How do you know the book is important if you haven't written it yet?

Thanks for the helpful response, it's an important paper for school, smartass.

Hi all,

This question is addressed to anybody, including the honorable Mr. Desper. I am writing an important paper about recording practices at the Beach Boys' home studio circa Sunflower/Surf's Up, and imagine that Mr Desper's book must be an invaluable resource. Unfortunately I missed the first printing, and have no idea where to find a copy - I am willing to pay! Does anybody know where the book is available now, whether in hard copy or online? Thanks so much

Strange question but I would love to know - is there a message board like this one, for the Beatles? Have never been able to find a Beatles board with as in depth discussion and interesting factoids as this for the Beach Boys...

[Bellagio 10452]

You could make a start by using the info contained herein:

Bellagio 10452

Mr Doe, yes I'm totally aware of your amazing website and frequently use it for my research. But I've still yet to find a definitive chronological list of all the recordings, including home tapes etc. I don't feel like its such a ludicrous idea

This is maybe a silly question, but has anybody ever compiled a definitive list of all the Beach Boys (and related) recordings that are circulating, in chronological order? Incorporating the various home recordings etc. Seems like it would be an invaluable resource!

Can't believe AGD would be suspended. So he gets in a bad mood sometimes? WHO CARES?? He's one of the only people left on this board who brings genuine insight and knowledge of the Beach Boys' internal affairs. This board has really been going down the tubes as its been taken over by an increasingly conservative mindset. If you can't handle a little internet forum cattiness, you probably shouldn't be on the internet at all.

And yes, I don't post much. I lurk around and read because the information posted is SO goshdarn INTERESTING. Stop banning the people who actually have something to contribute!

Smiley Smile > Smile

Don't go Andrew!! As a long time devoted lurker, what the hell will we do without your knowledge, expertise and wisdom?? It won't be fun for us anymore either..

Any more questions?

Yeah, but a rather unanswerable one: Why did Brian find himself unsuited for the lead vocal? Even this year, he did a GREAT lead on it!

I disagree.  "Sail On, Sailor" requires someone with a soulful voice handling the lead vocal.  BW's voice is about as soulful as a dishwasher.  He plodded through it decently enough, but they should have let one of the other guys take this one. 

How can anyone say this? Brian was by far the most soulful vocalist in the band.

Hi all!

Returning with the newest single we just cut at Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen which is actually gonna be on our album "Nathan Jones is Dead" coming out in a few weeks. The album is this ridiculously sprawling and stupidly grandiose yet sort of tongue in cheek rock opera. On the song we tried to incorporate things from all sorts, Stevie Wonder, Sonic Youth, Sam Cooke, the Beach Boys, the Band, the Beatles (of course). I really hope you guys enjoy it.

http://ghostpal.bandcamp.com/track/hop-skip-a-jump

Also, if anyone's interested, here's an amazing bit of press we got the other day for a Mama Coco's showcase we did in Brooklyn with four of the bands from our stable. This man, Jim Testa, he gets it.
http://www.jerseybeat.com/mamacocos-freecandy.html


Thanks for checking it out, guys.

Oliver

If it was disclosed that Brian Wilson was OK with "Still Cruisin" and "Ballad Of Ole' Betsy", and wasn't comfortable performing the other songs you mentioned, would you feel the same way?

Eh, not really. BW's no untouchable deity. These are just shockingly bad song choices, no matter which way you slice it.

Well that's a bit dull...
Come on, let's hear some anger!

Ugh,
why are we pretending to be ok with this piece of crap's repeated inclusion in recent sets, while "This Whole World," "Prayer" and "Marcella" become increasingly scarce?? Let's hope this is just for the heartland USA. There does seem to be a trend in the recent weeks of an increasingly conservative set list, which is disappointing and a little bit depressing.

I don't think there has to be a particularly Brian-centric reason that album connected with him as it did. It's a simply devastating piece of work, bitterly hilarious in parts but so deeply humane. It's not hard to imagine an artist of Brian's caliber being floored by it. I don't think the meaning of the lyrics to "Sail Away" was much of a secret, and I think knowing it only adds to the song's beauty since its so emblematic of Newman's style, which is to dig deep into the minds and souls of the characters who are usually considered beyond empathy.
I have wondered about the extent of its influence on Brian. Consider that he got deeply into the album in 73 - right? - directly before his voice started changing. Really makes me wonder how much his singing style on 15BO and BBLY must have been an intentional imitation of Randy Newman, especially in light of how pure a tone he was able to achieve on M.I.U. just a year later. Just imagine the last line of "Roller Skating Child" that Brian delivers in Randy Newman's voice, and it literally makes more sense. Just a thought.

