How It All Began (Surfin' Safari/surfin' Usa - Beach Boys)

Member Name: Scottyboy_Peanut

Product:	Surfin' Safari/surfin' Usa - Beach Boys
Date:	18/05/09 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun to listen to, and for the most part enjoyable.

Disadvantages: Not the Best The Beach Boys did, by a long way

This is definitely not the best of the Beach Boys "Twofers," but that fact that it has two albums on one CD makes it a pretty good purchase.

These two albums are where The Beach Boys started and from a purely historical point of view contain important moments in the history of modern music.

The music here isn't sophisticated and the production isn't going to knock your socks off in any way but these albums are fun to listen to and that surely counts for something.

This is the music The Beach Boys are best known for anyway. Even though their career took them through a wild journey on the back of Brian Wilson's creative genius there are still those that don't know about much more of their career than what is contained in these early albums.

So what we have here are two albums that were made when the concept of making an album that people would enjoy in its entirety wasn't even a twinkle in the record company's eyes. They saw albums as a way to cash in on successful singles. Simply put, an album was the hit singles, a couple of songs that sounded a bit like the hits and then some filler, usually covers.

The Surfin Safari's track listing is

1) Surfin' Safari
2) County Fair
3) Ten Little Indians
4) Chug-A-Lug
5) Little Miss America
6) 409
7) Surfin'
8) Heads You Win - Tails I Lose
9) Summertime Blues
10) Cuckoo Clock
11) Moon Dawg
12) The Shift.

The hits here were the title track, Surfin' and 409. Of those 409 is my favourite and probably the best song on this album. The rest sounds just like what it is, filler. It is quite well performed and impressive if you think about their ages at this time which is quite evident from just hearing their vocals. Honestly, this album isn't great. It's hard to see the seed that would bloom into future greatness at this point. This could have been their one and only album and the name of The Beach Boys would never have been known.

As for Surfin' USA the track listing is;

1) Surfin' USA
2) Farmer's Daughter
3) Misirlou
4) Stoked
5) Lonely Sea
6) Shut Down
7) Noble Surfer
8) Honky Tonk
9) Lana
10) Surf Jam
11) Let's Go Trippin'
12) Finders Keepers

This is a much better album than the previous effort. They suddenly sound like professionals. Surfin' Safari has a very garage band vibe to it but this album from 1963 sounds like a little more effort was spent on it, particularly with the vocals which are now double tracked. The one place where maybe not enough time was spent was track selection. What is here is well performed, but with a bit more time Brian could surely have created better than the five instrumentals here.

Farmers Daughter is probably my favourite song on this album with a beautiful falsetto vocal from young Brian. He sounds very pure and innocent. If you track his career through to modern day you can really hear how life hasn't taken its toll on his voice.
Lonely Sea is also lovely with yet more Brian falsetto. I could do without the cheesy spoken word section but other than that it is perfect.

The possibilities of growing into a great band are evident on this album, but only in small doses.

Contained on this twofer are three bonus tracks; Cindy Oh Cindy; The Baker Man and Land Ahoy. These were all recorded at the same time as the rest of this album but didn't make the final cut. Land Ahoy Is particularly interesting because it is basically the same song as Cherry Cherry Coupe that was on the Little Deuce Coupe album.

Overall this isn't really an essential purchase. Musically most of the rest of the Beach Boys catalogue was better than what is here and a short hop to the next album Surfer Girl, shows remarkable improvement. If you want to hear the very best of what Brian Wilson can create, The Beach Boys Today, Summer Days(and Summer Nights), Pet Sounds, Wild Honey and Brian Wilson Presents Smile are much better choices. If you have a taste of the slightly peculiar then add Smiley Smile, Friends and Love You too.

Summary: The Beach Boys really were boys when these two albums were made. Not sophistacted, but still not bad