Their surfing music phase was really only their first three albums.  There was a (musical) move away from it after that.  The image remained mired in it though despite the musical transition away from it.   

Hot Rod Lincoln (sorry Beach Boys), also like that annoying Beep Beep song.

For Beach Boys I'd have to say - Shut Down, Cherry Cherry Coupe, No-Go Showboat, Betsy and Spirit of America.

He starts with "Well" and it all flows from there. 

How about Keith Moon?   

Dennis:  "And now Al, you're gonna discover what 'Brotherly Love' is really all about, you sweet, sweet little fella...."  
Mike (in deep whisper):  "Brotherly Looooove, oh yeah."  
Carl: "It's okay Al, don't be frightened."
Bruce [edit]: "Brian's waiting in the tent...."

Do the Girl Scouts keep records of big things like this?  Maybe this troop could be identified, must have been an LA area troop (at least i would think), probably some of these "little girls" are still alive and kicking with memories of this event?

And I also want to know - did Brian and the boys order cookies? 

[deleted]

Kokomo.   That one really bummed me out and still does.   

I can totally see the Beach Boys being welcomed and received well at the festival, maybe even in the striped shirts.  The attendees were, by and large I would propose, at the festival to have fun.   The Beach Boys are fun (fun, fun), or certainly were; corny fun perhaps, but fun nonetheless, so why not?  However, handled correctly they also could have used the opportunity to perhaps surprise the audience (in a good way) and take a giant step outside their "image" and present a newer one in its place - still with many of the old attributes (even the Beatles were still the Beatles no matter how much they changed over the course of their career), but with alterations akin to the times and changes happening both outside of and within the band itself.    I think they could have done this even with it being Smiley Smile instead of Smile as the r most recent record.   I honestly think such a move could have (at the very least) gone down well.  
But darn that Coke, they messed everything up!    
Why must "Beach Boys" always mean surfin' and cars, beach bunnies and clambakes?   Because that's what the long term marketing push has been.  But could they not have molded a new perception of the band?  They almost did in the 70's, but had they all united and committed to a decision to broaden their horizons back in 66/67 (recognizing that things - the music - had already changed) - could they not have pulled it off earlier and much more successfully than their "almost but not quite" 70's attempt?   A beach is way more than surfin' and chicks (both lovely things mind you) - it's symbolic and metaphoric and euphoric and alas poor Yorick....a beach is a place where a man can feel he's the only soul in the world that's real.     That's a lovely line, not a Beach Boys line, but lovely nonetheless.  Because it's true.  A beach is a place where you look out into that giant swelling body of water.  You become entranced, hypnotized, awe struck and overwhelmed by the eternalness of it all.  It emboldens you even as it frightens you, enlarges your vision even as it makes you feel small...a cork on the ocean, rock in a landslide, leaf on a windy day......(also very lovely lines).  
So I don't know, perhaps, maybe not.  Playing my own devils advocate I'd present the case of, funny enough, Coke!   They stuck with the same recipe to great success for umpteen-however many years, then changed it and it caused a mighty backlash.....so, maybe playin' it safe really is the way to go.  

EDIT:  and yes, I do perhaps over use the word lovely as a descriptive term.....

50 is the new 20, and I won't be "20" for another 4 years!   

I'd never thought of this as fodder for a 45 rpm single, but had they brushed it up a bit, perhaps, perhaps.... 

The potential singles they had, but never released is food for thought/speculation.  I wonder how, say, San Miguel would have fared - that's another song that (to my ears) sounds like a hit.  I'm usually wrong about these things though.   

Maybe I Know and California Nights are great. The only non-60s song I have from her is her cover of ACDC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap"!

Lesley Gore covered "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"    Either you're kidding, or I really need to hear that!    

EDIT:  Indeed she did - just found it  http://youtu.be/pusgdcX2D54     

These sort of threads are ridiculous. Stop trying to make weird alternate timelines for people.

Why?  They're fun.   

