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http://dangerousminds.net/comments/low_tide_the_beach_boys_hit_rock_bottom_in_1992_with_summer_in_paradise

That's OK... I actually like that album!

Nice article on it! The album was ok! pretty good for the music that was coming out in the 1990s

Fitting review for the absolute worst piece of garbage in the history of recorded music. myKe luHv should have been immediately stripped of his rights to perform under the BB name.

Nah...the NASCAR album was much much worse. *shudder*

This at least has 'Strange Things Happen'

Plus Lahaina Aloha ain't too bad. There's a sorta kinda ok short EP buried in there amongst the drek.

Two questions:

1.  Is it really, really true that it only sold 1000 copies? Even for a turd like this, how is that actually possible? For his famous a band as they were, regardless of content, that literally seems like an impossible number to be true.

2. How late in the game did Al come back to the band?  And I wonder if his parts on the final record were already on there with a different person singing temp vocals, which were then replaced by Al?  Is there a version of Strange Things Happen with Carl or Mike (or Adrian?) singing those chorus parts?  It wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to have left those parts unrecorded until the last minute, unless they were certain Al would rejoin.

No idea about the 2nd, but as for the 1st..it didn't have widespread distribution as it was sort of self released with little publicity, so it's believable.

If that's accurate, I wonder if there are any parallels with any other band of that stature?  Especially considering that they were still making appearances on Full House, and things like that…  they may have been creatively washed up, but they were still touring a ton. I guess it's hard to have perspective on what their stature would've been like back then.  But that number is so laughable.

Was this record ever for sale at the merch booth at their shows at the time?  And was it for sale at ordinary chain record stores?

It may have been less...that may have been the amount *shipped*. Never did get confirmation on that.

I saw the cd in all the chain stores. Don't know if any of them ever left the stores, but they were there. I took a look at the back cover, saw all the T. Melcher/M. Love writing credits, and got pissed off. "It took them 7 years to put out a studio album, and Al and Carl got totally shut out." I vowed I would never buy this testament to ML's ego. I gave in when I saw a copy of the cassette for a dollar at Half Price Books.

That's very interesting to hear that perspective. If the writing credits had not been listed on the back cover, do you think you might have purchased it at the chain store?

I remember in the days of Blockbuster Music when they would open up a brand-new CD for people to listen to and preview at a listening station, and if you did not choose to buy it, they would re-seal it, obviously not with factory shrink wrap, and then put it back on the shelf and sell it as new!  I always thought that was pretty shady.

Of course, this album predated that whole scenario by several years, so I'm surprised there weren't more people who just purchased it because it was a new record by the band when they saw if on a chain store shelf.  Maybe those visible writing credits were also a deterrent for quite a few more people…

That's where I heard it! Back in 1996. I actually heard it before Pet Sounds -_-

Needless to say, I didn't buy it until years later for like $1

No way! They had 4-year-old copies of SIP decaying on the shelves at Blockbuster Music in '96?  That is so crazy. I wonder at what point they were sent back as unsold stock.  That's a pretty late date for that album to still be sold as new from its original pressing. How many years would it have taken for the store to ship it back? There was only one pressing of this album, that much we know.

Did this album kill Terry's reputation and career?  I'm not seeing that he has a single credit (BB or otherwise) after this album, maybe I'm missing something?

Sadly, I bought mine for much more than $1. I still want my money back.

I've always liked Summer In Paradise. I don't care what anyone else says! I used to list it in my top ten BB albums. I don't think that's the case now (maybe more like top 20).

I had never heard anyone other than hard core fans talk about it, and I had never heard a track from it in a public setting, until I heard Hot Fun InThe Summertime at a bowling alley a couple years back (2013?) My mind was blown....How did it make it to that playlist some 20+ years later??

He was running his mom's inn in Carmel at the time. Music, at that point, was something of a hobby for him.

I love Sly & The Family Stone but the Boys' version of "Hot Fun" is a close second to theirs, despite all the cr@p hurled at it on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3gLb_V20hQ 

The idea that the album only sold 1,000 copies seems like it might be at least a slight exaggeration. A lot of us saw it at chain stores like "Blockbuster Music." I saw it at "Fry's", and I recall seeing it back in the day at one of those price-gouging mall record stores like Musicland or Sam Goody or Camelot Music.

So you have to figure if even 2 or 3 copies of the album were shipped to most or all of the stores in these chains, that would have to be more than 1,000 copies at least in terms of what was shipped. I recall Alan Boyd mentioning that while this was a "self-released" album, they still got it distributed by a real distributor in terms of moving copies into stores (Navarre). So it's not like "Brother Entertainment" was boxing and shipping copies themselves.

