1. Background and recording

2. Promotion

3. Reception
    Retrospective reviews   Influence  

4. Alternate releases

5. Track listing

6. Personnel

7. Charts

8. Notes

9. References

• Folk rock{{sfn|Unterberger|2002|p=245}}

Beach Boys' Party! is the tenth studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, and their third in 1965, consisting mostly of cover songs played with acoustic instruments. It reached No. 6 in the US and No. 3 in the UK. The album spawned one single, a cover of the Regents' "Barbara Ann", which reached No. 2 in the US and No. 3 in the UK, and was their highest-charting British single to that point.

Party! was recorded in a music studio and presented as an impromptu live recording of a party, with informal chatter by friends and family overdubbed later.{{sfn|Schinder|2007|p=113}} The record company, Capitol, wanted an album for the holiday season, but as there was no new material ready, several options were considered, including a greatest hits album and a live album, before the band decided on the party theme.^[1][2] The Beach Boys covered songs by the Beatles, several doo-wop groups, Bob Dylan, and the Everly Brothers. While the "beach party" atmospherics fit into the Beach Boys style to that point, the varied musical influences presaged the change of direction that would occur over the next several years beginning with Pet Sounds (1966).

Because of its stripped-down approach, Party! is considered to be the first "unplugged" type album.^[3] In 2015, Capitol issued Beach Boys' Party! Uncovered and Unplugged, an 81-track expansion and remix of Party!.

Background and recording

In August, after the release of Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson was contemplating his next studio effort, which would turn out to be Pet Sounds. Capitol Records requested a new album for the holiday season. Since The Beach Boys' Christmas Album had been released the previous year, as had a live performance via Beach Boys Concert, the "live party" idea was selected to reflect the togetherness of the holiday spirit. Sporadically during September, the band and their friends rehearsed current and older hits (including revisiting the Rivingtons' "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow"). Although presented as an impromptu live recording of a continuous set of songs played at a small party, the songs were recorded and mixed individually in a sound studio as any regular studio album, and laughter and background chatter was mixed in during post-production.^[4]

The album included versions of the Beatles' "Tell Me Why", "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and "I Should Have Known Better"; "Devoted to You" by the Everly Brothers; the Phil Spector produced "There's No Other (Like My Baby)" and a send-up of their own "I Get Around" and "Little Deuce Coupe".^[4] David Leaf noted: "In an era when rock stars were beginning to take themselves more seriously, the Beach Boys showed how natural it was to make fun of themselves."^[4]

Author Geoffrey Himes wrote that the party theme was created to justify the casual arrangements.^[4] Music theorist Daniel Harrison writes: "Party was an exercise in minimalistic production ... The performances seem unrehearsed, the instrumental support is minimal (acoustical guitar, bongo drums, tambourine), and fooling around (laughing, affected singing, background conversation) pervades every track."{{sfn|Harrison|1997|p=41}} It was Wilson's first exploration in "party tracks", a form of music which includes the sounds of people shouting and making noises as if at a party.{{refn|group=nb|The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" and Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women ♯12 & 35" (1966) were similar examples of party tracks.{{sfn|Whiteley|Sklower|2014|p=150}} }} He would later continue this approach with Smiley Smile in 1967.{{sfn|Whiteley|Sklower|2014|p=150}}

Several other songs were also recorded, but not put on the album. This included renditions of the Drifters' "Ruby Baby",{{refn|group=nb|First released on Thirty Years of The Beach Boys (1993).{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}}} the Beatles' song "Ticket to Ride", the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", the Robins' "Riot In Cell Block #9",{{refn|group=nb|Later be played live in the early 1970s, and subsequently reworked as "Student Demonstration Time" for the Beach Boys' Surf's Up album.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}}} and several other songs,{{ambiguous|date=October 2015}} all of which were released in its 2015 expanded remix.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}

Promotion

The original release of Party! included a sheet of photographs which depicted the band at a party.^[5] In order to promote the album, Capitol distributed to dealers a million bags of potato chips which bore the album's cover art. The label also coordinated a motion floor merchandiser containing five Beach Boys LPs, full-color streamers for window displays, and full-scale radio and newspaper advertising.^[6]

