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Post by B.E. on Mar 20, 2019 17:28:12 GMT
We all have a unique story to tell. Was it a particular song, album, concert, or TV appearance that hooked you? Can you remember the first Beach Boys releases you owned? What path did you take? Here's mine...
1. 20 Good Vibrations - The Greatest Hits - This was the lone Beach Boys CD in my house growing up. For years, until the age of about 14-15, if I wanted to listen to the Beach Boys I listened to this compilation. I'd mainly listen to it in the summer. There wasn't a song I disliked. [circa 1995]
2. Pet Sounds - I discovered Pet Sounds as a teenager. It quickly became my favorite album. Despite this, I still didn't feel compelled to explore further. Just not enough time in the day, I suspect. [circa 2003]
3. Little Deuce Coupe / All Summer Long - A few years later, my brother picked this up. It was nice to have more of their earlier material. I liked it, but I listened to it sparingly. I was focused on other bands at the time.
4. Friends / 20/20 - Another few years later, I picked this up out of the blue. I can't remember why. I don't think I knew anything about it. I distinctly remember listening to both albums and being impressed. Impressed enough to recommend these lesser known albums to people, but apparently not enough to ditch whoever I was listening to and obsess over the Beach Boys. I had Pet Sounds. I had the hits. I had a few early '60s albums, a few late '60s albums. How much more did I need?
5. Party! - This was given to me by a friend. She said she never felt cooler than when she was cruising, blasting this album. She said it was the only Beach Boys album she liked. I thought that was kinda cool. [2011]
These are my first five (or seven) Beach Boys albums, but it should be noted that I was aware of Brian's solo career enough that I picked up BWPS, TLOS, and the Disney album shortly upon release. I don't think I was aware of GIOMH or WIRWFC. I probably just wasn't interested in the Gershwin album at the time.
In 2012 I was aware of the reunion, but I was still something of a casual fan. Ultimately, I didn't see them on tour and I didn't pick up TWGMTR until a year later (when I was buying all of their albums). So, what was I interested in? Pacific Ocean Blue. I can't be sure what inspired me to pick up the 2-disc edition of POB, but I couldn't stop listening to it. Even though Friends and 20/20 had clued me in to the potential quality and diversity of the Beach Boys music beyond the hits, it wasn't that far removed from what I knew. With POB, here's the drummer, solo, in '77, giving me one of my favorite albums. It was time. I had to listen to it all. At this point I started reading up on the band and by mid-2013 I had bought just about every album. I also remember stumbling upon a blog of someone's Top 200 Beach Boys songs. That's where I heard some of Brian's mid-70s material for the first time, e.g., 'It's Over Now', 'Still I Dream Of It', and 'Sherry She Needs Me'. That blew my mind. As I picked up the rest of their albums, I started with Smiley Smile / Wild Honey.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 20, 2019 17:59:39 GMT
I fear that someday someone will go through Boards of Beach Boys Past, compile my various answers to this kind of question, and prove my memory is fading (or becoming more creative and interesting, maybe!). But I’ll try to retell it with some degree of honesty. The Beach Boys’ Endless Summer was in my parents’ record (yes, vinyl) collection. Neither was a fan, so I’m not sure how it got there, but there it was, probably a first edition. So in the late 70s and early 80s, that was the Beach Boys for me. I listened every now and again. I performed (er, lip synced) a brilliant rendition of “California Girls” with my brother for our parents, tennis rackets for guitars and my dad’s sport-coats inexplicably selected for wardrobe. I wondered about the weird cover. David Lee Roth released “California Girls” as a single. I loved it. Around the same time, I stopped even half-liking the Beach Boys. I suppose I saw the Sunkist commercial, I started liking things that were “cooler” (to a tween and teen of the era), and the Beach Boys just were not it. A little later “Kokomo” and Full House did nothing to remedy the situation for me. It was about another decade before that changed. In the later ‘90s, I was fascinated with all these “best of the century” lists that were everywhere at the time: best movies, best books, and yes, best albums. Pet Sounds. Weird cover. A few songs struck me as familiar titles, but this was supposed to be genius!? I mean, the oldies band of bearded fat guys who sang stupid Chuck Berry ripoffs? Hard to believe. But I bought it (and Velvet Underground & Nico, Highway 61 Revisited, Trout Mask Replica and assorted other things I was apparently supposed to respect) and came to fall in love—mostly for the arrangements using mostly non-rock instrumentation. Shortly thereafter, I heard about Smile, and began chasing that down. So I got a French Smiley Smile CD, then the twofers of that era, and just expanded the collection in both chronological directions. The volume of material I dismissed shrank significantly, and I went from being a Smile fan to a Brian Wilson fan to a Beach Boys fan. By 2001 or 2002—20 age 25 or 26—I was fully on board. And on boards, for that matter. I’ve been both ever since.