At the same time, let's remember that in 1992 this album *didn't chart at all*. As in, it wasn't one of the TOP 200 albums for even one single week. Sales would have to be pretty low for that to occur. Quick research shows that Billboard started using Soundscan for sales numbers in late 1991, so SIP would have fallen under the umbrella of being tracked by Soundscan.

So I'm guessing more than 1,000 copies were manufactured and shipped to stores. Were less than 1,000 sold? Perhaps it never sold 1,000 in a single week, but I'd have to guess it sold at least a few thousand over its lifespan. Especially when we factor in the 1993 UK release, which I believe got some level of distribution through EMI.

Either way, it's by leaps and bounds their biggest failure in terms of a new album release.

It's also interesting in that when people try to suggest how much publicity and fans John Stamos garnered the band, I always point to the utter failure of SIP to disprove that idea in large part. The album was released during the middle of the run of "Full House", the album was promoted on the show itself, *and* Stamos himself appears on the album. That he or the show couldn't even help get the album in the Top 200 tells me the Stamos connection wasn't doing much. It got eyes on the group when they appeared on the show, but that never apparently translated to sales or chart action.

Here's hoping that his book will suffer the same, well deserved fate.

Here's all I can say about SIP - When I first moved to Boston, September 1992, I was literally a few hundred yards away from Tower on Newbury and Mass Ave. I'd go there regularly, some weeks every day, to browse the racks and check for any new arrivals. They had a Beach Boys section, of course. At that time, the two-fers were winding down. There were the usual hits packages, the bizarre import versions of such, and always at least one copy of Pet Sounds as that seemed to be selling no matter what year it was. And "Summer In Paradise" was new, so that was in the bins that fall.

Fast forward the next few years, as I lived in the same area and had the same routines of visiting Tower to check for anything new. The two-fers gave way to the single-disc CD reissues (which I always thought was a mistake on Capitol's part and a rip-off for buyers), various hits, imports, etc.

And as always, Summer In Paradise. The stock never seemed to go down. They were always just there in the bins.

So I got to trace the progression of the album over months, then a year, and into 2-3 years.

The album eventually wound up as a discount. Still a full rack.

Tower eventually moved it to their version of the "cut out" bins. Drastically reduced pricing, albums that just didn't sell which were moved to these bins. And it looked like whatever shipment they got back in '92 ended up lock stock and barrel in the cut-out section. Just a full stack of them, at a very low price. And the stack never seemed to get smaller.

Then it was gone entirely.

I have to think very few if any copies were sold, either in the new Beach Boys bins or in the cut-out bins. It was crazy. I always wondered what the heck was going on, where other titles and the years-old (at that time) Pet Sounds reissue CD and even the 24K DCC "Endless Summer" reissue would come in and go out, but SIP never seemed to go down in stock. Meaning no one bought it, or Tower had cases of these discs piled up in the storage area which they'd keep bringing out to fill the bins.

My guess is the former scenario, not the latter.

A now banned SS member previously posted that 10,000 copies were sold

I was at a Fry's Electronics in the mid-2000s, probably around 2005 or 2006, and in their CD section I saw what appeared to be an original 1992 copy of "Summer in Paradise", still stickered by Fry's at the original price, the thing looked dusty and beat up (it was in that original weird packaging configuration where the case was "unfolded" and then shrinkwrapped presumably to be of a similar height to the old "longbox" CD packages).

It was such a weird curio that I almost bought it (I hadn't seen the CD new in that configuration since 1992 at the mall).

I doubt many shops got anything past an initial shipment of the album.

It's ironic because had I brought an investor's mindset to my sometimes hazy but lazer-focused existence as a fan in the early 90's, I would have bought up a dozen copies sealed, packed them away, and sold them on Ebay when original CD copies were selling for obscene amounts!

I'm thinking a sealed copy is the best way to experience SIP, in any case. ;-)

Even though it's still, by a long shot, my least favorite BB album, I listened to it earlier in the summer, and it's not as horrible as I remember.

The cover of Hot Fun is pretty decent.  I like the title track.   And I even like the Stamos sung version of Forever (before I get accused of blasphemy, I still much prefer the Dennis Sunflower version, but I like this version, and it's easily the best produced track on the album IMO).  

The SIP version of Surfin, the cover of Remember Walkin in the Sand, and of course the worst BB song of them all Summer of Love, are still god awful.  

