I could google these questions. But what's the fun in that when I could just ask people on here.

I would also suggest that information gleaned here is likely to be more thorough and reliable than from other sources.

I stand to be corrected, but I think those are the rates per hour. Whole day Saturday for $140 in 1977 ?

I strongly suspect you're right, Andrew. That's one hell of a markup on 2" tape, though. The 1976 Ampex catalogue quotes $75 for a 2400ft (10.5") reel. The cost of quarter-inch, again assuming a 10.5" reel, is not much above list price, however.

The book "Making History" by Stephen Fry also covers this subject. (Warning: Spoiler alert.)

The protagonists succeed in ensuring that Hitler was never born, only to discover that the world as a result is a FAR worse place. Even without Hitler, Franz Ferdinand was still assassinated, the First World War still happened, and Germany still went bankrupt. In the absence of Hitler, a far more persuasive, elegant, and outwardly level-headed man became the leader of the Nazi Party (which was formed to try to fill the vacuum in Germany after the First World War), and remained in power until his death from natural causes in the mid-1960s.

The protagonists then have to try to reverse their earlier experiment, to ensure that Hitler was born after all, in order to make the world a better place. The moral, of course, is "be careful what you wish for."

Good LORD! 

The number of truly terrible BB pics is staggering!

Wasn't Al the clean-living one? He looks as though he's halfway through a year of bong hits on this one!

I don't normally do list threads, but I've been thinking about this one since the thread was opened. It's been more difficult than I thought: it was difficult to whittle some albums down to only three tracks ("Today"), whereas with others it was difficult to find three at all! Due to obsessively listening to the Beach Boys in my youth, I find the more, erm, popular material to be damned with overfamiliarity these days. For example, the only track from "Surfin' Safari" I'd really want to listen to is "Cuckoo Clock" (don't laugh), but by sticking to the rule of three tracks, I picked probably the two other most obvious tracks. I've also only just realised that there are only three tracks I ever listen to on "Friends"!

Here's my 2d'orth:

Surfin' Safari: Cuckoo Clock, Surfin', 409
Surfin' USA: Farmer's Daughter, Lana, Lonely Sea
Surfer Girl: Hawaii, Our Car Club, Your Summer Dream
Little Deuce Coupe [not counting duplicates from previous albums]: Ballad of Ole Betsy, Car Crazy Cutie, Custom Machine
Shut Down vol. 2: Fun, Fun, Fun, In The Parking Lot, Pom Pom Play Girl
All Summer Long: We'll Run Away, Drive-In, I Get Around
Today!: Please Let Me Wonder, In The Back Of My Mind, She Knows Me Too Well
Summer Days...: The Girl From New York City, California Girls, Summer Means New Love
Party: Hully Gully, Mountain of Love, Alley Oop
Pet Sounds: Don't Talk..., I'm Waiting For The Day, Pet Sounds
Smiley Smile: Vegetables, Fall Breaks and Back to Winter, Gettin' Hungry
Wild Honey: I'd Love Just Once To See You, Aren't You Glad, A Thing or Two
Friends: Meant For You, Be Here In The Mornin', Busy Doin' Nothin'
20/20: Be With me, All I Want To Do, Time To Get Alone
Sunflower: Slip on Through, This Whole World, It's About Time
Surf's Up: Long Promised Road, Disney Girls (1957), 'Til I Die

While I own the rest of the catalogue, years can pass before parts of it see a turntable or the inside of a CD player, so I'll stop here with one notable exception:
Love You: Good Time,  Johnny Carson, Let Us Go On This Way

No, but Crosby asked "What year did In My Room come out?" To which Nash replied "65?"
I am pretty sure it came out in 1963 here in the states. Maybe it came out in 65 over seas?

Unless "In My Room" was on an earlier UK single or EP, the "Surfer Girl" LP wasn't issued in the UK until 1967, if memory serves correctly. Mr. Doe?

