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Post by Kapitan on Jul 19, 2021 12:00:13 GMT
It was something of a quiet period for Beach Boys fans wanting new material after "Break Away" in the summer 1969. The band was at work recording through much of that year, while also seeking a new record label and briefly touring in late autumn.
In February 1970, the Beach Boys released their first single for the Warner subsidiary Reprise: "Add Some Music to Your Day" backed with "Susie Cincinnati." The single was a soft pop song that highlighted the democratic spirit of the band's next album, Sunflower, with Brian, Mike, Bruce, Carl, and Al each delivering a part of the lead vocal.
They flipped the formula here, with the softer song as the A-side and Al Jardine's rocker "Susie Cincinnati" as the B-side.
The band's first single for Warner and first single of the '70s did not change their fortunes: it peaked at #64, one spot worse than "Break Away" and (in an honor that they would top again and again) was their lowest charting A-side since "Surfin."
Please discuss and rate "Add Some Music To Your Day" and "Susie Cincinnati."
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Post by kds on Jul 19, 2021 17:24:13 GMT
I'm a big fan of Add Some Music. Although, for an album that has so much Dennis, it's a little odd that he doesn't contribute a line to the song. With artists like The Carpenters, BJ Thomas, and Simon & Garfunkel having big hits with ballads, you'd have thought Add Some Music would fit right in.
Another of the BB singles which has a ballad and a rocker on either side, Susie's a fun song. Odd that it eventually surfaced on an album six years later.
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Post by jk on Jul 19, 2021 18:40:51 GMT
"ASM" is a good example of what I call the cartoony side of Sunflower. There's something childlike (one might be unkind and say childish) about both the words and the music. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's a lovely track -- but I can understand why it was never a hit. I remember hearing "Tears In The Morning" in the BB-friendly UK at the time but not this one, which is a little odd as I was glued Brian-like to the radio in those days.
I can only give it a token score (let's say seven), as for me it's an album track. Same holds for the B-side, which I heard for the first time in the early 2000s.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2021 22:58:59 GMT
Add Some Music may not be a particularly strong song, but it effectively sums up the whole music thing and the Boys show off some really nice vocal magic throughout. I like the song a great deal, and I would give it strong 9 on its own. Susie would get a strong 8. It's a fun little ditty and could have achieved A-side potential with some less awkward lyrics.
Overall I still give this single a 9, even with its tepid reception. Maybe it was a timing thing, I don't know, but I don't think it's a poor choice for a single at all.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jul 20, 2021 0:00:02 GMT
I think "Add Some Music To Your Day" is a really good song, but I'm not sure it had the best shot as a single. Was "This Whole World" too short? Wasn't "All I Wanna Do" single material? Or "Our Sweet Love"? Or "It's About Time"? "Add Some Music To Your Day" is very mellow isn't it? Very mellow for 1969. Sometimes I think "Add Some Music To Your day" should've rocked a little more. I love the tag; it really gets going, it picks up momentum. I wonder if a different arrangement would've breathed more life into it. I'm gonna give "Add Some Music To Your Day" an 8. That's a good-to-very good rating.
"Susie Cincinnati" is a good song but I can't go any farther than that. "Susie" also sounds like it wanted to rock a little more, too. It's funny (though "funny" isn't the right term) how The Beach Boys mellowed out as a rock band in the late 1960s and 1970 after being such a rockin' band just a few years prior. Some of their songs wanted to rock - and I wish they would've more - especially in 1968/69/70. Oh, and the lyrics are clever but clunky at the same time. Over the years, including 2021, "Susie Cincinnati" certainly had a chance to shine. It never really did, did it? I'll give it a 7.
I guess that makes my ranking a 7.5, but since I'm in a good mood tonight I'll round off to an 8, and that is a stretch. The single bombed.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 20, 2021 0:17:09 GMT
7.
