I have Sunshine Tomorrow for more than two months now. Time for an evaluation.

1. It is a labour of love, and it is so much more than the umpteenth reworking of a minor classic

Cheers to all involved!

Indeed to all of the above. Musically it was always a fun album, but the remix has improved the sound quality so much that it actually enhances the music, which is a feat.
Without meaning to cause offense, you have to wonder how the original sounded so bad in comparison, when the recordings are of such high fidelity...
But massive kudos to Mr. Linett for giving us a mix that sounds both warm and modern.

Now if Bruce were covering Babe I'm Gonna Leave you........

Ha! I think Bruce doing any Led Zeppelin song would be a treat. "Going to California" could actually be really cool, and it still has that yelling section.

Smile4ever - I had the exact thought listening to some of Dennis' music within the last week. Brian and Dennis are very different songwriters. Brian is unparalleled in pop music in his use of chords. Dennis is much more utilitarian in that area, his focus is on building emotion through the arrangement.

When you say that "Brian's music keeps moving in interesting and fascinating ways ways, Dennis has songs don't", I believe what you're saying is that Brian's songs change more structurally, particularly through key changes, which are a rare feature in the work of Dennis. Dennis' music does, though, feature extensive change in arrangement/instrumentation/feel between sections.

[In fact, Love says he prefers the idea of re-recording the group's old favorites now. "Recreating a Beach Boys classic like 'Do It Again' is something I really enjoyed doing," he explains, "so I'm hoping there's more of that to come."]

Can folks imagine how the Kokomaoists would react if Brian said this?

In fact, Love says he prefers the idea of re-recording the group's old favorites now. "Recreating a Beach Boys classic like 'Do It Again' is something I really enjoyed doing," he explains, "so I'm hoping there's more of that to come."

I've only read up to here so far, so I don't know if this topic was addressed later in the thread. I assume not, based on the tenor of this forum lately.

I would like to say that this post is complete trash. I am an absolute Brian Wilson fanboy. But the tone on this forum has swung so far to one side that it seems like a parody.

Given that Brian has had several Beach Boys covers on his solo albums, I don't think anyone in their right mind can take umbrage with Mike's statement above.

Since I've already made an ass of myself, let me add that I feel this attitude is rooted in the reaction to No Pier Pressure, which has somehow become the Fountainhead of the over-exaltation of my main man.

Upon hearing that the new BB album was out, walking to the local record shop full of unbridled anticipation. Could absolutely not wait to hear what was going to follow PS due to hearing "H&V" on the AM radio and bits of chatter here and there about how great it was supposed to be. Walking quickly home, I opened it up and put it on my JC Penny stereo, and had the most incredible WTF BB listening session in my life only to be followed very closely behind my Love You first listening session.

That must've been strange. At the time, did it reflect your opinion of their previous work?

The closest thing I can compare it to is being a big fan of the band Weezer. They released 2 creative, sensitive, rocking albums in 1994 and 1996. Their next album didn't come until 2001, and was much more commercially-focused. It felt like a punch in the stomach.  So I can see how Smiley would have been an off-putting experience at the time.

Very odd, I just had a dream that Brian and Al released an uptempo rock remake of "He Gives Speeches".

I can actually hear this in my head. With obligatory "do it"'s shouted not just at key junctures, but at seemingly any random moment.

Tarantino's basically the most competent tabloid-style director in the game. He will toss any and all historical authenticity out of the window in the service of film homage. So I wouldn't put it past him to make this some sort of spaghetti-western kung fu epic that just happens to star the Manson family.

If you're remotely familiar with Tarantino, this is more likely than anything involving reality.

Blondie's a great guy, not out to please but to kick ass and terrorize bourgeoisie!

Jukka, that's a wonderful phrase.

I saw the soundcheck for one of the shows a month or so ago, and Blondie was incredible. He sang both Long Promised Road and Feel Flows, and the performances were sensitive and beautiful. So glad I got to witness that.

When they performed the actual show Blondie went a bit too crazy for me personally, but I fully stand behind Jukka's assessment.

Really interesting. Dennis probably won't be mentioned at all.

Or he'll be a main character.

Or something in between.

