The Beach Boys Network

Re: Excellent Interview With Brian [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 06:00 AM CDT

Y'know, he wrote a number entitled "This Song Wants To Sleep With You Tonight". Coincidence ? Roll Eyes

Re: Favourite version of Surf's Up? [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 05:09 AM CDT

My vote went to the GV boxset demo.

Re: Labor Day Weekend 1978 [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 04:54 AM CDT

Book?

Surely you jest....

If not, tell us more!

New BRIAN WILSON and BEACH BOYS Saga BOOK CATCH A WAVE ["brian wilson"]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 04:41 AM CDT

US $14.51
End Date: Wednesday Sep-03-2008 2:41:08 PDT
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Re: What was #1 on the day you were born [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 03:50 AM CDT

UK-Grandad--Clive Dunn. Never heard it.

US--Knock Three Times--Dawn. ::)Christ.

Aus--My Sweet Lord--George Harrison. Sweet. Cool Guy

Re: Labor Day Weekend 1978 [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 03:16 AM CDT

That's going in the book. Unchanged. Grin

Re: The Alan Boyd Thread [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 03:10 AM CDT

Quote from: Alan Boyd on August 30, 2008, 09:29:35 PM

Actually, they've been published before.... and yet, I can't remember them completely off the top of my head.

The only differences (at least on the existing 16 track master we have) are in the parts where Brian sings solo. Instead of "I lost my way," for example, the alternate lyrics are along the lines of, "I"ll find my way...." The alternate lyrics seem to have been an attempt to make the song's message a bit more positive.

The other difference mentioned to me was "it fills my soul" as opposed to "it kills my soul".

Then, of course, there's the original lyric that's lost forever as Steve Desper didn't have time to set up a slave when Brian wanted to cut a new vocal with revised lyrics. So he just recorded over the top of them.

Re: Favourite version of Surf's Up? [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 03:08 AM CDT

Definitely the SU version, though all of them are great. The Box Set Demo has a few small moments where I think Brian's a little off. The SU version is total brilliance all the way, especially the tag.

I give points to the whole middle section of BWPS and I like that version of Surf's Up too, but the crisper, smoother(vocal wise) 1971 version can't be beat.

Re: TLOS is now streaming [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 03:04 AM CDT

Well, he probably couldn't have pulled off something as elaborate and well produced in both those stages of his career, but then the vocals occasionally remind me of BW88, while songs like Morning Beat and Oxygen have a certain mid-seventies quality to them, in terms of the lyrical content anyway. "It's a long, long way from January/All the way to December" - to me, that's just the same Brian as the one who created a song like Solar System.

Labor Day Weekend 1978 [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 02:21 AM CDT

This Labor Day weekend marks the 30th anniversary of The Beach Boys' sessions at Criteria Studios in Miami, and being the historian I am, I find myself reflecting on that moment in time.

Way overdue in fufilling their commitment to deliver the first album in their $8 million deal with CBS, the Boys chartered the late Elvis Presley's jet and planned a tour around a week's worth of studio time booked at Criteria (owned by the Brothers Gibb). As Ed Roach recalls, "The Boys were on such a high from their signing with Columbia...and were going to record their new album as a group, with Brian at the helm". Brian, just released from a detox hospital in San Diego and contracturally obligated to write and produce 80% of the group's new material, flew out to meet them in Miami, where the Boys and their entrouge were staying at the Doral Country Club Hotel. Brian joined the Boys for a string of concerts with Jan & Dean (who were just embarking on a comeback to tie in with the broadcast of the "Dead Man's Curve" TV movie), beginning in Grand Haven, Michigan on the 25th. Back in Miami on the 28th, the Boys set up camp at Criteria, having flown in Chuck Britz to run the board for Brian in Studio A, while Dennis was given Studio C to work in with former Brother engineer Tom Murphy (Steve Desper, who was living nearby at the time, dropped by the studio to hang out and observe the sessions).