I like both songs. But honestly I don't hear anything I'd expect to be a hit (and apparently neither did DJs of the time). I enjoy ASMTYD but it's just an album track to me. And Susie Cincinnati sounds like a single ... a clunky attempt at a single, if that makes sense. It doesn't sound to me like an album track, it sounds like something to be heard, but especially the lyrics are just a little, well, Al. Goofy.
On one hand, I tend not to worry much about Beach Boys lyrics, because I think they're quite often pretty bad. But these two, I think we've got one that's just overwhelmingly corny, and then one that's (again, lack of better word) Al. Both songs would be really interesting to hear with lyrics rewritten, at least heavily edited, by someone whose taste in lyrics I prefer.
For me, the lead-off single that would make sense is This Whole World (which I believe was done in November '69) b/w All I Wanna Do.
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Post by lonelysummer on Jul 20, 2021 1:07:54 GMT
We're not gonna do Cottonfields? Or we did and I've forgotten? Long before I heard Sunflower, I heard Add Some Music in the middle of Good Vibrations - Best of the Beach Boys, and it felt out of place there. I knew all the other songs except Friends and Surf's Up. A a year or so later, I heard Add Some Music as the opening track on Ten Years Of Harmony. It made for a great album opener. Surprised it didn't get that slot on Sunflower.
As a single, it's passable, but agree with you guys - there were better choices for singles from Sunflower. Who sings the line "when day is over, I close my tired eyes"? I thought maybe it was Dennis, but it sounds more like Brian. "Music, when you're alone, is like a companion, for your lonely soul" sounds more like Carl, but somewhere in the "woah's" it sounds like Brian takes over. Susie Cincinnati makes for a good b-side, but that's all. I'll give this a 6.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 20, 2021 1:23:29 GMT
We're not gonna do Cottonfields? Or we did and I've forgotten? It is up next. I am going in the order presented in the Wikipedia page for Beach Boys discography. According to that, "Add Some Music To Your Day" was released Feb. 23, 1970, while "Cotton Fields" was released April 20, 1970.
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Post by jk on Jul 20, 2021 8:04:56 GMT
Who sings the line "when day is over, I close my tired eyes"? I thought maybe it was Dennis, but it sounds more like Brian. "Music, when you're alone, is like a companion, for your lonely soul" sounds more like Carl, but somewhere in the "woah's" it sounds like Brian takes over. According to this source, the first line is Brian and the second is Carl -- including the "woah's", it would seem.
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Post by kds on Jul 20, 2021 16:31:58 GMT
I do agree This Whole World seems like the most obvious single for the time, and I've said it before, it should've been the opener on Sunflower.
If any song was going to show that The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson still had "it" going into a new decade, it's This Whole World. Across two minutes, there's everything you'd want on a BB song.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jul 20, 2021 20:58:55 GMT
In my above post, I kept...wishing...that The Beach Boys would've rocked out a little more in the late 60's and 1970, and thought "Add Some Music To Your Day" and some other songs would've benefited with rockier arrangements. I couldn't really verbalize that opinion very well, and I couldn't give any examples. Then, this morning, I heard Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" on the radio and thought, "That's it!" In some ways, "The Sound Of Silence" is a slightly mellow, introspective song. But, they grafted that electric on it and it changed everything. It gave the song an edge, a different feel, a little more emotional edge maybe. Again, I'm just wondering if some of The Beach Boys' post-Pet Sounds songs up to Surf's Up would've benefited with a rockier sound, a more electric feel...more life!