Worst BB album?  Yeah (although KTSA gives it a run).  Worst album by a great artist?   Eh, mayyyyybe.  Although, I'd rather spin this than Queen's Hot Space, Metallica's St. Anger, or Van Halen III.  Worst album of all time?  Not while Five Finger Death Punch, Nickleback, and Iggy Azalea walk the earth.  

I know I'm going to be tarred and feathered , but I'd rather listen to "Summer In Paridise " than the "Love You " album. ( at least give me credit for being brave enough to say so. )

SIP is an unintentional collectors item! ;D

What's the source of the info about Summer of Love originally being a Bart Simpson/ Mike Love duet? It's perhaps the most hilarious tidbit of info about any song in the entire catalog, but we seemingly know zero about the origin of this story, which *almost* makes me think it's a made-up urban legend. I just want proof!

I want it to be true, and I want to know details! Did creators of The Simpsons approach Mike? Or (more likely) did Mike send a letter to someone working on a soundtrack of Simpsons songs, begging to collaborate with the then-hot Bart?

Maybe former Simpsons writer Conan O'Brien knows the answer?

With Carl wearing dark sunglasses in the Problem Child video (which some people theorize may have been because he was embarrassed), I feel like maybe he'd have taken to wearing a bag over his head for  Mike Love / Bart Simpson collaboration music video  :lol

I'll give you credit for saying it. 

Love You is definitely is the BB bottom five for me. 

SIP is a tragedy because they had the fan upsurge from Kokomo and blew it.

"Love You" versus "SIP" is where putting one's objective critic's hat on for a moment can provide more context.

Certainly, I'd rather listen to "Strange Things Happen" than, say, "Mona." But I think the problem with SIP, beyond some functional things (e.g. AWFUL early 90s production values; easily worse than even BB '85), is that it's rather vapid and soulless.

"Love You" can be a challenging listen; Brian's voice is rough, the production values are sparse and weird. But it's by any definition a much more personal, truer artistic statement. It's Brian's soul on a record. Plus, most of the core compositions (pretty much everything but "Mona") still better the core compositions on SIP. Brian's 1976 piano demos show this as well.

"SIP" is largely Terry Melcher and Mike Love with some drum machines and a Beta version of ProTools trying to crank out "Kokomo" clones and derivations. They stumbled into a couple of moderately catchy songs, saved by Carl's and Al's vocals. And even those have rather dire, factory conveyer belt lyrics.

I read that in the Complete Guide to the Music of The Beach Boys by Andrew G. Doe. 

Interesting. Maybe AGD knows the source of this info. It had to originate somewhere, right?

How lucky are we that Al was reinstated to be on this album? Just imagine - if Al hadn't added his (excellent, but too few) vocal contributions to this album, SIP could have been *even worse*. I think most people would say that the album's few high points are largely due to Al (and Carl's) presence. Take some of those away? Yikes.

Past, say, Holland, is there really a BB album that would have *really* suffered if Mike had been kicked out for having an attitude problem of his own? I can appreciate a good Mike vocal as much as the next guy, but it's perhaps something the band should have tried a time or two. By and large, and certainly post 1970-ish, the band has always been best when Mike has as little political power as possible.

Well, personally, I wouldn't want to not have It's OK, Kona Coast, Sumahama, Getcha Back, Still Cruisin, Kokomo, Somewhere Near Japan, Daybreak Over the Ocean, and Beaches in Mind in the catalog. 

Now THAT is funny. :lol  I, though, have an unsealed copy.  Who have the other 999?  There are just a couple of 1/2 way decent moments on the l.p. but not many.  It really is a "turd".   Surfin' is gawd awful...not that it ever was a great song but on SiP...it hits the basement of the outhouse...ker-S P L A T   Hot Fun in the Summertime?  They [Mike] should be entirely ashamed.  Not even Carl's contribution could save it.  And Forever?  :o  Never.

It's pretty much a turkey farm.  To play it twice through would be to suggest deafness or that lack of 'taste' is a serious issue for the owner.

I don't give Mike credit for much these days but here goes... ... ...Mike-Eddy... ... ...THANK YOU for never doing THAT again.  Even you, I guess, figured out that THAT kind of a horror show specifically could NOT be allowed to happen twice.  Man... ... ...you proved beyond any shadow of doubt that since the very early 70s, at the latest, you pretty much SUCK as a lead singer
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By the way...how special is it that Mike-Eddy added his name to the list of folks who wrote the classic mega-hit Under the Boardwalk...the Drifters' contribution helping to rightfully add the song to the American Songbook lists so that folks could enjoy it forever?  That he felt it necessary to 'improve' it was most 'impressive'.   ::)  THAT took some balls.

