The Smiley Smile Message Board

So I was rereading all that lovely Jack Rieley posting from some time back...and it reminded me just how cool the Surf's Up LP is, and how even-cooler it could have been.

Somehow I don't recall seeing any deluxe-styled boots ever appearing that collect everything Surf's Up-related in one place, the way the Sea of Tunes CDs tended to do.

I realize part of this may be the confusion over what the album was supposed to be in the first place ("Landlocked", I guess).

Reading about stuff like "Burlesque" just gets my appetite going and makes me want to hear more Surf's Up stuff, maybe compile my own new tracklist for it.

But where do I look? What's missing? What's never been heard?

I'm a big fan of Surf's Up. In the 20/20 thread I've made my indiffernce to that album clear based on its lack of cohesion. I guess the same could be argued for Surf's Up so not sure why I love it. I think the band's contributions seem stronger. I love Carl's tracks, and Bruce's and Al's are great too. The only track that bums me out is Student demonstration Time, so if I had to make any changes I might swap that out for Sound Of Free. I think another reason for my fondness is that when I was rediscovering the BB in my teens, along with Pet Sounds, this was the album played to me that gave me a totally different perspective on the band.

As I understand it, some of the SU era tracks include Lady, Big Sur (early version), Sound Of Free, H.E.L.P., Barbara, 4th Of July, and then Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again which by all accounts is a work of genius. WIBNTLA aside, it seems criminal that Dennis is so under-represented on the album as SOF, Barbara and Lady are better than half the songs on SU imo.

My understanding is that Dennis pulled his own tracks from the Surf's Up project. He wanted one of his tracks to close the album, instead of the title track.

Correct - he and Carl reportedly had a falling out over the sequencing, so he said "**** it", and pulled both his songs.

What were his songs to be? Sound of Free and Fallin' In Love, or was one of them WIBNTLA?

How does one have the ability to just 'pull out' his music from the album? I mean, technically its a "Beach Boys" song right? Also, if the rest of the group sang on it (not sure if they did or not) wouldn't that further enforce that its a group effort?

It´s true that the recordings were owned by either the band or the label, depending on who financed them. For a song to be released for the first time, it´s writer has to give permission though...

WIBNTLA was one of 'em iirc. The other one I'm not sure about. Maybe "4th of july". I believe Dennis wanted the album to end with kind of a "life"-trilogy. "A day in the life of a tree" "'til I die" "Wouldn't it be nice to live again?"



Still hoping for a release of the finished "Surf's up"-Audio DVD

"(WIBNT)LA" and "4th of July", even though it wasn't finished.

By virtue of his holding the copyright on it, same way that Brian insisted "California Feeling" wasn't included on the album of the same name.

I've said this before but if Surf's Up had 4th Of July & WIBNTLA in place of Student Demonstration Time & Take A Load Off Your Feet it would be considered an all time classic (IMO).

I think we might be waiting for ever -  seems that 5.1 fad has all but past in the music world. What I'd hope for is a Deluxe Edition which bolts on a 2nd CD of all the other "could-a-been" tracks, and maybe, just maybe, a (regular) DVD with some footage and maybe some 5.1 bonus tracks, but I doubt we'll get a DVD-A as such.

You may be right, but the one glimmer of hope is that the HD uncompressed audio being used on Blu-rays is the same high resolution that was used by the SACD and DVD-A formats. So if a package like the one you mentioned is ever released, a Blu-ray disc (in place of the standard DVD) would give us the "DVD-A" mix. The new Blu-ray release of the film INCEPTION features a 35-minute selection of the film's score in 5.1 HD surround - that's the equivalent of a "soundtrack album" being released in the DVD-A format.

"Take a Load Off Your Feet" is great. f*** you guys.

Yeah, it's kind of too bad that Surf's Up won't get a special treatment.  Interesting that even though something as difficult to compile as Smile gets to see the light of day as a special project, something easy like Surf's Up never will.

If we're playing fantasy, I picture a 3-disc edition.  Disc one would be a Desper supervised remaster plus Dennis' tunes, Disc two would be outtakes, several vocals-only and track-only mixes, etc. disc three, the 5.1 mix on some DVD format.

I think this should be done for every BBs album from 1964-1977.