Worst Beach Boys Song on Wild Honey - Part 11 in an Ongoing Series

then again, the stinker has a bitchin organ solo

How She Boogalooed It, which while not terrible doesn't fit the record at all.

^^^^^

The stinker?

we're all on the same page here

I've never really been a fan of "Darlin'" -- tho I don't know if I dislike it enough to vote for it over "Boogalooed"...

I had a friend who recently saw the Mike Love and the Beach Boys Travellin Road Show recently and he was shocked/surprised to witness them do "Darlin'" (in the middle of their otherwise totally predictable nothin-but-hits set).... I've always had a soft spot for the song, it has a bunch of weird melodic changes in it.

Oh man this poll has given me a reason to listen to Wild Honey..............
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fuck yes it is one of my favorite albums!!!

(Did you do some laundry while I was waiting?)

love this album -- they should've just continued making records like this. worst is def. "How She Boogalooed It" but the title is so good. "darlin'" is incredible -- love the instrumental version on Stacks o Tracks, too. So much going on beneath the surface.

Even the cover is super fucking cool:

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/b/beachboys~~_wildhoney_101b.jpg

What is the Mike Love stinker? Does he even have a single lead vocal on this record? Boogalooed is sung by none other than the legendary Al Jardine. And I could never vote against a song with the lyrics "S-O-C-K I-T To me!"

"How She Boogalooed It" (Mike Love/Bruce Johnston/Al Jardine/Carl Wilson) – 1:56
* Features Carl Wilson on lead vocals [1]

I just blame Mike Love for everything I guess

I'm voting for Country Air. It's not a bad song but it kind of interrupts the album's groove.

I think bcz its percussion is so different (ie barely there).

No way. Country Air is amazing.

This record is pretty close to perfect. But the weak link has to be Mama Says.

Yeah I am now regretting my vote for Country Air. Mama Says is a silly ending thing and I wld say NOT a bad song bcz it makes me happy as hell every time. This album is pretty much perfect.

^^^Truthbomb

Too difficult for me to vote. It's not my favourite Beach Boys album, but it's incredibly consistent considering the post-Smile turmoil that had all but crippled the band. Country Air is so beautiful and melancholy, Aren't You Glad is gorgeous, I'd Love Just Once To See You is perfect crushtape material, and there's so many other little fun songs on there, I can't bring myself to dislike any of it.

I like the songs on this record but the production feels, I dunno, claustrophobic.

production is weird, no doubt about it. almost lo-fi, though i'm sure the recording situation wasn't lo-fi. is it a weird mix or something?

It was recorded @ Brian's house.

I'll rep for Mama Says - its a total goof song, just showing off how many different ways they can sing a verse, but the singing is just wonderful and the lyrics are funny.

If my memory is correct this album was recorded almost entirely at the home studio at Brian's house, so it is definitely lo-fi in comparison to, say, Gold Star Studios.

x-post

ah i guess you're right ... even "Darlin" was recorded at his house?

also produced by "The Beach Boys" (as opposed to "Brian Wilson")

does that mean that Mike Love requested his vocals be turned up?

FYI, "Mama Says" isn't just a silly thing that ends the record --it's a bit from "Vegetables" that, as of 1968, hadn't been aired yet and wasn't in the Smiley Smile rendition.

I like the songs on this record but the production feels, I dunno, claustrophobic.

otm, my thoughts exactly

worst song: booga
best song: I was made to love her

album would be perfect if it included the box set version of "Can't Wait Too Long" and dropped "Boogaloo" ...

I'm gonna listen to this right now...

yeah the Capitol two-fer with this includes Can't Wait Too Long (which is amazing), Their Hearts Were Full of Spring, and You're Welcome - any of which would've been better for this one.

yeah, i think I prefer the box set edit of Can't Wait Too Long, though. Such an incredible tune. Maybe one of my favorite Beach Boys songs ever.

yeah that song is seriously as good as anything they've ever done

Other songs originally slated for this:
"The Letter" (Cover of the Box Tops' hit) - great version of this on the Lei'd in Hawaii boot
"Cool, Cool Water" - not sure what version this would've been. I can see it workin though.
"Game of Love" (Cover of the Clint Ballard Jr./Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders song) - never heard this, anyone got it?
"Lonely Days" - ditto
"Honey Get Home" - ditto

lonely days is good, I linked it on here: This is the thread where we talk about great Beach Boys+BW unreleased/demo/semi-released songs

I'm pretty sure I've heard 'honey get home'

haven't heard those -- is there a studio version of "The Letter"?

yeah there is. I dunno, I don't find it so special.

