Drat.  Both YouTube links are dead.  I never got a chance to hear this.

Things allegedly began to seriously sour between Mike and Al during the recording of the 1992 "Summer in Paradise" album, with Mike reportedly complaining of Al's “severe attitude problem.”  

Things finally boiled over in the 1997 period when Carl was gravely ill, and Mike and Al bitterly disagreed over Al's idea of doing a "symphonic tour" wherein they would perform with music with various symphonic orchestras

From the horse's mouth...
Goldmine, July 28, 2000.

So what prompted your decision to stop touring with Love's version of the Beach Boys?

We had a symphony tour lined up for the United States. Lots of interested symphonies that could give our music a breadth and depth that we didn't have before and give them a little extra business they needed. A lot of symphonies were going bankrupt. For instance the San Diego Symphony was in a desperate state, and we were going to do our rehearsal concert there in San Diego. They would get one and we would get one. That kind of deal where they get one for their coffers and we'd get a chance to rehearse and get it underway. And then go to the Hollywood Bowl, get that wonderful place sold out and take it from there all over the country. Carry our charts with us and give them to all the different symphonies.

What happened?

Love steadfastly refused to do it. He insisted that Brian be there, I remember that remark which is not all wrong. I don't disagree with that. It would be great if Brian could be everywhere, but we all have to be realistic. He's not going to be predictable that way. He's got only so much energy for that kind of work. He's not built for it.

Brian never liked to tour.

I think Brian was designing our songs back in the day so we wouldn't have to be dependent on him. Anyway, I suggested that he conduct the concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I thought it would be neat if he could come out and take some credit for all that great work. Anyway, that wasn't to be. Mike refused to do it. I think it would've been a great tribute to Carl. It would have been built around the music, not the messenger. It wouldn't have been built around any one of us.

After Carl passed away, you were still in the band and then decided to leave the Love touring lineup sometime after that.

Right. It became one of those moments. Love continued to tour. He didn't stop touring. He just didn't want to tour in that modality. That wasn't his idea of "fun, fun, fun." [laughs] So he continued to work with his band, The California Beach Band, and he would go out and do dates and have surrogate singers do Carl's parts. I thought that was tasteless. While at the same time not going out with the Beach Boys because of Carl's passing so there's some kind of contradiction in that, in my opinion. In fact, my son Matthew at the time was still in that employ, which I did not disagree with because I don't want him to not be able to earn a living. But at some point it got uncomfortable.

So at what point did you pack it in with that lineup?

When Mike refused to tour with the Beach Boys. He just refused to tour with us in any fashion. I can't go into detail with you right now, [but] it got reorganized where Love took the band with an exclusive license and I didn't. And Bruce decided to go with the guy who sang all the hits. Matthew had to make some decisions of his own. We decided to form this entity - Beach Boys, Family And Friends, which I felt would mmore accurately define the harmonies and the vitality of what was missing in the waning years of the band.

https://troun.tripod.com/al.html

Ironically a few years after Al's dismissal from the band, Mike and Bruce would end up incorporating an orchestra during some of their shows.  They did this back in 2004 for the Chastain concert in Atlanta.  That was the year I was working backstage at the venue.  I remember they had the orchestra perform a medley of Beach Boys' songs during the band's intermission.  I was standing next to Bruce backstage while he was talking to my stage manager gushing to her about having an orchestra perform with them.  I also remember him complaining a little about how the crowd wasn't really paying much attention to the medley.  🤷🏼‍♂️

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.)

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you do that cover of "That's Why God Made The Radio" years ago?  If so, that one was pretty spiffy.  Your arrangements of "Walk On By" and "Return To Pepperland" alone would give you the credentials to do something more interesting than this song for sure.

As for the "Wish" song, I wish they would have worked on the production more.  Al's vocal (which is quite nice for a guy his age) sounds like it was plucked from a lo-fi and completely lossy MP3 file and the mix itself feels a little on the cheap side.  It sounds bad even listening to the 24-bit version you can purchase off Qobuz.  And the never-ending ties to "Waves Of Love" are just straight-up irritating at this point.  

