Although the Beach Boys have always been around for as long as most living people can remember, it's still hard to believe that America's greatest '60s rock band (at this...
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Ever wanted to hear the Beach Boys' 1965 album track "Salt Lake City" in stereo instead of mono, or maybe an a cappella version of "Can't Wait Too Long," which the band...
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After anthologizing the Beach Boys' creative peak with several reissues during the '90s, Capitol turned its attention to the '70s recordings by acquiring the rights to the...
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Along with the Who, it's nearly impossible to keep track of all the Beach Boys compilations that have littered the marketplace since the 1960s. But undoubtedly one of the...
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The best Beach Boys album, and one of the best of the 1960s. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon...
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Another erratic early album from the Beach Boys; few other rock LPs have such a wide gap between the best and worst material. On the good side, you have absolute classics in...
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The fourth album was also The Beach Boys' fourth to be released within one year, so let's not blame them for the repetitions. Moving the group from the beach to the race...
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The Beach Boys go pseudo-soul, even tackling Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made To Love Her." Inconsistent, but also often overrated, thanks to the inclusion of classics like...
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After the Smile sessions shut down, the Beach Boys became much more of a band than they had been in the mid-'60s. They began playing most of their own instruments on record...
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Brian Wilson's retirement from performing to concentrate on studio recording and production reaped immediate dividends with Today!, the first Beach Boys album that is strong...
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At this point, Brian was only making occasional appearances, and the albums displayed just sporadic spurts of brilliance--"Do It Again" was a very high point in the band's...
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20/20 was not a proper album, being compiled from singles and leftovers in order to fulfill contractual obligations to Capitol. Nonetheless, it's one of their better...
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After Pet Sounds, this and Today are perhaps the best examples of the Beach Boys as album artists. The Beatles' influence was very strong on many of the tracks...
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Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) was a bit of a regression from the success of Today!, lapsing back into that distressing division between first-rate cuts and lightweight...
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The Beach Boys' debut album, recorded in an era in which little was expected of rock groups in the way of strong LP-length statements, is mostly thin and awkward in both the...
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One of the oddest albums released by a major rock group in the '60s, Stack-o-Tracks consisted of instrumental backing tracks to 15 of the Beach Boys' more famous songs,...
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The real breakthrough, as Brian Wilson asserts himself in the studio as both songwriter and arranger on a set of material that was much stronger than Surfin' Safari. Besides...
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With the Absolute Best collections out of print at the end of the '90s and the 20 Good Vibrations: The Greatest Hits missing about as many great singles as it included,...
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With this collection, Capitol has come up with something that has long been missing, a collection of essentially every Christmas recording done by a band that was born to...
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They may have been "America's band," but the Beach Boys' story has been full of mighty bad vibrations almost from the beginning and as disharmonious as any band...
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This is a maddening collection, at once one of the most fascinating and frustrating compilations of the Beach Boys' work ever issued. On one level, it seems to be the...
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Greatest Hits 1961-3 is a budget-line, ten-track collection that compiles several of the Beach Boys' earliest hits ("Surfer Girl," "Little Deuce Coupe," "Surfin'," "Surfin'...
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The idea behind Greatest Car Songs is a little gimmicky -- collect all of the Beach Boys' cruisin' and drivin' songs on one budget-line disc -- and while it's not executed...
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There's little arguing that Pet Sounds is one of the greatest albums in rock & roll, and its cult, if anything, has only grown in the decades since its intial release. Part...
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It is the rare major recording act who hasn't cut a session early in their career for some small label, whose owner licenses the tracks over and over, diluting the catalog's...
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Capitol's 2000 two-fer reissue program of Beach Boys LPs continued apace with 1972's Carl and the Passions - So Tough and 1973's Holland, a pair of albums whose quality,...
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Learning quickly from the utter failure of their modernist, roots rock bent (circa 1972-1973) and the overwhelming success one year later of their greatest-hits package...
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Displaying remarkable growth even since their previous release, "Hushabye" and "Wendy" already sound like "Teen Symphonies To God"--as Brian would later call Pet...
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The best pre-1965 Beach Boys album featured their brilliant number one single "I Get Around," as well as other standout cuts in the beautifully sad "Wendy," "Little Honda"...
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A five-CD box set, containing a whopping 142 tracks and covering the group's entire career, that manages to feel like too much and not enough at the same time. True, all of...
