The Smiley Smile Message Board

When will be the release of "Postcard From California"?

Probably the week after never.

February 31st next year.

End of Febuary next year..??  Poor Al has spent the last 20 months or so tryin to get it released..And i guess Mike has given up on Unleash the Love..

Ahem....










 ;)

Mr. Wilson, you may want to take a closer look at the specific date in Andrew's post. Then double-check your calendar to see exactly when that date occurs.

After Brian's done with Gershwin and Disney, Al is going to commission Brian to finish songs from Postcards From California, some which pre-date George, Ira, and Walt.

hahaha ;D

Seriously, though, I would love to hear this album in its entirety...I would love for Al to prove us all wrong and release it next week or something.

That's my birthday!!  :-D

Not so - he had a perfectly good offer from a major label last year.

PS: check your calendar...  ;D

Excellent !

Mike? An offer from a major label?

:-O

Andrew, please elaborate!  I've been really eager to see Mike's album officially released as well...why would he turn down a major label deal?

Sorry, bad writing - Alan had the offer.

Thanks for clarifying...

I'd love to hear both...it's sad that there's a large possibility that much of this material may never be heard by the fans.

Agreed. The more snippets I hear from Al's album (on his website) the more I like it. Initially I thought it was a bit vapid sounding but there would appear to be snippets with slightly beefier production now. Better and better.

He's still the Beach Boys with the best-intact voice. He needs to be heard.

Al had a good offer?

Does he have a 'wife and manager' for poor decisions or does he do his own screw-ups?

But...?

Really, it seems like some people on this board don't take this album too seriously, but I really want it to come out ASAP... First of all, we probably won't get a whole lot new material from the original Beach Boys anymore, so anything we can still get is more than welcome... I thought the sound clips sounded pretty good... There are some pretty interesting guests on it... And 'Looking Down The Coast' is my favorite unreleased BB-song so I want it to have an official release, even if the new version is inferior to the original.

It's difficult to take something seriously when it's been in the works for nearly four years and has been constantly tinkered with.

And Al tinkered with Loop De Loop for what -- 30-plus years?

Maybe Al got Al lot of feedback from the snippets online (like the title track sounding like "Rhinestone Cowboy") and is making changes.  I know he added Mike's new vocals to "Don't Fight the Sea".

Could be it's not about the deal but that he's too perfectionist.  Or he's waiting for the 50 Year hoopla/stuff to happen  to maximize sales.

I think he should just put the thing out already; we're not expecting a masterpiece.  I'm just happy to hear Neil Young and Steven Stills are involved. 

I would really like for it to be released. Al seems to be a nice guy, and he's a competent enough musician with a killer voice. He should just book a studio for a weekend, record some covers, and put out an instant album. I'd buy it.

Al has his own studio and plenty of songs! And they're all recorded! UGRHRHGHRGH

I just mean to get away from his perfectionist ways. Just bang out a covers album as a stopgap, and work on Postcards for as long as he wants.

No offense meant to him, but I imagine Al must be very frustrating to work with because of those reasons.

And I still prefer Brian's demo of Sail Plane Song!

And after all those years of tinkering -- the song still sucked anyway!   >:D

I think the song is fine, in a fun kind of way. But it didn't deserve 30 years of tinkering. Just write, record, release, move on. They're just pop songs, Al...

I would think Al is more of a procrastinator than a perfectionist.  Because if it takes him years to get a song like "Loop de Loop" just right, then perfect must equate to mediocre.

Wait a minute!!! It took him that friggin' long??? I kept thinkin' that they worked on it back in the 60's and didn't touch it again until around 1998

That's what i thought..... i can't honestly believe anyone would work on something so slight for forty years

Well, it was worked on during the Christmas album sessions at MIU in the late 70s -- and Al said at several points in that decade that he was working on it -- at some points it apparently lasted much longer.

It's kind of funny how we're all complaining about and making fun of Al's inability to complete a song or album, but for some reason we all seem to have given Brian a break, when the two stories seem quite similar. I don't mean anything bad by that, it just struck me as funny for some reason....

Mike's 'new' album is full of 'new' songs too!

Al Jardine as Bryan Ferry! :lol

I don;t think the cases are that similar -  I assume you're talking SMiLE 66/67-BWPS 04?  Brian abandoned SMiLE in 67 and started again in 04 -  the restart took just a few weeks, days even, in the studio.

Brian's output in the last few years has been impressive - Imagination, OCA, Roxy, PS Live, GIOMH, On Tour, BWPS, WIRWFC, TLOS, and now two album in the pipeline.

Postcards – Al's first solo LP in the 48 years he's been in the business - seems to be subject to infinite tinkering.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing, mind. I'm gone from being unexcited to relishing its eventual release.  Al's got the best intact BBs' voice and has written some fine stuff over the years.  It just needs to be out there, now.

..... and not forgetting that Al promised to give a free copy of his new album 'Postcards From California', to those European fans who were disappointed when he pulled out from touring with Brian a couple of years back. This was after tickets had gone on sale and some of the fans who bought them, at the time of purchase, were expecting to see Al on stage with Brian. I know a few people in Holland who have kept their ticket stubs, as Al has told them to do so. They're just waiting for confirmation of where to send them. I just hope Al doesn't end up giving more away that he sells :-\.

Incidentally, the reason Al gave for having to pull out of touring with Brian...., you ready for this? He had to stay at home to put the finishing touches to the album ;D.

Interesting - I've gone in exactly the contrary direction. I was seriously enthused, about three years ago but now (although I'll buy it, of course), I could care less.

A year back I mailed Al's management and asked where to send the ticket stub, and this is the answer I got:

"Please send your ticket stub to jardine@jps.net

 

Thank you.

 

Paula Springer

On Behalf of Al Jardine"

What I mean is, Al probably just added his vocal and maybe a few overdubs on Loop De Loop over the years. But with Brian, he was adding and abandoning whole sections of Heroes and Villians. Brian was changing the whole dynamic of a song, abandoning it, and starting all over again in a very different direction. I think the Brian example of perfectionism(is that a word?) is much more extreme than Al has been. But Al is the one that gets picked on, and Brian gets excused. AGD will probably correct me though.  ;D

Nope, I think all Alan did for "Loop" '98 was to re-record/triple track the first verse... which is why it sticks out like a sonic sore thumb. Not listened to it for a while, but as I recall the rest of the song is the 1969 vocal.

That kind of reminds me of a story about The Who. They were remastering and remixing their Live At Leeds album, and one of the songs had just a few words of the first verse missing. John Entwistle missed his cue. So John overdubbed the first verse of the song....in 1994. That's 24 years after the original recording was made. This was at a time when John was starting to lose his voice after 30+ years of smoking. Needless to say, the "fixed" version doesn't sound very good.

BW's H&V obsession only lasted a few brief months though. Postcards has been on the go for, what, two, three, fours years now?