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Post by geminitactics on Mar 20, 2019 19:09:57 GMT
I've just done this on another board, but no reason not to do another one here... I always knew of the Beach Boys, and have a very strong memory of hearing "Good Vibrations" when I was about 4 years old and thinking it was a "special" song that stood out from the others on the radio. I liked the singles from Pet Sounds growing up, but not so much the hot rod/surf songs. (Still true).
I got particularly interested about five years ago when helping a friend of mine put together a Beatles module for the college course she was teaching. I was cribbing out the Sgt. Pepper chapter and noting the strong influence of Brian and Pet Sounds on Paul McCartney both in conceiving his record and in some of the sound-combining he did in the recordings (like meshing piano and harpsichord). It occurred to me that I'd never given Pet Sounds a proper airing, and I ended up with it playing in my car for an entire spring - it really helped me get through some difficult times. It's a record, as Brian says, with a lot of love in it. It'd been a long time since I'd had such an emotional connection to a piece of music.
After that I started becoming interested in the Smile Sessions and it's just slowly grown from there. It's honestly incredible how much there is to discover and I considered myself fairly well-versed in music history, but I just had no idea. I'm still working my way very slowly through the 'edges'...started in the juicy middle of the catalog. I'll get to L.A. Light Album and Summer in Paradise one of these days.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 20, 2019 19:15:56 GMT
It's honestly incredible how much there is to discover and I considered myself fairly well-versed in music history, but I just had no idea. Absolutely true (and well beyond The Beach Boys, of course). I’ve been a hardcore fan of popular music since age 12 or so (so 30 years), studied music formally through college, own thousands of albums, listened to (and for a few years wrote about) many others ... but at the end of each road are a few alleys going off in other directions. It’s (so far) unendingly rewarding.
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Barco
Denny's Drums
Posts: 41
Likes: 72
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Post by Barco on Jan 17, 2023 17:20:19 GMT
Mine isn't much of an exciting story, I should say. But here it goes. Until about seven years ago, as most young people, the only music I listened to and knew was what was on the charts (or at least popular enough for it to get to me without the need of me having to look for it) and whatever songs my father played on his car's stereo. Purely casual listening. And I admit I did enjoy quite a lot of it. Many popular names of contemporary music - most of which I've forgotten by now - and cliche rock classic were recurring in my playlists. I didn't even really know what an album was, so creating and listening to playlists and the radio were the ways I consumed music. This changed in 2015 or 2016, I think, when I stumbled upon this video on the internet of two guys talking about Led Zeppelin's discography. Discography? What does that even mean? And that's when I learned about what an album was, and I went to check it for myself. I listened to all of Zeppelin's album in the original release order over the next few months and I just went mad. I didn't know music could sound like that, I didn't know music could feel like that. I was obsessing over a catalogue from a band gone long before I was born, but this never felt weird to me. The music was still there for us to listen, after all. And I just continued from there. I started going through the albums of other artists and discovering, overtime, what it is I like in music and what doesn't do it for me. It was when I got into The Beatles, though, that once more the way I think about music was completely reorganized. My favourite album was Sgt Pepper and, through research on the web, I found this almost unanimous opinion: If you're looking for something 'like' Sgt Pepper, you have to listen to The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. And so I did. And I didn't like it. At all. Probably because I was comparing both and PS didn't have the same psychedelic immediacy and bright sound Pepper had. Maybe I just 'wasn't ready' for something like that yet. So I gave up The Beach Boys for a while. But it was during this period where I wasn't giving them any more chances that I started to explore more of the 1960s beyond The Beatles, and over the years that's what I've grown to like the most. And so came the time to try them again, and now, it seems, I was ready. For some reason it happened through Smiley Smile - from what I've seen not a particularly popular album on this board - sometime in 2019. At the moment H&V started playing I knew that these guys were special. How could a group sing something like this? How could someone write, compose and produce something like this? Then I started listening to Pet Sounds again and finally getting it, got more and more interested in Brian Wilson's story and music and so on. Pet Sounds is probably my all time favourite album now. And that is, not that briefly, how I became a The Beach Boys fan.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 17, 2023 17:40:47 GMT
I disagree that it's not much of a story: that's great stuff! (I'm always a sucker for stories, though. Not necessarily the action of the stories, but just the personal side of motivations, interpretations, associations...) Regarding Smiley Smile, I think it's a pretty mixed bag of opinions here. I know carllove loves it, for example. I used to, until I heard more of the Smile recordings that came first. Then I pretty swiftly changed my mind toward the originals. (Not that I hate Smiley, either.) It's a shame you missed our Zeppelin and full Beatles threads: we went through each album. (We've got the Beatles US albums going now, which you've seen, but previously did the full UK albums plus all of their solo albums, in chronological order. That was a major effort!) Speaking of that, we enjoy doing those exercises here sometimes with various bands a sufficient number of people like. If you've got any suggestions...
