Reviewing Adult/Child as an actual Beach Boys album

[Cabinessenceking]

Would a kind soul send me all there is out there from Adult/Child, i don't have anything on this pc ):

Most on youtube my friend. Just convert them by searching 'youtube to mp3'. The remaining cuts from the Landlocked sessions, It's Over Now and Still I Dream Of it are found on the GV box.

Since that is now out of print I see no reason why you shouln't just torrent them... (DONT BAN ME GODS OF SMILEY SMILE, IT IS AFTER ALL OUT OF PRINT RIGHT?)

[onkster]

OK, Zach, your point is well-taken.

The problem I have with it is that the feeling it does give me is so...awful. Just because something elicits a feeling, doesn't mean it's always a positive thing. (That's why I don't listen to death metal, nor consider it brilliant.) When I listen to something that sluggish, sad, sloppily arranged, fat-sounding, it makes ME feel exactly the same way. I suppose if I already felt that way, maybe I'd feel a kinship to it--the way I used to with Neil Young's Tonight's the Night. Or the Lennon song I mentioned. Currently, I've had enough dark in my life I don't care to listen to something that continues that feeling or makes it worse.

You mentioned Pet Sounds--that doesn't depress me. It describes doubt and insecurity, but clothes it in beauty. It still feels life-affirming. That's the key, I guess. Adult Child feels like an abandonment of life, not a reexamining or contemplation of it.

So, to your point, yes A/C does have value as art. It's just not something I can listen to for pleasure at all.

I'm babbling--hopefully there's some sense in what I wrote. Gotta run to work.

[Cabinessenceking]

I love the material. But I've made my own compilation eliminating 'Games Two Can Play' and 'H.E.L.P' and adding 'My Diane'. Looks something like this :

1.Life Is For The Living
2.On Broadway
3.Hey Little Tomboy
4.Shortnin' Bread
5.It's Trying To Say
6.Lines

7.Everybody Wants To Live
8.Deep Purple
9.My Diane
10.It's Over Now
11.Still I Dream Of It

Side Two is where the magic happens.

Very nice tracklisting here. This is how A/C should have been back then. Like a 70's version of Today!
I wonder since there should be 6 tracks on each side whether there is one more good song from the period that woulda made good value.. Sea Cruise maybe?

[Ziggy Stardust]

I believe Youtube isn't the best place to find audio files in their higher quality?

Can anyway make a decent cover for this? i only find weird stuff on Google

I think a good cover would be that photo taken (I think) on Brian's birthday in June, 1977. He is shaven and is blowing out a birthday cake - like an adult child! Wasn't that about the time Adult Child was assembled?

Oh wow yea, good idea! you mean this one, along with his two lovely brothers? :


(maybe i can start collection different pics to make a collage stuff, starting with this one and the mickey shirt one? would that be wrong?)

No one's stopping you! A lot of great mid-70s Brian pics can be found on this amazing post http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,6052.msg99268.html#msg99268

Thank you friend!

[Sheriff John Stone]

I wonder since there should be 6 tracks on each side whether there is one more good song from the period that woulda made good value.. Sea Cruise maybe?

I like Sail On, Brian's comp a lot.... Could I take a shot at the 12th track? I'm not sure of the exact recording date of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin"', but I use it on my mix:

THE BEACH BOYS - Adult Child

1. Life Is For The Living
2. Shortenin' Bread
3. Hey Little Tomboy
4. It's Trying To Say
5. You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'
6. It's Over Now

7. Deep Purple
8. My Diane
9. On Broadway
10. Lines
11. Everybody Wants To Live
12. Still I Dream Of It

A little ballad-y, a little sad, but you use what you got....  

[Heysaboda]

I've been doing a lot of listening to Adult/Child recently. I'm wondering what everybody here thinks of it. Let's pretend that this is a "real" album, in the context of 15BO/Love You/MIU/LA Light. Where would this album have gone, had it been released? I actually think that this would have been one of the better albums that the group put out. Everybody Wants To Live is, in my opinion, a minor "masterpiece". The same goes with It's Over Now and Still I Dream Of It. I also think that Deep Purple is one of Brian's greatest 1970's vocals.

You can call me crazy but I think that Still I Dream Of It is one of the most incredible songs I've ever heard.  It has this amazing Crazy Zen quality.  Beautiful song!  Dreamy/sad/wistful/happy all at once!  I love both the demo and the strings version.  I also love the crazy Zen quality in Everybody Wants To Live.

Free the Adult Child album now!  It should be released to the unsuspecting populace.  It really shows how unconventional the Boys could be.  (Think Neil Young's Tonight's the Night.)