With all that being said, dare I suggest that there some actual pleasant moments in the song; I think the whole thing needs to be reworked and definitely remixed though.  

Interesting idea but not well executed.

Any idea if we'll get super deluxe reissues of Mike's solo work primarily from 1978~1982?

It would be a pointless endeavor.

Just learned of this on the other board.  Shocking news.  Say what you will about his production style, without him we might not have witnessed Brian's remarkable late career renaissance as a solo artist, nor would be able to sigh in relief that Summer In Paradise did not end up becoming the band's swan song concerning studio albums with original material.  


https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/joseph-thomas-obituary?id=54988926

Not trying to start a Mike thread here, truly, but that article was interesting in that it's fascinating that Mike is still so sour, in fact seemingly *more* sour, on the "That's Why God Made the Radio" album now. I get his gripes, and I don't even disagree with all of them. It would have probably done the project a bit of long-term good to have just placated Mike and had he and Brian write a few tunes "from scratch."

But it's strange to have that specific perspective on that album. It clearly was made the way it was in large part because they didn't have a ton of time to finish it. And it's not as if there aren't other Beach Boys albums with *even fewer* Brian/Mike from-scratch collabs.

It almost feels like Mike is less perturbed that the album ended up with less Brian/Mike from-scratch co-writes, and more upset specifically that he feels like he was promised or strongly led to believe, at some point I guess, that the album would be focused around Brian/Mike co-writes. It's peculiar, because it sure seems like by the time they actual got the record deal, it was clear Capitol was signing them based on the bag of Brian/Joe songs, and also that given the amount of time they had to actually record the album, they would have to use those pre-existing songs as the basis for most of the album.

Again, not trying to inflame or stir the pot. I genuinely find this stuff fascinating, especially in light of things on a number of other fronts being relatively cooled off and amiable between the group members, and in terms of their feelings on individual subjects.

Yeah it wouldn't surprise me if that's the way he feels.  But considering that the album turned out far better than it had any reason to be and ended the band's recording history on a great note, Mike is probably looking at this the wrong way. 

And I believe things worked out well the way they went.  Following the 50th reunion Brian put out a pretty satisfying solo album with No Pier Pressure and Mike himself became quite prolific putting out several better-than-expected solo albums as well as a Christmas album.  And Al's doing OK continuing to perform and occasionally release a never-ending parade of reworked versions of "Waves Of Love". 

So while the reunion wasn't perfect and ended a little bumpy (which should always be expected with this band), I can't really complain with the way things went.

I believe this was the track they were recording after Brian's final tour concluded.  Which would explain Brian's rather fragile vocals.  Apparently Darian is handling all or most of the vocal harmonies.  Overall a pretty good track despite Brian's weakened condition. 

Because nobody demanded it, and also because I was just straight-up bored, I went about making my own damn mix of "Island Fever" off the disastrous Summer In Paradise album.   This one combines stuff from both the U.S. and U.K. versions of the song.   Have a listen here:

https://youtu.be/rhTD8cnVZB4?si=5sakEskWFuNbt2kg

Dear all,

Is there any way to find the Dae Lims Smile in a lossless download? If anyone knows, I'd be grateful. Especially looking for the AI enhanced stereo mix of Cabin Essence.

All the best

A simple search on the Internet Archive will take you there.

https://archive.org/details/DaeLimsSMiLEAI

I'm honestly more intrigued with the soundtrack they're putting out.  Here's hoping they take a cue from the great Endless Harmony soundtrack and give us a lot of interesting unreleased content.  We certainly don't need another greatest hits rehash. 

Since the board came back it has looked physically different on my end.  All the columns do NOT fit within my page anymore.  Now I must scroll to see the columns on the right hand side. 

I hope this can be fixed soon!

