thanks Krabklaw - most kind

we had a lovely evening in Paisley - lots of folks who hadn't managed to see the movie and who were blown away by it. and then we all sang Surfer Girl and Do It Again. good for the soul.

Hello Smiley Smilers

Love & Mercy is being screened tomorrow evening (13th October) as part of the Renfrewshire Mental Health Arts & Film Festival. I'll be joined for a Q&A after the screening by Duglas Stewart where we'll talk about the movie and our Caroline Now! project of some years ago. Not sure if there are many Scottish SSers around here but you never know!
http://www.renfrewshireleisure.com/love-and-mercy-pg/

That bit Brian plays of Murry's "His Little Darling And You" sounds a lot like Brian's own "Just Like Me And You".

you're right Cristian! the melody is identical  

Some additional insight:  http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,22663.0.html

thanks for that thread link GoodVibrations33. I actually remember seeing that now! Whatever the germ of its genesis Just Like Me and You is an outstanding late period BW quirky gem. Shades of Love You, Being With The One You Love and bits of the Sweet Insanity music. Those TLOS extras are fabulous.

Edit:  Great documentary by the way!

Great thread, thanks for bringing it up

Another thing about the documentary, at one point Bruce mentions that "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" features all six Beach Boys singing. I'd always thought it was just Brian doing all the parts, so that's interesting.

you're right Cristian! the melody is identical 

Apologies if this has been posted already 

New BBC2 doc on Pet Sounds. Some fabulous BW moments, lovely appearances from all surviving BBs, Tony Asher and other important players. Thankfully the music is centre stage…

Sorry to those who can't view outside the UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07ljcxf/classic-albums-the-beach-boys-pet-sounds

Apologies if this has been posted before...lovely / chilling anecdote in Feb 14 issue of MOJO. Jimmy Webb recalls BW attending his 30th birthday party for 5 minutes, dressed in a bathrobe and telling Jimmy (who was on the Bolivian Marching Powder with 'Ringo and Kinky') "You know, Jim, you have dark wings around you"...

Thanks Rocker!

Alex- yes it was me who recorded Go Away Boy. I told a story about Alex's reaction to that one on another thread 

Alex absolutely loved Love You. When he recorded I Wanna Pick You Up for Caroline Now! he insisted on transcribing all of those synth lines in the third verse for 12 String electric which he played beautifully on my Baldwin. His chording throughout is gorgeously jazzy and sweet. Standing round one mic with Alex, Francis MacDonald and Duglas was a big highlight of music for me, that's for sure. What a talent.

What kind of processing is used on the lead vocal?  In fact, all the vocals sound processed.  Maybe that's why, because it's more of a record production and perhaps he doesn't think it would work as a live song.  It's also really slow.  Mike likes the up tempo numbers for himself.

I think the vocal effect is a Dolby Stretch - where you record with the Dolby noise reduction encoding ON then play back with the encoding OFF - you get this kind of hyper-bright compression which is pretty extreme and kind of beautiful. I've sometimes used a similar effect with tascam noise reduction too. Sounds spooky and cool...

good wishes to Alan from Scotland...

Love And Mercy...just like in All You Need Is Love the 'you' is 'him' 

He's beautiful.

LOL, music journalists.

Also, why are tributes to BW always done by insipid, young, fleeting hipster bands that are painfully dull and have no MUSICAL relation to BW, but only an empty stylistic "similarity"?

Monicker - I guess these insipid, young, fleeting hipster bands might love Brian Wilson and want to pay tribute to him, that's why! Or somebody asks them and they think 'that sounds like fun'. Or somebody else (usually a music journalist) decides they sound 'like the Beach Boys' (one of the first things they teach budding music journailsts in music journalist college is 'if in doubt say it sounds like The Beach Boys'). And of course you don't have to have any musical relation to BW to record his songs...

