Departed
Former Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 2:55:59 GMT -5
I recall a thread of this nature was on PSF, and fortunately this time around I kept my old response! If you'll forgive another obnoxious self-plug about it, this essay is also on my blog but it's certainly relevant enough to warrant sharing on the forum too!How did you discover the band, and what does their music mean to you personally?
For myself, there has never been another band that grew up with me the way the Beach Boys have. When I discovered this group, I was very young and listening to the Backstreet Boys (I know, I know...but it was the '90s.) My mom noted "when I was your age, we listened to the beach boys" and showed me a cassette of a hits comp called Do It Again. I thought they looked like a bunch of dorks, not gonna lie. That was my first impression of this band that would come to affect my life so profoundly. Later, I started listening to that comp, and my mom bought me The Greatest Hits Volume 1: 20 Good Vibrations and from then on, I was truly hooked. We'd listen to it every summer on the way to and from the beach. I initially loved "I Get Around" and "California Girls" the most. As the years went on, "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows" grew on me and dethroned the previous pair of favorites. They had a beauty and emotional sincerity to them the other songs couldn't match. Similarly, little kid me never thought of "Good Vibrations" as particularly impressive--it was just one more song on the comp. It wasn't until I grew older that I fully appreciated how otherworldly it sounded, and what an impressive feat of musical production. A year or two later, we got The Greatest Hits Volume 2: 20 More Good Vibrations and it changed my understanding of the band. I recall listening to this CD as a family traveling cross country to visit some out-of-the-way relatives. It's another great memory of my life tied to this group's music. I still loved the happy go lucky beach tunes, but when I got my iPod, if I was listening to the beach boys it was always this second comp. The songs on it were far more somber and vulnerable, it seemed to speak to my budding insecurities and desire for intimate companionship as I entered Middle School. "Warmth of the Sun," "Please Let Me Wonder," "Little Girl I Once Knew" and especially "Caroline No" were the most beautiful songs I'd ever heard by any band at this point in my life. While I found it interesting, "Heroes and Villains" never struck me as particularly special back then, similar to my aforementioned experience with GV. ( So, needless to say, I was surprised years later when I found out H&V was the centerpiece to the fabled SMiLE masterpiece--but more on that later.) Over time, I still enjoyed the old hits but more as a guilty pleasure. In high school, it was Brian Wilson and the myth of his genius which reeled me back into appreciating the group. Doing some research, I discovered Pet Sounds and that became my favorite album. Starting in the Summer after 9th grade when I first heard it, the record was the soundtrack to my teen angst and longing for acceptance. PS was the first physical album (as opposed to an iTunes download or YouTube rip) I ever purchased with my own money. I'd try to get my friends to listen to it, but they heard "Beach Boys" and refused. If not that, the name and cover of the album itself killed any chance of them humoring me to check it out. I was really hurt by that; I wanted to share this precious statement that had got me through so many bad times and not even my closest friends trusted my taste in art. It was just one of many moments where I felt like the odd one out or punching bag even among my supposed friends--the exact emotions which appealed me to Pet Sounds in the first place. More research and I came upon SMiLE, the fabled unfinished follow-up to Pet Sounds. Unfortunately, I decided to listen to Smiley Smile first since I heard that it was a simpler yet completed version of the music. At the time, I figured that would be preferable to a bunch of half-baked demos. Unfortunately, SS was such an under-produced, incomprehensible misfire that it killed my interest in SMiLE proper for another two years. Finally, during my senior year of high school, the subject somehow came up again in my mind, and I downloaded some bootlegs of SMiLE. To put it simply, they completely blew me away like nothing has before or since. Not only that, they literally changed my life. (I know that's a cliched thing to say about a favorite piece of art, but in this case it's absolutely true.) The SMiLE music was so melancholy, yet there were these disparate while simultaneously harmonious elements of frivolity in it which left me baffled. I didn't know quite how to react to most of the songs emotionally, which somehow made them more compelling. A good example of what I'm talking about is the track "Child is Father of the Man" which on the surface sounds despondent, yet there's this horn part in the melody that reminded me of the "wah wah" sound effect in TV shows were someone is the butt of a joke. It's a seemingly inappropriate element that has no business being in the tune...yet somehow it just works. A more commonly cited example is the yodeling in "Wonderful" or the upbeat "Heroes and Villains" containing lyrics about a wife and mother getting violently gunned down in the streets. On top of all this, there were also hundreds of literary and historical references, deep themes including the cost of manifest destiny, and hidden puns which inspired hours of analysis and discussion over the next 5 years of my life. The many