Why the Beach Boys Matter

Tom Smucker has written rock criticism for Creem, Fusion, Rolling Stone, and the Village Voice.

Introduction 1. Harmony and Discord 2. Cars and Guitars 3. Suburbs and Surf 4. Studio and Stage 5. Fathers, Shrinks, and Gurus 6. Girlfriends, Wives, and Mothers 7. When Did the Early Sixties End? 8. Jan and Dean 9. Innocence and the Second-Best Pop Album Ever 10. Hip and White 11. The Best Unreleased Pop Album Ever 12. The Beatles 13. Into the Genres 14. Dennis 15. Carl 16. Al, Bruce, and David 17. Mike 18. Brian Solo 19. Storytellers, Historians, and Fans 20. Summer's Gone, the Endless Summer Epilogue: Suggestions Acknowledgments Notes Discography A Chronological Listing of DVDs Mentioned in the Book Bibliography

Why the Beach Boys Matter provides an excellent introduction to the band that might have evolved, Smucker suggests, into the Beatles...We were ready to abandon the Beach Boys. Now, with Smucker's book, we can reconnect to them. (New York Journal of Books) Smucker's book on Why The Beach Boys Matter tells us exactly that, and quite evocatively. (Critics At Large) It's a pretty tall order to tell the Beach Boys' oft-confusing, decades-long history in a 176-page, 5" x 7" book, but Tom Smucker does an admirable job in Why the Beach Boys Matter. (Comics Worth Reading) Smucker is a long-time fan of the Beach Boys, and his passionate defense of their importance is carefully thought out...Why The Beach Boys Matter packs a lot of content into a short volume. Smucker does an excellent job summarizing the Beach Boys' long career, examining their influences and their place in American pop culture. (Mark My Words) Rather than land on a single thesis in answer to the book's title, Smucker gives the reader myriad starting points for determining why the Beach Boys matter...While the rhizomatic nature of the book's short, chronologically nonlinear chapters may frustrate some academic readers, others will find that the structure is a perfect metaphor for the answer to the problem posed by the book's title. There is a multiplicity of reasons for the importance of the Beach Boys, musically and historically, and to say otherwise for the sake of a central thesis would be to attempt to insert an intellectual square into an intellectual circle...the arguments...[are] just right. (Journal of Popular Culture) [Why the Beach Boys Matter] is one of the great books for anybody who likes to think about pop music (or the USA). Smucker efficiently shares fresh sociocultural thinking right along with answering the crucial "but is it good listening?" questions. (Rock Critics)