Where do I start with them?

Where do I start with them?

Just listen to their 1961-66 stuff. Maybe a 70s album or two if you want. Don't listen to Pet Sounds, that's a meme album. And never ever listen to anything after Love You. I'm not kidding.

Spotify has all of their albums aside from Still Cruisin', Summer in Paradise, and Stars & Stripes. I guess the band and the vast majority of BB fans would prefer to not remember that any of those exist.

Start with Pet Sounds and then SMiLE. If you want to hear the lead-up to Pet Sounds, listen to Today, and Summer Days. If you want surf, listen to everything from Surfin Safari to All Summer Long. If you want to listen to the best post-Pet Sounds albums, listen to Wild Honey, Friends, Sunflower, Surf's Up, and Love You.

I wish Summer in Paradise was on Spotify

Still Cruisin is fine though.

I'm still waiting for my "Still Cruisin'/Summer In Paradise" twofer. Been waiting for 16 years now. In fact, they should do a revamped SC, drop the 50s-60s covers, and tack on other assorted 80s bilge like Chasin' The Sky, Rock and Roll to the Rescue, and California Dreamin'.

And how about SIP Deluxe with Crocodile Rock and Problem Child as bonus tracks?

Someday this era will be ready for reevaluation. And even through that reevaluation will end with a verdict of "yes, most of this stuff does indeed suck donkey nuts", it would still be nice to have all of it rounded up anyway.

You can run from it, Mike Love, but you can't make it go away. Al Jardine's mullet, Farm Aid, the rapping on SIP. We remember...

Isn't it true that SiP sold like 1000 copies?

Something to that effect, although the distributor went bankrupt so exact numbers are not available. Soundscan claims 55,000 copies but some of that total includes the free ones bundled with the QVC box set.

The European release of SIP is partially rerecorded and better than the original US release; supposedly the US release was rushed out the door and not properly completed/mixed. The live versions of the songs from the 93 tour were also a considerable improvement on the studio ones, especially the title track, which is the only song from the album that has remained in the band's setlist.

I admit, I've never been brave enough to listen to anything after Love You.

I made the trek through the BB's entire catalog years ago, and yeah once you get to M.I.U., things become pretty brutal. M.I.U. and LA do have a few good moments, although the disco remake of Here Comes The Night is grueling. I particularly like Good Timin' and Getcha Back.

The worst part about the post-Love You period is that Mike Love thought it was a great idea to go back to doing teenage love songs as they were pushing 40.

Don't forget the vomit that was Still Cruisin' and Stars and Stripes Vol 1. You don't get off that easy.

LA is a good album, MIU not so much. Keepin' The Summer Alive was just okay and the S/T could have been decent without the horrible 80s production.

Listen to Pet Sounds, then get disappointed. Brian Wilson really isn't that good of a songwriter.

I like MIU. It gets a lot of unjustified hate only because it's a very Mike/Brian kind of throwback album.

Light Album feels like the sequel to Holland, but with less Brian. It seems to be the last album where they were seriously trying to be contemporary artists instead of a nostalgia act.

Still Cruisin' is better than S/T and Summer in Paradise. It has a decent selection of songs, too bad they padded it out with unnecessary remakes of 60s stuff.

I had a hard time getting into MIU and LA due to the dated disco-era production which is probably the worst aspect of them. Throw in some mediocre 50s covers, the Bach thingie, Match Point of Our Love (ewww)...if you can survive these, there's some genuinely good songs on the albums.

S/T is total puke. Even without the awful 80s production, the songs are still extremely lame.

Keepin' The Summer Alive is also plagued by dated production, but it's not as bad as the S/T. There's no really bad songs on here, but nothing memorable either.

The European version of Summer in Paradise is passably good. Some of the production is dated and not all the songs are in good taste, but it's still better than the S/T.

>Somewhere near japan
>make it big
>Total puke

The SIP title song is pretty good, actually it was one of the few later career BBs songs that felt inspired and didn't generate audience groans at concerts as they waited for the band to break into Surfin' USA and Little Deuce Coupe. I mean, singing about keeping the beach clean and free of pollution. Who could dislike that? :^)

Are these later albums better or worse than 15 Big Ones and Love You?