theories of how it all fit together intrigued me, as did the story of its creation and abandonment. During my high school senior week, me and a dozen or so friends rented a house on the shore. When I wasn't enjoying the beach, taking in the city or getting drunk with everybody, I was chilling out and reading Catch a Wave: The Rise Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. Over the next several years, I started getting into other far out 60's music and the counterculture. In college, when I wasn't working on school itself, I was reading over a dozen biographies of various countercultural musicians, including Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix. When it came out, I eagerly purchased the SMiLE Sessions Boxet, which has remained one of my most prized possessions to this day. I poured over the session highlights, making my own SMiLE mixes--the structure of which changed drastically over time. Overall, SMiLE and its mythos completely redefined my sense of what music and art were capable of. Knowing this magnificent work had been inspired by LSD made me determined to try the substance out for myself. Needless to say, psychedelia on its own also greatly impacted my character and worldview, but I might never have taken that step were it not for SMiLE and the impact it had on me. This thread, once pulled, would slowly but surely unravel the fabric of [deadname] over the same 5 year time frame, liberating the Cassandra I had always been underneath. Without psychedelics, it might have been an additional 5, 10 or 20 years until I'd obtained the insight and courage necessary to be myself. Not only that, psychedelics changed my understanding of spirituality and how we're all connected. Combined with the intriguing values of the Age of Aquarius (which I only discovered thanks to reading about the counterculture...which in turn I only learned of thanks to SMiLE) it gave way to the creation of my pseudo-religion, Aquarian-Pantheism, the tenets of which I've explored in my blog. Four years after the boxset came out, after spending the interim period checking out the music of their contemporaries, I returned to Brian and the Beach Boys one again. As I was taking the first concrete steps to transition, including buying some girl-clothes and trying makeup for the first time, I finally sampled their post- SMiLE work. I learned to appreciate Smiley Smile on its own terms for the bizarre, one of a kind experiment it is. I found the song I consider to be the summation of Brian's personality and humor, "Busy Doin' Nothing." Most significantly, it was Love You that personally resonated with me to a degree nothing had since Pet Sounds. I dig how it's so unapologetically quirky and sincere; it's a great listen because of how unseriously it takes itself. See, by that point in his career Brian had nothing to prove anymore, so he just wrote fun tongue-in-cheek songs about Johnny Carson, the solar system, spending time with his infant daughter and other trivial subject matter in an earnest manner. I want more music, and perhaps more art in general, to be like that. Love You was the perfect soundtrack to what I was going through at the time, just being myself without giving a damn what anyone thought about it. I feel like my writing today is a cross between Brian Wilson’s SMiLE and Love You but put to the page. There’s pretensions on my part of saying something as deep as the former. But in actuality, it’s just a fun off-beat mish mash of stuff I like to talk about, in keeping with the spirit of the latter. Occassionally, when I'm feeling brave and it's relevant to the topic at hand, I delve into personal memoirs, in the same emotional honesty that I found inspiring in Pet Sounds. [I've mentioned elsewhere, but in case you missed it, this was the very first version of any song on any SMiLE bootleg that I heard--I know it's the same because I ripped it off YouTube just over seven years ago. This is the track that first blew me away and kicked off an obsession.]
|
|
|
Post by AGD on Dec 30, 2018 4:02:55 GMT -5
For me, it was simplicity itself: reading the summer 1975 NME 30,000 word three-parter about Brian by Nick Kent - The Last Beach Movie: A Story Of Brian Wilson 1942-. That was it. The single spur to delve deeper. Of course, I knew of the band and their music, distinctly recall seeing them live on RSG ! during their November 1964 UK visit, and pirate radio played the living bejeesus out of them (didn't realise it at the time but I had pretty hip parents in this respect), but that article grabbed me. Loves me a mystery and here it was, a legendary lost album. Never knew such things existed ! Albums were... well, albums. And then there was Brian...
So, I started buying the music - first album, Pet Sounds - and ordering clippings. Thankfully, their 1976 resurgence was lavishly covered by the UK music press, and that was it. Hooked. The first fanzine, Beach Boys Stomp, started in 1977. I subscribed, started writing (I used the term in its very loosest sense back then - more stringing words together), met John Tobler through that and the rest is history. Or maybe hysteria. Then came the internet. Definitely hysteria and mania.
See, the thing about me is, when I'm really interested in something - silent movies, Jack the Ripper, pre-Victorian cricket to name but three - I need to know as much as I can about it. Guess I took this BB thing the furthest, and then maybe too far. Never expected to meet any of them, much less be invited to lunch and/or the studio, never expected to be regarded as some sort of authority on the band (some would strongly dispute I ever have, and with reason).
