classy arangement - check

american - check

artsy - check

folksy - check

nostalgic - ohyeah

loveable - plausable

 

 

Pet Sounds vs. Bridge Over Troubled Water. The Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel were always 'hit' oriented bands in the first place, and usually their albums suffered from unnecessary filler (despite rarely ever being more than half an hour long). While BB were never 'folksy', they did do a lot with orchestration. I adore Pet Sounds immensely, while Bridge Over Troubled Water is another favorite of mine. I prefer the former over the latter, though, for sheer consistency. See, even in their worst 1960's ruts, the Boys were more consistent than Simon and Garfunkel. It was probably because Art didn't write any of the songs, and BB had two or three writers from time to time, eve if Brian Wilson was the iconic father of Pet Sounds. In all, considering S&G only had five standard albums and BB had twenty or thirty, not counting solo projects (notably Pacific Ocean Blue), it's hard to judge. At the end of the day, I'd take Beach Boys, but mainly on account of Pet Sounds. I can't help it.

 

The arrangements of Cecelia, Bridge Over Troubled Water, even Mrs. Robinson are musical and creative for their time. And Simon went on to face the world fusion explosion, and one of hits sports the best drum groove ever in Steve Gadd's beat for "50 ways to leave your lover."

I don't even care about 'experimentation'. And I'd actually take Pet Sounds over Sgt. Pepper any day (but not Abbey Road). For me, it's the world of spiritual and sexual naivety that surrounds Pet Sounds. Oh and the harmonies and melodies.

 

For most of the 60s, The Beach Boys diddled around with beach music. Sorry, in the grand scheme of things they were inconsequential.

They DID diddle around with beach music and I detested that, but are you saying that Sounds of Silence or Bookends had more of an influence or impact than Pet Sounds? We're speaking of influence on rock and prog. Now, there wasn't much rock to either group. And neither group influenced prog too much, either. In terms of prog, well who was more influential than th Beatles? Alright, now which band influenced the Beatles more? Ya don't hear Paul rattling off about the wonders of Mrs. Robinson. 

That point aside, I rate the bands equally. Simon's lyrics never touched me in any way, so I don't consider lyrics in one bit. When it came to vocal harmonies, even if it was beach music (which made little sense, as the Boys were hardly surfers in the first place), the Beach Boys ruled supreme. By the time Simon had even gotten out of the woods, musically, the Beach Boys had nearly ten albums behind them. 

Surfer Girl was inconsequential, Little Deuce Coupe was inconsequential, and Stack O' Tracks was very, very inconsequential, but how can ya say that Pet Sounds, even if it's one lone record, was inconsequential in the least? I'm not trying to defend a sacred cow, here. Pet Sounds isn't even in my top 10 favorite albums (maybe top 50 or so). It's influenced everyone from Bob Dylan and Roger Waters to Eric Clapton, John Lennon, most baroque pop bands, Love, and Elton John. I dunno. Ya don't hear about S and G very much these days, and I ain't never heard a single 'rock' or 'prog' composition come from them. Sure, there's gospel in Bridge Over Troubled Waters, but that came out in 1970. The Beach boys had somewhere around 40 chart topping singles. 

I don't know. This all seems f**king pointless. What are we arguing? Which was more influential. Is that an opinion? It isn't an opinion. One was more influential or one wasn't. It's measurable, just not with our technology. So we are basically measuring facts we cannot prove with blind speculation. All we have to go on are record sales, artist admissions, and estimation. Even if one group sold more records, who is to say which people were influenced? Which band was more influential to Robert Fripp? Or how about to Tony Banks and the crew at Genesis? How about the Beatles? What does it matter? How can you objectively prove this sh*t?

 

The most integral part of Simon & Garfunkel was, of course, Simon. Yes, The Beach Boys had their sacred cow Pet Sounds (which I've never cared for, personally), but if you look at Paul Simon's career as a composer/lyricist, there really is no comparison. Aside from S&G albums, Simon's 70's releases, such as Paul Simon, Kodachrome, There Goes Rhymin' Simon, and albums from the 80's like Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints, show a consistent ability to compose superb albums over three decades, as well as successfully incorporating world music into his portfolio. The Beach Boys? They've played a lot of state fairs and bowling alleys since the 60s. And, of course, they had John Stamos as a band member for awhile. Ummm...and of course the Beach Boy's Dennis Wilson hung out with Charles Manson, so they have that going for them as well. 

I have yet to delve into Paul Simon's solo career. It's on my list. And of course the Beach Boys died down into the gutter after the beginning of the 1970's. By chance have you heard Pacific Ocean Blue, form Dennis Wilson? Its my favorite album that came from the Beach Boys at all. It's no coincidence, then, that the Final Cut is one of my favorite records, so goes it. I wonder if Roger Waters listened to a lot of Lou Reed's Berlin and Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue between 1977 and 1982.

 

fantastic song... so exotic and warm

 

 

 

 

"He Gives Speeches", "Friday Night", "Holidays"  with the sound of ping pong games and chainsaws for good measure is quite an affair musically and stylistically of The Residents. As strange as Simon & Garfunkel's BOOKENDS seemed to be...with all it;s bizzare tape recordings of patients in a rest home, animals at the zoo etc...which was a duplicate of what Beaver & Krause pulled off on In A Wild Sanctuary...it is still not as Avant-Garde as the original SMILE tapes. And I believe that is Paul Beaver on "Save the Life of my Child" from BOOKENDS, but it still doesn't compare to the level of SMILE. If you listen to the Brian Wilson 2004 re-recorded version it does not by any means represent what Wilson was trying to accomplish. You can put the tracks from the original Smile in the order of the Brian Wilson version and it works but remains to be not that impressive at all. The reason being that many of the songs written for SMILE were not included on Wilson's 2004 version. Another detailed aspect to compare with Simon is this: Wilson was just a powerful songwriter as Simon and especially with ballads of a dark gloom and doom depressing nature. And many people in the world have yet to hear these original versions of Wilson's ballads. No doubt that the ballads off the original SMILE like "Wind Chimes", "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up" are completely much, much more amazing than the versions off SMILEY SMILE AND SURF'S UP. Many versions of these songs were re-recorded on 20/20, Friends, Wild Honey, and Sunflower and do not represent the progressive side to SMILE.

 

 I f you listen to the original Smile and for many years...it puts things into perspective in the sense that the original Smile was closer to being an Avant-Garde opera and more progressive than anything Simon & Garfunkel could come up with. And I make this point base on the knowledge that BOOKENDS had many progressive elements throughout. Even though it was still folk....the album had a strange twist to it. Almost like a Procol Harum release. However again...beyond that it could not compare to the original SMILE regarding the structure of composition and strangeness it contained from within. I mean some of it is electronic....which I found baffling the first year I stumbled onto the original tapes.  I think Brian Wilson had reached this higher peak and led the Beach Boys to it. I believe they were more progressive and somewhat darker with lyricism and arrangements.