It really could be anything though. There's no guarantee that Dennis or the band will have anything to do with it.

Great analysis Rick.

The one point that's in contention for me is Mike. I'm seeing his pose as supervisory; he's making sure things are going to plan, and is satisfied with Dennis' work. Perhaps he even sees a bit of himself in the kid?

Ozzie Osbourne on drums!  

LET'S DO IT A-F******-GAIIIIIIIIIN!

Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day

"What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted" Jimmy Ruffin

Another is the Zombies' "A Rose for Emily" from their incredible Odessey and Oracle album.

These all get my sad stamp of approval.
I would also add "A Butcher's Tale" from the same Zombies album. That one hits me pretty hard.

It sounds wonderful.

Although Mark could've used a few more limiters to match the Sgt Pepper's remix.
 

My unfiltered 1st thought (that's what the Internet's for, right?): someone "stumbling our way back to the hotel" sounds more like a Mike fan than Brian to me. Maybe you were in your element?

drugs or fasting?

drugs = fasting

As for other BB projects, I have a lot of mixes already done for a Love: Redux album. I have some ideas for how to assemble it all. Sadly it's just going to take a lot of time getting it all together. I want to add at least 10 minutes to the album and hopefully I can have it done within the next half year (really hopefully sooner).

Thanks for your reply, and I really hope you get a chance to finish up your Pet Sounds mashup - can you tell me more about it? (I promise not to steal any ideas!) - I totally understand if you'd rather not though.

That sounds great. I've gotten caught up in starting but not finishing songs, and you really need a plan, which it sounds like you have.

The mashup thing isn't a big deal, it's just an 8-bit rendition with a few twists. The main issue being that the rest of the work is more on the technical and tidying up side; the fun musical side is all done, so it's not terribly compelling at the moment!

Great thread.

The one singularly strongest moment for me might be the end of "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" where it does the round of repeating the title lyrics, and on the third time through it adds a downward chromatic chord progression not featured anywhere else in the song. It feels melancholic, but a little bit triumphant too- you can wallow in it but feel that better things are coming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR7_TbMIVnA#t=02m40s

But I'll add, after linking it above, that it doesn't sound as good in isolation. As I'm sure with most of the moments here, it's the build and anticipation that makes them so strong. Or, with intros, it's what they're setting you up for. Tension and release!

One of the best covers I've ever heard in terms of reinterpreting the feel without being too dissimilar to the original. Thanks for posting.

Hey there rab. Regarding the pitch/time shifting, that's interesting since, though I was last listening to your project just before bed so wasn't in the most technical of minds, I didn't notice the artifacts too much. No doubt the use of lossy audio sources would have contributed to it. And of course we're our own worst critics, but I thought it was more than well-enough done within the scope of a "non-professional" project, if you get what I mean without being an insult in any way!

I've heard a lot of great stuff about Logic, but I'm on PC so can't use it. Ableton Live is a great program, really intuitive in a lot of ways, probably similar to Logic (and Apple in general) in that way. Live gets a lot of use in, if you can believe it, live situations by bands, DJs, etc. Largely because time and pitch shifting can be done very easily and quickly, but it also has a lot of options and tweakability; I haven't explored the options, but there might even be plugins that can do the job better. if that's a concern for you I'm a bit behind the times myself, and I've heard about other DAWs taking overtaking Live in terms of newer features. It's so painful switching to a new program, and though Live still gets the job done, I fear the time may be coming for a switch! From what I know though Logic is great like I said, and you'd probably only want to look towards Live for a performance situation.

Are you working on any other BB (or other) related projects? Anyone else reading too, would love to hear about BB music projects in process. I have something of a Pet Sounds mashup type thing that's been ongoing for several years; unfortunately will take a lot of rework since I actually started it using a different DAW (Sonar) and a bunch of outdated synth plugins.

Spurred on by the recent posts, I re-listened to this last night. Can't believe I never posted anything before, but this is so well done. Technically, creatively, scope; every aspect is appealing. Even within the few mashup melodies that don't work on every note- when those melodies DO work for the majority of the time, they are so appealing that the blemishes become a sign of humanity, and not so dissimilar from perhaps a stray cough left in the final mix of a song.

rab, following from the other thread- I'm not familiar with Logic, and Ableton user primarily myself. Did you just use stock pitch/time shifting in Logic? Any special tweaks? I suppose the biggest factor is always keeping adjustments as minimal as possible, but your work sounds pretty clean and natural.

