She readily admits she doesn’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of their history and discography. The Michelle Phillips episodes (covering the Mamas & Papas) worked so well because it was Michelle and that group’s major historian/expert jogging her memory.

Her lack of knowledge about the band was the least of my complaints about that interview.

Check Billy's post.

So not really released. I read that comment as there was some kind of official release. I mean, whatever. An mp3 is an mp3.

Just look a few posts up.

The leak? Or the deezer link? Because nothing's at the Deezer link.

These recordings were not leaked. They were officially released, albeit in a minuscule and temporary way.

Where?

Just the same with the Carnie interview, I wish I had never heard this. My impression of Dave before was realistic, but positive. This was the most depressing and repulsive Beach Boys related interview I've ever heard.

That said...

While I was annoyed at the host's endless self promotion, I was intrigued with his handling of Dave. I'm glad he defended himself and threw it right back. He's a decent interviewer. (You just feel like you need to shower when it's done.)

I need to stop listening to this guy's interviews. I suppose on one end, you see who these people really are. Truth is always best, of course, but she's just grating here, and I've never heard so much unartful and unnecessary cursing. The host seemed to know more about the band and the music than she did. No offense to those of you who have known, loved, respected Carnie forever. I liked Wilson Phillips. I call them as I see them.

I picked that up watching the Greek show on YT this week. Mike was often rusty on one off shows or at the start of the summer, but for an end of a summer tour I was quite shocked. If that is the quality going forward I hope those around him have a talk about retiring.

I saw the band in Sherman, TX last month and Mike sounded pretty much exactly how he sounded when I saw them in 2012 and 2014.

Aw, that's kind. It's a long shot, but I'd love the opportunity to help Al finish the unfinished songs he mentioned, not as an "AI guy", but as a producer/co-writer.

Might be the first step in the door. Take 'Wish', polish it off and hand it back to Al's people. Perhaps the production aspect is one of his roadblocks.

This is going to piss at least one of you off, but I bet Dae Lims could take this track and make it sound like a million bucks. (At the very least clean up the noise gate effect.)

I continue to be amazed at how small that studio is.

I listened to the livestream last night and really enjoyed your cover! One of my favorite Dennis songs, and one of my favorite Carl vocals. It was my song for our son when he was tiny (he's got bright, baby blue eyes). Greg does a great Carl and Bobby's vocals were angelic. Please keep doing these!

A few years ago I discovered a show on Surf 97.3 FM in Flagler Beach, FL called "Wilson Beach Radio," which featured music of The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson and friends. It included some deep tracks and a thoughtful curation of Beach Boys adjacent groups like Jan & Dean and various cover versions of Beach Boys songs.

It was an incredible show that was neat to listen to on a pocket radio on the beach. Thankfully the station also streams, but I believe the show itself is defunct and the station runs archives. I live in Utah and don't stream much from websites, so I can't say definitively. Anyway, in the spirit of that show, I'm creating a playlist for Beach Boys adjacent and cover tracks and am looking for some input. So far the playlist features the following artists:

-Explorers Club
-Wyatt Funderburk
-Wondermints (crappy YouTube rips because I won't pay $75 for an import CD)
-Blondie solo stuff
-Jeff Beck/Johnny Depp covers
-Jeff Foskett solo stuff
-Splitsville
-Jeff Larson
-Adam Marsland

But I need more! What else should I add?

A great mix and another good example of using AI well. Personally, I think this mix is a dramatic improvement on the official stereo mixes released so far. Past stereo attempts of GV have remained quite muddy and have limited separation (all for very obvious reasons), but this is both clearer and has better width and separation throughout - great work Dae Lims!

Yeah, it might be just because I'm limited to YouTube output, but I can't really tell a difference.

From Dae Lims, a superb Good Vibrations AI stereo remix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW83O-xC8bQ

Aside from the stereo, can somebody bullet point the tweaks in this? I can't tell the difference between this and the 26 other releases of this track.

One thing I like about Dae Lims work is that there is such a human presence to it. He isn't typing a prompt into ChatGPT asking for a song to be created out of thin air, he is meticulously working at these tracks, and it shows. His work is one of the few things I actually like from this new wave of modern AI tech.

Exactly. There's some other cat out there dabbling in this with Beach Boys music and I couldn't get 30 seconds into the first track. When it comes to most things AI-- from writing to art-- I'm solidly in HeyJude's camp. It's Dae Lims' love for, and deep grasp of, the music and the band AND his musical abilities that make his stuff worthwhile to me.

I dunno, but maybe it would be "Why? Didn't I finish the album in 2004, and didn't we also put out a Beach Boys version several years later?"

I'll have more to write when I get to my previously-mentioned thoughts on my recent re-listen to a bunch of that AI vocal stuff, but I will say that the stuff works much more as a "squint and imagine" exercise as opposed to a crystal clear, full-blown, high-fidelity detailed listening session.

I think Brian would be able to tell these things don't sound like him (or Carl, or Mike, etc.), and the question would be more whether he would be a nice, polite guy and say "Interesting, cool, thanks for your enthusiasm" or "Wow, that kind of sounds somewhat like us", or just blurt out that it doesn't sound like the Beach Boys individually or collectively.

I regret using Smile as an example in my question because both responses to it so far have focused more on my use of Smile as an example (it happened to have been the latest Dae Lims thing I listened to) than the actual question I'm asking. Let's forget I used that example. And I won't provide another one because that will get parsed to hell too.

Had AI been around in the 60s, might Brian have considered using it?

Ok, I'll ask another question: If Brian was to listen to something Dae Lims made-- say his AI SMiLe-- what might his reaction be?

