The Beach Boys scored a Grammy nomination.

[guitarfool2002]

Re: Woody Guthrie. Has the majority of the material on that box already been released in some form? Or another way to phrase it is this: If you buy the Guthrie box set, what exactly are you getting in terms of songs or recordings you do not already own if you're a fan? I'm genuinely asking, I don't know the answer...but it would seem Woody has been released and re-released many times through the past decades, including rarities, acetates, alternate versions, etc.

It would seem a CD box set ultimately should have as the main feature *the songs*, and everything else in the packaging provided to support the enjoyment of the actual music. If you're buying a Woody Guthrie box set to read the books, why not just have a book and buy that?

It's a delicate balance, that between the book/research elements, the "goodies", and the songs themselves.

Ultimately if a box set's main appeal is the book and research, it's falling short of the main goal which is the music.

My two cents. Of all the cool stuff with Smile, the music on the discs and vinyl was still the main reason people bought and enjoyed it. Much of it previously unheard, some even unknown to diehard fans. The "cake" in other words, not just the icing and decorations.

[guitarfool2002]

A few points to consider, namely the one that unless I'm simply not remembering my release history - Was there any precedent to the Headquarters Sessions box set?

I'd argue that the Pet Sounds Sessions set, tho obviously not as completist, is the clear precedent, and the inspiration for the HS set.
Also, The Complete Funhouse Sessions was released the year before the Headquarters set.

I figured something had come out before, I just couldn't remember. Funhouse it is!

I had the Pet Sounds box in mind too, but for some bizarre reason I just never considered that in the same category of "limited edition/deluxe" box sets as I'd put Funhouse Sessions or HQ Sessions or the others. I don't know why. But it is very true, that Pet Sounds box did set the precedent I'd say for looking that closely into a single pop/rock album and it was looking back a very influential release.

If we really want to trace it back, I'd say a major influence on all of this was the bootleg market. I remember a Tom Petty interview before the box came out where he mentioned driving his family crazy by listening to Brian and the musicians recording take after take of Pet Sounds, then me tracking down what he could be listening to back to one of the early PS boots that had that material in that kind of format. But the damned thing was too expensive...

[I. Spaceman]

Leggo My Ego!

[guitarfool2002]

Leggo My Ego!

I remember that! Closest I got when that was "new" to owning an original copy was getting a preview on a portable CD player with greasy store headphones at a local shop that dealt in such material...and it was just too expensive to justify. Double-disc sets at that time were 50 bucks, compared to the other places selling official Beatles/BB's single CD's for 9.99..."Ego" was over a hundred bucks.

I waited for the official box to come out.   There was talk in several magazines that both PS and Smile box sets were to come out in the mid-90's, so the underground material seemed that much more overpriced if the real stuff was set to be out soon anyway. Of course it only took two more decades for Smile to hit the stores.

[I. Spaceman]

Yeah, I paid a hundred for it, worth every penny! That was about two and a half years before the official box. Still some bits on it not available on the official set or the Sea Of Tunes sets.

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

The Beach Boys in 2012 are not mainstream in an Adele/Taylor Swift way. True, the album did debut in the top 5, but it was off the 200 within a matter of weeks, no staying power. The staying power, commercially, is with the old stuff, i.e, Sounds of Summer. That thing has been on the 200 off and on for years, probably their biggest seller since Endless Summer.

 

[rab2591]

Fun is one of the few bands on the top 40 that have great harmonies, musical creativity, and great hooks. It's ridiculous to hate on them solely because they are mainstream.

Also, there is nothing wrong with mainstream. The Beach Boys helped create a culture - that's as mainstream as it gets.

[hypehat]

Re: Woody Guthrie. Has the majority of the material on that box already been released in some form? Or another way to phrase it is this: If you buy the Guthrie box set, what exactly are you getting in terms of songs or recordings you do not already own if you're a fan? I'm genuinely asking, I don't know the answer...but it would seem Woody has been released and re-released many times through the past decades, including rarities, acetates, alternate versions, etc.

It would seem a CD box set ultimately should have as the main feature *the songs*, and everything else in the packaging provided to support the enjoyment of the actual music. If you're buying a Woody Guthrie box set to read the books, why not just have a book and buy that?

It's a delicate balance, that between the book/research elements, the "goodies", and the songs themselves.

Ultimately if a box set's main appeal is the book and research, it's falling short of the main goal which is the music.

My two cents. Of all the cool stuff with Smile, the music on the discs and vinyl was still the main reason people bought and enjoyed it. Much of it previously unheard, some even unknown to diehard fans. The "cake" in other words, not just the icing and decorations.

21 out of 57 tracks are unreleased. The book is chuck full of documents, lyric sheets, historical essays, criticism (and, lets be honest, something worth writing criticism about - Priore's bit in TSS is amazingly redundant, for one) .... I am not a huge Woody Guthrie fan, is what I meant. TBH, the appeal of TSS is even less than the Guthrie box - 4 discs of sessions vs career overview/unreleased tracks.

