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The Beach Boys/Brian Wilson are fucking brilliant thread

Started by Nowhere Man, January 17, 2015, 02:38:40 PM

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Nowhere Man

Topic for Beach Boys/Brian Wilson related stuff.

For some reason this morning I started listing my favourite Beach Boys tunes in my head. This is what I came up with for a top 10 list:

God Only Knows
Good Vibrations
Wouldn't It Be Nice
Surf's Up
Don't Worry Baby
'Til I Die
Heroes and Villains
California Girls
I Get Around
Feel Flows

but then I thought about Wonderful, Break Away, Cabin Essence, Surfer Girl, Warmth of the Sun, In My Room etc. etc.
and it got me thinking about just how fucking incredible the Beach Boys actually were at their peak, dare I say that many of there very best songs are very much a match for any other group ever (never mind just the Beatles)

Despite the heavy amount of filler on their pre-Pet Sounds stuff (even on Today and All Summer Long) They were one of the best singles bands of all time, a feat they accomplished in just a few short years. In fact i'll say the filler is surprisingly good and makes their output in many ways more intruiging than their contemporaries. (Who needs perfect albums anyway? Pfff!)

But the fact that the band that released Pet Sounds, SMiLE, Sunflower, Surfs Up and countless classics could release so much shit post-1971 is almost mind-boggling to me, yet it somehow makes sense for them.

Surely you guys are now familiar with Summer Of Love? (which I used in my last avatar)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBFsJk6PWu0

or Brian Wilson & his therapist Eugene Landys early 90s rap? Its really as incredible as it sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz0SnpN_O00

How did the same band that released God Only Knows release Summer Of Love?
Why did Brian Wilson butter his face and put in between two slices of bread?
Why did Dennis hang around with Charles Manson?
Why is Full House's John Stamos a constant fixture of Beach Boys concerts?
Why did Murry Wilson take out his fake eyeball to scare Brian?
How is Brian still alive?
How did Kokomo become a US no.1 Hit?

The Beach Boys story is really incredible, it's like a long running soap opera. Is anyone else as fucking obsessed with this shit as I am? Are you not? Post whatever Beach Boys related thing pops into your noggin.




doppelkorn

Let's get this out of the way: Kokomo is a great tune

My dad loves the Beach Boys. Whenever I go round his house he has this Knebworth Beach Boys film on that always seems to be on Sky Arts. Now that's a great gig from a band who by then must have been extremely naff.

It must be from about 1981/82 because Dennis is on there.

My best mate asked me if I wanted to start a Beach Boys tribute act with him when we were 16. I think that's the worst idea I've ever heard from anyone.


The Masked Unit

One of my favourite things is listening to the behind the scenes stuff on the pet sounds sessions. It's such a privilege to eavesdrop on something so significant and how 95% of people can go on making music after doing so is beyond me. I know it's one of the reasons I gave up.

Nowhere Man

One of the coolest things is just mining all the outtakes and odds and sods that were left unreleased back in the 60's/70's. (SMiLE and Adult/Child included of course)

This is one of my absolutely favourite tunes that was an outtake post-SMiLE when Brian was still obsessing over little song fragments:

Cant Wait Too Long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHXGvDP8iLI

and one of Dennis's best songs which was originally going to come out on the Surf's Up album was only released two years ago:

(Wouldn't It Be Nice) To Live Again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jinTmcYwAdQ

It shows just how mental the band are/were that they could take over 40 years to release a gem like that but still put a dirge track like Student Demonstration Time on that album!

This is a proper lovely track from 1969 that was only released about 15 years ago, apparently because Carl flubs one of the lines and they weren't that bothered about the tune. A shame really as its wonderful.

Soulful Old Man Sunshine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssmPxLhmKIY

Nowhere Man

This recording is unbelievable, can you imagine Brian, Carl, Dennis, Al and Mike being bossed around by the Wilson's father who is giving them a lecture on how to sing their song? It sounds daft now but here's living proof from the "Help Me Rhonda" sessions:

Murry "brian, i'm a genius too" Wilson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DATadl9seGc

Weird how Carl seemed so normal, when Brian was so mentally fragile and Dennis a violent thug.  Yet they all had the same tyrannical father.

