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Post by Kapitan on Apr 5, 2021 12:24:29 GMT
By the time the Beach Boys released their album Today! in March 1965, they had already been releasing singles from it for more than six months.
Now, for their first nearly contemporaneously released single, they released an A-side ... not found on Today!, at least not in the same form. While the album included "Help Me Ronda," the April 5 single was the remake, "Help Me Rhonda" (which would be found on their next album). The track included Brian (Hammond organ, piano) and Carl (12-string guitar) as well as 10 studio musicians, and the full group on vocals.
Of course, Rhonda went on to be one of the band's all-time classics, an instantly recognizable standard. The song was a #1 in the US and Canada, and did well worldwide. In 2001, Ricky Martin dedicated it to all the Rhondas in the house, though there couldn't have been many.
The B-side, "Kiss Me, Baby," is the fifth consecutive B-side from the group that could be considered a classic ballad. Another major production, it featured a dozen studio musicians on instruments ranging from French horn to saxophones to vibraphone to traditional rock and roll instrumentation, as well as Carl and Brian playing. And of course, the whole band sang. The song did not chart.
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Post by kds on Apr 5, 2021 13:15:42 GMT
As much as I love Help Me Gibbler....er....Rhonda, it's become one of those BB classics that I rarely seek out anymore. I still love it when I hear it, but I never intentionally play it if that makes sense.
But, the B side on the other hand, is easily a Top Ten BB song for me.
Ten
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Post by Kapitan on Apr 5, 2021 13:34:28 GMT
"Rhonda" is one of those I hung on to as a most-hated for a while, lingering from when I didn't like the Beach Boys. I lumped it with the surfing and car and "Barbara Ann" tunes, just annoying nonsense from this irrelevant group of Sunkist salesmen and sitcom guest stars.
I really came to appreciate it later--unlike some of those surf or car songs that I still don't necessarily like. Now I am definitely a fan of the song, though I admit that, like KDS, I don't really seek it out very often. I don't avoid it, anyway, and I can totally acknowledge its quality.
And "Kiss Me, Baby" is an absolute gem.
10.
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Post by kds on Apr 5, 2021 14:26:30 GMT
Kiss Me Baby is another one that really caught my attention at the C50 show I attended. Like Please Let Me Wonder it was on the Warmth of the Sun comp. It really amazed me that so many great songs on that comp didn't hit me when I first played it.
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Post by Kapitan on Apr 5, 2021 14:30:32 GMT
Kiss Me Baby is another one that really caught my attention at the C50 show I attended. Like Please Let Me Wonder it was on the Warmth of the Sun comp. It really amazed me that so many great songs on that comp didn't hit me when I first played it. To quote another band of the era (and I guess a relatively successful book they were quoting and paraphrasing in that song), to everything there is a season (turn turn turn). Sometimes a song just hits you, and other times it doesn't.
"Where have you been all my life? ... Oh, right there? Weird."
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Post by kds on Apr 5, 2021 15:03:14 GMT
Kiss Me Baby is another one that really caught my attention at the C50 show I attended. Like Please Let Me Wonder it was on the Warmth of the Sun comp. It really amazed me that so many great songs on that comp didn't hit me when I first played it. To quote another band of the era (and I guess a relatively successful book they were quoting and paraphrasing in that song), to everything there is a season (turn turn turn). Sometimes a song just hits you, and other times it doesn't.
"Where have you been all my life? ... Oh, right there? Weird." I think my tastes were slightly different too. I think I was 27 when I bought that comp. And, I'd bought Pet Sounds the year prior, and was very unmoved by the majority of that album at the time.
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Post by Kapitan on Apr 5, 2021 15:10:18 GMT
Yes, that's partly what I mean: over time we just see or hear things differently than we used to. Today's unremarkable is tomorrow's brilliance (and vice versa).
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Post by jk on Apr 5, 2021 19:40:36 GMT
To my mind, "Help Me, Ronda" has aged more gracefully than the version with an additional h. And I shall forever see "Kiss Me, Baby" in the blissed-out context of side two of Today!
So neither side of this 45 has enough going for it to warrant a ten, or even a nine.
Eight.
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Post by beachboystalk on Apr 5, 2021 21:28:59 GMT
"Rhonda" is one of those I hung on to as a most-hated for a while, lingering from when I didn't like the Beach Boys. I lumped it with the surfing and car and "Barbara Ann" tunes, just annoying nonsense from this irrelevant group of Sunkist salesmen and sitcom guest stars.
I really came to appreciate it later--unlike some of those surf or car songs that I still don't necessarily like. Now I am definitely a fan of the song, though I admit that, like KDS, I don't really seek it out very often. I don't avoid it, anyway, and I can totally acknowledge its quality.
And "Kiss Me, Baby" is an absolute gem.
