Ah... as late November/early December rolls around, it's time to pull out the Christmas music.  Obviously this is an album I play a lot of at this time of year :-) I mostly stand by what I said last year, but I like Merry Christmas Baby more than I used to now.  The middle-8 is rather dull, but the rest is decent.

Couple of comments/questions I didn't post at this time last year:

- First off, why the hell couldn't Brian write ONE more original song for the first side?  Then that way, it would be all one side with the new songs, and another side with the classic favourites.
- I've read that Christmas Day (a favourite of mine) was about 10 seconds shorter than the stereo version I'm used to.  Can anyone tell me the difference?  I haven't been able to get my hands on the mono version.
- Speaking of Christmas Day, has anyone heard the boot where Brian calls it a "f**king piece of sh*t"?  If so, could anyone give me any "hints" on how I could track it down?

Pop, what tooth paste are you using?

The variety of toothpaste is irrelevant; I was just following the advice in Mama Says.

OK, I FOUND IT!

It's in Airplane on Love You -- "The clouds in the sky caress my mind so tenderly" at 0:41 (also repeated later with different lyrics).  It just jumped into my head while I was brushing my teeth a couple minutes ago.

yeah, i know what you mean..

it's almost the same chord progression as the pre-chorus of "walkin the line" on BW88.  and the melody is pretty similar.. although i am never a fan of putting melodies under the microscope and comparing them

Hmm, this is close, but not quite as close as I thought the similar melody would be.  Let's Go To Heaven In My Car also has a similar melody, but I was picturing something *exactly* the same.

I realized earlier, I think I might have just heard my brother playing TLOS before I started listening to it, and so that melody seeped into my subconscious and I mistook it for another song.

Thanks for your responses though, folks, I'm glad I can count on y'all :-P
Another melody I found similar was the prechorus line to Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl which sounds kind of similar to the prechorus line of Let Him Run Wild (" "The gift she gave to me / her timeless melody" vs. "And now before he tries it / I'll make him realize it..."

OK, this probably doesn't deserve its own thread, but this is really bugging me:  In Morning Beat, at about 1:53, there's a melody with the words "It's hard to feel down living in this town but you're so far away" - I feel like I've heard that melody before in a BW/BB song.  Can anyone tell me if I'm just nuts or not?  I want to say it's the "Is somebody gonna tell me why she had to cry-y-y" from The Night Was So Young, but that's not quite the same.

This seems like a good time to review this album!

Hmm, this album was hard to come to a firm number on.  I think I'll give it a 3.  I really, really like Christmas songs, I'm not gonna lie - so I'm not like one of those people that will give a Christmas album a low rating just because it's a Christmas album.

I *like* most of the songs here, but some of the performances are really dull.  Little Saint Nick was great as a single, but for some reason they put an odd version on here without the sleigh bells and glock... The rest of the first side is quite good, except for Merry Christmas Baby which I'm not a big fan of.

As for the second side, I really like their song choice, but the vocals are just too rigidly done, as if they're singing a song they've never heard before while reading the notes on a sheet of paper.  This works well for songs like We Three Kings and Auld Lang Syne where there are multipart harmonies; not so much for songs like Frosty and Blue Christmas which are more monophonic.  Also, Brian's voice really starts to grate on me on the second side, for some reason.  I don't know why, exactly, I usually like his voice - but couldn't he have given some leads to Carl, Mike or Al on the 2nd side?  And Denny's flub on Auld Lang Syne really doesn't do much to help the rushed feel of the album.

It just seems like not much care went in - I'm not saying they didn't spend a lot of time on it, I'm sure they did; but it does FEEL rushed to me.  I almost wish I could go back in time and say "do a good job on this album, because people will still be listening to it 40+ years from now!"  BUT with all its flaws, the product is somehow better than the sum of its parts.

Nice work!  The harmonies are nicely arranged & mixed, and your voice is very well suited to this kind of material.

Opening track called My Friend's Apartment from an upcoming EP called Red For The Blood.  If y'all have any suggestions on how the mix might be improved, let me know!  I've a pretty lousy ear for production

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3a1t4Gb7NI&fmt=18

Do you agree that if it's Brian in the "Brian sings lead" version, then it's also Brian in the sax solo version?  They are clearly different vocal takes (can't argue with THAT) but otherwise the vocalists sound identical.

There are just certain ways Brian and Carl pronounce certain words.  The way "knows" is pronounced more like "knews" on the "Brian sings lead" version is VERY Carlish.  Brian sings it with a much harder & less diphthongued {o} sound - listen to his replacement of Carl's part of the vocal tag (ie, the bottom) on the mono version, for instance.

Also the way the singer does a bit of a vibrato on the "you" and kind of sounds like he has a cold when saying "me" (in "the world could show nothing to me" - 'm' sound almost sounds like a 'b') is very Carlish as well.

I don't dispute that Brian intended to sing lead on it and sang it at the session ("if you wanna hear it, come on").  It may very well be that a recording of him singing lead in '66 exists.  I'm just REALLY sceptical that the "Brian sings lead" version on the box set is him.

5 stars, this is a great set...

But the "Brian sings lead" version of God Only Knows was a bit of a let-down... there is NO WAY that is Brian!  That is clearly Carl just singing in a more forceful way.

I've always found the edit, or at least the timing, in I'm So Young to be kind of strange - the part where Mike goes "doo doo doo" and then Brian goes "Pretty soon..." - it feels a bit abrupt.