PaulTMA

Quote from: Nowhere Man on January 17, 2015, 06:03:15 PM
It shows just how mental the band are/were that they could take over 40 years to release a gem like that but still put a dirge track like Student Demonstration Time on that album!

Supposedly it was Dennis's decision to pull the track himself.  But yup, kwazy it was unreleased for over 40 years.

daf

This is a good round-up of Brian's productions outside the Beach Boys :



including this immortal corker given to Glen Campbell - Guess I'm Dumb (1965) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA7ZaCxC3kA

Talulah, really!

#10
Don't know if the following track is one of those things that everybody already knows about but it seems to me worth mentioning that whilst the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson get talked about in the context of the Beatles in building up the complexity of sixties pop from straight ahead r'n'b based songs to the greater glories ahead , dear old Jan and Dean get left aside as though all they did was straight ahead surfer pop and yet this track, a B-side from 1964! shows them well on the road to Pet Sounds with a perfect blend of the California sunshine sound of glorious chorus and harmonies, driving r'n'b with more baroque pop flourishes, harpsichord and oboe, the dexterous texture of the lyrics pushing the florid melodies and then the topping of the snarling riff on the outro. Marvellous.

The Anaheim, Azusa and Cucumonga Sewing Cricle, Book Review and Timing Association

Also worth checking out is "You really know how to hurt a guy" if you want the soaring melancholy that is the other side of this era of California pop, just as good as Bacharach and Wilson IMO.

http://youtu.be/krF8bU43GRw

Petey Pate

You can listen to one of Brian Wilson's favourite albums, the "How to Speak Hip" comedy record by Del Close; legendary improv teacher of many famous American comedians and John Brent, in its entirety here.



http://audio.skeyelab.com/howtospeakhip/#

Attila

Every once in a while I get asked to give my public talk that draws similarities between medieval popular music and modern rock and roll. When I illustrate medieval polyphony, I usually play one of the vocals-only versions of Beach Boys tracks floating around on YouTube (God Only Knows works really well for this).

I used to teach a module on the History of Rock back in the US, and my lecture on the Beach Boys (and surf in general) was one of my favourites. I don't like Mike Love, but I think Brian is wonderful. I took a mad holiday from teaching back in 2011 to fly over to London from Philadelphia just for the weekend to see Brian at the Southbank Centre. I was pretty poor at the time, and that trip meant actually rationing food for about a month when I got back, but I have never regretted it.

I've had the chance to publish tiny articles about the Beach Boys and surf music (for an American children's academic press as well as Oxford University Press -- the latter required a 16 page contract for about 750 words!) in kind of music encyclopedia type things, but I like them best of my academic stuff.

Brian has a wonderful band behind him when he tours alone; I like when they do God Only Knows and Heroes and Villains best.

I have an upcoming publication thing (well, actually, it's stuck in editorial hell) for the British Museum, and when I contacted EMI about permission to use some of their archival images in the article, the archivist waived all of the fees when she saw that I'd snuck a Beach Boys' title into the title of my paper :3

DukeDeMondo

Is there a good, comprehensive Beach Boys documentary? I've had a look around but I can't see any mention of one, though it seems like the sort of 12 part series Sky Arts was made for. I've seen Beautiful Dreamer, but I want a BB-specific film that talks a lot about the likes of Love You, for example. Does such a film exist?

SteveDave

Endless Harmony's quite good. Doesn't really go in depth about the LPs but it's split into 2 parts so part 1 is all happy fun, fun, fun & then part 2 is DRUGS! BREAKDOWNS! DEATH!

And Mike Love is king of the dicks in it. I got it in Fopp a few years ago for about £5.

Nowhere Man

I like that the documentary's named after a really shit Bruce Johnston song

dark now my pies

Quote from: Nowhere Man on January 22, 2015, 09:11:18 PM
I like that the documentary's named after a really shit Bruce Johnston song

I like that you're named after a really shit Beatles song.

I find myself completely gone off the Beach Boys under Brian Wilson. I used to think he was brilliant but now he's a little too sissy for my tastes. I have to be in a real sissy mood to enjoy them. I tend to listen to their 70s stuff onwards nowadays. Now that's some proper earthy shit there.

doppelkorn

Hang on. Dennis Wilson was a violent thug? Look at the man.