As Brian has said, it's been a trip. And it ain't over yet. Whatever the trials, tribulations and storms, there's always the music, and that's what it's all about. The incomparable music of Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys.
|
|
gxios
Grommet
Posts: 32
Likes: 43
|
Post by gxios on Dec 30, 2018 6:13:37 GMT -5
I go back to 1963. I remember Surfin' Safari on the radio, but it was the one/two/three punch of Surfin' USA/Surf City/Little Deuce Coup that did it for me (for some reason, Surfer Girl did not get a lot of play in Washington, DC). I liked all their 45's, especially I Get Around, but I didn't buy one until California Girls. I bought most of the 45's after that (not Good Vibrations for some reason, even though I liked it). My first girlfriend (1967) had Pet Sounds, so that was the first time I heard the whole album. I didn't really get into it until 1970, after buying Sunflower and being mesmerized and getting into the back catalog. 1971 was the year I bought all the albums I could find (some were out of print by then), but friends of mine filled in the gaps with some ratty used albums (Summer Days, Today). Thereafter, I bought most releases on day of release. My first concert was 11/7/71 at Georgetown University in DC. I have seen them over 30 times over the years, met Mike (very nice to me), Dennis (enthusiastic, but more interested in my sister), Al (told me Smile was coming out soon), and Bruce (shook my hand on the way to the bus) after a 1972 show. My appreciation for their music has remained steady. My wife of 32 years saw the band in London in 1968 and 1969, and is also a big fan (Friends is her favorite, and she has a mono copy).
|
|
|
Post by John Manning on Dec 30, 2018 6:14:00 GMT -5
For me - and I suspect many other British fans - it was the glorious summer of 1976 and the release of 20 Golden Greats EMITV1: www.picclickimg.com/d/w1600/pict/362518467808_/Beach-Boys-20-Golden-Greats-Lp-1976-Best.jpgMore specifically it was the lead single off that collection, Good Vibrations, that mesmerised me. I bought the single first, and played it alone in my bedroom on a little Dancette-type player. This, to my ears, was futuristic music that told me what music might sound like in another hundred years time. I was 12 years old at the time and already obsessed by the TV series Dr Who; its theme tune, written nominally by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop In 1963, is a haunting futuristic work and the two - Good Vibrations and Dr Who Theme - spoke to me of what we’d be listening to in a century’s time. I played Good Vibrations with the spindle arm off the player So that it repeated again and again, until the room was spinning round. I was addicted to a piece of music for the first time. I needed more. My dad was the village newsagent. One day we had a family trip to the cash and carry near Bradford, a store which also sold a wide variety of other goods besides the confectionery he needed, including a limited number of charting LP records (but not singles). I asked him to pick me up a copy of 20 Golden Greats while the family waited in the car. Half an hour later he returned, smiling, pleased with his success, waving a copy of … 15 Big Ones! I explained the difference. He swapped it, and home we went. I popped the LP on the record player expecting more futuristic stuff like Good Vibrations - bear in mind that other than GVs and the flip side Wendy I wasn’t aware of the Beach Boys at all. I don’t think I’d even heard Rock and Roll Music, another charting single around that time. What came out of the speaker, of course, was completely different. A succession of upbeat driving pop songs about surf, cars, sunshine, boys n girls. But I wasn’t disappointed – this was great, catchy stuff and, gobsmackingly, I realised that I already knew most of them from hearing them on Radio 1 in the background. I hadn’t realised, until that afternoon, that they were all created by the same band. Also, nearly all seemed to have been written by one guy, called Wilson. Who the hell could write so many great songs? One song in particular caught my ear: Heroes and Villains. We had a family cassette recorder (high tec!). I placed it next to the record player and recorded H&V in sections, using the pause button, the rewind button, and lifting the record arm on and off again and again and again. I ended up with a version of H&V that seemed to last forever and ever! After that I became increasingly hooked. I’d no concept of the difference between studio album and compilation album at the time so swapping albums at school (it’s how I came to part with my Beatles’ Hollywood Bowl album) landed me a few Greatest Hits albums, including a French double LP collection, and multiple copies of the same tracks. But it also netted me that 15 Big Ones LP my dad had had to swap a few months earlier. I also had a paper round (see Dad’s profession above) and every Saturday afternoon would catch the bus to Halifax – Bradley’s Records, Scene & Heard Music, Woods Music Shop – Woolworths – to spend my hard-earned pennies and dimes on more Beach Boys LPs. Later, on the Piece Hall market (no lardi-dah marble steps back then, thank you very much) I bought a copy of the Hawthorn Hotshots bootleg EP (a bootleg of a bootleg) and had my first teeny taste of The Beach Boys’ vast archive of unreleased gems. That was supplemented later by a cassette of the Smile bootleg bought on a market in (I think) Norwich …or was it Lincoln? On a visit to a record fair in Halifax Civic Theatre I met trader David Wall, who happily sold me a bunch of cassettes - Adult Child, Landlocked, Smile, and a few extra tracks thrown in for good measure including that Please Let Me Wonder track where the instruments are faded out leaving just an ecstasy-inducing vocals only track. Must transfer those some day, if they’ve survived 14 subsequent house moves. This collecting bug is an illness that mainly but not exclusively affects male members of our species. What drives it? To me it’s the hope of, one day, hearing another Good Vibrations, another Heroes and Villains. Good thing with collecting The Beach Boys is that you strike gold so frequently.