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Emdeeh
Pacific Coast Highway
Posts: 520
Likes: 532
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Post by Emdeeh on Jan 17, 2023 19:01:14 GMT
I heard this cool new song on the radio called "Surfin' USA" and fell in love with it. I was hooked on the Beach Boys from then on, and the Beatles never had a chance to dislodge them in my fandom.
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Post by kds on Jan 17, 2023 19:47:04 GMT
I know I've shared my Beach Boys origin story on here more times than Bruce Wayne, but somehow...not in this specific thread.
Born in September of 1980, I grew up hearing a steady diet of 1960s and 1970s music on my parents' car radios. Of course, The Beach Boys were part of that soundtrack. I also recall seeing the infamous Full House episode during the summer of 1989, the very same summer that my uncle loaned my father a BB hits tape to listen to while we were in Ocean City, Maryland on vacation.
On Christmas Eve 1990, my father gifted me a copy of The Christmas Album on cassette, which I would play quite often the following Decembers. But, as the decade went on, and I started really gravitating to certain bands instead of just songs I knew from the radio, The Beach Boys didn't join my growing list of favorites.
By early summer 2006, I was seeking to expand the two CDR mix I made of more laid back offering to play during the summer months. I think something in my brain recalled that summer of 1989, and that BB tape and Full House appearance because I really wanted to add some BB tracks to my collection, most notably the ballads. So, that summer, I got copies of Sounds of Summer and Pet Sounds. The former was a well reviewed (on Amazon) one disc comp and the latter was "the Beach Boys album any music fan has to own."
At the age of 25, going on 26, and somewhat stressed out by a life that appeared to be tracking backwards, I put on my wife of SoS, the opening bars of California Girls took me to another world. I enjoyed that compilation immensely. Although, other than the big three tracks, Pet Sounds didn't really register with me.
By summer 2008, I'd gotten a copy of the companion compilation Warmth of the Sun. And, over the next few summers, I'd listen to both comps pretty regularly during the summer months. I also found myself being drawn to The Beach Boys story thanks to repeated airings of the movie American Family on Vh1 Classic in the late 00s / early 10s.
As the weather warmed in 2012, I'd heard the surviving Beach Boys were reuniting. I knew this was likely my only chance to see a complete BB lineup in concert. So, less than 24 hours prior to their Columbia, MD appearance on June 15, I bought myself a lawn ticket.
That Friday night, I drove to Merriweather Post Pavilion after work, and picked up my lawn ticket at will call. I was pretty much expecting a 90-100 minute greatest hits concert. What I got was a 48 song setlist of hits, album tracks, and a couple new (at the time) songs. I was completely blown away by the two and a half hour show.
The very next day, I scanned my copy of Warmth of the Sun for songs that I recognized from the night prior that somehow never really leapt at me during previous playings, songs like Kiss Me Baby, Please Let Me Wonder, and All This is That.
That summer, I lived The Beach Boys. I would occasionally add some of the two fers to my collection, as well as Peter Carlin's Catch a Wave book, and the Endless Harmony doc on DVD.
As summer turned to fall, I met the girl I would wind up marrying. Turns out she liked The Beach Boys too, so while we were courting, we would spend time together listening to them. I think this was what helped me finally appreciate the Pet Sounds album.