But who would have driven Brian to even leave his house let-alone somehow get his music out there without a band? You remove Mike and Dennis and Al (both Mike and Al bugged Brian endlessly to start a band) from the Beach Boys story and it's hard to see anything really happening.

Murry?

Was Murry running around insisting that Brian form a band?

............ no

No, Murry running around insisting Brian's music be heard, and pep talking/haranguing Brian into "fighting for success" (i.e. Brian has his own music career - like Paul Anka, only better.)  

But who would have driven Brian to even leave his house let-alone somehow get his music out there without a band? You remove Mike and Dennis and Al (both Mike and Al bugged Brian endlessly to start a band) from the Beach Boys story and it's hard to see anything really happening.

Murry?

[scenario interlude:]

Pumping gas is the type of job a young man might have.  Not nowadays, of course, but back when they used to have such service at gas stations.   Mike was a young guy at that time, and whatever today's equivalent to pumping gas would be (flipping burgers?) there's no disgrace in someone doing that for an income no matter what their age.  
Personally though, I don't see Mike as being one to remain in that job for his life.   There may be issues I take with Love, but I don't count him as any dummy.  He may often seem tacky, tactless and treacly, but he's obviously got some intelligence and is a hard working guy.  I can easily imagine him having done just fine without the big music career.    And who knows, maybe he would have got into music and had a big career anyway (scenario interlude: Mike ends up meeting Arthur Lee, and they go on to form the band...Love...[Meanwhile, back at the ranch...]  Brian, Carl and Dennis along with Murry and Audrey start a career as The Wilson's, and Al Jardine combines his fondness for Folk and Dentistry as The Singing Dentist. Al records a duet album with The Singing Nun, and passion blooms, she leaves the Church for a life in Big Sur with Al.   Bruce and Terry fill the void left by the absence of a "Beach Boys" and become huge....oh, and Bruce ends up marrying Doris Day.   )

[Pet Sounds]

My favorite albums(in no particular order and excluding comps, live and solo, so there's less than 10)

Pet Sounds - a perennial of course.  Not (IMO) the "greatest album ever", but a great one amongst many great ones that have been through out recorded musical history.   To this day it stands as a unique work.  There's nothing else, including anything in the Beach Boys catalog, that sounds quite like it.  

Smiley Smile - The SMiLE project distilled and corked for public consumption; too bad no one was thirsty, because they missed one of the most sublime little freaky nuggets ever, and I am guessing, the first album to really illustrate what one can achieve via a home recording studio.  

Friends - Such a pure, sweet album, comfort food, peaceful vibe....  This album might have done better had it come out in the mid 70's, it has that feel to me.

Today - This is, start to finish, one of the best albums of the 60's, and because they were wise enough to put the "audio verite'" ("...Big Daddy") track at the end of side 2 (instead of in the midst of the album as the previous two LP's had), it acts more as a coda, or bonus track to the album and not as a part of it.  This album is fantastic.  

Carl & The Passions - So Tough - Quite possibly more derided than even Smiley Smile, but this is my favorite album of theirs during that early 70's period.  First off it is the first post SMiLE debacle which does not recycle some piece of that project, and it's lack of cohesiveness, or flow makes me think of the Beatles White Album.  This is the Beach Boys White Album (albeit truncated), and I like all the songs on it.  I dig the gospel of "He Come Down" and the etheral "All This Is That", the Brian songs, "Marcella" and "Mess Of Help" are raunchy little rockers, and Dennis' tunes are two of the greatest and best examples of the "So Overwrought It's Nearly Ridiculous, But Somehow Still Inescapably Gorgeous And Touching" variety - and even the Fataar/Chaplan songs are decent.  

Surfer Girl - IMO their best early album.  Every song is enjoyable, it's young and fun and steeped in the classic image of the band.  Some of the lyrics are a bit sickeningly corny, but I'd still take "Surfer Girl", "Your Summer Dream" and "Surfer Moon" any day over "Girls On The Beach".    This is the classic early Beach Boys at their album oriented best.  