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Released when Cream and Jimi Hendrix were at their apex, the low-key pleasantries of Friends seemed downright irrelevant in mid-1968. Today it sounds better, but it's...
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A low point. Bruce Johnston produces a Beach Boys soundalike album using the actual group, plus 22 other credited musicians, while Carl Wilson collaborates with Randy...
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The group's last halfway-good album, sparked by pleasant singing, some unexpected rock cover versions, and funny wordplay by Brian Wilson. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music...
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Their first four albums, these were released during the pre-Beatles era, when albums were primarily seen as vehicles to spotlight hit singles, fleshed out with filler...
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The Beach Boys' third and fifth albums make a good pairing on one CD, different as they are in content and origins. Surfer Girl was the album on which the group's and Brian...
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Capitol pushed the Beach Boys for too much material in too short a time for the group to maintain as much quality control as would have been desirable. Consequently, most of...
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A 12-song collection containing many of The Beach Boys' hits from 1964 and 1965. Some of their best pop music, but incomplete compared to other compilations. ~ William...
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Absolute Best, Vol. 2 picks up where the first volume left off, beginning with "California Girls" and running through the early '70s. On the whole, the music on Absolute...
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Their first four albums, these were released during the pre-Beatles era, when albums were primarily seen as vehicles to spotlight hit singles, fleshed out with filler...
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The usual perception of the Beach Boys' early albums is that they're primarily for completists and principally of historical interest. This CD goes a long way toward...
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This two-on-one CD reissue offers a pair of "firsts" -- the group's first concept album (in the Sinatra sense of the term, referring to an LP built on a specific theme or...
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Christmas music seems like it would be a natural for the Wilson touch; unfortunately, the album was a wasted opportunity, as it plays less like Berry and Spector than it...
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While it may seem rather incongruous for the definitive voices of summertime to tackle the music of the holiday season, The Beach Boys' Christmas Album succeeds brilliantly;...
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The first documents the group at the height of Beach Boy mania, complete with hysterical, screaming girls; the latter is sans Brian, of course, but documents that the group...
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This pairing is a sort of natural, capturing the Beach Boys at the end of Brian Wilson's tenure as a regular performing member of the group, and at the peak of their...
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After Pet Sounds, these are perhaps the best examples of the Beach Boys as album artists; Capitol released them together as a two-fer CD package in 1990, complete with...
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These two albums represent the point in their history where the Beach Boys essentially divide into two distinct yet interlinked musical entities: Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson,...
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It was probably a wise choice by Capitol Records to put Beach Boys' Party! and Stack-o-Tracks together on one CD because those are the two original LPs by the group that are...
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The masterpiece; it is often chosen as the greatest rock album of all time by both critics and musicians, the latest example being in Britain's terrific MOJO magazine....
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This 29-track CD represents the final phase of the Beach Boys' first go-around with Capitol Records, as well as the tail end of their 1960s output. The two albums contained...
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At this point, Brian was only making occasional appearances, and the albums displayed just sporadic spurts of brilliance like the title track (written with Van Dyke Parks...
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The Beach Boys' catalog is littered with forgotten 1970s LPs that barely scraped the charts upon release but matured into solid fan favorites despite -- and occasionally,...
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At this point, Brian was only making occasional appearances, and the albums displayed just sporadic spurts of brilliance--the cases in point being "This Whole World," "Add...
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After Reprise rejected what was to be their debut album for the label, the Beach Boys re-entered the studio to begin work on what would become a largely different set of...
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We're beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel here, featuring as it does one brilliant track--the Wilson/Van Dyke Parks penned "Sail On Sailor" (with Blondie Chaplin on...
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The California sun mixed with mysticisms and some outrageous sound experiments (all with a great beat). A failed effort to renew the group's sound with a change of venue (to...
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At this point, Brian was only making occasional appearances, and the albums displayed just sporadic spurts of brilliance--it's worth checking out "Marcella" and "You Need A...
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With the addition of drummer Ricky Fataar and guitarist Blondie Chaplin to the lineup, the Beach Boys entered a period of surprisingly earthy arrangements, obviously based...
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15 Big Ones 1/15/1991, Yahoo! Music, Bill Holdship
A major disappointment, coming as it did with a huge "BRIAN IS BACK!" campaign, complete with major cover features in all the rock rags. The group even manages to butcher...
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Thanks to the surprising success of the compilation Endless Summer, the Beach Boys entered the studio in 1975 for the first time in almost three years. The album that...
