The Smiley Smile Message Board

the 1990 hotel piano jam session with BW, BJ, Foskett and Stamos has leaked. Check out the media section

"Leaked"?   I still have a VHS copy of it from more than 10 years ago!

Yes, but you have almost everything!  Not everyone has seen thru your eyes....

Well..........true, seeing it behind my blue eyes wouldn't be easy for someone else to do, Bgas. The VHS copy I have looks like about 3-4 generations from the source. So does the "upgraded" version I have on DVD. Real blurry and grainy. But from what I understand, even the first generation tape is like that! Wonder if the original source tape is that bad.  Video cameras back in the early 90's weren't nearly as good as they are today.

And I don't have almost everything. I still need the "Salt Lake City" Capitol promo and 3 stock copies of the early Warners singles.  ;D

So, after looking at this site:   http://www.beachboys45.nl/    you're only missing 3 Warners singles? 
That's impressive.
   

I don't need all those! Who the Hell needs all the Starline copies? Not me.

You already know what I'm  talking about! Stock copies of the early Warner/Reprise issues.

The site is SO MUCH MORE than just Starlines; a good start would be to go  back and check it again; start here:
http://www.beachboys45.nl/USA-regular.htm

Then check these two: 
http://www.beachboys45.nl/USA-Regular-BrotherReprise-intro.htm 
                       And   
http://www.beachboys45.nl/USA-Regular-Reprise.htm

Not to mention the sections on Promos, before you check all the other regular issues. 
What would be really cool is if you go there and find a variation you own that's not shown

Who taped it? Kevin S. Leslie?

Stamos.   No Surf Nazi's to be seen.

Stamos couldn't have taped it because he's in it.

Well.............you know everything, Jay, so I'll defer to your vast knowledge!  ;D

It's not really "vast knowledge". More like simple common sense. Stamos can be seen standing at the side of the piano. How can somebody be seen standing by a piano, and filming from the opposite direction simultaneously? But I'll go easy on you, considering the fact that you have time and time again shown that simple kindergarten level logic is not your strong suit.  :)

Possibly because Kevin's doing the filming ?  Speaking from personal experience, I'm in very, very few of the photos I take.

July 2nd 1990 in Montreal, btw. For reasons unknown, Mike wasn't on this Canadian mini-tour.

Hey Jay, seriously, you remind me of a bug that I smacked off my arm the other day.  I think it was a gnat.

Huh. Well based on personal experience, I'm in some of mine. You turn the camera on, then put it down, then direct it to the source of what you want to capture. And if you want to be included in the picture, just move around in front of the camera! Also, sometimes I use a little remote control to turn the camera on and off so I can be in the shot. Not sure if they had this feature on video cameras back in 1990 though.

But Andrew, like your little buddy Jay here who runs rampant on this board almost every day and PM's people for unreleased music and other trivialities, you're probably very, very right about Leslie being behind the camera. Same guy who was filming the tour of Brian's house in Malibu, and the same guy behind it when a TV film crew showed up at the gates of Brian's house and Brains & Genius.

I had the pleasure (?) of encountering Kevin on more than one occasion in the mid-late 80s. Landy's mini-me.

I encountered Leslie at Brian's book signing in San Francisco.  He was pissing off people who were in line waiting for an autograph.  Kept shoveling bottled waters into Brian's face and saying "Nope" to half the stuff people wanted autographed.  Even had a slight altercation with a KGO radio news guy trying to get a few words with Brian.

So what became of this chap when the Landy affair finally ended?

Well, for maybe a year he was still living with Brian, and of course reporting back to Landy, then he seemed to drop off the radar.

The camera's moving quite a bit, no way it's on autopilot. 

Thank you for posting this link to the other link.  I'd never seen it before and it was fascinating to watch.  Brian actually gets agressive in that one part and tells Bruce to "SIT YOUR ASS DOWN AND PLAY THE SONG" or something.  I know he was just screwing around and likely a little drunk, but still I've never seen Brian like that.  I wonder if he ever still gets some balls every once in a while? 

Which leads me to another question.  Does anybody know if in Brian's current creative process, does he have anybody who helps him mold his ideas?  I love his band and I love Brian, but I've found over the years that most of your 'great' musicians, writers, artists tend to lose some of their luster when they get so big that nobody tells them no.  Musically, is anybody telling him no?  If somebody told Stephen King 'NO', he'd probably write better books with a little editor work.  If somebody would have told Michael Jackson 'NO', he would have made better music those last few years, and if somebody was telling Brian 'NO', maybe he'd take his music to another level as well. 

