Beach boys haters, do they really?

[Mahalo]

I feel ya....  I get the same jive from people.... I get the look when I say I'm listening to the Beach Boys on my mp3. Sometimes I just want to say, "Here, listen.....this is called 'Sail On Sailor, or 'Surf's Up'...." I also feel glad, like it's my own personal listening experience that few of us hold dear....I suppose us Beach Boys fans are actually real cerebral types of people, in a sense....maybe I'm wrong.

[GoogaMooga]

The Beach Boys' curse is that they made it big on a fad, surf guitar, and would therefore always be associated with that fad no matter what creative turn they took. But the surfing image was also a blessing, because they were so famous in the early sixties that they had enough clout to survive lack of backing by their labels and take artistic chances and consistently surprise the most devoted fans at least until 1980. Jan and Dean couldn't shake off that clean-cut surfing image either, and their way out album "Carnival of Sound" was never released. Had the Beach Boys made straight-ahead pop like Tommy James and the Shondells and progressed from there they might have enjoyed more recognition today, but would they have lasted as long and would the labels have supported their every whim?

[GoogaMooga]

Okay, my post was a bit contradictory, I meant "lack of promotion", not "lack of backing". The labels backed their albums, but didn't always promote them properly.

[Magic Transistor Radio]

I wonder how much differance it would've made if they were called the Pendletones. Even if they still did Surfin USA, Catch a Wave, California Girls, etc.

[Aegir]

The Pendletones just sounds so 1950s-esque. They'd've been even worse off in my opinion.

[pixletwin]

This is an interesting thread.

I grew up in the 90's and I was totally into the Beatles and John Lennon. I had a friend who was always trying to get me to listen to the Beach Beach boys but I always snorted condescendingly at him. The extent of my knowledge of the Beach Boys at the time was 1) Barbara Ann, Surfin' USA, Help Me Rhonda 2) They (Mike Love) was on Full House at least once - a TV show I despise to this day and 3) Kokomo - a song a hated. Not to mention I hated living in Salt Lake City at the time and the fact that they recorded a song in homage was no help.

Then I was reading a book about Pink Floyd founder, Syd Barrett and how the author was making comparisons between him and Brian Wilson, which peaked me interested and about the same time I read the famous quote from Paul McCartney about God Only Knows being the greatest song ever written and these things piqued my interest. To cap it all of, one of my favorite groups, The Flaming Lips, listed the Beach Boys as one of their biggest influences and I realised that alot of the things I liked about them were things they'd taken from Pet Sounds. So I went out and bought Pet Sounds on CD. I thought it was great but I quickly forgot about it.

Then in 04 I heard an interview/review of BWPS on NPR and I loved what I heard, ran out and bought it. LOVED IT!!!! began collecting other CD's until now I have the complete (as far as I know) Beach Boys Catalogue and I have searched out for every fragment of the original SMiLE sessions and recreated it using the BWPS as a model.

Now my love for Brian Wilson's music absolutely eclipses any of my other musical tastes. If my 32 year old self now would have told my 16 year old self that the Beach Boys are my favorite band I think I would've jumped off a bridge. 

[pixletwin]

One more thing of note, I now am also a huge Dennis Wilson fan. Funny thing is that there was this song used on the TV show Northern Exposure which I had been searching for 7 years to find. When I did I discovered it was called DW Suite, dedicated to Dennis Wilson.

[Aegir]

When I was dating this one girl, whenever we would go anywhere in my car we would listen to the Beach Boys. She was none too pleased.

But then yesterday I saw on her last.fm page that her recently played tracks were I Know There's An Answer, God Only Knows, That's Not Me, et cetera. So I said to her, "Oh, so now you DO listen to the Beach Boys. I see how it is."

Her response? "ughghgh. GET OFF MY BACK! i like their popular songs, not ones about brian wilson's son on his knee."

The fact that she likes Pet Sounds but hates Friends is worse than if she were to just flat-out hate the Beach Boys.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Couldn't have hated them that much if she remembered a lyric from "When a Man needs a woman" which certainly is one of Brian's more obscure numbers.

[MBE]

Well in her defense that is one of the lesser songs on Friends which as a whoile I think is terrific.

[the captain]

It's one of my 10 favorite Beach Boys songs. Love it.

[Aegir]

Yeah, When A Man Needs a Woman is one of my favorite songs.

