Beach Boys:The Beach Boys

Beach Boys: The Beach Boys

1972

Spring Board Records

Format I Own it on:Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Surfer Girl  2. Barbee  3. Luau  4. Little Deuce Coupe  5.  Surfin'  6. Surfin' Safari  7. Judy  8. What is a Young Girl  9. 409  10. Karate

Chronologically speaking, I should've discussed this one a couple days ago, but it was actually a hard album to get any information on...I found this for a $1.99 at the FYE and was drawn to the stark pencil-drawn  cover... In particular,the awesome drawing of Brian Wilson on the bottom left that kind of looks like he's wearing a bumpit...

 ...and the Al Jardine (?) drawing located directly above Brian,  that looks like Martin Short...

You know, it just struck me that the drawing is based on the back cover of  the "All Summer Long" reissue vinyl...

(compare and contrast with the other album cover pictured above...)

Turns out this album was released by Spring Board Records, who were a budget label (similar to Pickwick) that released cheapo rip-off records in grocery stores...Featuring re-recordings and cheaply licensed pre-fame songs.

And that's exactly what this is...closer inspection of the back cover reveals that a number of the tracks aren't even the Beach Boys (as promised on the front cover). Turns out three of the tracks are performed by some instrumental group called the Surfin' Six! I mean, the Surfer Six aren't terrible  or anything (they've got a swingin' martini-time thing going), but they're certainly not the Beach Boys...or else there would be a bizarre pencil drawing of them on the front cover...

(The only mention of the Surfin' Six I can find on the internet is in reference to this particular album...I wonder who they were. What did they do when they weren't playing Beach Boys covers?  Hey, nobody made good on my hit on the  New Kids on the Block a month or two ago...So, I'm rescinding that bounty and instead offering three dollars to the first person who can provide me the names of all six members of the Surfin' Six!

Do we really even know if there actually were Six of them?!)

 The remainder of the material consists of recordings the Beach Boys did in 1961, before the band were signed to Capitol records...Mostly skeletal doo-wop. Probably the most interesting thing here is an intriguingly-slightly- out-of-sync (is it just my copy?) version of  "Surfer Girl" that's incredibly dreamy.

This record fills a bizarre niche I guess... It kept proto-Beach Boys (they were actually still going by the name the Pendletones (which sounds like the name of a ska band) at the time) recordings available...It's certainly far below the band's best, but if it wasn't readily available there would probably be some uptight guy complaining about what  a crime it is that the "obviously superior, out-of-sync" take of "Surfer Girl" isn't in print...But really, I would have a hard time recommending this to even the most die-hard Beach Boys fan (seeing that a good chunk of it isn't even the Beach Boys).

 I guess if you're into creepy pencil drawings of Martin Short, this might be up your alley...

In the meantime, let's check out "Surfer Girl" by the Beach Boys...(This version seems less off-time than the version on my copy of the record, but it appears to also date from '61...

So...close enough...

Amazingly enough there's no "Surfin' Six" on youtube and I don't feel like uploading any today...So...)