EDIT: No need to bother Andrew directly. His website comes up with the full skinny:
"Fun, Fun, Fun" EP issued in the UK June 1964.
"Best Of The Beach Boys" LP issued in the UK November 1966.
"Surfer Girl" LP issued in the UK March 1967.

So "In My Room"'s first LP issue in the UK was on a hits compilation.

Are Carl's shades on the "Problem Child" video a homage to Roy Orbison, who had a hit with a song of the same name? Or did he just want to look like a prat?

This one is just... just...

It's just.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe0QjiXrspA&feature=related

Thanks, Andrew. You've just made tea come out of my nose. (And to think I was only drinking milk. Boom-tish. Aythangyew, I'm here all week, folks!)

US: Capitol 2765 = stereo
UK: Capitol CL 15640 = mono fold-down

Added to which, there is a Dutch issue which features the same reprocessed stereo version of the A-side as on the UK "Sunflower" album. Real stereo B-side, though. Not sure of the catalogue number as I don't have it any more. Sorry. From the design of its label, it may have been a reissue.

I don't own the recording in any format, but absinthe boy's screenshots lead me to wonder whether the European CD is HDCD encoded? HDCD, among one or two other tricks, boosts the output of the disc by 6dB (ie to twice the subjective volume.) When a HDCD disc is played back on a non-HDCD compatible CD player, the volume boost still happens but with crushed peaks (ie with an added layer of brickwall limiting.) iTunes, on the other hand, can accurately rip and decode HDCD, thus making Andrew's ripped copy sound better from his iPod than the original.

Of course, if Andrew has an HDCD player, all bets are off.

Also, it seems to be largely overlooked that one can hear some semblance of stereo with only one ear. Each ear is capable of decoding directional information on its own to some extent - this is the basis of Quad and other surround systems. I only found this out for myself when I suffered an inner ear infection which took much of my hearing in my left ear as a teenager. Thankfully, I got my full hearing back following an operation, but during my "deaf year" I could still easily detect from which speaker certain sounds came from, especially with wide, three-track style "trick" stereo recordings made in the 1960s.

I've got a Readers' Digest various artists box set which includes "Fun, Fun, Fun," the potted biog to which says that CARL drowned in 1983. It was issued years before Carl really died.

To follow up on this, I now have the set on vinyl and - having found a cheap copy secondhand - CD. The booklet notes in the vinyl box vary wildly from the CD set. Many of the booklet dates are inaccurate (ie Elvis died in 1979) - these have been corrected on the CD issue, but with some mistakes remaining.

Here's the anonymously-penned bio of The Beach Boys ("Fun, Fun, Fun" is in the box set, stereo mix.)

"The group was formed in Los Angeles during 1961 and originally comprised Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, Al Jardin [sic], Mike Love and David Marks. With their first national hit, "Surfin' USA," they made the public aware of surf music. By the end of the 60s the band was at a low ebb with several members having personal problems. David Marks left the band. However their appearance at the Monterey Festival in 1970 and their jam with Grateful Dead at Fillmore West in 1971 put them back in favour. Their line-up was augmented by Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin after drummer Dennis Wilson lost a hand in an accident. Again the band slumped badly until Brian Wilson got himself together and in 1976 the re-emergence of the Beach Boys as a force in popular music came about. The million-selling "Fun, Fun, Fun" comes from the period when Brian Wilson was going through a beach buggy and hot-rod phase. Carl Wilson, the only surfer in the group, was drowned in the early 80s."

The CD bio is identical, but with cuts to the text: Jardine's name is spelled correctly, Marks isn't mentioned at all and the shock story of Dennis's amputated hand is no longer there ("lost a hand" is, I suppose, true to an extent as he couldn't use it, but the phraseology sounds like something from a bad online translation.) They still maintain that it was Carl that drowned.

The box set, for anybody interested, is a Readers' Digest various-artists set called "The Heart & Soul of Rock 'n' Roll." I've no idea when it was issued: post-1983, obviously, but before Ricky Nelson died at the end of 1985 (he's referred to as a popular live act on the vinyl booklet.) The CD presumably came out much later, has slightly modified artwork, and some attempt has been made at correcting some of the more obvious gaffs in the text, as well as removing some other information probably for space reasons.