By 2014, I'd collected all of The Beach Boys studio albums, as well as many comps and live albums. That was also the same year that I had discovered the BB online community, first via Brian Wilson's website, then eventually Smiley Smile and the Pet Sounds Forum, which evolved into Endless Harmony, which spun off Beach Boys Today.
I would go on to get married in 2015, with God Only Knows as our first dance song. We also saw Brian Wilson, Mike & Bruce, and Al in concert about ten times over the years.
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Post by carllove on Jan 17, 2023 19:52:11 GMT
Regarding Smiley Smile, I think it's a pretty mixed bag of opinions here. I know carllove loves it, for example. I used to, until I heard more of the Smile recordings that came first. Then I pretty swiftly changed my mind toward the originals. (Not that I hate Smiley, either.) It's funny Kapitan, that your story is the opposite of mine with Smiley Smile. I hated it for years because so many of the songs were so different than the versions on the GV Boxset - then I heard it on Vinyl and was just like... WOAH - I get it! I love it! This is some chill Sh*t!
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jan 17, 2023 19:56:13 GMT
I can't believe I overlooked this thread. Well, I've already told my story 100 times...so how about 101?
In the summer of 1974, I was in high school and I distinctly remember the groups/albums that were consistently on my turntable. It was all hard rock - The Doors, Blue Oyster Cult, KISS, Sparks, Slade, Led Zeppelin, solo Ray Manzarek, Queen, and The New York Dolls. I have a sister who is two years older than me, and she was always a step ahead of me in discovering new music - and good music. Our bedrooms were adjacent to each other and I could hear all the records she was playing on her tiny record player. One day, I heard her latest purchase, Endless Summer by The Beach Boys, blasting through the walls. I have to say that I wasn't overly impressed. The guitars didn't rock like Ace Frehley, Buck Dharma, or Jimmy Page. The keyboards weren't as adventurous as Ray Manzarek's or Ron Mael's. And, the lead singers couldn't belt out a tune like Jim Morrison, Freddie Mercury, or David Johansen.
At first, the only songs from Endless Summer that got my attention were the fast rockers like "Fun, Fun, Fun", "I Get Around", "Shut Down", and "Surfin' U.S.A./Safari". But, it wasn't long before I was welcoming the ballads "Surfer Girl", "In My Room", and "The Warmth Of The Sun". And then "Don't Worry Baby". And then "All Summer Long". And then "California Girls". And then the entire album! It wasn't long before Endless Summer made its way from my sister's record player to my turntable.
Around this time, my high school buddy, who had a car, bought the Endless Summer 8-track, and whenever he picked me up, that 8-track was playing in the car. I was getting hooked big time, and I couldn't figure out why. I felt like Mackenzie Phillips in American Graffiti. What was this surfin' shit? I was a rocker. I had a reputation. I couldn't let my friends know that I liked "Wendy". But I did, and all I knew was that I wanted more. And more is what I got. It wasn't long before Spirit Of America came out and more classics to digest. Then I started to hear other BB songs like "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "Sloop John B", and "Good Vibrations" on the radio and I had to have them, too.
After high school graduation in late May 1976, a bunch of us went to the Jersey shore for the week. While most were listening to "Silly Love Songs", "Sara Smile", "Love Hangover", and "Fooled Around And Fell In Love", I was listening to any Beach Boys I could find. You couldn't beat it - the sun, the surf, girls in their bikinis, the boardwalk, bars...and The Beach Boys' music. A week later, 15 Big Ones was released and there was no turning back. What a great musical trip it turned out to be.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 17, 2023 20:04:28 GMT
Sheriff John Stone and kds, it's ok to repeat the stories--especially since now these tellings act more or less as an intro of us to our newer members. I thought we had a thread like this, but when I dug it up this morning and realized we'd only barely used it (all on one day, March 20, 2019!), it seemed it might come in handy for new and old members alike. It's a nice opportunity for people to get to know one another all in one place.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jan 17, 2023 20:19:14 GMT
Sheriff John Stone and kds , it's ok to repeat the stories--especially since now these tellings act more or less as an intro of us to our newer members. I thought we had a thread like this, but when I dug it up this morning and realized we'd only barely used it (all on one day, March 20, 2019!), it seemed it might come in handy for new and old members alike. It's a nice opportunity for people to get to know one another all in one place. Yes, and maybe we can have some kind of a "drive" for all members of The Beach Boys Today! Forum to post in this thread. I know some are lurking!