Reception

In November 1965, the Beach Boys released the non-album single "The Little Girl I Once Knew" which repeatedly used a measure of silence in the arrangement and was reportedly disliked by radio programmers owing to their avoidance of having "dead air",^[13] this has been cited as being partially responsible for the single stalling at US number 20. Still wanting to play new material by the band, radio disc jockeys around the United States began starting to play the last track of Party! straight off the LP, a cover of The Regents' "Barbara Ann". After receiving good listener's response, "Barbara Ann" was promptly issued as a single by Capitol when they started hearing from radio programmers, and became a number 2 hit in early 1966.^[5]

Retrospective reviews

Influence

• In 1997, the Canadian indie rock group Sloan, released an EP entitled Recorded Live at a Sloan Party! (a.k.a. The Party Album) as a bonus disc to the US release of One Chord to Another in homage to the Beach Boys' Party! LP. Like the Beach Boys' Party! album, Recorded Live at a Sloan Party! mixes acoustic versions of old classics and songs originally written and recorded by other artists, and presents a supposed gathering that was actually constructed in the studio.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}
• Rivers Cuomo revealed that the Beach Boys' Party! album inspired Weezer's 2008 "Hootenanny Tour," in which fans would be invited to bring their own instruments to play along with the band. Cuomo also named it as his favorite all-time Summer album in a July 2008 issue of Entertainment Weekly.^[15]
• In 2003, Netherlands pop-punk band The Travoltas released Party! in homage to the Beach Boys' Party! which includes acoustic covers of Beach Boys and other surf-rock tracks. Like the original Beach Boys' Party! album and subsequent tribute albums (e.g. Live at a Sloan Party!), the album includes the ambient sounds of a party, spontaneous-sounding singalongs, glasses clanking, etc.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}
• In 2004, alternative country/indie-rock band Limbeck released a companion album packed with limited editions of their 2003 album Hi, Everything's Great.. The album was recorded live and acoustic in the same vein as The Beach Boys.
• In 2013 indie-rock band Hellogoodbye released a live album entitled Did It Kill You?, a reference to their album Would It Kill You?. The album was recorded live, acoustic, referenced Beach Boys' Party! and contained a cover of "Barbara Ann".^[16]

Alternate releases

In 1990, Beach Boys' Party! was paired on CD with Stack-o-Tracks with bonus instrumental tracks. The bonus instrumental tracks include "Help Me, Rhonda", "California Girls", and "Our Car Club".^[5] In 2012, the first stereo mix of Beach Boys' Party! was released.^[17]

On November 20, 2015, Capitol issued an 81-track expanded remix, Beach Boys' Party! Uncovered and Unplugged, containing the original album without overdubs followed by a selection of outtakes culled from the album's original five recording sessions.^[17]

Track listing

Personnel

The Beach Boys

• Al Jardine^[5]
• Mike Love^[5]
• Brian Wilson^[5]
• Carl Wilson^[5]
• Dennis Wilson^[5]

Additional musicians

• Dean Torrence^[5]

Charts

Albums

Singles

Chart information courtesy of Allmusic and other music databases.^[19]{{failed verification|date=October 2015}}

Notes

References

Sources

• {{cite book|last=Fusilli|first=Jim|title=Beach Boys' Pet Sounds|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVIx8qes4V8C|date=2005|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-4411-1266-8|ref=harv}}
• {{cite book|ref=harv|last=Harrison|first=Daniel|authorlink=Daniel Harrison (music theorist)|editor1-last=Covach|editor1-first=John|editor2-last=Boone|editor2-first=Graeme M.|title=Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis|date=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780199880126|chapter-url=http://www.lipscomb.umn.edu/rock/docs/Harrison1997_BeachBoys.pdf|chapter=After Sundown: The Beach Boys' Experimental Music|pages=33–57}}
• {{cite book|last=Schinder|first=Scott|chapter=The Beach Boys|editor-last1=Schinder|editor-first1=Scott|editor-last2=Schwartz|editor-first2=Andy|title=Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever|date=2007|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport, Connecticut|isbn=978-0313338458|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=chj91X0dWzUC&pg=PT101|ref=harv}}
• {{cite book|ref=harv|last1=Whiteley|first1=Sheila|last2=Sklower|first2=Jedediah|title=Countercultures and Popular Music|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c9WpBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA150|year=2014|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|isbn=978-1-4724-2106-7}}
• {{cite book |last=Unterberger|first=Richie |authorlink=Richie Unterberger |title=Turn! Turn! Turn!: The '60s Folk-Rock Revolution |date=2002 |publisher=Backbeat Books |isbn=0-87930-703-X |ref=harv }}
• Beach Boys' Party! Uncovered and Unplugged liner notes.

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