|
|
|
Post by Beach Boys Fan on Dec 30, 2018 7:08:56 GMT -5
I'm Beach Boys Fan, thus been naturally destined to discover this band - via the Beatles. Pet Sounds, Sunflower, going way back to Surfin' Safari, then in chronological order. Happy to say that some disappointments album-/songwise aside, the Beach Boys music won me over. Footnote: didn't realize who was who in the band for quite some time, simply listened to the beautiful music.
|
|
Departed
Former Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 7:34:44 GMT -5
Briefly, my first encounter with the BB was seeing them enter the Billboard Top Twenty with "Surfin' Safari" in the New Musical Express in '62. (I remember the band's name amused me.) Later that year I saw their name again in Cashbox's "bubbling under" feature in Melody Maker with "Ten Little Indians". I first heard them in mid '63 when "Surfin' U.S.A." was at #3 in the US. I was intrigued by the high falsetto-ish line, which was nothing like anyone's else's falsetto at the time (or, it proved later, at any other time). After occasional hearings on radio (e.g., half of "Don't Worry, Baby" fading in and out on Radio Luxemburg) and TV ("The Lonely Sea" in a current affairs programme) there came that magical moment in late '66, in the evening, in the dark, when I heard the UK radio premiere of "Good Vibrations". There were no visual distractions in those days so it created in my mind a lightshow of dark glowing colours. It's one of the musical pinnacles of my life. As for buying BB records, I heard "Barbara Ann" at the start of that year, loved it and bought it. It's still a great favourite of mine. Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile (which completely threw me to start with) followed in '67 and '68 respectively. To keep things brief: In 2002 I saw Brian and band perform at the "Party at the Palace", was given Brian's "autobiography" for my birthday and bought the Sunflower/ Surf's Up 2fer (I'd known and loved side two of Surf's Up for 30 years). Several tracks in I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about! Then I heard "All I Wanna Do" and I was sold for ever. Several message boards later I seem to have contracted Beach Boys Burnout, a not unfamiliar complaint I'm told. I believe SMiLE (which I've consistently ignored over the years)--and more particularly the Aquarian SMiLE mix I posted in that topic--may be my way back in.
|
|
Departed
Former Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 7:49:12 GMT -5
My older sister, who was always a step ahead of me in discovering great albums, purchased Endless Summer in 1974. Her bedroom was adjacent to mine, so it wasn't long before the sounds of summer made their way into my room. At the same time, my buddy picked me up for school in his 1971 Dodge Dart, and he had the Endless Summer 8-track tape in his car, so I got a pretty good dose of Beach Boys' music at a great time - during high school years. It wasn't long before my friend also purchased Spirit Of America and I was getting hooked big time. Right after high school graduation in 1976, a bunch of us went to the Jersey shore for a week and it was constant Beach Boys. I bought my first new Beach Boys' album that summer, 15 Big Ones, and I was an official diehard. This was right in the middle of the "Brian Is Back" campaign, and, well, it certainly worked on me!
The amazing thing is that I got hooked on the Beach Boys' music at all. Around that time, my album rotation consisted mainly of The Doors, Blue Oyster Cult, KISS, Slade, New York Dolls, and Sparks. I mean, who woulda thunk it? And friends of mine were surprised (shocked!) when I mentioned my newfound appreciation for....The Beach Boys! Now, everybody associates me with them.
|
|
|
Post by Vale on Dec 30, 2018 9:08:04 GMT -5
Well I remember when I first heard a Beach Boys song and I was in 5th elementary, a friend of mine bring a tape cassette recorder with a mix cassette and one song was from The Beach Boys, "I Get Around". I was impressed but at that time I didn’t know how to copy that tape and make it mine. So after a while I was watching the movie "Flight Of The Navigator" and that song was still there... I turned on my parents VHS recorder and recorded about 30 seconds of the track. I was so happy that I had fragments of "I Get Around" which became my favorite song at that time (I still have that VHS).