10.
Really? When you didn't like the Beach Boys, what was your beef with them at the time?
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Post by Kapitan on Apr 5, 2021 23:08:42 GMT
"Rhonda" is one of those I hung on to as a most-hated for a while, lingering from when I didn't like the Beach Boys. I lumped it with the surfing and car and "Barbara Ann" tunes, just annoying nonsense from this irrelevant group of Sunkist salesmen and sitcom guest stars.
I really came to appreciate it later--unlike some of those surf or car songs that I still don't necessarily like. Now I am definitely a fan of the song, though I admit that, like KDS, I don't really seek it out very often. I don't avoid it, anyway, and I can totally acknowledge its quality.
And "Kiss Me, Baby" is an absolute gem.
10.
Really? When you didn't like the Beach Boys, what was your beef with them at the time? Hope you've got a while... (The long-timers groan and wander off to do damn near anything as Grandpa Luther pulls up a chair and opens another drink to repeat, more or less, his origin story.)
It's key to understand the era. I'm 44, born in 1976. So for me, the Beach Boys were parents' music, and pathetic old men trying to grasp onto relevance. Or rather, not even parents' music: music of parents' younger siblings, maybe. My parents had the Endless Summer greatest hits comp, though frankly I'm pretty sure it was my mom's youngest sister's, not even my parents'. My parents were roughly the Beach Boys' ages, meaning the music they liked was more like the music the Beach Boys liked, as opposed to the Beach Boys themselves. My dad loved Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, but also harmony groups (be they doo-wop, folk, gospel, or "modern jazz"). My mom liked early Beatles, early Beach Boys, etc., but once the hair passed the ears, I think it was over for her.
So the record collection in my house was pre-Beach Boys in terms of rock and roll influence, but mostly post-Beach Boys otherwise--the collection of young adults becoming just plain-old adults, parents, etc. (Different time. Now I think adults extend some kind of adolescence in a way they didn't in decades past.)
My exposure to the Beach Boys beyond Endless Summer was a god-awful Sunkist commercial, VH1 playing a "Good Vibrations" video as part of its oldies show, and once I hit my early to mid teens, appearances on Full House. None of these--especially with me being a wannabe-to-budding guitarist in the era of the Van Halen-mimicking shredders--was remotely interesting to a teenager in, say, 1988, 1990.
So honestly for me, the Beach Boys were that pathetic group of non-surfers who pretended to surf and ripped off the real rock-and-rollers who preceded them, and who now were weird-looking fat and/or balding old men in lame clothes on bad TV shows. Once you have that as your established position, you don't spend much time thinking about it.
In the mid-to-late '90s, though, a bazillion lists came out: the top 100 movies, TV shows, books, and yes, albums of the century. I, being in my latter years of college, was a pretentious enough bastard to eat that shit up. Pet Sounds was always prominently represented. Finally I bought a CD of that and while it took me a second to get over the lack of rock and roll instrumentation, I became a Brianista. ("I love Brian Wilson, that tortured genius; I hate those crass, commercial dipshit brothers/cousin/friends of his who held him back.") Discovered many bands who name-checked BW (which nobody I knew of in the 80s or early 90s did). Dug into Smile, such as it was in those days for an idiot without the modern internet.
Then Imagination comes out and then Brian tours and so in both cases is in the news; combination of cheap, used CDs; and improving internet means I hear a ton more, learn a ton more. See shows. Expand tastes. And eventually go from being an elitist asshole of a fan to a regular asshole of a fan.
The End.