During the making of the 1985 video biog, the producers had to lay hands on 2-, 3-, 4- and 8-track consoles to playback/copy the session tapes so, really, could have been any one of quite a few people, some not actually employed by the production company.

They'd have only really needed one console - providing the wiring is in place, a 3-track tape can just as easily be played through, say, a 42-input desk as through a three-way mixer.

Certain Ampex and Studer tape machines had interchangeable heads, circuit boards and (in a rare case) tape paths. With the correct hardware and somebody suitably trained to line the machine up post-modification, it is possible to play a 1" 8-track tape on the same transport (machine) as a half-inch, 3-track tape. It's possible it was all done through one or two playback machines. I find it most interesting that the series stopped before the switch to two-inch, 16-track (and more) tape. That may have had something to do with the 2" tapes being inaccessible to the bootleggers, mind.

I love your work, Andrew, but hate to leave somebody so knowledgable under a technical misapprehension.

I would bet that the "windfall" that Best received, and the check that he holds up (13 million? really?) are for, exactly as Howie stated, the one-time cash payout for Anthology. Although how that payment was set up, paid out, whatever, might have been left to lawyers who describe it in legal terms that relate to "royalties".

I've just put Pete Best's name into the PRS (Performing Rights Society) database, which is used to calculate payments for the use of recorded music originated in the UK. He is listed as "performer" for the Decca and EMI audition tracks on "Anthology 1." This usually implies that he still gets royalties as a performer based on sales and radio airplay (albeit a dwindling amount with each year that passes. The EMI tracks may even be based on the royalty rate in the original 1962 contract - a farthing per record sold to be split five ways.) He is not listed as an individual performer on the Polydor tracks, in the same way that - say - Johnny Scott is not listed for his flute contribution to "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away," as that was subject to a one-off fee.

What Best has in common with Scott is that he has no right of veto or editorial judgement as to how the Beatles recordings in which he participated are used. As essentially as "session musician with added privileges" I imagine his much-publicised pay-off was a combination of royalties from "Anthology 1" and a further fee to prevent him objecting to the exploitation of these recordings at any time in the future.

Anyway, he's there. If he wasn't getting residuals from the recordings, it would be very unusual for him to be listed without there being a specific note about it.

Hope this helps.

If I can take this to an extreme to make the point, you don't compare a friend with a mustache to Adolf Hitler without expecting the mustachioed friend to get upset. "I'm just talking facial hair!" won't cut it.

Bingo! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law>

How many Beatles songs does Pete Best still get royalty payments for ? (The Sheridan/Beat Brothers tracks don't count, before anyone says anything).

The Polydor tracks wouldn't count anyway. The Beatles were paid session fees and a buyout fee of any royalty payments.

If there's any comparison to be made, Pete Best was better looking than the rest of the Beatles, and David Marks was worse looking than the rest of the Beach Boys.

Not so sure about that. A few years ago my wife, looking at the sleeve of "Surfer Girl," singled out Marks. She asked me who he was and why she didn't recognise him from their other album sleeves. I explained that he'd left shortly after recording that album. She then asked me whether he'd been fired out of jealousy as she said he was clearly "the cute one."

I actually wonder how any given Beach Boys song would've sounded with The Funk Brothers playing rather than The Wrecking Crew.

"You're So Good To Me" would have turned out much better, IMO. (Yes, I know it was the Beach Boys themselves on that one.)

Any Beach Boys song recorded at Motown would have sounded distorted, that much I can guess. 

Happened to find this old postcard online while looking for something completely different....the card has Brian drowning instead of Dennis, they worded it drawned....take a look see.

http://www.cardcow.com/150038/the-beach-boys-ronald-reagan-presidents-ronald-reagan/

I've got a Readers' Digest various artists box set which includes "Fun, Fun, Fun," the potted biog to which says that CARL drowned in 1983. It was issued years before Carl really died.

They all (not) in my loft, being eaten by mice.