Some of those bands - whether you love them or their versions of BW or not - do have big constituencies (particularly Bon Iver) and will certainly pique even more interest in BW. Unbelievable to us here but not ALL the world shares our madness, even in the face of what we see as an epoch making release. And in the world of BW the community of fans and the community of musicians are possibly more closely linked than in other cases - look at the BW band - full of fans who ended up making a major contribution to the story of a great artist. So give poor wee Grizzly Bear and his cousin Panda Bear a break. And while you're at it make Bon Iver a cup of tea and tell him about The Beach Boys Love You.

As a fan of BW and an artist who wants to make beautiful things for the world I am thrilled as all get out to be a part of THIS cd at THIS time.

And also kind of up for being lumped in with the hipsters 

I wonder if the difference is that BW is just not that interested in being a musician per se. Sure he can play a bit when he needs to / feels like it but why would you bother honing technical playing skills when you can hear that in your head and get those guys to help play it / realise it so beautifully for you. There are plenty great artist writers who don't really cut it as musicians and some amazing musicians who couldn't conceive of a plate of scrambled eggs on toast without a score to tell them how and when. Even if there is a decline in the playing the artistic modus operandi seems fairly unchanged to me.
And there's a difference between needing Autocue and wanting Autocue isn't there? When BW started touring I heard from reliable source that he tended to make less mistakes when the screen failed. In one of my lines (broadcasting) they talk about pre-record vs live and the analogy of the tightrope walker - if there's a safety net you tend to fall...
As for him getting older - well, no way to dispute that.  

that's a fun and daft track. hope it's all as quirky as this...

the first few minutes remind me a lot of the music of Louis Hardin AKA Moondog, another great American eccentric.

Grillo - I feel your pain if you've been disappointed with the many works of BW since the magnificent 88 album but I have to say I think you over-egg the pudding just a wee bit. BW was certainly more than supposedly involved in the writing of TLOS - a quick listen to that album and the associated extras (message man) etc will tell you that surely. no way to fake that signature style. thousands have tried. including me.

I love the song Black Widow. I like the fact that it's kind of daft but turns into something somewhat more intense - a classic BW shape shifter.

and it doesn't mean reduced! it means 'brought back'.
don't use words you don't understand, david.
 

yes, i was trying to be fancy nancy film director there. redux means reduced, I think. hope it's been reduced to the correct degree!

Hi

French Rock behemoth Les Inrockuptibles have a special edition of the magazine coming out dedicated to the BB's. They're including a redux edition of my Caroline Now! project (free). Not quite sure where you can get it (France certainly!) but it might be a nice souvenir. Plus if you speak French you can have fun spotting everything they get wrong.

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peter - thanks for posting this lovely piece. beautiful to read BW being...BW

No arguments at all from me about the quality of the singing, but my recollection/records of the event does/do not include any elements from AIWD.   The infamous TM medley to which David refers was constructed as follows:

TM (the Charles Lloyd piece)
All This Is That
Friends (bridge and final verse)
TM Song (from 15 Big Ones, sans argument on the lawn)
He Come Down
Back In the USSR (bridge) - don't ask why!
Friends (tag only)

It was indeed totally unrehearsed.  And I doubt it will ever be repeated.  It was just one of those glorious fleeting moments of ultra-fanboy fetishism made manifest.

i remember now - for those who don't know what we're talking about here this was a wonderful event at ST Brides Church (I think) in Edinburgh a few years back run by Beach Boys Britain. That TM Medley was a really great idea - Francis Greene, Daniel McGeever, Sean MacReavy, mebbe Laurence on guitar and I can't remember who else. You guys should record that and put it out online or summat - who else is interpreting BW/BB music in that way? I also seem to remember Val from BBB and AGD singing Had To Phone Ya. What a brilliant song and a nice fun rendition too.

guid = good, pronounced 'gid'
chanter = singer, as in 'he makes a pleasant sound while chanting tunefully', pronounced, 'chanturr'

and yes, a Scottish thing 

he's a guid chanter that laddie.

i think there's a Dolby Stretch going on in AIWD - where you record with the Dolby noise encoding ON then take it OFF for playback / mixdown. Sounds like an exaggerated compression ie very cool.  AGD, didn't Sean MacReavy sing All I Wanna Do at that gig in Edinburgh a few years back (where we also did All This Is That with no rehearsal)?