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Post by B.E. on Apr 6, 2021 0:40:44 GMT
To my mind, "Help Me, Ronda" has aged more gracefully that the version with an additional h. And I shall forever see "Kiss Me, Baby" in the blissed-out context of side two of Today! I'm curious if there's something specific you can point to about Ronda (or Rhonda) that you think has aged well (or hasn't aged well). Regarding your 2nd point, I've got a similar dilemma: I don't own, nor have I ever listened to this 45, so I've never formed an association between these songs (other than "Ronda" and "Kiss Me Baby" both appearing on Today! of course.) Perhaps I'd think differently if circumstances were different, but I don't really think these songs are a perfect match for each other. I don't know, though, it really might just be the strong association I have with each song and their respective albums. That said, these are both 10s for me, so I gotta go with a 10 for this single. Actually, I was really enjoying "Help Me Rhonda" when I was creating my 'Playlist Challenge' playlist last week and it reminded me of my top 20 songs from the 'My Favorite Beach Boys Songs Are...' thread and how SJS called me out ( ) for including "Wild Honey" in my top 10. Not that I'm any less of a fan of it (or Wild Honey) but I did (and do) feel a little uncomfortable about including it over "Help Me Rhonda". If I were to update the list to reflect my current mood, I'd bump "Help Me Rhonda" into the top 10. I Get Around/Don't Worry Baby - 10 Surfer Girl/Little Deuce Coupe - 10 Help Me Rhonda/Kiss Me Baby - 10 Little Saint Nick/The Lord's Prayer - 10 Surfin' USA/Shut Down - 9 Fun Fun Fun/Why Do Fools Fall In Love - 9 Be True To Your School/In My Room - 9 Do You Wanna Dance/Please Let Me Wonder - 9 When I Grow Up/She Knows Me Too Well - 9 Dance Dance Dance/Warmth Of The Sun - 9 Surfin' Safari/409 - 8 Man With All The Toys/Blue Christmas - 8 Surfin'/Luau - 7 Ten Little Indians/County Fair - 7
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Apr 6, 2021 1:36:00 GMT
The circumstances behind my hearing both "Help Me Rhonda" and "Kiss Me Baby" FOR THE FIRST TIME could not be more different. "Help Me Rhonda" is the first Beach Boys' song I can remember hearing. We didn't have the 45 or album; it was all over AM radio. And, for many years, I thought they were singing "Help me run, help help me run..." (hey, it was static-filled AM radio ). I loved it in 1965 and I love it today. It is usually in my personal Beach Boys Top 10. I think it's one of Brian's best songs and productions, a perfect single. It really does get going, doesn't it. The piano and the guitar during the bridge are great. Of course I have to nitpick, but I wonder why Brian didn't come up with an intro for the single version of "Help Me Rhonda"? Every other version of the song - studio and live - has an intro.
I didn't hear "Kiss Me Baby" until I was well into my Beach Boys' fandom. The song did not appear on any of the first comps I bought, The Beach Boys Today! was out of print, and I stumbled upon it on this reissue:
What a great song! Both Mike and Brian's vocals are among the best they ever did. Mike was on a roll with his lyrics; he was really connecting. Brian was channeling Spector, developing his own Wall Of Sound on Today! Not many composers of the rock era could come up with the trifecta of "Please Let Me Wonder", "She Knows Me Too Well", and "Kiss Me Baby". And, "In The Back Of My Mind" and the cover of "I'm So Young" weren't exactly slouches. I know, I know, Brian had to grow and progress to Summer Days (And Summer Nights) and Pet Sounds and SMiLE, but if I could take a page from the book of Mike Love, I kinda wish we would've gotten more ballads from Brian like "Kiss Me Baby" before he moved on.
This one's easy. "Help Me Rhonda" 10 + "Kiss Me Baby" 10 = 10
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Post by lonelysummer on Apr 6, 2021 6:35:57 GMT
By the time the Beach Boys released their album Today! in March 1965, they had already been releasing singles from it for more than six months.
Now, for their first nearly contemporaneously released single, they released an A-side ... not found on Today!, at least not in the same form. While the album included "Help Me Ronda," the April 5 single was the remake, "Help Me Rhonda" (which would be found on their next album). The track included Brian (Hammond organ, piano) and Carl (12-string guitar) as well as 10 studio musicians, and the full group on vocals.
Of course, Rhonda went on to be one of the band's all-time classics, an instantly recognizable standard. The song was a #1 in the US and Canada, and did well worldwide. In 2001, Ricky Martin dedicated it to all the Rhondas in the house, though there couldn't have been many.
The B-side, "Kiss Me, Baby," is the fifth consecutive B-side from the group that could be considered a classic ballad. Another major production, it featured a dozen studio musicians on instruments ranging from French horn to saxophones to vibraphone to traditional rock and roll instrumentation, as well as Carl and Brian playing. And of course, the whole band sang. The song did not chart.
I think we need to change the language here. Albums weren't THE thing in 1963-65; singles were. It wasn't a matter of putting out an album and releasing a bunch of singles from it; it was the reverse. An album was expected to be some of an artists latest hits, along with a bunch of filler material to ...well...fill out the album. The Beach Boys were recording singles, completely focused on making these songs the best they could be. Then, once the song had proved to be a hit, it would be featured on an album, surrounded possibly by other singles, and material that was perceived not to be strong enough for singles. Just my 2 cents. And this single is a 10.
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Post by Kapitan on Apr 6, 2021 11:39:31 GMT
I am aware of the single-to-album shift of priority in the mid-60s. But you're right, it is a different way of thinking.
The difference between the Beatles' (UK generally?) approach is night and day, feeling they were ripping off fans if they sold an album full of singles they'd already sold them. Regardless of priority between the two formats, at least the Beatles weren't double-dipping quite so much.
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Post by Kapitan on Apr 6, 2021 17:26:06 GMT
I linked this in the interviews thread as well, but check out Don Randi talking (erroneously) about "Help Me Rhonda." (It's cued up.)
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