This is quite lovely! I'm in a similar boat to you, young (I'm 22 but was on a similar path at 15), working the DIY angle in subterranean studios..this is my band's latest thing, hope you like it too
http://ghostpal.bandcamp.com/track/wildebeest-song

hey all
after a little recording hiatus during which I've been opening up a commercial recording studio in Brooklyn and producing a bunch of bands, my band Ghost Pal just released its new single "Wildebeest Song" which is a song I wrote on safari in Tanzania while reading "tearing down the wall of sound' about phil spector. so the tune is about reincarnation, and somehow links all those things together.
it's definitely got a beach boys-y sound in ways, and i was sort of trying to get a sound akin to the stereo mix of pet sounds, in terms of the drums particularly. if you check it out i'd be very grateful for some feedback!
http://ghostpal.bandcamp.com/track/wildebeest-song

as usual we tried not to rip off the beach boys too hard
but we're pretty happy with this one! for one thing the basic track (drums, bass, two guitars) we recorded live, giving it some urgency
secondly we got a whole bunch of new toys at mama coco's funky kitchen (compressors, pre-amps and things) and i believe you can hear them!
lastly in a very beatlesy trick the lead vocal for the majority of the song is varispeeded up about 15%..i sound like a teenaged gremlin
anyway here it is. thanks in advance for checking it out, and hope you enjoy it!
http://ghostpal.bandcamp.com/track/get-thee-gone

Wait so - if the original structure of "Heroes and Villains" (Humble Harv vintage) was to feature "barnyard" as the fade, has anyone examined the possiblity that the 'great shape' verse may have been used recurrently as a chorus?

Then you never really listened to 50s R'n'B, etc., did you ?

Did you?

Sorry, but while Wild Honey is very much indebted to R'n'B, it's not 50's R'n'B. There's not much here that references, say, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Lee Dorsey, etc. It's not even really an homage to people like Chuck Berry who is all over the early BB records. Instead, the R'n'B that informs Wild Honey, is 60s R'n'B, like Motown and Stax, hence the horns on Darlin', the cover of Stevie Wonder, etc.

And the fact is that late 60s psychedelia was informed by Motown and Stax, and by late 1967, wore those influences on its sleeve even more so. So, we have something like Whiter Shade of Pale, which is certainly inspired by When A Man Loves a Woman. Then you have Joplin basically doing soul songs. The Letter by the Box Tops was certainly one of the first that was actively sounding soul-inspired. But Wild Honey, in many ways, nicely informed the connections between soul and psychedelia that were to be even more heavily felt through 1968 and 1969 in songs like "Baby, Now That I Found You," "Midnight Confessions," "Judy in Disguise", stuff by Blood, Sweat, and Tears, etc.

Thumps up 

It always bothers me when people draw these delineations to argue that BW abandoned psychedelia after Smiley Smile, and that Wild Honey is not a psychedelic record
I would maintain that once BW's music cracked into that impressionistic dimension sometime in 65, it remained psychedelic for a long time; just in increasingly subtle and homespun ways.
lyrically? not always. but musically? hell yeah!

psychedelic aspects on wild honey, off the top of my head:

"Wild Honey" the overall sound of the track, the wailing theremins and distant organs, and the stop and start rhythm, it's a very trippy song
"Aren't You Glad" the distant and yet burning tone of the horns, the way the organ buzz piles up, the weird edits between the verses and choruses
"I Was Made to Love Her" again, the overall sound of this thing, that fat bass just locked in with the low piano, while the tambourine and organ (?) hold up the high end, granted these are subjective analyses but i hear something very psychedelic indeed
"Country Air" should be so obvious. the way bruce's high vocal melts into that rooster. that burning organ buzz again, this time threatening to envelop everything. the weird verses that are almost free-form, whistle scat vocals. this song feels like a more controlled 'smiley smile' experiment
"A Thing or Two" one of the trippest songs on the album! the bizarro structure, the way some lines just end really early leaving weird stray guitar notes hanging by themselves in the ether, and then the hard edits into those choruses! The sound of that chorus is one of the fattest ever, that organ just envelops you and the piano/bass syncopated line is just wild
"Darlin" probably the least psychedelic piece on the album and perhaps as a result has always been my least favorite. beautiful song though and that "every night" bridge is as lovely as anything he ever wrote, and again scratching at that heart-rending impressionistic vein he could do so well
"I'd Love Just Once to See You" the overall cathedral like ambience, oddly juxtaposed against such a mundane concept and lyric. the weird hard edit at the end that drops a beat. the sudden fade just as the song feels like its opening up. all very psychedelic touches.
"Here Comes the Night" the intensity with which the choruses ascend up and down the chords, also that thick organ again that just renders your brain to mush. the hypnotic repetition.
"Let the Wind Blow" should be so obvious i'm not even gonna waste my energy. the most psychedelic thing on here.
"How She Boogalooed It" is just a silly song but with a lot of great period details!
"Mama Says" is obviously very psychedelic.

To argue that "Wild Honey" is "JUST" an R&B album is reductionist and oversimplistic in my opinion. Yes, BW was clearly trying to bring the band back to that raw emotion, screaming vocals around a pounded piano thing. but there was no going back from what he had learned. and these impressionistic masterstrokes are all over the record

Well said!