I like all the recent stuff, but it seems like (and I don't blame them) his band is full of a lot of sympathetic ears. 

Oh yes.  ;D


Can't speak for all his releases, but certainly he was (gently) pushed to improve his vocals on BWPS. Shame the same wasn't done for GIOMH, we might have ended up with an album that was half-assed with decent vocals as opposed to an album that was just plain half-assed in all departments.

Being a public forum and all of that, can more be revealed about that clip? Has the statute of limitations run out after 21 years?

Because what I remember hearing about the "source" of that video, whether that means the camera-person or the person who put it out or if they were the same person, suggests it was someone other than Landy's assistant.

Watching that clip is very fascinating. Notice how Brian rocks back and forth whenever he plays the piano. Then there is that weird "mood swing" with Bruce. Another part I thought was interesting is watching him when they start singing that Elvis song. Brian gets REALLY excited. He's jumping up and down and clapping wildly. Maybe I'm just reading to much into it. But it seems that even a little kid would go that overboard.

I got my copy from a fellow collector about 10 - 12 years ago, when VHS was still the primary consumer format. And I'd heard that it was in trader circles a year or two before that. At that point, it wasn't advertized anywhere on the internet for sale. Been awhile since I've watched it, but I remember Brian getting up to "go to bed" two or three times, then coming back to play some more. He might have been medicated (and a little drunk) but obviously no recreational drugs were around that night. Thought it was so cool and unusual for him to play those songs - he was obviously having a good time with a little egging on by Bruce, Foskett, and Stamos.  Stamos looked like a kid in a candy store...... 

Maybe this video was "leaked" by the same guy who stole the master tape of Sweet Insanity from Brains & Genius.  :-D 

Curiously, I always wondered why the video of Brian's tour of his Malibu house wasn't/isn't readily available. I don't even see it on Youtube. Only place I've seen it was at one of the two Beach Boys conventions in San Diego in the early 90's. I think it was a funny video and pretty sure it was shot by Kevin Leslie. I don't think many have this one. Seems like the "Great Hotel" video is more popular and well-known.

The house tour was shown at a Stomp convention in London, and we were under strict orders to send it straight back, no copies whatsoever (and of course as it's not shown up anywhere, of course we didn't copy it, no, not at all...): the funniest bit was noticing that although someone had removed the numbers from the house gate in the interests of privacy, you could still easily read them as the wood underneath wasn't weathered !

When the method of collector communication still included mailing lists - with actual envelopes and stamps  ;D - I received an announcement from such a mailing list around Spring 1996 about this "Hotel Tape" being available.

My big-ticket wish-list items at that time were Beatles, Monkees, and Beach Boys - and it's amazing to see most if not all of the titles I used to have on my wish-list-if-I-could-afford-it available for free on YouTube. Incredible.

It has been ages since I’ve seen this, but a part I always though was funny was Bruce continuing to attempt to show Brian a little new arrangement bit he had worked up for “Caroline, No.” My vague recollection is that he keeps trying to get Brian’s attention to show it to him, but it takes numerous attempts.

I also thought it was interesting that Bruce recalled “Sherry She Needs Me” and asks Brian to play it. I wonder if Bruce recalled the song from the original 1965-ish timeframe, or if Bruce was somehow aware of it more from the 1976 attempt to revive the song.

I think he was drunk.  (no joke)

I remember those days with mailing lists and snail mail very well!  Just as the internet and e-mail (56K modems) were gaining momentum. No YouTube, not many Beach Boys sites, not much Ebay. Goldmine, Discoveries, and Record Collector still going strong.

I'd have to think that it was the 1965 version of "Sandy/Sherry She Needs Me" that Bruce remembered. The sessions for it were right around the time he joined the band in 1965. He wasn't around very much in late '76 when the song was re-recorded, was he? But who knows. It's still surprising that Bruce remembered an unreleased song enough to want to revisit it with Brian. Maybe he was thinking at that point that Brian should release it.

Good to read you again, Hey Jude - it's been a long time!  One of these days we have to finally hook up!

You remind me of a piece of corn in a sh*t I took once.