Then CDs arrived here in Italy (and the internet, of course) and I remember my dad bought me two twofers from 1990s "Surfer Girl / Shut Down part II" and "Party! / Stack-o-Tracks" which had "I Get Around". I was a little upset at that time because it was not the version I knew... but you know... So I started to write all the lyrics of the songs that I used to have on my first computer using a simple editor (..blue screen an yellow text...) and that was the moment when I realized that they were my favorite band. I studied and learned all the tracks and that was a big help for studying english for school. I knew almost all the lyrics of every single track before the ending of high school.
I also remember when I firs heard a SMiLE track, there where two avi clips on cabinessence.com of "Surf’s Up" and a small clip of "Mrs.'O Leary's Cow". I was speachless because I didn't expect they could do something like that. But the real turning point was when I first bought with my own money Ten Years Of Harmony, I was impressed about the beauty of the songs and about the number of albums they did (in the booklet there are lyrics and the name of the album where the song were picked up). Then the GV boxset and so on... 'til today. Passion grew day after day, month after month and year after year.
|
|
|
Post by Vale on Dec 30, 2018 9:17:42 GMT -5
during their November 1964 UK visit, and pirate radio played the living bejeesus out of them Was it Radio Caroline? A colleague of mine talked me a lot of that radio, he was a radio-amateur at that time... just curious.
|
|
|
Post by AGD on Dec 30, 2018 9:44:56 GMT -5
Started off listening to Caroline but soon moved on to Big L.
|
|
Departed
Former Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 9:49:33 GMT -5
Started off listening to Caroline but soon moved on to Big L. A wise decision, sir.
|
|
Departed
Former Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 9:51:37 GMT -5
I don't know if I've ever shared the full story, bits and pieces only. But it was pretty much a long, gradual, casual exposure since birth with multiple seeds planted along the way before they finally took root:
Childhood: General exposure to the Beach Boys through my uncle who is a music fanatic and generally speaks in the language of music trivia and song lyrics. BB songs he’d play while babysitting my sister and me: Barbara Ann, Help Me Rhonda
Age 12: Kokomo. I loved it. My mom thought the music video wasn’t appropriate for kids and I’m not even kidding, she actually banned all music video tv programs and networks at my house until I was 16, because of the Kokomo video, LOL. Didn’t stop me from taping the song off the radio though. Then my uncle (her brother) bought me the Cocktail soundtrack on cassette.
Highschool: took vocal classes for 4 years, with the same teacher every year, Mr. White. He was a huge BB fan. We sang various BB songs in his class – Little Deuce Coupe and In My Room were our favourites. One year, Mr. White tried to teach us to properly sing I Get Around with all the vocal parts assigned. He wanted us to perform it in a competition. We couldn’t get it right. He was so disappointed.
Also highschool: "Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies; Wilson Phillips.
Early 20s: Good Vibrations came back on the radio to mark the 30th anniversary. I was all over it.
Then a nearly 20-year gap where my life was a BB-less existence.
2015: The Love and Mercy Movie. That movie just happened to find me at a time when I really needed it, with the sudden loss of my dad to his depression in late 2014. The movie actually kind of helped me deal with that and helped me forgive my dad. And it was the springboard for me actively going out and buying Pet Sounds, becoming a bit obsessed with it, and then starting to listen to the entire BB’s catalogue from the beginning.
2015 to the present: Listening gave way to collecting and the successful transformation from casual, occasional fandom into wanting to hear every single snippet of music they ever made. And that’s how the Beach Boys became my favourite band. Their music has lifted my spirits and inspired me in a way that no other band has.
|
|
|
Post by Vale on Dec 30, 2018 10:03:23 GMT -5
Highschool: took vocal classes for 4 years, with the same teacher every year, Mr. White. He was a huge BB fan. We sang various BB songs in his class – Little Deuce Coupe and In My Room were our favourites. One year, Mr. White tried to teach us to properly sing I Get Around with all the vocal parts assigned. He wanted us to perform it in a competition. We couldn’t get it right. He was so disappointed. That’s cool, in junior high I had a teacher who did the same with the Beatles, she was a fan I guess, I’m very thankful to her because she turned the light on...
