Good Overview of a Great Band

The Beach Boys. I have to admit that their music bugged me when I first heard it as a kid. Maybe it was the sweetness of their harmonies and production values, or maybe it was the seeming irrelevance of the surf imagery to the desolate grey Ohio reality of my youth? I don't know. Certainly, they were very different than the hard rock of Led Zeppelin, the Who, Black Sabbath, the Stones...the bands I first gravatated to. Whatever the reason, I just didn't like them.

Over the years, I found my appreciation for them steadily increasing. As I got a little older, I had to admit that "Sloop John B" and "Good Vibrations" were just two of the most amazing sonic productions I'd ever heard, and that "California Girls" was a clever pop masterpiece, worthy of Pete Townshend or Ray Davies, and far better than anything from the Spielberg of rock, Sir Paul McCartney. (my admiration for this last tune, not surprisingly, more or less coincided with my entry in to puberty and the new outlook on girls, California, Ohio, or otherwise, thereby brought on)

But it wasn't until about five years ago that I started really listening to the Beach Boys. An obsessive collector friend of mine turned me on to Pet Sounds, a bootleg reconstruction of the fabled Smile sessions and some of Brian Wilson's more eccentric, LSD inspired creations from the late sixties. A longtime fan of Syd Barrett and other lysergically influnced geniuses, I had to give the man and the band their due.

This compilation is one of the best box sets I've ever heard. I own a few of the Beach Boys albums, and while there are some songs I would have put on here that the compilation's producers didn't, I still think they did a phenomenal job with this collection. The big hits are all here from early gems like "Surfin' USA," "In My Room" and "Don't Worry Baby" to "Caroline, No" and other psychedelic classics, to some of their forgotten hits from the '70s like "Sail On, Sailor" up through to their '80s come back hit, (ugh, I'm sorry I really can't stand it) "Kokomo."

But it's not merely a greatest hits record. The set includes a lot of worthy tracks that somehow missed the charts and a wealth of unreleased recordings. The title song and "Heroes and Villans" (meant to be the key to the aborted Smile project and the opening track of the underrated Smiley Smile lp that was salvaged from it) appear in several versions throughout the project, winding through it like leitmotifs in opera. The version of "Good Vibrations" that we all know and love is here, as is an excellent, unreleased live version from 1967. Of special interest are the instrumental deconstructions of this perfect pop tune, isolating several different tracks and showing you just how much depth there really is to this seemigly simple tune. Other tunes, like "Surfin' USA" and "I Get Around" are also presented in various stages from demo to rehersal to the finished single, giving a fascinating look into the songwriting and recording processes.

But the highlight of the CD has to be the unreleased tracks from Smile. How could songs like "Wonderful" and the quirky "Vegetables" have languished in the vaults for twenty five years. And there are discoveries from other eras as well. "It's Over Now" and "Still I Dream of It" are further testaments to the genius of Brian Wilson, recorded during the '70s but released only with this set. These were difficult years for Brian personally, but still fertile artistically.

This is a must have for anyone who is interested in the Beach Boys. You get all their hits in various stages of development, some songs that should have been hits, and a lot of interesting oddities. It is thorough enough that it is probably all the Beach Boys you absolutely need to own, although you'll want more once you have it. If you are a fan that doesn't have it, your collection is not complete.