Are the Beach Boys a top 5 band all time?

[Mediocre Man]

Your answer will not be taken seriously if you have never listened to Pet Sounds. You must indicate in your answer if you have listened to the album

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

Only if you're an old timer.

Their music certainly didn't age well as, say, the Beatles.

 

[Draco]

You don't need to listen to all of Shaq's album to know its crap.

 

[Ed O]

They made some amazing music. I don't have an all-time top five, but I think that they are dramatically underestimated by many music fans.

Ed O.

 

[julius]

You don't need to listen to all of Shaq's album to know its crap.

are you saying that the Beach Boys are crap like Shaq's album?

Kazaaaam!

 

[tlongII]

Oh Hell No!

 

[Mediocre Man]

I will not be trying to convince anyone either way. Just thought it might be a fun topic

 

[SlyPokerDog]

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/l...e-19691231/pet-sounds-the-beach-boys-19691231

 

[jlprk]

I went to Beachboy concerts once or twice in my day.

I rank songs, not groups.

 

[GriLtCheeZ]

They might be a top five band in the history of rock n roll, but I like the Monkees more than I like the beach boys.

 

[THE HCP]

Respect them, but no way are they top 5. I'm assuming you mean "bands" and NOT individual artists.....

Zepplin, The Beatles, Rolling Stones are some of my top picks, but how can you put a list of top bands together and not give props to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Miles Davis and the such! Music and lists are a dangerous topic.

 

[julius]

Respect them, but no way are they top 5. I'm assuming you mean "bands" and NOT individual artists.....

Zepplin, The Beatles, Rolling Stones are some of my top picks, but how can you put a list of top bands together and not give props to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Miles Davis and the such! Music and lists are a dangerous topic.

Mostly because none of those guys are bands.

 

[theprunetang]

Everyone has different opinions, but the Beach Boys are in my personal top five. Pet Sounds is brilliant. I could talk about its genius for hours......but I will just leave it there. I think it is the most perfectly recorded album in the history of ever. I really do wish that Brian Wilson could have finished Smile in the 60's. It would have been fanfuckingtastic.

 

[julius]

Everyone has different opinions, but the Beach Boys are in my personal top five. Pet Sounds is brilliant. I could talk about its genius for hours......but I will just leave it there. I think it is the most perfectly recorded album in the history of ever. I really do wish that Brian Wilson could have finished Smile in the 60's. It would have been fanfuckingtastic.

I read somewhere that they released that album in a box set. Don't know anything more about it though.

 

[jlprk]

Nice to see you writing about music again, Prunetag.

 

[theprunetang]

Nice to see you writing about music again, Prunetag.

Yeah... still a major part of my life. I just haven't felt like posting much in the past couple of years. Just kind of who I am, I suppose. As an aside, my band's latest album is available for free download only for the next 24 hours.
Not the greatest recording ever, but it is definitely seeking something. And for the money we spent....hehe.... we got the most out of it. Check it out, or not. It's free (for now). http://herecomedots.bandcamp.com/

prunetang

 

[jlprk]

I get religious when I'm sane! I've heard that song before!

Bought this computer 2 nights ago...first download except antivirus...first use of Windows Media...just gave WM its settings...first time I'm hearing the tiny laptop speakers for music...not bad...it's not Beats...

I don't want you (something). I like the first song better than the second. Now for Water Death.

 

[jlprk]

Paper Moon sounds like the KInks! Oops. My grandfather told me about them. Anyway, it has a drumbeat and you sing from low to high! Ray Davies you are!

 

[jlprk]

Lay your head down--I just realized a pattern in your songs over the years. You deviously repeat a cute little mantra about 4 times and then EXPLODE in a sound that reverberates and vibrates like an echo in a cave. The exciting sound lasts about 5 seconds and then you go back to your cunning buildup of the next drama.

 

[jlprk]

Now I'll listen for the third time. Second time, I ranked them Paper Moon, Age of Reason, Lay Your Head Down, Touch Me, Water Death, and least favorite Death is a Machine. Here goes the third time.

 

[jlprk]

The two Death songs move up. Paper Moon still the catchiest for a radio song. Lay Your Head may be second best radio song. Touch Me the most emotionally sung.

Still good after all these years!

 

[theprunetang]

The two Death songs move up. Paper Moon still the catchiest for a radio song. Lay Your Head may be second best radio song. Touch Me the most emotionally sung.

Still good after all these years!