|
|
Departed
Former Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 10:16:17 GMT -5
Highschool: took vocal classes for 4 years, with the same teacher every year, Mr. White. He was a huge BB fan. We sang various BB songs in his class – Little Deuce Coupe and In My Room were our favourites. One year, Mr. White tried to teach us to properly sing I Get Around with all the vocal parts assigned. He wanted us to perform it in a competition. We couldn’t get it right. He was so disappointed. That’s cool, in junior high I had a teacher who did the same with the Beatles, she was a fan I guess, I’m very thankful to her because she turned the light on... You gotta love those people who switch the light on for you!
|
|
|
Post by filledeplage on Dec 30, 2018 10:19:13 GMT -5
Saw them in the Disney movies, and on Ed Sullivan, Andy Williams, and on the radio. Among the top three; Beatles, BB's and Stones. But, the coup de foudre was when I heard "The Little Girl I Once Knew" on the radio, with all its crazy starts and stops that people criticized - it was so different, and it was just instant love.
|
|
|
Post by Paul JB on Dec 30, 2018 10:38:27 GMT -5
Similar to Sherrif... 1974 my best friends older brother was driving us around (we were preteens) in his blue early 70's formula firebird. We stopped for some reason at I believe a hardware store and he saw the Endless Summer 8 track, brought it, jammed it into the tape deck as we got back on the road and the rest is history as they say. I Get Around blaring from a muscle car under blue skies and Summer heat is a sublime experience.
By the next year, 1975 I saw them live and would by all of their albums as they came out starting with 15BO. By around 1980 I started the pursuit of all of the prior to '74 releases. Saw them live nearly 20 times until Carl died and of course C50 plus Brian 5 times. Never saw Mike/Bruce yet.
As we were saying before the other place vanished...do you still learn things...yes I do and I'll never tire of this band. The catalog is vast and astounding. For many of us it's the soundtrack of our lives now.
|
|
|
Post by Mikie on Dec 30, 2018 11:32:21 GMT -5
I've been a Beach Boys fan for 48 years. I think I’m considered a second generation Beach Boys fan. I still learn something about the band and their recordings all the time; especially by reading message boards like this one. And that won't end until I finally drop. So........there have been many happy events that have happened during my Beach Boys fandom days - too many to single out and document here. But here are some milestones: Late 60’s. Heard the album "The Beach Boys Songbook Vol. 1: Romantic Instrumentals By The Hollyridge Strings" at my Uncle’s house and really liked it. Around 1970. I went over to a friend's house down the street. He'd bring girls down in his basement to hear the latest rock records. He and his older brother always bought a lot of records. One of them in their collection was "All Summer Long". I asked him to put that album on and I kept telling him to put the needle back on "I Get Around" over and over until he finally kicked me out of his house. I went down and bought the 45 the next day. A short time later I heard "Good Vibrations" on the radio and it done blew my mind! Picked up the "Good Vibrations" single at the store and played that sucker over and over 'till the parents almost kicked me out of their house. Probably my favorite Beach Boys song of all time. Even all the alternate/outtake/variations of the song still give me goose bumps and the shivers! As Brian would say, "It sends a shock up my spine!" 1972 - Picked up the "Carl & The Passions/Pet Sounds" vinyl 2-fer for two bucks at a flea market. Was confused at first about the younger faces on the Pet Sounds cover compared to the CT&P cover. Played the albums, especially Pet Sounds, to death. Would go to sleep listening to Caroline No with the headphones on and the tone arm lifted off the record automatically. Did the same with “Cuddle Up” at the end of CT&P before I zoned out. 1973 - November 18, 1973. Winterland Arena, San Francisco. Attended my first Beach Boys concert. 