This should be a blast! Pick the 10 BB songs you cannot stand and say why. Only the most forgiving fan could struggle to fill this list!!
Mine are as follows;
1) Solar System.  Have slagged this many a time before. May very well have caused Mike's last remaining hairs to fall out upon hearing it. Brian certainly wasn't "back" the day he wrote this dreck.
2) Passing Friend. Bad 80's synths, drum machines - yuk! The only thing worse than hearing The Beach Boys do a song written by Culture Club is hearing Culture Club do a song written by Culture Club.
3) Make it Good. I wish he had! This is the one Dennis song I truly detest and stops CATP from being a 5 star album. At least he made amends a track later with "Cuddle Up".
4) You're So Good to Me. Hate BW's voice on this when he goes "Luurrve It". Garbage lyrics. Why is this on practically every "best of" comp in the UK?
5) Heads You Win... Can't be assed to write it's entire title, you all know the one I mean. The outcome when you hurry a developing young songwriter into a studio to make a record when he's only got about 4 good songs to his name.
6) Problem Child. Mike and Melcher drag the groups name through the mud. The annoying kids "NAH NAH NANANAH"! is the best part of the song. Which says it all really.
7) When Girls Get Together. Nice one Bruce! This fits on KTSA much better than a track nabbed from Dennis's stillborn "Bambu" project would have. Good choice!!
Let's put Our Hearts Together. Lumpy production meets bad lovey dovey lyrics that feature BW's wife wailing off key whilst eyeing up Rocky's package.
9) She Believes in Love Again. Ouch!! Again with the horrible 80's synth production. Plus Bruce makes us all laugh by trying to sound like Don Henley!!  
10) Full Sail. Carl bores us with this AOR coma inducing zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! (Sorry drifted off there) snoozefest.

5, 6, and 10 suck ass. I actually forgot about "Problem Child" when I said what 3 songs were my least favorite in another post. In that case, let me humbly add the hideous "Happy Endings". Yeah, I was happy when the Luther ended.

edit..."Luther"? Seriously"!   interesting word filter...

I seem to be one of the few fans left who thinks that 1964-1967 is the best period of the Beach Boys, along with I'd say 1969-1970. The rest, of course, has a lot of offer but I tend to think of the best BB songs along the lines of all the stuff on "Pet Sounds," "California Girls" everything on All Summer Long and Today and the SMiLE material.

Actually, I always thought most fans feel that way.

Oh, and if I try to run Malwarebytes or Spybot now, my computer restarts after a couple of minutes.

I know it's almost unheard by a lot of folks (but it's out there), but Brian's 1980 recording of River Deep Mountain High has an amazing sound on it. Kind of Love You-esque, but full of that "Brian" sound. He never finished it; only getting as far as a backing track and most of the lead vocal, but there's a lot of potential in there for a great cover.

Now, why the dude (or chick) who leaked it in the first place leaked it as a truly crappy 32kbps MP3 is beyond my comprehension (read: covering their ass), but we take what we can get. The magic is in there, beneath the tape hiss and digital artifacting. 

Brian was really belting out the vocal too. He certainly was feelin' it. The one I heard was 128kbps, but yeah, the hiss was unbearable.

Looks like i'm still infected. System restore does not work; I get a message stating "System restore cannot protect your computer. Please restart and run system restore again." If I try to use Google, any site I click on automatically brings me to a fake search engine that says "background sleuth" up at the top.


This is balls.

I too can find good and bad stuff on all their albums (well, I can't find anything bad on Pet Sounds, but yeah...). Hell, even SIP has "Strange things happen".  See, the thing is, for the longest time,growing up,  I actually hated the Beach Boys. Later on, when I did become a fan, it still took a long time for me to give the earlier material a shot. And for the most part I like it, minus the LDC album and the songs mentioned earlier. Actually, listening to "Party" without the party overdubs is revelatory.  Still, PS thru   Holland are my  favorites. Not because it's the "hip" thing to do, but because that time period happens to be my favorite.  And to be fair, Smiley Smile was the album that turned me on to the Beach Boys.

Yeah, and I actually don't dislike it, minus California Calling, I'm So Lonely, and It's Just a Matter of Time. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the pre-Pet Sounds material as compared to what came later (as my favorite songs generally range from 1966-1972), but the songs listed in the post you quoted are the only ones I can honestly say I do not care for.