Love You is one of their best albums and better than some 60s BBs records, so no. 15 Big Ones is closer in spirit to the >1977 albums.

It's hard to say. Love You is a polarizing album that some love and others hate. You'll have to listen to it for yourself and decide. 15 Big Ones is about 50% good tracks, 50% crap.

>yfw you realize that the black shield thingie is supposed to be a stylized vagina and the album title is implying that they...

Oh...dear...God...no...

My Diane is really good on MIU though.

However, just read a lot about the beach boys. The information available really makes you want to listen. Surf's up is a really great album, it gives you a lot of hints about what bb is all about

Keep in mind that their early years predate AOR, so you really just want the singles from the pre-Pet Sounds period.

My cousin bought Love You back in 1977 when it came out and he said it's the one BB album that just never clicked with him no matter how many times he listened to it. Also he said LU was in the bargain bins at record stores a few months after it came out.

In all fairness, Love You didn't get a lot of promotion from Reprise and the Beach Boys were old news in 1977; everyone was too busy jerking off punk bands. Also the "Hey everybody, Brian's back!" hoopla from two years earlier had kind of faded. This is a shame because it's a good album and like someone else said, the last time they really felt like a contemporary band instead of a nostalgia act.

Some of the songs like Johnny Carson are cheesy as fuck, but that's just Brian being Brian. He loves his corny, endearing little pop rock ditties.

I know it's not going to be everyone's tastes, but I still can't get why 'Love You' is so polarizing. I'm on the side of thinking it's one of the best BB albums and I don't hear the production/performance oddities as being that difficult, or the lyrics that uncomfortable.

To me it feels like the cheap exploitation of a mentally ill man in no shape to be writing songs or performing them.

I don't agree. Love You truly is Brian's baby, moreso than anything else in their discography. He produced it, wrote all the songs (the only album with all Brian songs), and sings lead vocals on most of them as well. If anything, producing and writing the album was probably therapeutic for him.

Brian has been a potato pretty much his entire life. It's just that the guy's autism spectrum is so great that he could use it to produce music in ways a sane person could never have done.

On Love You, he's clearly lost none of his songwriting or production skills even after the hell he went through in the early 70s.

Hey, you're welcome to believe that but the facts seem pretty obvious that BW was not in any shape to be recording an album or going out on tour, and he was being taken advantage of in an extremely cruel way. The facts stand that Love You was not a commercial or critical success, hardly any copies of it were sold, and its singles got absolutely no radio play. It wasn't a grand slam out of the park, it was a dud that reduced their fanbase even harder than SMiLE.

Yeah I agree it sold a lot less than 15 Big Ones, which IMO is much less of a real album since it's mainly covers rather than original material, but was still a lot more successful than the next couple of albums, and besides, LY did get some positive reviews (Christgau gave it an A and put it in his top 30 list for '77, while Lester Bangs also reviewed it positively) and is still well-regarded today. Yes, LY has its detractors, but some of their late 60s-early 70s albums had even lower sales.

Again, I'll stress that Love You wasn't given much, if any promotional push by Reprise, and everyone was focused on punk rock at the time. I'd also like to argue that the album is forward-thinking in its own way, it actually feels almost like proto-New Wave. This was probably their most forward-thinking or innovative record since the late 60s.

MIU was critically panned by everyone and sold about 25 copies, but I find some of the material pretty good and don't get why it's been so badly eviscerated.

And incidentally, isn't My Diane about Brian's sister-in-law? When he was still married at that?

Since when have sales and radio play been the mark of a quality album? All those punk albums everyone was beating off to in the late 70s sold a tiny number of copies and absolutely no radio play. You know what bands did go platinum back then and were playing on the radio all day every day? REO Speedwagon and Styx. See where I'm going with this?

>And incidentally, isn't My Diane about Brian's sister-in-law? When he was still married at that?
Yeah, Diane Rovell. They were very much lovers back then.

>Some of the songs like Johnny Carson are cheesy as fuck
I love Johnny Carson, the ending with the sweet voices and synths underneath is so good.

???

damn..