1974 - After feeling pretty good about myself that I had all of the original Capitol Beach Boys albums in my collection at that point, I found out from one of the proprietors of a record shop in Sacramento (Hi, S. Bonilla!) that I still needed to find an original Stack-o-Tracks (w/book), Friends, 20/20, Greatest Hits Vol. 3, Deluxe Set, Live In London, and Good Vibrations, all of which were deleted from the Capitol catalog at that time and not easy to find in near-mint condition. Then all of the singles, including picture sleeves. A somewhat daunting task at the time (without the Internet & Ebay - only snail mail and expensive long distance phone calls) but a lot of fun collecting the original Capitol Beach Boys, Beatles, and Stones records! Free time after work and school back then was spent chasing wimin, going to see some great bands, and......... * Waiting for the latest Beach Boys Freaks United (BBFUN) newsletter to come in the mail from Alice Lillie. * Waiting for the latest Add Some Music fanzine to come in the mail from Don Cunningham. * Waiting for the latest Goldmine to come in the mail. * Waiting for the latest Pet Sounds fanzine to come in the mail from David Leaf. * Waiting for the latest Derek Bill and Steve Bates set sale/auction record lists to come in the mail. * Waiting for the latest Endless Summer Quarterly (Dempsey/Edgil/Mast) to come in the mail. * Attending the monthly Castro Valley record swap meets. * Attending the monthly Capitol Records parking lot record swap meets (later in Pasadena). * Frequenting every new and used record store in the Bay Area. * Hearing new bootlegs for the first time (couldn't get enough) and feeling pretty cool about it, knowing the general public had not heard them before. * Beginning in 1979, waiting to hear every single new fragment, morsel, and crumb of the holy grail relic known as SMiLE. * Attending Beach Boys conventions in the Bay Area in the 70's/80's and San Diego in the early 90's (2), thanks to the late Les Chan! * Meeting Brian Wilson at his house on 10452 Bellagio Rd. and at book/record signings. * Meeting Carl, Al, Mike (twice) and Bruce and getting autographs. Missed meeting Dennis by a few feet (damn!). * Conversations on the phone with Les Chan, Greg Larson, Derek Bill, Don Spears, and other collectors. Dinner meeting with Frank Holmes, Les Chan, Will Brison, and Pete The Greek in S.F. in 2004. * Reading all of the great articles in Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Phonograph, Cream, Bomp! magazines for the first time. * Picking up all the new Beach Boys books coming out, starting with Barnes, Tobler, Leaf, and Preiss in the 70's. Loved the four Priore volumes. * Attending as many Beach Boys (and solo) concerts as I could in the Bay Area and Sacramento, beginning on November 18, 1973. www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rock-and-roll-band-the-beach-boys-perform-onstage-in-news-photo/73987382 The 70's. What a great, great time to be a fan! * Enjoying the hell out of all the new Beach Boys and Dennis Wilson releases on CD since the bonus tracks on the early 90's Capitol/Warners/CBS 2-fers and '93/Pet Sounds/Smile/MIC box sets, compilations, and copyright extension releases that included un-booted material or were upgrades, in addition to stereo releases. Those releases alone were real big highlights and well worth waiting for! * Beginning in 1997, enjoying and contributing to the Pet Sounds Mailing List, Cabinessence/Shut Down, Male Ego, Smiley Smile, and Pet Sounds Forum message boards. Beach Boys fan pre-internet primary sources for my knowledge and reading pleasure: * Beach Boys Freaks United - Lillie * Pet Sounds fanzine - Leaf * Add Some Music fanzine - Cunningham * Friends Of The Beach Boys fanzine - Taber (Cancelled subscription after 1rst issue) * Endless Summer Quarterly fanzine - Mast, Edgil, Dempsey * Beach Boys Stomp fanzine - Grant * The Clown Princes of Rock & Roll - A California Saga - Colville * Friends of Dennis Wilson fanzine - Duffy * Brian Wilson Fan Club Newsletter - Breakaway With Brian Wilson - Klobas * Goldmine Magazine * Discoveries Magazine * Record Collector Magazine * Peter Reum auction lists * Derek Bill auction lists * Brad Elliott auction lists * Steve Bates auction lists * Midnight Records auction lists (some advertised original silver CD's were actually Cdr's!) * Capitol Records parking lot record swap meets - Los Angeles, Pasadena. (All time best!). * Tower, Moe's, Rasputin's, Leopold's, Amoeba Records - Berzerkely * Tower, Let It Be Records, Recycled Records, Streetlight Records, Amoeba's - San Francisco * Tower, Rockaway Music, Music Man Murry, Wenzel's Music Town, Wallach's Music City, Record Collector, Peaches - Los Angeles * Tower, Rare Records - K St. Mall, Record Exchange - Sacramento * Tower, Rowe's Rare Records, Big Al's Record Barn, Streetlight Records - San Jose * Blue Meanie Records - El Cahones * Mail order shop out of Singapore - original silver CD's of Sea Of Tunes Unsurpassed Masters, Dumb Angels sets.
|
|
Departed
Former Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2018 12:36:42 GMT -5
One thing I wanted to mention as a newbie in the mid/late 1970's, is that it was difficult to get all of the original Beach Boys' albums because many were out of print. You had to settle for these re-issued double albums with different names and album covers, which had a song or two deleted. You also had these single albums with two or three songs deleted, too. It was very bizarre.