[Don't Back Down]

Or Pitter Patter 

It looks like raiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin.......

Sad thing is when a friend and I walked outside to go to class it was raining and I actually sang those words out loud and we both laughed 

[Breakaway]

Aw, does everyone really hate Pitter Patter? I actually kind of like that one...

[Roger Ryan]

Personally, I think "Pitter Patter" is the best track on MIU; it reminds me of the Wilson/Jardine collaborations from 8-10 years earlier.

[SG7]

I just have a love/hate relationship with that song. Sometimes its funny and other times downright disturbing 

[Reggie Dunbar]

I liken the Beach Boys music to Asian food, there's something for everyone
if you take the time to read the menu. You can't say that for many artists.

[MBE]

Well said

[bluesno1fann]

Unfortunately I have noticed there's not a lot of love for the Beach Boys.
Just the other day I was with a bunch of friends, wearing a Beach Boys T-Shirr, and they started going on about how the Beach Boys sucks (FYI one's a Kiss and Queen fan, the other is obsessed with Eminem). I tried showing them WIBNTLA, All I Want To Do (Live MIC version) and Hard Times. Within seconds they thought it was sh*t. It certainly didn't help that they happened to notice Disney Girls on the Surf's Up tracklisting and started laughing uncontrollably (Damn You Bruce Johnston!).
But they're just teens. Even with adult music fans, I've noticed they're a bit of a laughingstock, and are rarely taken seriously. It's sad, really. But I've learned to ignore ignorant comments about the Beach Boys.

[Niko]

People I know ask me to put them on all the time when I'm playing music. It swings both ways. Old Folks Stuff vs. Classic Songs of Summer

And everyone I know loves WIBNTLA.

[buddhahat]

I think the Beach Boys are much more polarizing than many other artists from that era. The vocal harmonizing thing will put off many listeners right off the bat. I don't try to get anybody into the Beach Boys unless they're expressing an interest, or have a love of the hits already.

and they started going on about how the Beach Boys sucks (FYI one's a Kiss and Queen fan, the other is obsessed with Eminem).

If I was a teenager and my friends (a kiss, queen & an eminem fan) were taking the piss out out of my Beach Boys t-shirt, well - I can't think of one BB song that's going to reverse that situation. Even if one tiny part of them is illuminated by the music - some isolated and lonely molecule of good taste swimming in a vast sea of retarded conformity - you think they're going to admit it to you!? Nice try though. In that situation I would play them the best 'worst' BB songs I could think of: Songs I love but that appear so lame by conventional teen standards that they actually exceed their wildest and worst imaginings of what Beach Boys music could sound like. Songs like Crack At Your Love or Belles of Paris. Play them loud and taunt them as you do it: "How d'ya like this muthaf**kas? This sh*t owns Eminem."

Alternatively, ask yourself if you want the whole world to be into The Beach Boys? That's what The Beatles are for. The Beach Boys will always be a cool, niche thing. That's part of the appeal for me.

[Myk Luhv]

The Beach Boys are incredibly corny and I don't think the doo-wop-inspired harmonies help to mitigate against this fact for a lot of people. The bands that have been inspired by them, both in the '70s up to the present, don't often sound anything like The Beach Boys -- either because these bands don't sing merely about love songs, don't have doo-wop-inspired vocal harmonies, use a different kind of humour... there are a number of reasons you could select, basically. Obviously I appreciate these things about The Beach Boys in varying degrees at any given time but I can also completely understand why someone wouldn't like these factors as well -- and I think that's why the Holland era Beach Boys (and possibly also Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue) may have gone over so well with folks who would not have previously considered themselves "Beach Boys fans".

[retrokid67]

My mom didn't like them until she really heard them through me, most people I know did them though on one level. The Full House era was a lot more embarresing but since Pet Sounds and Smile gained more fame, they are considered pretty hip. It's funny but the period where they were considered really uncool here (67-70) was their coolest.

same here!  I convinced my mom to take me to C50 and she loved it, she was even crying  .  she's not as crazy about them as I am but she still appreciates the music

[Please delete my account]

A friend of mine whose taste I respect once said to me, when I asked her why on earth she hated the Beach Boys, words to the effect of: "you know what? I think maybe in fact deep down, I do actually like them."
Then again she could well have said that to get me off her case!

[alf wiedersehen]

I would hardly place any stock in in the opinions of a Kiss fan.