Maybe a release date next year?

[Heysaboda]

If it HAD come out, it would have been in my top 5 albums. I'm not ashamed to admit that I freaking love the music on this. Better than 15 BO and Love You, honestly. If Brian had spent the rest of his career doing music like this, I'd have been happy. Why in the blue gravy f*ck are Brian's "people" trying to push Brian towards the 1965-era, when it should be the 1976-7 period that would suit Brian best now?!

Got off topic. Anyway, thumbs up from me. And dammit, "Games Two Can Play" should've been on Surf's Up at the very least.

This post from Billy C (from 4 years ago!) is sheer unadulterated and unalloyed genius!

FREE ADULT/CHILD NOW!

Till then I'm just a dreamer!

[Wirestone]

There is a core of good songs for Adult Child. But Brian couldn't sustain the big band sound, which means that you have several songs that are in an entirely different sound world than the rest of the record. The other newly recorded songs are cool, but even sparser than Love You in production. And then you have the recycled early 70s stuff (which some of the mixes cannily avoid, I notice) and the covers. It just doesn't hold together for me.

If Brian had managed another big-band track or two (to make it an album side) and another quirky, low-fi number or two (to make it another side), then you could have had a true "Adult Child" album -- with one side being for "adults" and the other for "children." And Christ, that idea makes so much sense that I'm suddenly wondering if that wasn't Brian's original intent with the record. That's how he had sequenced the Christmas album, after all.

[Sheriff John Stone]

There is a core of good songs for Adult Child. But Brian couldn't sustain the big band sound, which means that you have several songs that are in an entirely different sound world than the rest of the record. The other newly recorded songs are cool, but even sparser than Love You in production.

I agree. Some if not most of the recordings - not the songs - but the tracks/vocals are borderline embarrassing in their simplicity. I wonder if Carl would've/could've done another facelift or makeover on Adult Child like he did with Love You?

[Cabinessenceking]

I guess A/C as a proper album will never be released, but they should include remastered clean versions of these songs at least.

You've Lost That Loving Feeling
Shortening Bread (Brian on bass vocal version)
Lines
Life Is For The Living
It's Trying To Say
Everybody Wants To Live
Deep Purple

No need for more really since its all on GV..
I think we can expect at least a couple of these for this 50th celebration box.

[Myk Luhv]

"It's Over Now" is a better song to me than "Still I Dream Of It", especially that second piano demo I keep hyping. Those demos -- especially that one -- need official release.

[Disney Boy (1985)]

It's an enjoyable if artistically lightweight album. I think it's probably best that it stayed in the vaults.
I really enjoy 'Life Is For The Living' - mainly for the funny lyrics ('don't sit on your ass, smoking grass' is a classic line); although elsewhere it's actually the lyrics that are my main issue. 'Everybody's Got To Live...' has catchy piano but the lyrics are painful, just horrendous ('if you start laughing you're just a coward', 'the cigarette butt when you throw it in the water goes ssshh').
The lyrics on It's Trying To Say and Lines aren't quite as bad - enjoyably goofy, rather than irritating - and thus I can enjoy the catchy melodies without distraction.
'It's Over Now' and 'Still I Dream Of It' are, in my opinion, massively over-rated by some fans on here - the lush production can't disguise weak melodies and (again) poor lyrics. (The lyrics on Love You are also generally poor but for some reason they add to Love You's charm, whereas here they more often than not have the opposite effect: detracting from what would otherwise be good songs.
Hey Little Tomboy is seriously f**ked-up here, thank God they drop the spoken word sections for the released version!
Games Too Can Play and HELP would have been by some considerable distance the weakest tracks had they been included on the album released at the time of their conception - Sunflower. Here however, they're notably of better quality than most of the surrounding material. They stick out like a pair of sore thumbs.
Al's vocal on 'On Broadway' is terriffic and the backing track is nice, while the version of 'Shortenin' Bread' here i personally much prefer to the LA Light Album version - there's more interesting vocal work, less screeching guitar (I love the almost feminine backing vocals on the chorus).

All in all, it's a definite 3 out of 5. Fun but deeply flawed.

[Disney Boy (1985)]

Oh, and 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling' is one of my all-time favourite Beach Boys cover versions - however it's not listed as part of the album on my cd, only as a bonus track, so i didn't mention it in the above review (likewise Sea Cruise, Be My Baby, etc)

[runnersdialzero]

'It's Over Now' and 'Still I Dream Of It' are, in my opinion, massively over-rated by some fans on here - the lush production can't disguise weak melodies and (again) poor lyrics. (The lyrics on Love You are also generally poor but for some reason they add to Love You's charm, whereas here they more often than not have the opposite effect: detracting from what would otherwise be good songs.