I’m dumbfounded that the simple act of someone enjoying a piece of music is so unsettling to you that you need to write a 15 paragraph post in an attempt to “advocate” that these people need to listen to certain type of music. You claim that people who listen to AI are wasting their time, but yet all I see here are people who are just simply enjoying what they are listening to (so to them it’s not a waste of time). It’s just kinda weird that you’re attempting to “encourage” & “advocate” that people enjoy a certain type of music. Also kinda weird that you’re dictating what is and isn’t a waste of people’s time.

His disdain-- not just for "fake" music, but for those of us that don't share his opinion on this matter-- is palpable.

[already]

It needs to be said: this is getting tiresome from both sides. There is no resolving such different perspectives. No one is going to "win" here.

I seriously doubt that more than 5% of those who listen to AI-generated tunes become so enamored of them that they prefer them to the originals. That argument is such a pathetic strawman that I'm shocked it came from someone who is ordinarily one of the most intelligent posters here.

If a few folk go over the edge in that way, it's because some portion of the population will do so with anything. (Hell, a lot higher percentage of the US population has gone over the edge with respect to far more pressing issues, and possibly we should be focusing on that danger as opposed to the "specter of AI" ruining our lives.)

I absolutely love what Dae Lims has been doing. Do I think it replaces or supplants the original recordings? Of course not. I'm a fan of Dae Lims in the sense that GF alluded to--admiring the work of a man with significant talent, sensitivity and expertise who is paying his form of tribute to a band that he loves just as much as any of us. That tribute should be seen as a sincere effort to replicate a sound that no other group of individuals can recreate for us--it is not coming to us from some cabal of "pod people" gestating in someone's basement, but from someone who's carefully studied the band for some time, and who's making a sincere effort to respect the underlying aesthetics at work.

Do I think that he's achieving 100% success? Of course not--but, then again, neither did the band. Do I prefer some of Dae Lims work to some portion of the band's actual output? I can't say for sure at this point, because I've had half a century to make up my mind about the relative quality of the band's music. But I seriously doubt that Dae Lims has any illusions about his work somehow supplanting the band's recorded legacy. Enough with the spookifying already! Do I like Dae Lim's "Our Happy Home" more than, say, "Cuckoo Clock"? Absolutely--even as a "fake," it's better sung, and it's an intriguing and quite beguiling reimagining of "Our Sweet Love," a much more sophisticated track than what the band (and Brian) were capable in their very earlv years. So shoot me already! 

We can either agree to disagree and move on, or we can keep bickering about something that already is totally out of our control. Regardless of what anyone thinks about this issue from any possible perspective, the momentum of AI is relentless and will have more effects on the future than what is occurring here in this little cocoon of ours.

Let's just not get as intractable as the misanthrope over at the Nearest Faraway Place, who probably would (if he could) send a ragtag mob of hooligan purists over to Dae Lims' studio to put a halt to all this. That won't stop it, either, and it would just deprive us of the one person who does this with a palpable sense of artistry.

Just remember: no one has to listen to it if they don't want to! 

Very well said.

Had AI been around in the 60s, might Brian have considered using it?

I guess I find a level of absurdity that is something like this:

This makes sense if you believe there's nothing redeeming in this content, that it brings nothing new to the table, that it can't possibly generate excitement about real Beach Boys music. You do you, chief.

If you’re genuinely curious about why people like this stuff, perhaps ask them “why?” instead of telling them to listen to a Tampa ’74 show.

As for the rest of your post, I still completely stand by everything I said about musical/technical creativity and people’s personal music taste, and don’t see the need to respond further about that.

Bingo. I explained sum of my "why" in the reply above. Beyond that, I'm intrigued by what could have been. As somebody who internalized the band's catalogue decades ago, I think a lot about what else they could have done and how that might have sounded. AI is a way to sort of test that. Most of it that I've heard so far, noble an effort as it may be, is terrible. Dae Lims' stuff is a rare exception (save for his 'Holy Man,' which makes Dennis sound British for some reason).

I'm intrigued by how close we can get to impersonation. I'm intrigued with the process.

But what I'm intrigued with the most is how apparent Dae Lims' talent is. He had to craft a dead-on analog impersonation of Brian with his own voice.  You can know these utilities in and out and be an expert musician, but if you don't intimately understand the sound of a person's voice, it's going to sound off, at best. Dae Lims has replicated most of Brian, Carl and Al's vocal qualities-- from the position of their tongues to the way they use their vocal chords-- with his own God given vocal chords.

AI just rounds out the sound, mitigating for anatomical structure and the genetic factors that make somebody's voice unique. It's quite a talent. I'm intrigued by it.

Personally, I’m a little less excited at the prospect of hearing “young Brian” sing something he already sang as an older Brian, but I can still enjoy it if it sounds good.

That's actually what I'm most excited about, particularly as I continue to explore why I don't care much for later Beach Boys music (particularly Love You) and Brian's solo stuff. Would I appreciate Love You more if it was sung by a younger, less vocally thrashed Brian? If nothing else, it's a troubleshooting tool. Dae Lims made a Love You track sung by a 60s Brian and I really like it. This tells me that part of my distaste for that album is Brian's voice. Turns out I really can't stand Brian's vocals from the 70s until about BWPS. Hearing some tracks from those decades sung by a younger Brian gives me a new appreciation for them.

Dae Lims says periodically on his live streams that his AI tracks exist as lossless and are "out there."

I would like to know where "out there" is. If somebody knows, I'd appreciated a DM.

https://archive.org/details/dae-lims-archive

Excuse my naivete, but these appear to be lossless versions of his YT videos, not necessarily lossless versions of the actual tracks he produced. Are those not "out there"?

Dae Lims says periodically on his live streams that his AI tracks exist as lossless and are "out there."

I would like to know where "out there" is. If somebody knows, I'd appreciated a DM.