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Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys


Dottleshead

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Another album before my time.  It was officially released in '66 and I was born just after.  I was reading up on the Beatles and discovered they liked the album a lot and then decided to check out it's review on Rolling Stone.  They had the album as #2 of all time.  I never heard of it -- except the first track "Wouldn't it be nice".  I just listened to the whole thing on YouTube.  Do you you older folks have any experience with this album?  Is it as great as the Baby Boomer reviewers of Rolling Stone say it is?

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...it got played on the radio a lot, even where I grew up those years in D.C.  I think that the kids from the VA and MD suburbs probably heard it more than I did, because I lived over in the SE ghetto, and Motown/James Brown was pretty much what was going around over there. 

 

When I hear it now, it makes me nostalgic for a California that my wife tells me never really existed. :) 

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Most records back then were a mix of good and bad. The band would work up a couple good songs, and then the studio would push them to turn it into an album.

I think you'll find that's what that is. My fave from that is Sloop John B.

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There are some really good songs on Pet Sounds, but overall I just don't see the legendary status that this album is given. 

But I know that's probably because I didn't hear it when it was new and fresh, or before a thousand other artists followed this album's example of composition and production.

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Gre

4 hours ago, TrentonMakes said:

There are some really good songs on Pet Sounds, but overall I just don't see the legendary status that this album is given. 

But I know that's probably because I didn't hear it when it was new and fresh, or before a thousand other artists followed this album's example of composition and production.

Great read by McCartney on it.

http://albumlinernotes.com/Paul_McCartney_Comments.html

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4 hours ago, TrentonMakes said:

There are some really good songs on Pet Sounds, but overall I just don't see the legendary status that this album is given. 

But I know that's probably because I didn't hear it when it was new and fresh, or before a thousand other artists followed this album's example of composition and production.

I could not agree more. If I had heard it when it came out, I may have a different ear for it. But it doesn’t do much for me.

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...I heard it when it came out.  I still preferred listening to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Wilson Pickett, and Marvin Gaye, with occasional appearances by the Frranklin sisters.  Oh, and Little Stevie Wonder. :) 

 

In retrospect, it was hard for me as an east coast city kid to get identified with the Beach Boys, or Jan and Dean, of any of the other California Surf Music productions.  It might has well have been coming from Mars.  I wonder if this means I identify as black ?:flirtyeyess:

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1 hour ago, Page Turner said:

...I heard it when it came out.  I still preferred listening to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Wilson Pickett, and Marvin Gaye, with occasional appearances by the Frranklin sisters.  Oh, and Little Stevie Wonder. :) 

 

In retrospect, it was hard for me as an east coast city kid to get identified with the Beach Boys, or Jan and Dean, of any of the other California Surf Music productions.  It might has well have been coming from Mars.  I wonder if this means I identify as black ?:flirtyeyess:

The Beach Boys and surf music always reminded me of home. I was surfing from a young age and hung out at the beach.  The music wasn’t what I listened to as a teen but    after I left for the military the lyrics would call out to me.  California Dreaming by the Mammas & The Pappas also got to me.

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That Beach Boys album Pet Sounds had two very popular songs, "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and "Sloop John B."  The other songs on the album, though good, were not particularly well listened-to at the time and it wasn't an album where song after song was a great hit like the Beatles or Rolling Stones albums.

But the Beach Boys produced songs on several albums that were popular year after year and, as teenagers, they were fun to modify with dirty lyrics.

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https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-156826/the-beach-boys-pet-sounds-54298/

 

rs-136791-eafbc592120358b4d3d14cda5acebf
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The Beach Boys, ‘Pet Sounds’

Capitol, 1966

"Who's gonna hear this shit?" Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked the band's resident genius, Brian Wilson, in 1966, as Wilson played him the new songs he was working on. "The ears of a dog?" But Love's contempt proved oddly useful: "Ironically," Wilson observed, "Mike's barb inspired the album's title." Barking dogs – Wilson's dog Banana among them, in fact – are prominent among the found sounds on the album. The Beatles made a point of echoing them on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – an acknowledgment that Pet Sounds was the inspiration for the Beatles' masterpiece. That gesture actually completed a circle of influence: Wilson initially conceived of Pet Sounds as an effort to top the Beatles' Rubber Soul.

