The cancelled bonus disc for Made in California

Regarding the general topic of the Beach Boys' vaults, I'll say this. I'm not (nor are most others) really particularly qualified to make a really prescient guess as to how popular the BBs will be in ten or twenty or more years, and with which age demographic, etc.

I think some things (the noticeably old age of audiences at Mike's shows) don't bode super duper well for the future, while other factors (notice paid to PS/Smile and other deep cut stuff among the indie/hipster crowd) suggest more longevity.

And there are many "in betweens" of course as well. The "original" fans are getting very old and dying off, and the fans that were very young during the mid-late 90s "indie" surge of attention are obviously getting older too.

That all being said, looking at the vaults as a hardcore fan and scholar, what I can say UNEQUIVOCALLY is that the vaults have *not* been sufficiently mined, and that there are more than just a few gems left in those vaults. Howie's reference to "15 Sugar Magnolias" is enough for me, but my own knowledge of what's in the vaults from mainly the 70s/80s (and 90s and even later as well, especially if we start looking at solo-ish material), and the knowledge that there's a TON of stuff in there that we *don't* know about, I would actually say the stuff is barely mined.

There hasn't yet been a concentrated multi-disc set focusing *only* on that material. The plan back circa 2000 to do each "Brother" album with a slew of bonus tracks for each album fell by the wayside, and ever since we've gotten some trickles of material from that era ("Hawthorne, CA", "Songs from Here & Back", "Pet Sounds" live bonus tracks, etc.) and a few larger dumps of the material, but still mixed in with 60s outtakes and mixed in among other well-known tracks, such as the "Made in California" set.

There is enough known and unknown material to easily do 2 or 3-disc "immersion" style sets for most of the Brother era albums.

And this is all *without* going to the really deep, arcane stuff that would *only* appeal to the most hardcore scholar (e.g. "Drip Drop", alternates of "Ding Dang", weird mixes of "15 Big Ones" oldies, etc.), stuff that could also help to flesh such releases out.

There are tons of revelatory items from this era.

And again, especially the further it gets into the later 70s and into the 80s, I think there's a good amount of stuff we don't even know about. Is there a BB '85 take of "Oh Lord"? I don't know, but stuff *like that* is around. And also, as I mentioned, if we start veering into solo material, there's all sorts of Brian material and I'm guessing Carl material squirreled away somewhere.

And, the live vaults (audio and video) have been even more lightly mined post-1967, especially compared to how much touring they did and how many great performances were captured. Again, this is keeping in mind there were awful-sounding tours (1981) and plenty of autopilot touring years. But there are even late-era inspired live performances (think Carl's '95 take on "Sail on Sailor"), and a TON of 70s and 80s shows worth releasing as a "Boyd's Picks" (or whomever) sort of series. Again, not necessarily Earth-shattering in terms of getting the BBs to #1 or anything, but compared to their popularity and ubiquitous stature on the touring circuit over all those years, there should really be more full shows out there, and more video beyond an edited-down "Knebworth 1980" and various other clips, etc.

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