"The Rolling Stone Record Review, published in 1971 by Pocket Books, features a review of WH, Friends, and Sunflower. I would also suggest Outlaw Blues by Paul Williams, published by E.P. Dutton in 1969 which features a complete chapter Called Brian-A Celebration of Wild Honey and the Tradgedy of Smile. It would be an interesting read for both of you. It helps to explain what was going on with Brians's head at the time and how WH was a complete turnaround for him in his writing. While you feel that there are "psychedelic" twinges in WH is perfectly acceptable, and I'm quite sure that we could find them in anything from that era if you tried hard enough. But, I will say that when it was released, it was not perceived by the record buying public as psychedelic by any stretch of the imagination-not even on weed.

Granted, I wasn't alive in the 1960s so I might be lacking on the context. But I feel like we are defining psychedelia in far too narrow terms, perhaps we are defining it as more political than we need to (from this vantage point, it's no longer really an "us" and "them" issue). I was a huge stoner and acidhead in my teens and I can say with confidence that Wild Honey is one of the great drug lps of all time

It always bothers me when people draw these delineations to argue that BW abandoned psychedelia after Smiley Smile, and that Wild Honey is not a psychedelic record
I would maintain that once BW's music cracked into that impressionistic dimension sometime in 65, it remained psychedelic for a long time; just in increasingly subtle and homespun ways.
lyrically? not always. but musically? hell yeah!

psychedelic aspects on wild honey, off the top of my head:

"Wild Honey" the overall sound of the track, the wailing theremins and distant organs, and the stop and start rhythm, it's a very trippy song
"Aren't You Glad" the distant and yet burning tone of the horns, the way the organ buzz piles up, the weird edits between the verses and choruses
"I Was Made to Love Her" again, the overall sound of this thing, that fat bass just locked in with the low piano, while the tambourine and organ (?) hold up the high end, granted these are subjective analyses but i hear something very psychedelic indeed
"Country Air" should be so obvious. the way bruce's high vocal melts into that rooster. that burning organ buzz again, this time threatening to envelop everything. the weird verses that are almost free-form, whistle scat vocals. this song feels like a more controlled 'smiley smile' experiment
"A Thing or Two" one of the trippest songs on the album! the bizarro structure, the way some lines just end really early leaving weird stray guitar notes hanging by themselves in the ether, and then the hard edits into those choruses! The sound of that chorus is one of the fattest ever, that organ just envelops you and the piano/bass syncopated line is just wild
"Darlin" probably the least psychedelic piece on the album and perhaps as a result has always been my least favorite. beautiful song though and that "every night" bridge is as lovely as anything he ever wrote, and again scratching at that heart-rending impressionistic vein he could do so well
"I'd Love Just Once to See You" the overall cathedral like ambience, oddly juxtaposed against such a mundane concept and lyric. the weird hard edit at the end that drops a beat. the sudden fade just as the song feels like its opening up. all very psychedelic touches.
"Here Comes the Night" the intensity with which the choruses ascend up and down the chords, also that thick organ again that just renders your brain to mush. the hypnotic repetition.
"Let the Wind Blow" should be so obvious i'm not even gonna waste my energy. the most psychedelic thing on here.
"How She Boogalooed It" is just a silly song but with a lot of great period details!
"Mama Says" is obviously very psychedelic.

To argue that "Wild Honey" is "JUST" an R&B album is reductionist and oversimplistic in my opinion. Yes, BW was clearly trying to bring the band back to that raw emotion, screaming vocals around a pounded piano thing. but there was no going back from what he had learned. and these impressionistic masterstrokes are all over the record

just wanted to post this because i think some here would like it
the band is called Sons of an Illustrious Father they make sprawling operatically intense post-punk folk-rock. they're damn good
this is their 2nd full length, i produced and engineered it and we recorded it in january in a freezing cold barn in vermont
hope you like it !
http://sonsofanillustriousfather.bandcamp.com/album/one-body

yep, the least popular Brian Wilson song of all time
but one of my favorites!
hope i did it some degree of justice, totally fudged the bridge but so did brian on the recording. worked in a little 'pied piper' there too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo4viCn1cbw
thanks fer watching

Bicycle Rider is in Gm, so no. The H&V version of the riff is in Eb, and we know that fits.

Child is in some hinterland key between F#, E, D, B, and A (Going by the sections we know and love) so no, and Wonderful is in C# to start but otherwise bears no relation to H&V. The only relation they bear with each other is arpeggiated chords, but the actual chords are a lot different so I think that's just a coincidence.

I usually just lurk here, so excuse my butt in, but this is just absurdly pedantic, no? He's talking about melodic and harmonic links (which do exist,) not the root key of each song.

i used to use adobe audition for years and it's a decent program but pro tools is much more flexible...plus the plugins sound better. definitely worth the investment!