Even some of the 1970's Reprise albums were hard to find. I couldn't locate Sunflower for a couple of years, and ended up finding it in an "Imports" section at a record store at Park City in Lancaster, PA. I paid $20.00 for it which was a lot in those days. It was thrilling and a helluva lot of fun discovering the Beach Boys by buying one album at a time and digesting it, but it wasn't easy finding them! It took me many years just to get every BB song on record.
|
|
|
Post by Vale on Dec 30, 2018 13:03:17 GMT -5
That’s cool, in junior high I had a teacher who did the same with the Beatles, she was a fan I guess, I’m very thankful to her because she turned the light on... You gotta love those people who switch the light on for you! Yeah you’re right, that teacher was one of them!
|
|
|
Post by Mikie on Dec 30, 2018 13:35:44 GMT -5
One thing I wanted to mention as a newbie in the mid/late 1970's, is that it was difficult to get all of the original Beach Boys' albums because many were out of print. You had to settle for these re-issued double albums with different names and album covers, which had a song or two deleted. You also had these single albums with two or three songs deleted, too. It was very bizarre.
This is true. Even in the early 70's, original new or mint Capitol vinyl albums and singles from the 60's were hard to find. Because The Beach Boys had switched labels and their popularity had declined and there were lawsuits and stuff, Capitol deleted most of the Beach Boys product from their catalog. So collectors had to resort to used record shops or auctions (i.e. Goldmine) via snail mail. There were no internet online sources for records back then. I remember paying 10 bucks each for the Breakaway and Cotton Fields singles around 1974 and I thought that was ridiculous. But both of those songs were unavailable on any album in the U.S. at the time, only on those Capitol singles.
|
|
|
Post by filledeplage on Dec 30, 2018 14:00:11 GMT -5
One thing I wanted to mention as a newbie in the mid/late 1970's, is that it was difficult to get all of the original Beach Boys' albums because many were out of print. You had to settle for these re-issued double albums with different names and album covers, which had a song or two deleted. You also had these single albums with two or three songs deleted, too. It was very bizarre.
This is true. Even in the early 70's, original new or mint Capitol vinyl albums and singles from the 60's were hard to find. Because The Beach Boys had switched labels and their popularity had declined and there were lawsuits and stuff, Capitol deleted most of the Beach Boys product from their catalog. So collectors had to resort to used record shops or auctions (i.e. Goldmine) via snail mail. There were no internet online sources for records back then. I remember paying 10 bucks each for the Breakaway and Cotton Fields singles around 1974 and I thought that was ridiculous. But both of those songs were unavailable on any album in the U.S. at the time, only on those Capitol singles. Cottonfields was on 20/20 - was that not available? I know it was pretty slim pickings in the stores - I always looked through the BB section even if I had most of the stuff - and without many albums in the store - it just fed into the dumb narrative that they were passé.
|
|
|
Post by AGD on Dec 30, 2018 14:06:28 GMT -5
Different version - not the single.
|
|
|
Post by filledeplage on Dec 30, 2018 14:16:19 GMT -5
Different version - not the single. Aha.
|
|
|
Post by Mikie on Dec 30, 2018 14:16:48 GMT -5
Cottonfields was on 20/20 - was that not available? I know it was pretty slim pickings in the stores - I always looked through the BB section even if I had most of the stuff - and without many albums in the store - it just fed into the dumb narrative that they were passé. The album version of Cottonfields was on 20/20. The single version was on a single in the U.S. only; the single version was also on singles and a couple of European import albums (including Sunflower) in the early 70's. The single version wasn't released on a regiular Beach Boys album in the U.S. until much later.
|
|
|
Post by filledeplage on Dec 30, 2018 14:25:33 GMT -5
Cottonfields was on 20/20 - was that not available? I know it was pretty slim pickings in the stores - I always looked through the BB section even if I had most of the stuff - and without many albums in the store - it just fed into the dumb narrative that they were passé. The album version of Cottonfields was on 20/20. The single version was on a single in the U.S. only; the single version was also on singles and a couple of European import albums (including Sunflower) in the early 70's. The single version wasn't released on a regiular Beach Boys album in the U.S. until much later. IIRC - it did not do well in the US and in 1969 was probably not going to do well, any version. Any references to "cotton fields" had a slavery connotation. It is a great song. I was suprised it did so well abroad but that was way before the internet. I think a better alternative for the US would have been "Time To Get Alone."
|
|