My thoughts on ITBOMM have been posted numerous times on this site. Don't Back Down...I actually find Brian's vocals to be cringe-worthy, esp the "who's got GUTS" part. Now as far as DNMLS...to me, it sounds muddy and entirely too busy and over produced. To be honest, it's not a well-written song either.

I'm not all giddy over Girls on the Beach either. I could either take it or leave it. There...I said it.  I'm prepared to get shat on now.

"It's OK" is a 70's BB classic.

"Do It Again" is a BB classic, period.

And that makes all the difference to me.

For some reason I imagined this post sung to the tune of "All This is That".  Damn I'm a BB geek...

Ahhh...to live again....

That...was...one of the best posts I have ever read on this forum. I'll give a more detailed response in a little while. But yeah, man, that was cool.

Wonder if the Shortenin' Bread riff will pop up anywhere...

I'm sorry for derailing, I can suggest one of two scenarios: he was sick already, might not have even known it. I remember AGD saying that by the beginning of 1996 he was visibly not well and remember this was November 1995

That's always been my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

Finally getting around to posting on this thread.

I can't freakin' STAND "Don't Hurt My little sister", as it is one of the the reasons I feel Today is highly overrated, same with In The Back Of My Mind (I like the instrumental track, but the vocals don't fit  and sound hurried). Those two songs and Don't Back Down just so happen to be my 3 least favorite BB tracks.

Wow...all this time I thought it was Brian!

Wow...

I'm using my wife's computer right now. Mine's basically toast.

I was running Super Anti-Spyware on my computer and it found a trojan.Like I've done in the past, I deleted it and then was prompted to restart my computer. Afterwards, NOTHING works. Not a thing. Every program I try to run pulls up a window that says "open with" and has a list of programs.  So, I tried using system restore. All I get is an error message that states "system restore is not able to protect your computer. please restart your computer" which does not work. Running in safe mode does not work. I have files that I *cannot* afford to lose on my computer, and some stuff that is irreplaceable. Can anybody help? I am desperate right now.

Can anyone link to/post a picture of Carolyn?  No?
 

I've never seen one. Also, I don't think she has ever commented on her time with Brian. Hell, I don't even know if she's even still alive.

Same issues I'm having...just happened again.

Wow I never even noticed the Brian part on "Sunshine"....probably because I've only listened to it a handful of times in my life. Hes on the last line of ever chorus right? Sounds like his late 70s/early 80s "falsetto".

Also, does anybody know why they really didn't use much Brian material on LA? Do you think it was Bruce's choice since he was producing? "Good Timin'" is a great song, and I just can't imagine CBS being very happy that they just signed the boys and had Brian only contribute one new song. They couldn't have been jumping for joy at a disco remake of an oldie, and some new Mike Love and Al Jardine numbers, along with a few sleepy Carl songs. "Baby Blue" however is an awesome tune, but honestly, how did they even accept this. There must have been better Brian stuff in the can they could have us

On Sunshine, he's singing pretty much the whole way through.  You can also hear him on Going On, the intro to "School Days", on Santa Ana Winds (not vocally though, just harmonica), and "Some of your Love".


Brian was on more LA tracks, just not the ones that actually made it to the album.

Same as recordings done with pitch correction. The pitch may be "fixed" somewhat, but you can't change the actual timbre of someone's voice.

7. His relationship with Brian remained strained until a few years before his death.

Considering he was the one who ruined the reunion in 1996, I think you can safely replace "years" with "months."

Is anyone having issues accessing the site today? Like, getting "page cannot be displayed" or any other errors like that?

Yeah but right after MIU he was back to the same old Brian.

As far as the second Landy era...notice how he got a somewhat stronger falsetto back for a while. Then, in 1991, he began smoking again. He quit in 1994, but the damage had already been done. Compare his vocals on the *original" Rainbow Eyes, or "Someone to Love" to anything from OCA. He lost all power behind his voice.

I'd go even earlier and wonder what the hell happened after Holland. It seems like Carl's marriage problems and subsequent heroin addiction (or did it come first?)completely killed his drive and was just as responsible IMHO to their failure to keep up their (artistic) momentum as Brian being forced back in.

Can you imagine if her & Brian wrote a book together? The lawsuits resulting would make even Mike Love gasp in horror.