I've noticed that too.  This forum format never really played well with mobile phones unfortunately.  🤷🏼‍♂️

Sure, anything is possible.  If they can do exhaustive box sets documenting the Beach Boys' fantastic but commercially ignored early 70's albums, they could certainly entertain a BW box set at some point.

Thanks for the replies. Does anyone know if there’s already a thread on this topic? I always find myself picking out a specific harmony part and wondering who it is that I’m hearing in that magnificent stack.

If you dig deep enough here you'll probably find some discussion about it but I don't really know specifically which direction to point you to.

Side note: props to having an amazingly clever screen name.  :-)

The general order (but not always) from the original roster was Brian at the top, followed by Al, then Dennis, then Carl, and ending with Mike at the bottom.  I'm not sure where Bruce fit into that equation when he joined but he was probably near the top.

 As interesting as these hypothetical fan creations can be, they are definitely kind of polarizing to some as they aren't truly "authentic".  Personally if I enjoy the creativity behind them (such as Dae Lims' creations) I can comfortably make the distinction between fact and fiction. 

All that said, I think the real meat of how artificial intelligence technology will be most constructively implemented will be in the more subtle nuances of audio editing.  It will probably benefit from making basic mixing, mastering and overall production easier and more efficient.  Using the MAL technology we can finally start expecting to hear proper stereo mixes of songs such as "Good Vibrations" whose multitracks have long gone lost.  Dae Lims himself put out a darn good fan stereo mix  of "The Little Girl I Once Knew" that gives you an idea of what
the technology can do.

One song I’ve always wanted to hear is a young Ronnie Spector singing don’t worry baby. I know she’s covered it in her later years but if there’s anyway Dae Lima could ever muster an AI beach boys version with peak era Ronnie singing the lead well I’d die a happy man

He would likely have to get a female vocalist who can match Ronnie's intonation to pull off such a feat.

[this alternate version of reality.]

GF - I agree completely that so much of whether I can enjoy/accept recordings like these are due to the superior quality of the workmanship that went into them, and Dae Lims IMO is killing it in that department.

I guess a primary issue that people can have with these is the insertion of musical ideas from another person who is not the actual artist...Which I totally get why that bugs some people.

But that said, if the music is good, the music is good, and I'm not trying to pretend it's anything else than what it actually is.
As it sounds really cool, I'm not going to force myself not to like it simply because it's not an actual recording of Brian Wilson's voice, despite sounding like him very much.

I'm reminded of officially released modern creations such as the 2012 version of Sail Plane Song.

I thought that was a really interesting experiment and I'm glad it exists and it was released.
It's not trying to take the place of anything else, it's just a well executed alternate reality that perhaps shows what the track might've sounded like if Brian had added more production back in the 1960s.

Not everybody digs it, but count me in as one of the people who does.

 These AI creations are somewhat similar in my book. It's new artistic ideas being put into an old song, but if it's done well that's all that matters to me. I'm not going to enjoy it as much as Pet Sounds and other actual original recordings by the band, but then it's not a contest.

I'm just glad that "new" material by this band is being carved out in one way or another.

It's ironic cause most of the fan mixes there have used ai tools to demix/re-balance, and people are fine with that.
I think we need to get past using the work 'ai' as a blanket term for any new audio tech.

It's a rather indescribable experience listening to these songs. But it's very very cool. To me there's only any moral and ethical quandary if he is trying to pass them off as the real thing, or anything like that. I see/hear nothing of the sort here so I have no problem enjoying this alternate version of reality.

I think some of the key issues in this debate are found in these two quotes. I am admittedly a vintage audio type of person, I prefer the sounds created on older technology. Having said that, hearing some of the AI creations posted and linked on this forum have changed my mind regarding the use of AI technology in creating these tracks, due in large part to the superior quality and the obvious respect and attention to detail that went into making them.

This could get long, because to cover all the aspects and issues would perhaps be a book-length exploration. All I want to do is express some of my own opinions, shine light on some historical details and parallels, and perhaps open some minds and opinions for discussion and consideration.