Streaming is where the music industry is heading, and the Wondermints albums are sadly not available on Spotify (I'm not sure about other platforms though). This adds further to the rarity/mystique of the music, though I wish it wasn't so and I could stream them, and Jon Brion's Meaningless, and more of Jason Falkner's stuff, and Umajets, and a bunch of other 90s-00s power pop albums that are strangely not available to stream as of yet.

Yeah, but Carl specifically said "...he'd decide what rhythms and syllables to use in the background...it can change the whole rhythm, the whole color and tone of it." (italics added by me) Rhythm implies music, syllables implies words. And if the whole rhythm, color and tone of a song was changed, I'd tend to think this was a fairly significant contribution to the arrangement...limited, I'm sure, to the bass vocal arrangement, but essential nonetheless.

Very true, I missed that point, which does turn it into an arrangement idea. Again it's hard to speculate without examples, but I suppose that's what we're discussing.

Guitarfool brought up the point about how such contributions are often uncredited historically- is that fair though? Even when it comes to professional arrangers, I believe they're paid on a work-for-hire basis. It's too late to turn back time, but theoretically why couldn't Mike (or anyone) receive, say, 0.5% of a song's royalties due to contributing the rhythm of an intro bass riff? But then you get into the discussion/argument about how much each contribution is worth, which is obviously completely subjective; and in itself having the discussion can impinge on the creative process, if not outright destroy songwriting partnerships at the extreme end of the scale.

Some bands have gotten around this arrangement-attribution issue by crediting the entire band as songwriters. I don't have much real knowledge about specific breakdowns, i.e. it certainly wouldn't have been split equally between all contributors in every such case, but surely that has been done in some instances, even where a certain band member didn't contribute anything of note to a specific song. The obvious example would be Lennon/McCartney.

But it would be interesting if things had been done differently in the business, and you had credits like (completely fabricated as an example):
I Get Around - B. Wilson/M. Love, arr. B. Wilson/M. Love/C. Wilson/G. Campbell/H. Blaine

I feel icky commenting here...but can totally sympathize with you c-man. There are 2 ways of looking at it:

1) It's the internet (Internet?), any asshole can post anything, don't take it personally
2) Can't we have a decent discussion as adults?

I tend to feel more alliance with #2.
I may agree with OSD et al. more than I did with some of the exiled posters, but that doesn't mean he isn't sh*t posting too.

And to at least briefly touch on the actual topic of this thread, it's hard to expound upon this without having further details. "Arranging" can be a fairly fluid term- was Carl implying that Mike actually came up with "riffs," or just syllables to sing to already existing melodies? Probably a combination of both, but given his relative lack of original material would probably trend towards the lyric rather than than the musical side. Which is an important distinction because, for me, lyrics (particularly when authored by someone other than than musical composer) are a distinct element from the music; the music is the artistic focal point, and the lyrics can either enhance or diminish the music, but rarely define it. And which is why Dennis and Carl are lauded for there relative MUSICAL achievements, while Mike's contributions seem to be largely LYRICAL, which is a notably lesser achievement in my eyes. And so what? If anyone insulted Ringo for merely being a great drummer I would laugh.

She's been known to make claims that are provably false. She takes severe umbrage those who question this. I know some people that post here have personally been the target of her ire at times.

But she's one of the best damn rock and roll bassists in history. I don't know her personally, and I think she's perhaps treated a bit harshly compared to her actions, so all I can judge her on is her playing. And she nails the parts and has such a great sound. Speaking technically, I don't feel a lot of swing in her playing- but I think this worked perfectly with Brian's music, and in a small way her rhythmic precision is a part of their early-mid career sound.

I wouldn't be surprised if Al used a clean boost.

j/k

They never really seemed to be into manipulating the guitar tone. I'm sure Ed Carter used some things, but the guys themselves seemed to just go straight into the amp more often than not.