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Post by carllove on Jan 17, 2023 20:42:42 GMT
Sheriff John Stone and kds , it's ok to repeat the stories--especially since now these tellings act more or less as an intro of us to our newer members. I thought we had a thread like this, but when I dug it up this morning and realized we'd only barely used it (all on one day, March 20, 2019!), it seemed it might come in handy for new and old members alike. It's a nice opportunity for people to get to know one another all in one place. Yes, and maybe we can have some kind of a "drive" for all members of The Beach Boys Today! Forum to post in this thread. I know some are lurking! I realized when you mentioned this, that I had told my story on another board. I do think everyone here but the newest folks, has heard my story about getting an adult beverage and taking a rest room break, as Carl was singing "God Only Knows" in 1986 though! I can't ever forgive myself for that. For some reason I had never heard that song before.
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Post by jk on Jan 17, 2023 21:22:39 GMT
OK, I'll take a shot at it (again)...
Like Emdeeh, the first BB song I heard was "Surfin’ U.S.A.", in the summer of '63. I'd seen their name before in the Billboard US top twenty ("Surfin’ Safari") and "bubbling under" ("Ten Little Indians") and thought it rather a generic name for a band.
After "SUSA" came "I Get Around", which sounded like nothing else at the time (or since). Later, I heard tracks that made me think, "These guys can be serious" -- first "Lonely Sea" and then, fading in and out on Radio Luxembourg, “Don't Worry, Baby”. Was this The Four Seasons? No, it wasn't Frankie singing -- this was special.
I heard other tracks over the years -- a local lad used to buy their albums. I won't go into details; I'll just say I was struck by how original everything was, and how varied.
Much later, in 2002, I saw Brian perform with his fantastic band at the UK "Party at the Palace". This prompted my brother to get me Brian's "autobiography" for my birthday that year and this consolidated my interest in the Boys. I then bought the Sunflower/Surf's Up! twofer, as I was familiar with side two of SU. Several tracks into Sunflower, I was wondering what all the fuss was about (it's true!!) when I heard "All I Wanna Do" and I was sold, hook, line and sinker. The next step was to find kindred spirits, so I joined the now-defunct Capitol Board. And the rest is etc.
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sockit
The Surfer Moon
Posts: 234
Likes: 181
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Post by sockit on Jan 18, 2023 0:47:31 GMT
Welp, just like a number of other posters, I've told my story at least a few times in various threads and fora. So I will try to keep this short and succinct. It was a very long process from casual listener to out and out fandom.
I spent the first 10 years of my life living in states East of the Rockies, where seemingly no one had even heard of the Beach Boys (including myself). I started hearing their early hits on AM radio in 1975 when my family moved to the Pacific Northwest. "Surfin' USA", "Surfer Girl", "California Girls"; songs that I would later learn were oldies back in hit radio rotation in the wake of some compilation called Endless Summer. I just thought it was some novelty band cashing in on the Happy Days nostalgia craze. They sounded very at home among songs like America's "Sister Golden Hair" and Grand Funk's "Bad Time".
Fast forward to the late 1980's. This time our local hits station was heavily playing "I Get Around" and "Warmth of the Sun" to promote the Good Morning Vietnam Soundtrack. I rushed out and purchased that soundtrack on cassette (which I still have). That was where it started. Rummaging through a bargain bin (remember those?) I found a budget compilation cassette of the Beach Boys called Surfs Up (not to be confused with the 1971 Reprise album that I was a long ways from discovering at that point).
It was around this time that I bought my first CD player and 2 CDs to try it out: Led Zeppelin II and the Cocktail Movie Soundtrack (with "Kokomo", of course). At this point I started to feel that it was pointless to continue on this "song here, song there" path. I was really starting to get into the Beach Boys. The Made in USA comp satisfied this need....for the time being.
When the 2fers came out, I was all over that. And then the 1993 boxed set--had to have it. And that opened up the SMiLE can of worms for me (something I had only read articles about, up to that point). The next few years, I spent "chasing SMiLE" as my eventual friend Coach used to say.
And I think everyone can pretty much figure the rest of the story out. Here I am, on fora like this, like the horse's head in the bed from that scene in The Godfather!
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