Point 1, and perhaps the more important issue to consider, is that all audio recording of music since roughly the late 1940's is an illusion, an alternate version of reality. As soon as pioneers like Les Paul started to work with magnetic tape, which led to multitrack recording, and other pioneers like Bill Putnam started to create technology to electronically process audio signals and create unnatural sounds and effects on recordings, the doors were kicked wide open. Recorded audio became an illusion, and the process of recording musical performances became a process of creating those illusions.

Previous to these developments, a recording was essentially capturing a live performance on media to be reproduced and sold and/or broadcast. Whatever the musicians did in whatever room they performed was recorded as it happened, as if the listener were in that room with them. The only editing that was done would have been doing multiple takes of that continuous live performance in order to get the "keeper" take.

When Les Paul came along with his "New Sound" or what they used to call "Sound On Sound", most times he had only himself or he and Mary Ford playing and stacking all the tracks. Instead of hiring 5 vocalists, along with a drummer, bassist, and perhaps 10 guitarists to cut a "live" take, we instead got 12 Les Pauls and 5 Mary Fords stacking sounds atop each other, track after track, to create an ensemble recording out of two people's musical performances.

That is pure illusion, pure alternate reality. It didn't exist prior to 1947 or so in the popular music realm, and that technique forever changed music. At the time, it was also called a gimmick, a fad, a false reality, etc by musical purists. They wanted to capture a full group as it performed live, whether it be classical, jazz, country...and some still do in 2024. But the illusion created by new technology, specifically magnetic tape and multitrack recording machines moved popular music miles ahead of where it would have been.

And the issue of magnetic tape: Editing became possible. If you had a group, or even a single spoken word artist, who had recorded 10 takes of a song, but none of those takes was "the one", a skillful engineer with a razor blade, a cutting block, and adhesive tape could patch together the best segments from those 10 takes and create a continuous recording which the majority of listeners would be fooled into thinking was a single live continuous take. Again, technology created a false reality, an alternate reality, but that technology allowed the creators to make records which were more perfect than would be humanly possible.

Tape editing became not only a skill but an art form. Instead of doing a straight cut, engineers could cut and splice angles to create seamless crossfades and deliberate effects. Instead of just connecting the first minute of take 2 with the last two minutes of take 7, they could razor-blade individual tracks in and out of the performance. It was used by experimental artists but probably brought to the mainstream by way of Good Vibrations, where the tape editing became part of the performance itself and created a #1 hit record. It wasn't used as a gimmick or a comedy prop, but rather played an integral role in the performance captured on the recording. Add to that the ability to loop tapes continuously, which was probably codified in popular music by The Beatles and Tomorrow Never Knows, and seen through into the 70's when the Bee Gees unknowingly created the robotic, precise nature of dance music by using the same 2-bar drum loop on 3 smash hit disco singles in the mid-70's because their drummer had to leave the sessions due to a family emergency and they didn't want to halt work on the tracks.

I could go on, and move into digital sequencing, digital recording, DAW's, and all that, but I think those gaps can be filled into the story.

It's an illusion, it's creating alternate reality from the point where a musician performs a passage of music and that recording gets distributed to and heard by listeners.

As such, how is the AI technology in the timeline of recording technology development any different than those previous developments? People who I guess were considered "purists" also criticized Les Paul's recordings, Bill Putnam's effects, the techniques of editing tapes in general, and a whole host of other developments through the years. Claims that it was not natural, it wasn't pure, it would create "lazy" musicians or put musicians out of work, it wasn't reality...Again, consider that recording music and distributing it to listeners in a multitude of formats is in itself creating an alternate reality and an aural illusion.

It's all in how the technology is used, and what kind of art is created with the technology. Artists use tools to create a work: If you give different artists those same tools and turn them loose, isn't it foolish to assume each of those artists will create some form of "high art" with them? It's like giving a hammer, nails, and wood to 10 people and expecting all 10 to create something valid or useful with those materials. One of those 10 might decide to smash the foot of another with the hammer, Three Stooges-style, to get a laugh...how can that be controlled other than someone saying not to do it? And if their goal was to create a comedy skit, to get laughs at the expense of someone else's foot, isn't that as comedy a valid use of the tools as well?