I can dig those songs too, or at least some of them. I could totally take or leave Kona Coast, Sumahama, Daybreak Over the Ocean, and Beaches in Mind. I'm just saying that if the better ones were missing, it wouldn't exactly be to those albums' detriment, as say Al + Carl's absence would have been to SIP.

To a certain point, I agree.  But IMO, BB85 would suffer without Getcha Back.  It's OK is one of the highlights of 15 Big Ones (one of the few really).  And, personally, Sumahama is one of my favorite songs from LA. 

I dig Getcha Back too. I want to know the full story behind that it was originally intended to be a Dennis lead vocal. Obviously must mean it was written in '83 or earlier.

I still stand behind my statement that if Al was gonna get sidelined for an attitude problem, Mike should have too at some point. Although I guess one might say that the amount of input on TWGMTR by Mike (still certainly not an insignificant amount) might actually be an example of that.

A funny sketchy memory I have about "It's OK" is that there was a podcast as I recall for the 2007 "Warmth of the Sun" compilation, and someone familiar with the interviews explained, in response to questions about why Al didn't have anything to say about the song during a specific episode, that he seemed to flatly decline to comment on the song.

I came away with the impression that Al was not a big fan of the song. But perhaps it was for other reasons (band politics, issues with Mike, etc.).

It was then interesting to see Al join in on the song on the C50 tour. Although, as I've mentioned before, "It's OK" went over like a lead balloon both in person when I saw it performed on tour, and most every recording I've heard. They even inexplicably kept it in the shortened Bonnaroo setlist during that tour, in front of a young audience that cheered more for "Heroes and Villains" than any other song!

I don't think Al was too keen on basically doing a 70s version of Do It Again. 

Not to stray off the SIP topic, but another problem with the C50 arrangement of "It's OK" is that they sucked even more life out of it by dropping the key and changing the drum pattern to a more "Be My Baby" sort of pattern with the snare on the "4" instead of the "2" and "4."

You can even hear some C50 performances where Cowsill starts playing it the "old" way before going back to the "new" way.

As a big Beach Boys fan, I'm never quite sure if I should be proud or embarrassed that I've never heard this album.

 :lol :lol :lol

Do you know any specific concert so i can take a listen? Thanks

Not a C50 show, but when I saw Mike, Bruce, and David at Wolf Trap last summer, I thought It's OK sounded more like the 15BO version. 

Well, I would think that the new fans had deserted them by 1992. Where they blew it was not coming out with an all-new album in 1989. I like the new songs on SC a lot - much more than anything on SIP. The fact that they waited 4 years after a worldwide #1 hit to do an all new album killed the momentum.

They didn't have enough VALID material to do an album after Kokomo.  [ unless albums were only 7 inch jobs/1 song per side that year. ]  Mike the Music Machine only has so much creativity to spare in any given time frame.  Without Brian?  They were sunk.  IF they had the tunes from Brian's initial solo effort and if they could have worked on them together...  ...  ... If 'ifs' and 'buts' were candies and nuts.

But then THAT wasn't going to happen was it?  If anything...Kokomo was a fluke...the happy coincidence of it being the right song, at the right time, in the right movie which appealed to just the right people.  It's A Beautiful Day didn't enjoy that kind of luck.  Kokomo was an out of left field stroke of good fortune never to be replicated by any contingent lead by Mike Love.  There's just not enough artistic talent there to make it happen.  There is to perform material...just not to CREATE it.

See, the thing is,  to me a song like 'Somewhere Near Japan' was far better than Kokomo. Same thing with 'Strange Things Happen'.

Kokomo was lightning in a bottle and Mike was delusional to think that that was the new template for future BB success.

I agree. But it is also hard to predict what songs will become the monster hits, which is why it's pointless to try to calculate how to reach the masses.

You have a point about 90's music... But, I am truly grateful that SIP had some of the last of  Carl Wilson's vocals who had shared leads on half of the tracks.

And, I do really love Lahaina Aloha with that yearning Carl lead. (Maybe it should have been released as a single. I still think it was a very strong song, probably the best on the album.)  We've lost that voice but still have those tremendous Carl vocals.   

Van Dyke Parks played accordion on two tracks.  And, I prefer Summer in Paradise live (MIC) to this version but do appreciate that they made an effort to stay in the market.

In regards to It's Ok...I've always had a soft spot for that one. One of my favorite summer time BB songs. In that Warmth of the Sun podcast, I believe both Brian and Al had nothing to say about that song and didn't want to talk about it.