With the Beach Boys' touring band, Brian laid down a number of tracks in Studio A, while across the hall Dennis recorded drum and percussion overdubs for his work-in-progress, "Love Surrounds Me". The AFM sheets for these basic tracking sessions were apparently filled out some time later, and are dated August 31st and September 1st; other evidence suggests the sessions actually occurred August 28th (or 29th) and 30th. Brian apparently began producing the morning of the very first day with (ironically) Mike's tribute song "Brian's Back", followed that afternoon by the Neil Sedaka oldie "Calendar Girl". According to the AFM contract, Brian played piano, with Carli Munoz on electric piano, Phil Shenale on Oberheim synthesizer, Sterling Smith on Moog, Ed Carter on bass, Bobby Figueroa on drums, and Carl on guitar. The afternoon of the second day, he produced "California Feelin'", the tune he'd written with Steve Kalinich three years earlier. Ed Roach: "I was SO impressed with Brian's attitude when we first set-up shop at the Bee Gees' studios...man, was Brian back in form! Even people like Eddie C., who'd been around forever, were impressed by him, but it was the people who'd never seen this before, like Figueroa & Munoz, who were really the most shocked. I think he might have started with (the) cover of 'Calendar Girl', recording organ tracks at 30ips, then playing them back at 15ips (or do I have that backwards?) with them sounding like a calliope... I mean, we were definitely in the presence of genius...". A few months after these sessions, Ed Carter would describe Brian's enthusiastic return to the production helm, compared to the tentative days of the previous two years: "In earlier days he didn't enjoy it as much as lately. I've seen him when he wasn't enjoying staying in the studio too long, but at least that was an improvement over the past. When I saw him at Criteria Studio in Miami he was working a 12-hour day and he was outlasting me, that's for sure...We did some great stuff and came up with some funny, you know, like Ray Bradbury, the way he writes prose and stories; some of the stuff that Brian came up with, I hope they use it on the album. There's one that sounds like a carousel. He has great ideas and unique ideas about everybody playing an octave above and playing another track, and tuning it slightly differently so it has a real childlike quality to it...it sounds very much to me like Pet Sounds, the stuff".

When it came time to record vocals, Brian soon realized that his once-rich falsetto voice had been damaged beyond repair by his cigarette smoking, so he phoned former Beach Boy Bruce Johnston and asked him to fly in from California to sing on the album. Bruce met the group in the studio the next day, and did about five days' work with them before joining them on the road for a half-dozen concerts in the Southeast. The group, including Bruce, laid down vocals for all three songs that Brian produced in Miami, as well as a couple of tracks cut in L.A. earlier that summer (Al's "Santa Ana Winds" and "Lookin' Down The Coast/Monterey") and Dennis' "Baby Blue" (lead vocals for this last song had been taped by Carl and Dennis in Seattle the previous month, but the background harmonies in the bridge section were added at Criteria).

Unfortunately, Brian's productivity and energy level soon came to an abrupt end, as Ed Roach recalls: "Well, I'm sure this lasted for 2 or 3 days, when suddenly, Brian was called to the phone. Whatever transpired threw him into a total funk... He took up a fetal position on either the couch or the floor, and was extremely uncommunicative". We can speculate about just what threw Brian into this "funk", but the best guess would be that it had something to do with his separation and impending divorce from Marilyn. "Next thing I knew," remembers Eddie, "Bruce...began producing the album". Bruce, having won a Grammy a couple of years earlier for penning the huge Barry Manilow hit "I Write The Songs", was an obvious choice to co-produce the group: having spent years in the studio and on the road with them, he knew all about their strengths, weaknesses, and personalities, yet could remain objective enough to see the "big picture"...the perfect "insider on the outside".

Other tunes reviewed and/or worked on in Miami included "Good Timin'" (cut at Caribou Ranch in late '74), "Shortenin' Bread" (Brian's latest version, begun at Brother back in January), and Brian's piano demo of "I'm Beggin' You Please", all of which exist on the "Criteria Rough Mix Reel" dated 8/28/78, alongside all of the previously-mentioned songs except "Love Surrounds Me". At some point the Boys met at Criteria with CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff; upon hearing the work the group had done so far, Yetnikoff reportedly stated "Gentlemen, I think I've just been foaded", before quickly asking "Where do we go from here?". The answer to that question would be "home"...following the last of their concerts (on September 4th), the group would return to Western Recorders in L.A., where Bruce Johnston and Caribou label head James William Guercio would soldier on, producing most of the remaining album sessions, and inviting Curt Becher to co-produce (with Bruce) the audacious disco version of Brian's r'n'b oldie "Here Comes The Night". Brian, meanwhile, would suffer another nervous breakdown in December, and wind up in the hospital for several months, while the Boys finished the L.A. (Light Album) without him.

What could have been Brian Wilson's return to a fully-inspired production career instead became a pleasant-but-somewhat-bland commercial disappointment, an album that peaked at Number 100 on the U.S. charts, despite moderate airplay for a couple of tracks and a surprise Top Ten single in the U.K. Ed Roach believes the bootlegged mixes of Brian's Miami productions that have circulated in the years since pale in comparison to what he heard in the studio all those years ago, and don't represent the true picture, but rather the direction the album began to take once Bruce picked up the mantle: "It occurs to me now that what remains is probably what was done after they continued working down there, and that's why those sessions were scrubbed. It was the basic tracks that Brian laid down that were phenomenal...".