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Post by kds on Jul 21, 2021 14:19:01 GMT
In my above post, I kept...wishing...that The Beach Boys would've rocked out a little more in the late 60's and 1970, and thought "Add Some Music To Your Day" and some other songs would've benefited with rockier arrangements. I couldn't really verbalize that opinion very well, and I couldn't give any examples. Then, this morning, I heard Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" on the radio and thought, "That's it!" In some ways, "The Sound Of Silence" is a slightly mellow, introspective song. But, they grafted that electric on it and it changed everything. It gave the song an edge, a different feel, a little more emotional edge maybe. Again, I'm just wondering if some of The Beach Boys' post-Pet Sounds songs up to Surf's Up would've benefited with a rockier sound, a more electric feel...more life! I actually think the mellow arrangement of Add Some Music works to the songs benefit. Although, I think Slip on Through, It's About Time, and Got to Know the Woman are pretty good rockers for a band that has essentially stopped doing rockers in the mid 60s.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 21, 2021 17:34:12 GMT
I don't think something like "Sound of Silence" rocks all that much harder than "ASMTYD." The biggest, most obvious differences would just be switching the acoustic 12-string guitar to electric 12-string and adding a little more driving feel to the drums (e.g. the kinds of cymbal use prominent in rock that Brian never really liked), wouldn't it? (For example, listen in the "music, when you're alone" bridge part: the drums there have what sounds like hat/tambourine on the 2 and 4 along a basic pattern. Are we just asking that it include a ride cymbal on every beat, for example? Or play the hat in eighth notes to give a more aggressive feel?)
It's not as if SoS was Megadeth while ASMTYD was church music. And really, the Beach Boys had so many voices in there, to add too much in the way of the aforementioned guitars would take away from those. To do much more would also both violate the spirit of the song and impact the vocals, in my opinion.
Rather than turn an apple into an orange, I'd just say "Add Some Music" was a sweet, corny little folk-influenced pop song that probably wasn't an ideal single ... and certainly not for someone looking for a rock and roll song.
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Post by lonelysummer on Jul 21, 2021 20:02:33 GMT
In my above post, I kept...wishing...that The Beach Boys would've rocked out a little more in the late 60's and 1970, and thought "Add Some Music To Your Day" and some other songs would've benefited with rockier arrangements. I couldn't really verbalize that opinion very well, and I couldn't give any examples. Then, this morning, I heard Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" on the radio and thought, "That's it!" In some ways, "The Sound Of Silence" is a slightly mellow, introspective song. But, they grafted that electric on it and it changed everything. It gave the song an edge, a different feel, a little more emotional edge maybe. Again, I'm just wondering if some of The Beach Boys' post-Pet Sounds songs up to Surf's Up would've benefited with a rockier sound, a more electric feel...more life! SOS has always stood out in the S&G catalog, and I finally figured out why. It's the one recording completed without their participation. Folk/rock was big at the time, so Tom Wilson added drums and electric twelve string to the original recording. Those additions gave it kind of a Byrdsy/Beatley sound, a sound S&G never repeated. Must have been fun trying to add those instruments to S&G's acoustic recording. There are places where the tempo varies because S&G slowed down a little to emphasise certain parts. The only other S&G track I can think of that has this rock edge to it is the flip side, We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'. It sounds nothing like anything else they did - more of a teen sound. There's even a clip of them on Shinding or Hullaballoo with both strumming guitars. Yes, Garfunkel playing electric guitar! They make sure you can't really see his fretting hand, though. lol
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2021 22:53:04 GMT
In my above post, I kept...wishing...that The Beach Boys would've rocked out a little more in the late 60's and 1970, and thought "Add Some Music To Your Day" and some other songs would've benefited with rockier arrangements. I couldn't really verbalize that opinion very well, and I couldn't give any examples. Then, this morning, I heard Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" on the radio and thought, "That's it!" In some ways, "The Sound Of Silence" is a slightly mellow, introspective song. But, they grafted that electric on it and it changed everything. It gave the song an edge, a different feel, a little more emotional edge maybe. Again, I'm just wondering if some of The Beach Boys' post-Pet Sounds songs up to Surf's Up would've benefited with a rockier sound, a more electric feel...more life! The only other S&G track I can think of that has this rock edge to it is the flip side, We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin'. "Fakin' It" rocks pretty hard. Lots of drum action going on in that one. "Hazy Shade of Winter" is another. I always liked that side of S&G.
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