Is this something to do with Charles Manson?

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: SteveDave on January 22, 2015, 09:17:22 AM
Endless Harmony's quite good. Doesn't really go in depth about the LPs but it's split into 2 parts so part 1 is all happy fun, fun, fun & then part 2 is DRUGS! BREAKDOWNS! DEATH!

And Mike Love is king of the dicks in it. I got it in Fopp a few years ago for about £5.

Cheers again for the recommendation, I watched this yesterday morning. I did enjoy it a lot, but you're right, it doesn't go into very much detail at all. I didn't find Mike Love all that dickish in it, to be honest. I think he's a bit more of an arse in this (very good) BBC2 documentary on Pet Sounds written and presented by Mark Lamarr from way back in the NineteenNinetyRichardAshcrofts:

http://youtu.be/sX-kFyt73Uw

SteveDave

There's also this

http://www.amazon.com/The-Beach-Boys-Satan/dp/B001DGFGQI

which I found in an Enfield charity shop & is quite strange. Kim Fowley improvises a blues song about the 60s & 70s in it.

The second greatest achievement of the Beach Boys, beyond their ability to have produced so much beautiful and sublime pop music, is to have attracted a fan base, a large part of which is so divided (Brianistas vs Kokomaoists) that it is virtually impossible for any rational discussion of their music to take place without it degenerating almost immediately into a frenzied bout of playground insult-exchanges and shit-slinging.

I just don't have the time anymore.  I'd rather put some incense on, turn the lights down low, lay back on the sofa and immerse myself in Friends, Sunflower, Holland or Love You.

lazyhour

Have any of y'all read the book/oversized zine "Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!" (I think that's what it's called)? It's a bumper compendium of clipped-out articles, ads, press releases and images from the run-up to (and aftermath of) the aborted Smile LP. It's really interesting to read all these contemporaneous pieces about what was, when the book was published, a great lost album.

I suppose its power is a bit diluted now that we do have an official version of Smile. I'm lucky to have read it several years before Brian Wilson's Smile was released or even talked about.

Brundle-Fly


Custard

#23
I highly recommend reading Nick Kent's famous article on yer Boys. You can get it in his collected writings book, The Dark Stuff. He totally annihilates Murray Wilson and Mike Love, and the Brian stuff is fascinating

That whole book is great, mind

I've had a copy of Endless Harmony for a while, might finally stick it on later. Pity they've never had the 6 hour Anthology treatment. It's a great, endlessly fascinating story

Only discovered Brian's stunning Lonely Sea recently. He wrote it when he was 20. Fuckin' ecks. Everyone else just give up

http://youtu.be/Efu8CMyfgSA

Squink

Oh, Brian. Such a lovely sense of humour [/Partridge].


DukeDeMondo

I've been listening to fuck all but Surf's Up for the past week. I think it's my favourite Beach Boys album. Student Demonstration Pish aside, it's just utterly awesome, in every sense of the word.

For what it's worth, me top five:

Surf's Up
Pet Sounds
Smile / Smiley Smile
Today
Love You

I haven't ever really been able to get into Sunflower, for some reason. Maybe I'll try again this week.


Nowhere Man

Love You is fucking brilliant. The greatest man child album of all time.[nb]Whatever that means.[/nb]
I honestly find it hard to believe there are people who can't see its brilliance.

Also here are two very decent 1995 Beach Boys tracks (with Brian of course). They weren't released at the time of course, an album featuring right wing country artists singing duets was apparently much more indispensable. They're both on the new-ish Made In California Box Set.

Soul Searchin' & You're Still a Mystery-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In0lZ_pNPbU

Custard

Did watch Endless Harmony, loike

It's not baaaad, but agree that it's very slight, and I also wish they went a lot more into the making of the music, but they only had 1.75 hours, so I guess it was a fair enough job of trying to cram in as much as possible. Should have been 4 hours, at least

Didn't like how the deaths of Dennis and Carl warranted a couple of minutes each, mind. Blinkin' eck!