Can't say I agree. I heard and loved these songs as Brian's sparse piano demos first, only later discovering they were actually completed. No issues with the lyrics to either song, each containing at least a line or two that I think are really something special, too. That's me, though.

[lance]

The lyrics on those songs are GREAT.

[Disney Boy (1985)]

The lyrics on those songs are GREAT.

'Time for supper now/smell the kitchen now' - no, no, no, no, no!!

[Fro]

Oddly, it beat Joe Jackson by half a decade, in a pop artist doing Big Band material, even though Brian only had 4 cuts like that. Not sure what they would have sounded like without Dick Reynolds's arrangements, though.

I run across the occassional big band/swing revival record from the '70s and '80s, but most of them are more like tributes to the Glenn Miller era, and more than a tad dorky. I have come across very little that pointed to the full-on swing revival of the mid-'90s, and bands like Cherry Poppin' Daddies or Squirrel Nut Zippers, both of whom I love. That psychotronic notion, tongue-in-cheek and lacivious to boot... it's always missing from the '70s and '80s swing material. But Brian's four songs, especially "Life"... they work in being contemporary and old-sounding, and not lame at all. Just my opinion.

It's Brian doing Sinatra (who was still going strong at that point), so I don't think it's anything that can be claimed as being groundbreaking.

[Ovi]

'Everybody's Got To Live...' has catchy piano but the lyrics are painful, just horrendous ('if you start laughing you're just a coward', 'the cigarette butt when you throw it in the water goes ssshh').

I think he says "pffst". 

And that's one of my all-time favourite lyrics. Brian in every possible way.

Another one I like is the "Frank Sinatra" one from 'It's Over Now'.

[Sea Devil]

does anyone know what that awesome swirly effect he appears to use in all the big band tracks 'cept "Life Is For Living"? know what i mean?

[onkster]

"A little while ago, my mother told me Jesus loved the world..." Followed by the bit about finding a girl. It's a little cringeworthy, but still very honest and true to where he was at at the time.

The cover version by Ed Harcourt leaves those lyrics intact, and somehow makes them work even so. Good version. As is the Brian demo.

[Heysaboda]

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Brian’s lyrics in “Still I Dream of It” because of their apparent “simplicity”.  The very best poems, for example the work of Robert Frost, are known for their simplicity and economy of expression.

Poets such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Hölderlin often take quotidian, routine, even very boring events of the day and imbue these events with deep or sometimes startling or troubling psychological characteristics.  These boring events become a starting point for the poem’s expression.

In “Still I Dream of It” Brian has tied together a fairly boring event, waiting for supper, with questions about his inner peace and happiness.  Later on, in the bridge/middle 8, the juxtaposition of “Jesus loving the world” with “finding a girl” is actually quite remarkable.

I find this poem to be both deeply troubling (“made mistakes” … “will I even learn”) and yet perhaps a little hopeful, since at the end the Poet is still dreaming of a better world.

BTW, do I actually think that Brian was actually influenced by any of the above poets?  No, of course not.  But as just a “poem”, to me it stands beside any of the work by those other poets.

So, this is a remarkable, remarkable work, and should not be causally dismissed.

I can’t neglect saying: the music is pure beauty (going to the augmented chord in the middle 8, gorgeous), as is his singing.

Sorry, have to say it: genius!

[lance]

Well, different strokes.

I think those kitchen lines are great. They totally personalize that song, 'hear the maid whistle a tune, my thoughts are fleeting now'. I just love those elements in the lyrics. I just love the idea of this rich guy smelling dinner as it's being made by his whistling made while thinking such dark, suicidal thoughts. The mundanity of those lyrics juxtoposed with  That Jesus Loved the world couplet later in the song...which is so  shockingly direct, comically personal, and yet SO RIGHT a the same time. No, when I first heardthat song, I wasn't even a fan and it blew me away, especially the lyrics--and back then lyrics were the main thing for me.

[DonnyL]

does anyone know what that awesome swirly effect he appears to use in all the big band tracks 'cept "Life Is For Living"? know what i mean?

I think it's flutes drenched in reverb, maybe vibes in the mix? Also heard on God Only Knows on the last verse.

[Smilin Ed H]

I'd love to have a whole 'big band' album.  Guess Brian lost interest. Of the other stuff recorded roughly during that period, it's very much of its time and would fit on the other 76-78 albums, but I don't feel it sits well with the big band stuff.

[Sam_BFC]

I always heard the 'Whistle a tune...' line as 'With solitude...' whoops.