Sorry, I'm not overly familiar with the current Beach Boys Band setlists, so you might incorporate some of these already:

- Add Some Music to Your Day
- All I Wanna Do
- Wild Honey
- Aren't You Glad
- Friends
- Busy Doin' Nothin'
- Break Away

Ah, ok.  Well I guess in my opinion/scale, 5 means "excellent", 4 means "very good", 3 means "good", 2 means "fair" and 1 means "poor".  The only BBs album I think is *perfect* is Pet Sounds.  So I guess it would have to be at least "excellent" by definition.  But the other 3 albums I mentioned, while I don't believe they're perfect, I do believe they're excellent.  So I guess they fit as fives on my scale but not yours.  Again, to each his own.

In retrospect, I was a little harsher in my comments than I *truly* feel about it.  Like Got to Know the Woman, I may be *tempted* to skip it, but I usually do listen to it anyway and end up reveling in its corny goodness.  Our Sweet Love, I'm not really even sure what I meant by it not doing it for me... I guess it's not one of my favourites on the album, but again, it's a well-done song and pleasant to listen to.  Tears in the Morning is the only song on the album I actually truly don't like that much.  Dierdre, I like the song a lot, I just don't like the way Bruce sings that one line.

I think if I had an AMG-style scale, I'd give it a 4.5.  But overall on an integer scale I like it enough to give it a 5, so I stand by that rating!  And I don't think giving 4 BB albums 5 stars on a *Beach Boys fan site* constitutes grade inflation!

Well, the album has charm.  So I'm willing to forgive a couple of minor hiccups.  The only BB albums I'd give 5 stars to are Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Sunflower and Love You.

I'll 5 star this one.  It's not *perfect* like Pet Sounds, but for my money, this is the best album between Pet Sounds and Love You.  I'd say this is pretty much on par with Love You.  Here's my ranking from favourite track to least favourite:

This Whole World (catchy as hell... I wish it were a little longer, but it's still outstanding)
Add Some Music (Took a while to grow on me, but now I *love* it... what a great song!)
All I Wanna Do (Breathtaking!  Satisfyingly peaceful and happy while also being haunting and psychedelic.)
Cool, Cool Water (Awesome suite-like piece)
At My Window (Cute song... just makes me smile.)
Slip on Through (Good album opener... great vocals from Denny)
Forever (Gorgeous song, but I don't think I like it quite as much as most BB fans)
Our Sweet Love (pleasant song, but it just doesn't quite do it for me...)
Deirdre (Would be higher, but the "I love your red hair" part makes me cringe every time)
It's About Time (Good li'l rocker, this)
Got to Know the Woman (I'm tempted to skip this one every time...)
Tears in the Morning (too long & grandiose for me... tries too hard to be all Pet Sounds epic-like)

"Heroes & Villains" did not bomb.  It was #12 on the US charts (& maybe #4 in UK?).

Not to mention #5 in Canada. 

Not bad, considering that NONE of their songs reached #1 here.

Hey foiks, this is an album-a-day (album written & recorded in a day) that I did a few months back.  The production is kinda crappy, but oh well, I had fun.  Some of the titles of the songs are not-so-subtle rip-offs of tracks from Smile(y Smile).

http://www.archive.org/details/SunnySunnySunshineV2

I generally agree with you about the lyrics, sockittome - at least with the lyrics Mike wrote.  I think Brian showed he's actually a pretty capable lyric writer when he does it right - Busy Doin' Nothin' has a fine lyric, for example.  But Ana Lee The Healer, while I like the song a lot and think the harmonies are exquisite, the lyrics are awful - the "goes a gal who got her fame by goin' round and healin' folks" line makes me cringe every time.

But in terms of a the sound, I think it sounds a lot better than WH quality and mix-wise and don't have a major problem with the production overall.

Just heard this track for the first time off the "Christmas With the Beach Boys" CD.... Oh, God!  In the name of all that is good and decent in this world, WHY, Mike Love, WHY did you have to do that?

But Brian does appear to have some odd movements/facial expressions/tics at times.  I noticed that when he did Larry King some time ago, and have noticed it since in other TV interviews.  Whatever is causing it might be relatively mild compared to what some people suffer from, but it's there, whatever the cause is. 

Hmm, yeah, and I've always thought his movements in this video (from 1967) were a little odd, especially around the 2:00 mark or so:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmtHmzwmJf4

BTW, why all the hating for Bull Session?  IMHO it's worth it if not just for the following exchange:

BRIAN:  I haven't made a mistake yet in my whole career.
MIKE:  Brian, we keep waiting for you to make a mistake.

Yikes.

The other day, I was in the car with my dad (he hates BB/BW) and I decided to pop this CD in... he was truly weirded out by it.  At the end I said "Yeah... only the fans like this record," to which he responded, "True."

Ha ha ha..... oh well, I'm glad a lot of "normal" people don't like it - it makes the record more special to us weirdos.... right?

::nod:: Yeah I agree about the drums.  And yeah I think the vocals are a bit too low in the mix on some of the tracks - but it also sounds like they're completely uncompressed, or something like that anyway.  I guess back then if you wanted reverb, compression, etc. you actually had to have an echo chamber, a compressor, etc. and couldn't just rely on digital plugins like we do so easily today and take for granted.

I guess that's why the minimalism of Smiley Smile and the more minimalistic tracks on Wild Honey work so well, whereas with the more grandiose tracks instrumentation-wise, some of the limitations of their home recording shines through a bit more.  But it's also interesting that they really did improve their sound quality with Friends just a year later.

Check out the Purple Chick Mix.  I imagine it's against the rules to post links to copyrighted materials, but it's easy enough to find on teh intarweb.