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Coming after the hyped "BRIAN IS BACK!" campaign of 1976's relatively weak 15 Big Ones, this could've been seen as the real "comeback." Controversial psychotherapist Eugene...
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Judging by the title and the quilted design on the cover, Love You would appear to be an album of ballads or romantic tracks, maybe '70s remakes of "Surfer Girl" or "In My...
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The Beach Boys went into their outtakes archive for this cobbled-together collection, which nevertheless features the lovely Brian and Carl Wilson collaboration "Good...
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Recorded right before they fell into a nostalgia act (following Endless Summer), it proves they could still put on a good show, though you'd be better off opting for the...
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Although somewhat unimaginatively titled, Beach Boys in Concert (1973) is significantly more than a hastily compiled live collection of hits. To the contrary, the set...
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The Beach Boys' first new studio album in five years was a concerted attempt to regain old glories, which it did to an extent, selling better than any record since 15 Big...
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The Beach Boys' success with soundtracks, notably their number one 1988 hit with "Kokomo" from Cocktail, provides the rationale for this hodgepodge of oldies and one-off...
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Hoping to continue the "success" of "Kokomo," the Boys go it alone, totally sans Brian. Dreadful. All you need to know you already knew if you ever heard Mike Love's 1981...
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One of the first Beach Boys CDs, California Girls is a 10-song abridgement of the 12-song 1965 album Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). Probably no longer in print, it...
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This was the album by which millions of sons of late baby boomers (and sons and daughters of the early ones) first really discovered the Beach Boys, beyond hearing the...
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The Beach Boys had two minor single hits -- "California Dreamin'" and "Rock 'N' Roll To The Rescue" -- back on Capitol Records in 1986, and to mark their 25th anniversary,...
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A followup to Endless Summer, much weaker in content (except for the inclusion of "Breakaway"), but its near-repeat success helped put the group back in the spotlight. ~...
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This album actually topped the charts for four weeks; today, it's a historical artifact, with its waves of screaming fans competing with the band. Not one of the best live...
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Released as part of a contractual obligation between Summer Days and Pet Sounds, Brian simply rented a house, threw a "party," provided instruments and let the tapes roll....
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Capitol, which had already released ten Beach Boys albums in three years, was bugging the group for product that it could release in time for the 1965 Christmas season. To...
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First off, let's clear up some discographical confusion: this album was originally titled Live in London and released overseas in 1970. When it was issued in the States in...
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The Beach Boys were the ultimate summer band, their songs full of sun, surfboards, and endless waves of good vibrations, but it is always interesting to remember how many of...
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Smiley Smile 1/1/1967, Yahoo! Music, Bill Holdship
Valuable only in the sense that it was the initial release of several of the tracks intended for inclusion on the aborted Smile, including the brilliant "Heroes And...
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Smiley Smile 1/1/1998, Yahoo! Music, Bill Holdship
Valuable only in the sense that it was the initial release of several of the tracks intended for inclusion on the aborted Smile, including the brilliant "Heroes And...
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After the much-discussed, uncompleted Smile project -- which was supposed to take the innovations of Pet Sounds to even grander heights -- collapsed, the Beach Boys released...
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Capitol seems to have intended to replicate its Endless Summer success of summer '74 with this two-record summer '82 compilation, which is oriented toward The Beach Boys'...
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The linchpin of the Beach Boys, Carl Wilson not only voiced some of the group's most transcendent songs but was the lone member keeping various factions of the band together...
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Alas, Brian is back for this one--but it's totally a Love-like concept. Following the lead of the Eagles and the gimmick responsible for their "comeback," the "Boys" team...
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Since Capitol's two-volume 1999 Greatest Hits only seemed to be chronological -- the label followed a rough time line, but Vol. 1 had many curious omissions from the early...
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The best Beach Boys album, and one of the best of the 1960s. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon...
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Treasured by collectors and particularly obsessive fans, the Beach Boys' work from the '70s and early '80s enjoyed a growing cachet with music cognoscenti during the '90s....
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The best Beach Boys album, and one of the best of the 1960s. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon...
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After gaining control of the Beach Boys' entire catalog (including all the band's post-1969 material), Capitol released two-fers covering their out of print '70s records and...
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Classics: Selected by Brian Wilson has a fancy title that suggests that this is different than a standard Beach Boys hits collection, but the end result is pretty close to a...
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