The Smiley Smile Message Board

I don't know how long this has been public knowledge, but I see that Brian has been announced as playing the Primavera festival in Barcelona 1-5 June. Bodes well for further UK/European dates this summer.

Pretty good line-up all round, in fact. http://lineup.primaverasound.es/2016
 

It is public knowledge since a few hours ago, but it has been rumoured for some weeks.
It is announced as Brian Wilson performing Pet Sounds, so it can be the first time Brian plays a Pet Sounds-only show plus an encore.
Festival concerts don't last more than an hour I think.

They can last longer than that, it depends.

If he's a headliner, he'll likely get a full set, or close to it.

From his position on the poster, it doesn't look like he's headlining. He's the eighth act mentioned on a five-day festival, so I'm guessing he'll have the pre-headline slot one day.

I have to admit.  I've never heard of most of the acts on that poster.  If it's a five day festival, and Brian's not headlining one of them, then either something's wrong, and I'm completely misunderstanding the point of that festival.

Breaking news: Brian Wilson eats Pasta Primavera.

Brian is scheduled for Saturday 4th and he doesn't look like a headliner in this poster.
Anyway Primavera Sound is a very prestigious festival here in Spain.

(http://www.dodmagazine.es/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/primavera-sound-2016-cartel-dias.jpg)

For somebody who apparently hates touring, Brian sure is on stage a lot these days.  I know touring trumps writing/recording for most posters on this board, but here's to hoping this fairly rigorous schedule leaves the man some time to work on and record new music.

It's probably best for Brain that he's not headlining, as Primavera headliners play in the middle of the night, don't they? He needs his sleep.

While I don't know the majority of the acts, the headliners -- and quite a few of the middle-of-the-bill acts -- are all hugely popular, critically acclaimed acts who've had multi-decade careers. To take the two acts billed above Brian the day he's playing, for example, PJ Harvey has an MBE for services to music, is the only person ever to win the Mercury Prize twice, and has three albums on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, while Sigur Ros are the most successful band ever to come out of Iceland.
In terms of the audience going to that festival -- people who like 1990s art-rock and post-rock experimental stuff -- Brian *shouldn't* be headlining.

That's where the money is for artists these days.

I understand why touring appeals to artists.  What I'll never understand is the overwhelming prioritization of touring over recording by a lot of posters here.  We're not making any $$ off Brian touring, and only a sliver of fanatics will be able to see some of these live performances. So why on earth do we care so much?  Is a video of a gig shot on an iPhone really more thrilling and enduring than a studio recording?  Or is there some sort of mystic draw to touring that the artists among us find so appealing?  I really don't get it.

1990s art-rock and post-rock experimental?  That's why I've never heard of any of these acts.  That kind of music does nothing for me.

I like some Radiohead.  I think OK Computer is a fairly solid album (especially for its time). 

I'm aware of PJ Harvey, but her music doesn't do much for me.

I would imagine most fans would indeed prefer to have a stack of new albums than see a live show. But I don't we have to have one or the other.

I don't think Brian's tour schedule impacts too much of the *quantity* of material he's releasing. It may in some cases impact the scheduling for precisely when they release an album.

But look at this this way. Brian has been by far the most prolific of the BBs as far as releasing studio material, and even he has really only come up with two albums of original material in the last decade (three if we want to count TWGMTR), and then a few albums of mostly covers. I don't think he would have put out any additional studio material had he toured less in all of these years.

There are certainly things outside of touring that these guys could be working on. Archival BB releases. Archival *Brian* releases for that matter. Archival *Al* releases even.

But as others have said, the revenue is in touring. I'm sure if Mike (or anyone) could make as much from releasing albums as they could from touring, you'd see them all hiring a full staff of writers, dusting off old outtakes, recording covers of Foghat songs, whatever it would take to put albums together.

Now, guys like Brian and Al (and the BBs as far as archival releases) could certainly do more to get more recorded material to die-hard fans. Live show download releases. CDs full of demos and remixes. Al could do a whole album of acoustic songs. And a million other ideas. But it took Al decades to release one album, and Brian doesn't seem interested in doing an indie-style deal where he puts a new "album" or package of songs of some sort out every six months.

There certainly is a lot of "dead" space and airtime for all of the BBs individually and collectively to fill to keep fans interested. They just don't seem to want to do it all the time. Again, a lot of this is bad (no) management at least in terms of BRI.

ooh - this looks like an amazing festival. I like all the headliners well enough and really like PJ Harvey; Day 3 has some acts that I love but didn't even know were still together and out there; day 4, of course....
hmmmmmmmmm

For me, the last time Brian made an album I really loved was in 2008 -- and even that was something that he premiered as a live performance. Given the choice between an album like That Lucky Old Sun and a tour, I'd take the album every time. But I'd take a live show over another No Pier Pressure without a second's thought. And that goes double for Mike & Bruce, of course.
But I also don't agree that "only a sliver of fanatics" will see the shows. I don't know what the audiences are like in the US, but on a typical UK tour Brian will play maybe ten dates, with three to five thousand people at each venue. Allowing for some overlap with people going to multiple shows, that's about thirty thousand people seeing him. And playing massive festivals, as he has done in the past, will get more people than that seeing him in one go.
And finally, at least for those not in the US, there's the rarity factor. For the UK, where I live, for example, in the last ten years, Brian has toured twice -- in 2007 and 2011. Since the 2011 tour, he's played three UK shows open to the public, all in London -- the two Beach Boys shows in 2012 and a one-off festival gig in 2014.
In the same ten-year time period, he's released three albums of new material, two albums of cover versions, one live double-CD and three live DVDs (counting the Beach Boys reunion material), not to mention all the archival stuff. So it's not like we're lacking in new recordings.
So for me at least, there are very good reasons to be more excited about a tour than about recordings. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

I think this will be great for Brian. A lot of the band on here i'm sure draw a lot of inspiration from him and the boys. Animal Collective have even got the strange "beach boys on acid" comparison from a lot of blogs and other reviewing sites.

Radiohead is playing songs off their new album at this festival too

U.K.  dates soon, then?

I'd go even farther than that:  if Brian weren't touring, if he weren't keeping active like that, we might not have got nearly as many albums out of him.  It keeps him focused on the music.

Compare his output when he was *off* the road, any time since about 1970, with his recent run.  Putting out two-nearly-three whole albums of original material in a decade is pure luxury!  And adding in a couple of cover albums, including one as gorgeous as Gershwin, is just gilding the lily...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

UK dates have been posted on Brian's web page.