Cannot be much worse than the annoying title track.

He sings his fucking heart out, and I love the doodly organ break.

yeah, i think I prefer the box set edit of Can't Wait Too Long, though. Such an incredible tune. Maybe one of my favorite Beach Boys songs ever.

Paul Williams (who is in really, really bad shape right now, see: Sad News About Paul Williams (the Crawdaddy music critic) ) put it very well in How Deep Is the Ocean?. He describes how the perfect version of that song is the box set version w/ Brian teaching the guys the lyrics and the less overly-long "Can't wait too loooong/Can't wait too long ba-a-a-by" section -- with the picked bass coda from the two-fer.

When people wld buy the album back when it was first released, did people even know about scrapped tracks, what a platonic "Smile" wld have looked like? Wld it have been (fairly) common knowledge that 'MAma Says' was intended to be in Vegetables? When did this start, this knowledge/bootlegging/swapping/etc?

I think Smile was fairly legendary early on -- at least there was a fair amount of coverage in the days leading up to the album being scrapped/replaced with Smiley Smile. As for when unreleased tracks made their way into collectors' hands, I'm not sure.

Wld it have been (fairly) common knowledge that 'MAma Says' was intended to be in Vegetables?

Given that people on this thread didn't know even now? Probably not.

Did they re-record the smile stuff to put on these albums or did they simply use what was already recorded?

little bit of both

I just blame Mike Love for everything I guess

Most people do. Not me though.

"Boogalooed" it is obv. the worst, but it's like 70 seconds long or something.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i really don't like this record.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Get a breath of that country air
Feel the beauty of it everywhere

This album is so great

Some great bits on the Sunshine Tomorrow expanded reissue thing from a few years ago. That includes an alternate version of Time To Get Alone that would have slotted really nicely onto the main albu.

"How She Boogalooed It" is one of the album's more uptempo songs.[19] It was the first original Beach Boys song (excluding instrumentals and cover versions) not to feature contributions from Brian.[19]

Huh

Despite the turmoil the band were going through at this point, this sounds like an album that would have been a lot of fun to play and produce compared to Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations

god i love this album

"Darlin'" was based on this earlier single released in Jan. 1964, which I always liked better. (sound quality better on other non-youtube sources; this one sounds like the treble turned way down making backing instruments hard to hear)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzRd53KI120

I'm listening to the Sunshine Tomorrow outtakes and they're playing songs like "Hawaii" and "Surfin USA" as demos and live takes and I'm like 'Huh. how cute they're still playing those old songs even then'. Then I realise there's literally a 4 year gap between 'Hawaii' and Wild Honey. People are still screaming at their concerts when they play 'Surfin USA'. That's berserk

I have never cared for Darlin’ in any iteration.

u craxy

Something I haven't really seen mention is how Doors-y some of this stuff sounds. I don't really think of the Boys sounding anything like the Doors, but those organs are so intrinsic to this era of the sixties, they're like a lost art

Darlin' is top 10 Beach Boys for me, just a shot of pure joy like For Once In My Life or Singing A Song In The Morning, and one of the best fade-outs ever too.

OTM

I never listened to the BBs much, but listening to the Jokermen podcast going through the post-Pet Sounds '60s albums has been a real revelation.

'68-'75 is arguably their peak period

If I had a spare several £100s lying about the gaff, I'd seriously consider buying those fancy reissue box sets they've been putting out over the last few years with all the rarities. I wouldn't listen to them, they'd just sit on my shelves looking pretty

Love Wild Honey, one of my favorites too. I'm still much more partial towards their "earlier" years (1962-1967, though the mid-'60s is really an era of its own), but I do think Sunflower is great and the rest have at least a few cuts I really like that have nothing to do with SMiLE (which I love in general).