And if I was just buying the music, I certainly wouldn't pay £120 for JUST five CDs and a vinyl album a la TSS. You're paying for the package, the book, the contents therein...

[guitarfool2002]

Re: Woody Guthrie. Has the majority of the material on that box already been released in some form? Or another way to phrase it is this: If you buy the Guthrie box set, what exactly are you getting in terms of songs or recordings you do not already own if you're a fan? I'm genuinely asking, I don't know the answer...but it would seem Woody has been released and re-released many times through the past decades, including rarities, acetates, alternate versions, etc.

It would seem a CD box set ultimately should have as the main feature *the songs*, and everything else in the packaging provided to support the enjoyment of the actual music. If you're buying a Woody Guthrie box set to read the books, why not just have a book and buy that?

It's a delicate balance, that between the book/research elements, the "goodies", and the songs themselves.

Ultimately if a box set's main appeal is the book and research, it's falling short of the main goal which is the music.

My two cents. Of all the cool stuff with Smile, the music on the discs and vinyl was still the main reason people bought and enjoyed it. Much of it previously unheard, some even unknown to diehard fans. The "cake" in other words, not just the icing and decorations.

21 out of 57 tracks are unreleased. The book is chuck full of documents, lyric sheets, historical essays, criticism (and, lets be honest, something worth writing criticism about - Priore's bit in TSS is amazingly redundant, for one) .... I am not a huge Woody Guthrie fan, is what I meant. TBH, the appeal of TSS is even less than the Guthrie box - 4 discs of sessions vs career overview/unreleased tracks.

And if I was just buying the music, I certainly wouldn't pay £120 for JUST five CDs and a vinyl album a la TSS. You're paying for the package, the book, the contents therein...

Sure, it's the whole package but at the same time the music is the draw and the main focus. I did laugh to read the comment about the appeal of The Smile Sessions being less than the Guthrie box: 4 discs of sessions is exactly what you'd be expecting on a box set called "The Smile Sessions"!    If folks wanted a career overview, copies of the '93 box are still available, surfboard sticker and all (though my set bought brand new didn't have the sticker, but I never returned it...).

I don't think we need to go over the "pros" versus "cons" of the Smile box set, but I think most notably you had many new tracks or tracks which had never been released in that quality before, taken from the original reels whereas booted copies may have been sourced from 20+ year old cassettes or worse. And for those wishing to hear it in some kind of order or sequence, they had that, too. And vinyl, for that group of listeners.

Obviously if someone thought they were purchasing anything more than an overview of the Smile sessions and would think the set didn't deliver exactly that, they were buying the wrong thing.

With the Woody Guthrie catalog, there were no "sessions" to speak of, it's a totally different market and a totally different goal for such a box set. I'm just at that point where - seriously - I don't know how many more re-releases or touch-ups or remasters or whatever of his material can add anything to the legacy. I'm being facetious, but did they dig up another wire recording of Woody singing "This Land Is Your Land" with a previously unheard verse or something? The man's catalog is and has been out there and available, in fact it's a ubiquitous catalog to see in the folk section of any music retailer, and I've been hearing various discoveries and rare recordings of his for at least 15 years on various radio shows.

The Smile Sessions was truly "new" material, the majority of it, that anyone who did not buy bootlegs would not have known nor heard. And this board doesn't count, because the sales numbers exceeded the membership numbers here.

I haven't even touched on the Beatles/Tony Sheridan re-release getting a Grammy nod. I mean, in terms of flogging a dead horse, you get My Bonnie, Cry For A Shadow, Ain't She Sweet and a bunch of filler that has been repackaged since 1964 and it gets a Grammy nod.

And I actually think the Smile Sessions book could have had more photos - but that's just me. I'd pay equal the value of another (yawn) newly discovered "This Land Is Your Land" recording to see a new Smile studio session photo that was never published, but that's my obsession, not everyone else's.

[Micha]

OK, cool. You're not the only person on the planet. Their last album hit the Top 5. Highly mainstream, thus.

My take on the fact they hit the top 5 is that most of the people who wanted to hear that album are too old to know how to download it illegally and thus were forced to physically buy it.

[Rocky Raccoon]

I haven't even touched on the Beatles/Tony Sheridan re-release getting a Grammy nod. I mean, in terms of flogging a dead horse, you get My Bonnie, Cry For A Shadow, Ain't She Sweet and a bunch of filler that has been repackaged since 1964 and it gets a Grammy nod.

That nomination isn't for the collection itself, it's for the liner notes.  Grammy nominations can be totally ignorant but I think in this case, it's just being subjective.

[guitarfool2002]

I haven't even touched on the Beatles/Tony Sheridan re-release getting a Grammy nod. I mean, in terms of flogging a dead horse, you get My Bonnie, Cry For A Shadow, Ain't She Sweet and a bunch of filler that has been repackaged since 1964 and it gets a Grammy nod.

That nomination isn't for the collection itself, it's for the liner notes.  Grammy nominations can be totally ignorant but I think in this case, it's just being subjective.