Do we know if Carl submitted any original material for "Summer in Paradise" that was rejected...or recorded but left unreleased?

I've always had the impression it was a Love/Melcher project all along, and Carl didn't even participate as heavily in the sessions as Mike did.

I've heard no evidence that he proffered any material for the album.

I think Carl was writing and cutting stuff in the early-mid 90s, some of which ended up on the "Beckley Lamm Wilson" album. But I always figured Mike spearheaded the SIP album, and it essentially as we all know came across as a Mike Love solo album with some vocal contributions from the others. (Yes, I know, it has 1/2 of a Bruce song on it).

And thank goodness it has the Bruce tune on it, that's one of the best songs on the record (despite the wretched drum sound on that tune, the song's not too bad IMO).

When I gave SIP a re-listen several years back, I was taken aback by how dated and bad the *production* sounded on it. The songs (the compositions themselves) hadn't changed for me; the few good ones were still good and the rest were still the same. But the production (and I suppose mixing and mastering) is just very harsh and tinny and thin. Really bad drum sounds (presumably mostly programmed). The group vocals are still performed well as always, but are all smushed and compressed. Perhaps the sampling rate/resolution, etc. for that early Beta version of ProTools was limited and didn't help things.

Seriously, the '85 album sounds warmer than SIP in terms of production and mastering.

If they could actually access the multi-track files for SIP, re-record *real* drums, and then remix and remaster, those hand full of good songs could sound even better.

I wish I could have the opportunity to mix it!

Thank you for the detailed analysis, Hey Jude...there's still a lotta gray area regarding Carl's recordings in the final decade of his life...makes you question whether he was tracking music in a home studio that has still not seen the light of day.

I think I remember some of us asking Alan Boyd some years back about what the status was of the non-analog masters in the BRI vaults for the '85 album and SIP. I recall that he mentioned they had all the DAT recordings for '85, but I don't think anything was known in terms of any SIP material (beyond presumably the final digital album masters used to make the CD). I'm not even sure what form of backups they would have done with a Macintosh Quadra in 1992 running a Beta version of ProTools, or if any "outtakes" would even survive, let alone the multi-track files for the finished album.

Perhaps backups were made to DAT?

The multi-tracks clearly survived for at least a little while, as they partly remixed and re-recorded several tracks for the 1993 UK version of the album.

Carl's unreleased compositions and recordings from the 80s and 90s seem as mysterious as the man himself. Little has surfaced. Billy Hinsche dug up the early 80s "This is Elvis" track.

Not sure what else might be lurking around; clearly his estate has shown no interest in these 18 years to do anything with any potential Carl tracks that aren't tied to BB recordings in the BRI vault. Perhaps then there *isn't* much in terms of any demos Carl may have recorded during all those years.

Carl was also not exactly the most prolific songwriter, either.

Do we know if Terry produced the UK re-recordings?

I can't fault them for trying to make the album better (it needed it), but they failed in their quest. All the re-records sound worse IMO, except Strange Things Happen, because it desperately needed to be cut down and edited to a shorter version, which it was. The Island Fever remake kills the only parts that were good about the original version.

Speaking of Strange Things Happen, the BBs need to contact the music supervisor of Netflix's hit Stranger Things, and get Strange Things Happen placed somewhere on Season 2! (Or maybe not...)

CD - the songs are not bad.  It is the production.  It would be great for Brian to take a second look, (add his own vocals)in order to preserve Carl's vocals (if those tracks were isolated) and do some reworking of the orchestration.  It was new technology for that time and maybe the overall approach in hindsight might have been a mistake.  But the environmental message has not been lost.  And SIP live is fantastic on MIC. 

That may be true for a select few of the tracks, but not even tasteful production could save the turd that is the album's centerpiece, Summer of Love.

Is it environmentally friendly for Mike to publish a printed book? Surfers recycle copies of Mike's book now, don't you know...

SIP and particularly Summer of LuHv are the perfect soundtrack for myKe luHv disgustingly pouring and  massaging gobs of rubbing oil all over himself on TV. A precise look into what that creep is all about.

Synching "Summer Of Love" to Mike's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous piece would be pure comedic gold.

Tons and tons of fantastic music was coming out in the 1990s. What a funny thing to say!

I'm with you Gohi.

I know that there's talent out there who could do this.  Sounds culturally enriching to me.   :hat

That is like oil and water, BW shouldn't waste his time going anywhere near SIP.

It is laughable thinking of Brian, at this point, dredging up Summer of Love and Still Surfin' to add vox.

Unless Surfer Joe from Still Surfin' could be Joe Thomas?