For me, Beach Boys have four distinct eras:

Early years: Surfin Safari - Summer Days & Nights

Art-pop era: Pet Sounds - Smile era

Mid-career: Wild Honey - Holland

Late-career: 15 Big Ones onwards

Their history and their approach feels very clearly demarcated that way

Same for me except I'd start the art-pop era a year earlier with <i>The Beach Boys Today!</i>. Side 2 of that album and several tracks from Summer Days & Summer Nights ("California Girls", "Let Him Run Wild") are quite art-poppy; key element was instrumentation by Wrecking Crew + orchestra rather than the band itself.

Agreed. I’d also say that Smiley/Wild Honey/Friends all kind of feel of a piece to me. Even tho Smiley Smile is literally warmed over Smile, it shares that Bellagio home studio vibe. 20/20 is a bit of a transition to the Warners stuff which then I’d group together. And then 15 Big Pieces of Shit and Love You – with MIU (which has shades of the Brian’s Back tapes)/LA/KTSA.

Back in topic, my favorite track from this (by some distance actually) is Country Air, which is everything I like about this era.

*on

Something I haven't really seen mention is how Doors-y some of this stuff sounds. I don't really think of the Boys sounding anything like the Doors, but those organs are so intrinsic to this era of the sixties, they're like a lost art

― Sade of the Del Amitri (dog latin)

i kinda feel like the standard 60s narrative understates how influential the doors were in their day - like, the first doors album came out in "'67", but it was literally the first week of '67. stuff gets categorized in years and it undervalues months. the doors s/t in january and surrealistic pillow in feb explains a lot about why both those bands were so influential on other 60s bands, including places one wouldn't expect.

I don't know, organs were pretty widely used in the 60s and Brian probably just one lying about at home.

Yes, and Manzarek is all about playing arpeggi up and down the keyboard while Brian's trademark is four-to-the-bar chords. The Beach Boys were, however, early in adopting keyboard bass (in their case, Moog synth) and the Doors might have been an influence there.
I've been wondering which of their late 60s studio albums could have contained a version of "Can't Wait Too Long"/"Been Way Too Long". I guess it hadn't been finished (or abandoned in its final form) in time to go on Wild Honey.

Brian probably just one lying about at home

for about 8 years actually

...until Dr. Landy got him up

Can't Wait Too Long is one of my favourites

Yep.

One of the things I love about Wild Honey is the piano sound, particularly the bass register. It’s clearly an upright and not entirely in tune and I am fucking here for it.

Apparently that's Brian singing the very Carl-sounding chorus of "Aren't You Glad".

I think Brian comes in on "I got a heart..." then it's Carl from "Aren't you glad..." onward.

Agreed

Tho I suspect that it may be Brian doing the response to Carl in the chorus (“Tell me, tell me …”).

This is a great one, the tiniest of gems in their catalogue. Spotify says it’s 2’18” but damn if it actually doesn’t feel shorter.

I think Brian comes in on "I got a heart..." then it's Carl from "Aren't you glad..." onward.

That's what it sounds like, but on Reddit someone got numerous votes saying:

"Mike sings the verses, Brian sings the prechorus and chorus. Don't believe anyone who tells you the chorus is Carl."

Tho I suspect that it may be Brian doing the response to Carl in the chorus (“Tell me, tell me …”).

Reddit: "It's Brian on both over two tracks."

The live version doesn't help, because Brian doesn't seem to be there and Carl only seems to be singing the "tell me" part on the chorus.

There is a possibility both are Brian. From around the Pet Sounds era on (possibly as early as 1965, I think it’s around when he retired from touring) he would record (and re-record) the “non-Brian parts. Based on everything I’ve read I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some “Beach Boys” tracks we assume involve all 5 or 6 guys that are actually all just him.

All that said, I’m inclined not to believe Reddit and to trust my ears here. At a minimum he and Brian are doubling each other on a few of these parts and most likely are trading off in that section, in an admittedly intricate fashion.

Yeah i read elsewhere (some BB forum) that it's all brian on that chorus, with his voice pitched differently (through recording speed) on one of the parts.