I'm aware of that, but again I think this kind of nomination is rather pointless considering the actual music - the ultimate reason to buy a CD box set of music - has been beaten to death for close to 50 years in an attempt to cash in on the Beatles' name.

When this set was released, I remember it well and joked about it because it seemed so redundant.

If someone out there can point me to something in this set that is worthy of me buying Tony Sheridan's ersatz rock n' roll, please do! At this point I just can't see it worthy of a Grammy nod considering the nature of the music the liners were written about.

Experiment a bit with this: Go to Amazon or Ebay and search Woody Guthrie Box Set or The Beatles Tony Sheridan and see how many hits you get from the searches.

I'm being bull-headed on all of these topics because I think the Smile Sessions got ripped off by not getting these nominations.

[guitarfool2002]

And if "fairness" plays into the Grammy nominating process, would it sound fair if it were mentioned that the Tony Sheridan/Beatles liner notes which got nominated this year are actually more like a rewrite or a revision of liners which *the same author* wrote for a Bear Family box set release of the same Beatles material over a decade ago?

If I'm getting any of that wrong, please correct, but damn if it doesn't feel like even more of a rip-off that something legitimately new in 2011-12 gets shut out in favor of a repackage of something from the last decade.

Do the Grammy folks know about this?

[SMiLE Brian]

Its unbelieveable the Tony Sheridan set got a nod, its the 400th repackage of a set of music that isn't that great. Its a cash in from a guy who was lucky to have the early and raw Beatles as a backing band. I guess the Beatles are so popular that people will award even the turds in the catalog.

[hypehat]

I swear to god if that fu*king FUN. Album wins anything I MEAN ANYTHING I will kill every teenage girl and "yolo" user on the planet.

Dude, I'm amazed you don't like this album. I'm listening to it right now and it's GREAT. Stop being a snob and embrace the big choruses!

[guitarfool2002]

Its unbelieveable the Tony Sheridan set got a nod, its the 400th repackage of a set of music that isn't that great. Its a cash in from a guy who was lucky to have the early and raw Beatles as a backing band. I guess the Beatles are so popular that people will award even the turds in the catalog.

True, the Beatles name carries a lot of the weight. But in this specific case, as the set is nominated for liner notes, almost the exact same box set was released over a decade ago on the Bear Family label, known for lavish and super-complete archival releases, and the same writer did the liner notes for *that* in the early 2000's. Then they essentially boiled that down a bit and even though it's nearly the same set and same notes, it gets a Grammy nomination.

It's more than unbelievable, it's almost absurd. I don't understand how the Grammy folks can be so strict about release dates when it come to nominations (and IIRC The Beach Boys or Brian fell into this not too long ago because of when their product was released), yet this debacle manages to slip through the cracks.

[Lonely Summer]

OK, cool. You're not the only person on the planet. Their last album hit the Top 5. Highly mainstream, thus.

My take on the fact they hit the top 5 is that most of the people who wanted to hear that album are too old to know how to download it illegally and thus were forced to physically buy it.

Yep. And all of those people bought it within a month of its release.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

You think more people have heard of Fun then The Beach Boys, then?

[I. Spaceman]

Digital downloads count as physical sales. And of course, most of the outlets for illegal downloading were falling even by the time TWGMTR was released.

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

I swear to god if that fu*king FUN. Album wins anything I MEAN ANYTHING I will kill every teenage girl and "yolo" user on the planet.

Dude, I'm amazed you don't like this album. I'm listening to it right now and it's GREAT. Stop being a snob and embrace the big choruses!

I strongly dislike it, the only modern group I can say I can listen to is M&S

[Heysaboda]

Was the Neil Young Archives ever nominated for a Grammy?

Neil's Archives set (vol. 1) was nominated and in fact won for "best art direction".  What ever the EFF that is.
Which, SHAMEFULLY ENOUGH, this was actually Neil's first effing Grammy as a solo artist.  EFFING UNREAL

This is not Joe Blow or Justin Beiber or "Fun." or some twerpy band of autotuned 13 year olds we are talking about here.

THIS IS FREAKING NEIL YOUNG.

The Grammy awards a-holes should be glad to pick up and eat Neil's poo.

AN ATROCITY FOR THE AGES!!!!!

[hypehat]

I swear to god if that fu*king FUN. Album wins anything I MEAN ANYTHING I will kill every teenage girl and "yolo" user on the planet.

Dude, I'm amazed you don't like this album. I'm listening to it right now and it's GREAT. Stop being a snob and embrace the big choruses!

I strongly dislike it, the only modern group I can say I can listen to is M&S

Jesus H. Christ.

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

wut

[Lonely Summer]

You think more people have heard of Fun then The Beach Boys, then?

EVERYONE has HEARD of the Beach Boys, but their cd/download sales in 2012 are paltry compared to the current flavor-of-the-month artists.

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

Guys, Guys, I mean in the current TEEN SCENE Fun is unlimited more popular then the beach boys.


anddddd I hate that.