With its vivid orchestration, lyrical ambition, elegant pacing and thematic coherence, Pet Sounds invented – and in some sense perfected – the idea that an album could be more than the sum of its parts. When Wilson sang, "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older?" on the magnificent opener, he wasn't just imagining a love that could evolve past high school; he was suggesting a new grown-up identity for rock & roll music itself.

Wilson essentially made Pet Sounds without the rest of the band, using them only to flesh out the vocal arrangements. (He even considered putting the album out as a solo project, and the first single, "Caroline, No," was released under his own name.) Its luxurious sound conveys a heartbreaking wistfulness, and the deeply personal songs, which Wilson co-wrote primarily with lyricist Tony Asher, bid farewell to the innocent world of the Beach Boys' fun-in-the-sun hits. Unfortunately, Capitol Records proved no more enamored of Pet Sounds than had Love; the label considered not releasing it at all. Not yet vindicated by history, Wilson withdrew further into his inner world. "At the last meeting I attended concerning Pet Sounds," Wilson wrote about his dealings with the label, "I showed up holding a tape player and eight prerecorded, looped responses, including 'No comment,' 'Can you repeat that?' 'No' and 'Yes.' Refusing to utter a word, I played the various tapes when appropriate."

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  • 1 year later...
15 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Wasn’t it released about two weeks after Sgt. Peppers, effectively killing it at the start?

Nope, it came out first. But The Beach Boys were sabotaged by their own record label.

Capitol had such little faith in Pet Sounds, they decided to release The Best of The Beach Boys, a collection of the band's well-known surf and party hits, around the same time.

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I had Endless Summer on 8 Track. Played the hell out of it. As a car lover, there were some fun car songs. 
A few years later, the local car show scene became American Graffiti wannabes. The guy who DJ’ed for the shows played Beach Boys and other bands of the era as nauseum. His now ex-wife worked with WoW. The ex tried to introduce me to him once. He was a complete dick! After she left him, we learned just how bad. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to associate music with people and he soured me on The Beach Boys. 

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Great songs.  Albums in the mid to late 60s were a mix of great songs and those not so great.  I didnt buy albums then; I didnt start until I got out of high school. Good Vibrations was the last big singe for the Beach Boys (that I recall), but , was not on Pet Songs.  Still, I agree Pet Sounds is a great album.

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10 minutes ago, az_cyclist said:

Great songs.  Albums in the mid to late 60s were a mix of great songs and those not so great.  I didnt buy albums then; I didnt start until I got out of high school. Good Vibrations was the last big singe for the Beach Boys (that I recall), but , was not on Pet Songs.  Still, I agree Pet Sounds is a great album.

I used to buy one or two albums each payday in the navy.  I'd buy albums I'd never heard sometimes just on advice or spec.  Sometimes I'd get junk and sometimes I'd discover new groups that were good but unknown in my circles.  Example:  Tower of Power's Bump City.

Much of this stuff was transferred to reel to reel tape.  I have virtually none of it since leaving the service.  I simply had too much to put in one car.

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3 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

I used to buy one or two albums each payday in the navy.  I'd buy albums I'd never heard sometimes just on advice or spec.  Sometimes I'd get junk and sometimes I'd discover new groups that were good but unknown in my circles.  Example:  Tower of Power's Bump City.

Much of this stuff was transferred to reel to reel tape.  I have virtually none of it since leaving the service.  I simply had too much to put in one car.

I bought 3 albums in Aug 1971 at the PX at Long Beach.  John Denver's Poems, Prayers, and Promises, Carole King's Tapestry, and The Door's LA Woman.  I still have all of them.

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56 minutes ago, az_cyclist said:

I bought 3 albums in Aug 1971 at the PX at Long Beach.  John Denver's Poems, Prayers, and Promises, Carole King's Tapestry, and The Door's LA Woman.  I still have all of them.

I love the quote someone made aboot Tapestry.  "In the 70s you never had to ask if someone had it, you just said 'Put on Tapestry'". :D 

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