Surely they're (not) being eaten by mice!

"Pom Pom Play Girl" - all official sources say it's Carl on lead, but while he's definitely there, I'm convinced that Brian is doubling his part in unison.

I used to hate the background talking on many of the 1960s titles (did those guys ever shut up?) However, I'm now so used to hearing it as part of the recording, I feel as though any modern-day stereo remixes are incomplete without it! (The obvious example, of course, is "Here Today," but there's extraneous chatter on lots of their output.)

On the subject of "Pet Sounds," it took me years to realise that the ghostly presence on the instrumental end of "I Know There's An Answer" was in fact Brian's guide vocal going through the echo chamber pre-fader. Again, an irritant at the time, yet the stereo remix sounds slightly wrong to me as it doesn't have it!

"Make it Big" from Still Cruisin'

And I've a soft spot for "Heads You Win, Tails I Lose" and "Cuckoo Clock" from Surfin' Safari.

So, if this newly found master was used for the original LP, some of the tracks, (and conceivably even all of them) were further individually EQ'd before making the original pressings.

Most likely the EQ was applied during the original cut, the cutting engineer having decided what changes needed to be made while rehearsing the cut.

And er yeh, there was a lot of Pet Sounds material on there, and I think, in my personal opinion which is what this is, that Don't Talk shoulda been amongst said material.

The only criticism of the box I saw in the UK music papers at the time (certainly in "Record Collector" and "Melody Maker" who both carried extensive reviews) was that this set would largely be bought by the kind of hardcore fans who already owned "Pet Sounds" at least once, and were therefore expected to buy a large percentage of it again.

I always wondered what went wrong with "Long Promised Road." The beginning is missing, if memory serves correctly.

I am intrigued because what you describe isn't the first mastering mystery about Pet Sounds.  Someone else swore they had what was supposed to be a UK mono LP but that press run was done from a folded-down-to-mono Duophonic tape, so it had both phase cancellation AND bad Elvis echo.

Sometimes what happens is, if the LP is cut with a stereo lathe, and the engineer is sloppy, litle dips in volume in one channel occur for a second or two. Two famous examples: the original US pressing of Cream's Disraeli Gears - on "Deserted Cities of the Heart". Another was the original US run of the White Album, on "Cry Baby Cry."

At least one of the early masters used for the UK "Pet Sounds" is a fold-down of the Duophonic. I had it for years until long after the first CD version came out. It was a first pressing as it had the old Capitol label (similar to the late-1950s US-style) which had been replaced by a later variant in the UK by the time "Smiley Smile" came out. The UK 45s of the "Pet Sounds" tracks were definitely cut in mono from Duophonic tapes, with dynamic compression to make them even nicer sounding. 

However, there is a UK "Pet Sounds" with the slightly later 1960s label which used the genuine mono tape. A friend had it - I taped his copy as an upgrade to mine, when the only commercially available alternative was to buy a Duophonic reissue.

The "Cry, Baby, Cry" issue is simply a momentary drop-out ("head clog") experienced when one of Capitol's stereo stampers was being cut. Again, heavily recompressed. I had a foreign stereo copy of "With The Beatles" whose right channel suffered a similar head-clog from halfway through "Til There Was You" right through to the end of side 1.

It was standard practice for several years for US Capitol to supply UK EMI with stereo material on tape, and mono material on stampers. When those stampers got worn through over-use, EMI often simply substituted the stereo tape to make a new folded-down mono stamper. (There are examples of Sinatra LPs peppered throughout the 1960s like this. The folded-down Duophonic "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" is a particular sonic joy.) That said, however, I believe this practice had ceased by 1965, so it's anybody's guess why "Pet Sounds" suffered in this way.

I'm assuming it's the same photo used for the cover of Hawthorne Blvd?

If it is, the thing that struck me about it the first time I saw that CD is how everybody's heads are at the same point across a straight line. Even Al Jardine, supposedly a good ten feet or so further from the camera than Mike Love, has his head at the same height. Which, on that scale, would make him about 9ft tall!