So much to digest, I've already gone too far. But consider AI as used to create these tracks is only another tool in the development of recorded sound. If people choose to make high art, or create pure crap, it's not the technology creating the end result as long as a human is inputting the data and parameters into the AI generators. And if people like one use of it, but not another use of the same technology, that's their own hang-ups and tastes.

Now if AI turns into HAL, that's another story. 

Yeah this largely how I look at these AI creations, specifically the cool stuff Dae Lims has been doing.  No it's not the "real" thing, but it can be appreciated on its own as a fun "what if" presentation.  Of course I can see how problematic these AI creations can be and legal headaches they might present.  But I would be lying if I said I wasn't digging a lot of the work Dae Lims has offered us.  I especially loved his "completed" take on "Walk On By" and his recently deleted "Beatles" version of Paul McCartney's unreleased "Return To Pepperland" was downright fantastic.

Hearing that he has dementia made me very sad, too. Really sad news for all Beach Boys fans, to know that he will never make another album, never be able to give concerts again.

Yeah it's unlikely we'll get much more from him.  Although he is slated to appear on that forthcoming Glen Campbell duets album as well as Fred Veil's country album.  Not sure when his parts were recorded (the Glen Campbell thing I believe was recorded after his last tour). 

The "Sail on Sailor" set is doubly a game changer, because for the folks who think it's all about Brian, it (and of course the "Feel Flows" set as well) proves the other guys were turning out excellent material. And then, for those who conversely assume Brian played no role in things by that point, and just slept through the whole trip other than singing the opening line on "Saga", there's a bunch of quintessential Brian stuff that we had never heard before.

Right on! 

Agreed.  That early 70's period saw the Beach Boys behaving like a collaborative unit where everyone brought something to the table. It also allowed Wilson brothers Carl and especially Dennis to come into their own outside of Brian's shadow.  And having Ricky and Blondie involved gave the group a much-appreciated edge they never had before or since.  So the SOS set is by all accounts essential listening.

Gotta say -- it's an incorrect assumption that anything was sidelined due to "sales" -- poor, or otherwise.
Trust me, there's PLENTY going on.

Good to hear from you, Howie.  Haven't heard much from you these days and was starting to wonder...

I'm not seeing a thread for it here but it has just been announced that he will appear on that Glen Campbell duets album coming out.  There were photos from that recording session taken back in late 2022. 

While I personally dig most of the content Dae Lims has presented us, I have to admit that this whole AI thing is a double-edged sword. Although I can totally appreciate Dae Lims's talents and creative use of the technology, this is not the "real" deal.  This kind of technology can produce all sorts of chaos and problems if not managed responsibly.  That said, I can still enjoy these creations as "fan art" that serves as a curious "what if" of sorts.

Has your Chrome browser been updated lately? It may have been set to no longer access sites that use http instead of https (which costs extra for websites, and some of us site owners can't afford to pay extra). There may be a setting in the browser you can change to let you access "unsecured" http sites.

I don't use Chrome, but I do use multiple browsers on all my devices, for situations like you encountered.

I can check.  It was working fine on my phone several weeks ago and it works fine on my Chrome browser on my PC.  So not sure what happened.  Just wanted to make sure the board wasn't down again.  :-)

Did I jinx something with this post?  😂

Dae Lims definitely deserves credit for putting all this overblown AI technology to creative use producing most rewarding results.  I'm still not entirely clear how he utilizes the tech though.  Is he singing the vocals himself and then running his voice through an AI genorator to change his voice to whomever he wants?  If that's the case then you have to really appreciate his skill.  Because I'm assuming you have to adopt the phrasing and tonality of the desired singer's voice to really pull off sounding like them.  In this most recent offering you can really pick out "Carl" and "Al" in the appropriate places.