I agree with everything you have just said. It was honestly our first try at a real recording. I have written songs now that have blown those all out of the water. That is the next project.... Make a coherent full length that lives and breathes and sounds beautiful in the meantime. I have given up trying to fit things to Portland's given sound. Instead, I have realized I just need to keep doing what I do. Keep writing what I write, and stop worrying what people think about it. This town is so insular (musically) and completely saturated that I really need to stop caring about anyone and just writing songs ffor myself. Art for art's sake.

prunetang

 

[jlprk]

You used to view Portland as far across the state from where you were appearing. Now you talk about it as home ground. You moved to the big time, but maybe an even bigger scene would mix you with people with other ideas.

You could experiment with a song that gives your voice a stronger presence in the foreground. You could write something 3-4 minutes long, a short song in which you speed the pace to fit it all in. You could extract the catchy riff from 3 of your songs and combine them into one song, as long as they are complementary. Just ideas.

Here's a song my cousin wrote, sung by a guy from Eugene.

 

[bigbailes]

i'm not sure i can put the beach boys as a top 5 band all time, maybe top 10 but they deserve to be in the discussion. saw them a couple times, or the few of them that are still touring together, and it was a pretty good show.

as for ranking bands, instead of numbers (top 5, 10 etc) i prefer to think of it like bill simmons does the baseball hall of fame, more in pyramid form. in that repsect i would consider them a fringe tier one or top of tier two band.

 

[MARIS61]

I assume that was a typo.

Top 50 maybe.

 

[Minstrel]

They're in the discussion. I don't think any band can be said to be a definite top five, since there are a number of bands in the upper stratosphere of the music realm that are both very close in quality as well as very different in sound. Ranking them conclusively is impossible, IMO. That said, the Beach Boys are certainly one of those bands who could be ranked in the top five...they're among my favourite bands ever.

Pet Sounds is obviously amazing, and SMiLE (which has both been leaked over time as well as produced after the fact in 2005 by Brian Wilson and a backing band) would have been incredible if released in the 1960s. I think one thing that hurts the Beach Boys in terms of overall recognition is that they didn't put together a lot of unassailable albums. They produced an incredible amount of fabulous songs, but they were spread out over a lot of albums, many of which had a lot of added filler and/or covers. But taking their top twenty or thirty or fifty songs, I think they stack up well with virtually anyone.

 

[DaLincolnJones]

Yeah, I have to give a nod to Mistrel here. The Beach Boys have to be in the conversation. Pet Sounds came out in what? 1966? It was not my Fav, I was more into the Stones and Beatles, still rock was changing on all fronts at a frantic pace. And thank god it did.

I have to admire Pet Sounds as being oe of the early theme or story album, like the Beatles, Sgt. Peppers..but I dont know if the fact that I had grown up listening to peter and the wolf on LP, that it was like i expected the music to evolve to that point. Fact of the matter is that I considered the Beach Boys to be "Rock light".

Dylin going electric, Beatles going to drug induced fantasy cartoons..almost too far..The intergration of "black" music and drifting away from the safe, clean "white" sound.

The influence of early blues, Hooker to Chuck Berry etc I think was far more of a big deal, and had a bigger impact. Bands like the Stones who embraced blues and made it acceptable, or rather marketable to the mainstream, there is where you will find your true top five.

 

[PapaG]

The Beach Boys? Top 5 of any genre, ever?

We're having this discussion?

Brian Wilson was a genius, but the bubblegum crap is what they're remembered most for these days.

I can name 10 rock bands off of the top of my head that make this a silly thread, in terms of memorable music.

The Beatles
The Doors
The Yardbirds
Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Pink Floyd
Queen
The Rolling Stones
U2
Metallica

 

[julius]

The Beach Boys? Top 5 of any genre, ever?

We're having this discussion?

Brian Wilson was a genius, but the bubblegum crap is what they're remembered most for these days.

I can name 10 rock bands off of the top of my head that make this a silly thread, in terms of memorable music.

The Beatles
The Doors
The Yardbirds
Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Pink Floyd
Queen
The Rolling Stones
U2
Metallica

I'm not sure I'd call Good Vibrations "bubblegum crap".

(I was tempted to bring up an actual bubblegum crap song of theirs, but I'm not sure what that term means, so I went with their best known hit instead. And if that's what bubblegum crap is, then bubblegum crap is some pretty god damned good music.)

 

[PapaG]

I'm not sure I'd call Good Vibrations "bubblegum crap".

(I was tempted to bring up an actual bubblegum crap song of theirs, but I'm not sure what that term means, so I went with their best known hit instead. And if that's what bubblegum crap is, then bubblegum crap is some pretty god damned good music.)

Yes, you oldtimers are going to cling to the idea that the Beach Boys are a Top 5 band of all time. I get it.