Wild Honey - Though I'm not a fan of Carl's karaoke run throughs of "Wild Honey" and "I Was Made To Love Her" (Al or Mike should have sung those IMO) this is a helluva great album.  

I do wish people here kept it to 'well, Mike Love does act like a sh*t, but he did write lyrics  to my favourite songs ever'  rather than 'I wouldn't piss on Mike Love if he was on fire'.

I would piss on Mike if he were on fire.  
I'd piss on you too, and I hope you would piss on me ( fire baaad!! )  

Hmmm, what to hate more?  One who says SMiLE instead of just plain old, boring every day Smile?  Or those who respond with snide, snotty comments when none are warranted?   The latter is what's truly "LAmE".    

A Smile is just a smile - but SMiLE is/was the greatest unreleased pop masterpiece in the entire universe!  

He sounds wasted.   

Perhaps this is the victimization via buffoonery which VDP speaks of? 

Or perhaps what Brian was actually saying was that VDP has the biggest butthole in the world, and if he does, maybe it's because it was victimized by Brian's massive buffoonery late one acid fueled night at the Laurel Way house....maybe even in the sand box!    

Box set extractions are painful, messy operations Phil, we can't go all hammer and tongs on it!  'Least not the hammer, the tongs we'll need, but just be sure to don your latex coveralls cos once the extraction begins the proverbial poop is gonna be gushing.  Careful now, careful....   

They may as well go to Vegas at this point, and actually I'm kind of surprised they haven't done so yet.    The Beach Boys are not, and haven't been a creative force for the past 40 years.  Yes, they've made some good new music in that time, but the focus has been chiefly on keepin' the show on the road and the summer alive.   Nothing wrong with that, because as Bruce states, they made that schtick "BIG business", and I can't fault a fella for milking the cow if he has a pail to fill.   They should go to Vegas.  It is, at this point, a perfect fit for what has for so long now constituted "The Beach Boys". 

perhaps what MIC really stands for is  "Mission: Irritate Cohen"

Easy Money or maybe Ka-Ching!

could we make that,"Kokomo Ka-ching!"? 

or, p'raps:  "Hoveround Hits"
                  "Brian's Back (Because His Wife And Manager Told Him To)"
                  "Dog Ears vs Mr. Positivity"
                  "Wilson, Love, Jardine, Johnston And Marks"
                  "Fossilized Woodies"
                  "Forever '65"
   

[he]

One thing I'll take issue with is Mike's claim that he concocted the "boy/girl" scenario for the lyrics of Good Vibrations.  If the original, more ESP oriented, lyrics ("I only looked in her eyes and I picked up something I just can't explain" etc) were written by Tony Asher, then it is he, not Mike Love, who should be granted the acknowledgement for deciding that, to make such a "weird" track as 'Vibrations' relatable  to all those poor confused Beach Boys fans, it ought to have a "boy/girl" lyric.  What Mike Love did do was alter the verses from the questioning mind ("I wonder what she's picking up from me?") to the more comment oriented nature of the lyric we all know and Love.  For example:  he Loves the wonderful clothes she wears, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.   Unlike the character of the Asher lyric (..."something I just can't explain"), Mike's character knows exactly what is, and unlike the Asher character, Mike's isn't questioning any of it, but rather is going with the flow; he is accepting of it all ("I don't know where, but she takes me there.") .  It's a good lyric and fits the song smartly.    Mike Love of course (and as he so Loves to remind everyone) also came up with the lyric for the bass line of the chorus.  He often gets chided for supposedly inventing a word simply to make a rhyme.   That word being "excitations".    However I believe that people have misconstrued two words for one.   Even Mike Love is too humble to cop to such a stroke of Genius as this!  You see, what the lyric actually is, is "ex citations".   Now we all know what an "ex" is, it's a former lover.  A "citation" however, can be a bad thing  , and it also can be a good thing; a positive recommendation or review, for example.   Mike's character says, "she's giving me ex citations".  So, what Mike was actually saying is that not only does this chick have wonderful clothes, and sunlit hair, etc, but she also comes with references!     Brilliant!