Re: How Will TLOS Chart? - UK And US [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 02:05 AM CDT

My guess is #37 in the US, #12 in the UK, and #3 in Lithuania

Re: Favourite version of Surf's Up? [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 02:00 AM CDT

It is argueable that the SU album version is one of the best tracks the BBs ever put down.

Favourite version of Surf's Up? [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 01:42 AM CDT

Let's just keep it to official releases meaning no Anne Wallace version etc..

Re: Spring [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 01:03 AM CDT

Part's of Brian's backups make him sound like his 15 BO self om "Sweet Mountain". Damn, that is a great track.

Re: Still Cruisin' [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 11:23 PM CDT

Well I'm not going to rate the last three songs. Preferrably they could have used the other available new tracks they had done in the last 4 years. There was easily enough material for that. But at any rate, the remaining the seven are not bad by any means. In My Car is unbelievable to me for some reason. I played it on the jukebox at the local bowling alley. First time I'd heard it. It doesn't work for some I understand but considering I'm one who has a huge appreciation for late 60's/early 70's Beach Boys for some reason it still works for me.

Still Cruisin' - 3.5/5
Somewhere Near Japan - 4.5/5
Island Girl - 3/5
In My Car - 5/5
Kokomo - 4/5
Wipe Out - 4/5
Make It Big - 3/5

That actually rounds to a 4.

Re: Foda Me!! Wild Honey is the best album ever!!!! [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 10:29 PM CDT

Quote from: Chris Brown on August 30, 2008, 06:26:20 PM

The messy production is a part of the charm...a lot of the songs wouldn't sound quite right with Brian's more "polished" sound.

See, I have to disagree here. I think the rough production works fine for Smiley, mainly because that album is a head trip all the way around. But Wild Honey deserves much more in the way of post production. Up to that point WH was pretty much the most modern and hip sounding material from The Boys, and with stereo quickly becoming the norm, it would have been a good album to present in that format...and I think it would stand up a little better these days, not sounding quite so dated.

My nickel's worth. Anybody got change? Cool

Re: Dennis/Dragon Album - Question to Alan Boyd [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 09:50 PM CDT

Good to see that Alan Boyd and others at Brother Records/etc. are at-least considering this idea! I can only think that, as a 'new/from the vault/Best of' release under the Beach Boys name would help it sell even more than POB/Bambu!

Jon Stebbins - Do we have any up to date sales figures on POB/Bambu. I know everyone is excited about TLOS but I am still glowing over the long awaited rerelease of POB/Bambu.

Also, Jon, any update on 'The Real Beach Boy' re-release?

Re: The Alan Boyd Thread [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 09:29 PM CDT

Re: Foda Me!! Wild Honey is the best album ever!!!! [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 09:16 PM CDT

Quote from: Luther on August 30, 2008, 06:31:31 PM

Quote from: Chris Brown on August 30, 2008, 06:26:20 PM

a lot of the songs wouldn't sound quite right with Brian's more "polished" sound.

No, but they might have sounded really good with Carl's more polished sound, meaning that early '70s sound they later nailed.

Yeah now that you mention it, I could picture that.

Re: How Will TLOS Chart? - UK And US [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 09:11 PM CDT

Quote from: Wrightfan on August 30, 2008, 08:45:46 PM

You can call me crazy...

It's going to go Top 10 in either the UK or US (most likely UK.)

I certainly hope you're right...that would be a huge morale booster for Brian. He may downplay it, but you know in the back of his mind he still wants everything he puts out to be a hit. That 60's mentality ("go write a #1!) has to still be in there somewhere.

Re: Official TLOS Album Reviews [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 09:10 PM CDT

Luther: That is the whole thing, sad to say. I meant preview in the sense that it was just an advance showing. And don't get me wrong, I could write more. But I think I'm pushing my luck with this much as it is.

Re: BW on Live At Abbey Road [Smiley Smile Message Board]

Posted: 30 Aug 2008 09:09 PM CDT

Quote from: PongHit on August 30, 2008, 08:59:29 PM

I just watched it & they did NOT do "Going Home" ! ! ! Cry

No but you could hear them playing the beginning of it when Brian and the band are being interviewed right after the show begins. But yes I was disappointed that he didn't play the whole thing too.