.
At first I thought it was a complete and utter prank, until I realized that I would have said the same about Back Home, released in 1976, but first recorded around the same time.
My source tells me that said tape is in the hands of Japanese collectors, who would be willing to auction it off... or not. If CDRs already exist, I do not know.
Anyway, all of this would be of the greatest musicological value, I am sure.
Anyone know more?
CLF

Thanks so far to everyone for the detailed answers!

Well ... that's okay then.

We haven't talked headphones, have we? I have Sennheiser HD212 Pros, which are the best I ever heard. Even 'phones costing eight times as much weren't as responsive when I tested them in the hi-fi shop.

I have Sennheisers myself.... 

"I immediately fell in love with the open, inviting American sound here, as compared to the more woozy British or German type of impressions. "

Hah!!! I beg to differ, sir, and challenge you to a duel (Dual?). Nobody round here calls European speakers "woozy" without getting a wet halibut in the kisser!! Take THAT! And THAT and THAT and THAT!!!

Let that be a lesson to you ...

PS My own (French!) speakers offer up a gloriously full, rich tapestry of sound; sparkling, crystalline highs, cavernously solid and clear bottom end, and a mid-range that stretches from here to Uranus and back.

Wait a minute, you canine exhaler...
I called British and German speakers woozy. Of course the French loudspeakers are state of the art, superbly clear, wonderfully definitive, excruciatingly precise, all-revealing, distortion-free, maddeningly addictive, supercalifragilisticexpialidociously built... er... what was I going to say again? 

1. 'Rock 'n' Roll Radio' - The Ramones
2. 'True Love Leaves No Traces' - Leonard Cohen
3. 'Stand By Me' - John Lennon
4. 'Born To Be With You' (LP) - Dion Dimucci
5. 'Girls Can Tell' - The Crystals
6. 'When I Saw You' - The Ronettes
7. 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town' - The Crystals
8. 'Keep On Dancing Little Girl' - The Ronettes
9. 'This Could Be The Night' - The Modern Folk Quartet
10. that 2 CD Spector sessions bleg set that I happen to have...

All in no particular order of course.

One of my biggest pleasures in the last couple of years has been getting my component system running and upgraded a little. I have a NAD amp and separate CD player, JM Labs speakers, and a thirty-year-old zero-frills Panasonic belt-drive deck, which I plan to upgrade when I get the opportunity. I just love hi-fi separates as stuff. It's beautiful, solid, and a pleasure to own, look at, use, and listen to. Like comparing a godd SLR camera to a disposable. A photograph is a photograph, sound is sound, and it's all a matter of degree. My daughter asked me what the "big CDs" were. My kids listen to music I like and don't like - but not on my system. They love their MP3 players.

I also love vinyl as stuff. I will never love CDs in the same way - to me, no matter how good the sound, a CD will always be a copy of the music, but a vinyl album is the music.

I agree with the picture painted here. Most enticing. I have a NAD amp, tuner, am looking for a NAD dedicated CD player, and a decent record deck, preferably a Thorens or Dual. Speakers: superb Infinity Ref 1i bookshelf units, to be put on dedicated stands. With regard to the speakers: I immediately fell in love with the open, inviting American sound here, as compared to the more woozy British or German type of impressions.
Also, I got hold of an Olympus analogue compact camera (for snapshots) and a Minolta X700 SLR with a Minolta 35-70 lens and a Sigma 70-210 one, to round it off. Magnificent stuff, and no digital camera below, say, 8 to 10 megapixels can come close, although most folks want to believe you otherwise.
CLF

Nice one Evenreven -
I imagine you stumbling home and pumping Barenboim's Beethoven into your drunken auditory brain cells... you could have done worse. I have that complete Barenboim box set and it's one of the finest interpretations.
Yes, I have many prejudices, and I am not alone in that.
CLF

Hello all -
since I have acquired the SMiLE 2004 set on double vinyl and have yet to play it: I have a few questions.
1. Can anyone post a complete list of backing tracks (including b-sides etc.) of SMiLE 2004?
2. How does the vinyl compare to the CD format qua sound?
3. Is there any material from those sessions that we haven't heard yet but is of huge interest?
CLF

Superbly interesting thread this, esp. because cultural pessimism is a very tempting pastime, I fell for its charms many times and am 46 now.
Let me make my very first post on this board with noting some observations:
1. I see youngsters passing me on the street with all kinds of personal audio devices, and I never get the idea that they listen with concentration, or play whole albums. It seems indeed to be a kind of soundtrack to their mundane everyday moving from one spot to another. I never could felt attracted to doing likewise in listening, be it walking and shopping, or even while doing a lengthy run in the woods. I love natural sounds, people talking, birds singing, but also normal traffic noise. I have a hard time imagining the above folks arriving home and putting a CD or an LP on and intensely focusing on the Goldberg Variations as played by Glenn Gould.
2. The seeming carelessness with which all kinds of horribly compressed formats get accepted is annoying. But then, CD itself is compressed, be it in the A/D conversion itself, or in the absolute cut-off points at either end of the frequency spectrum. I guess it has something to do with the ever shorter lifespan of different formats, and technologies. It seems still such a short time ago that DVD-players were touted as the be-and-end-all and were expensive, and now they metaphorically can be found on the cities' garbage piles. People have built modest DVD-collections, and already the arrival of the new and incompatible Blu-Ray disk is announced. One can shrug one's shoulders and move on, and perhaps this is the best attitude.
3. Adding to point 2, I must say that I find the relative failures of DVD-A and SACD rather encouraging. These formats certainly haven't brought their manufacturers the success they had hoped for. So, perhaps customers indeed went into some sort of strike because they did not want to plunder their bank accounts and wallets yet another time to buy their beloved music all over again.
4. The unwillingness of the vinyl format to die is also a happy occurrence for this listener. I regularly search the web for a decent 2nd hand deck (have to acquire a new one) and am amazed at the prospering of the trade in vintage Thorens and Dual, as well as even pricier high end brands. It is a true goldmine for the passionate amateur and do-it-yourself-pundit. Also: manufacturers of new decks, like Pro-Ject, Goldring, Rega, and the revived Thorens Co. do well all over the globe.
5. And the most promising prospect: highly serious observers, like for instance the Gramophone Magazine for classical music (UK) have spotted a truly refreshed interest of the major component makers in good, solid, frills-free two-channel stereo. Marantz, NAD, Sony, and many others have stepped down from the surround frenzy (which, I must admit, to me always has been something artificial and hollow-sounding, like perhaps quadraphony of the 70s, a nice gimmick to impress family and friends, and not much more); and these companies have invested much money in new ranges of very basic and stable discrete stereo components.

There is light at the end of the tunnel (for my taste), and I would not be surprised if within a few years' time, the possession of an 7.1 surround extravaganza will be looked down upon as a somewhat lower-class habit, and it will be en vogue all over again to have solid state 2-channel hi-fi stereo.
Thank you.
CLF