Shouldn't it tell you something that, in order to get away from the fact that top 40 radio stations play the same handful of songs in a set rotation throughout the day, there had to be a shift towards extraterrestrial radio before variety in music programming could occur? I think I'd be more salty at the corporations who own most radio stations and who hedge their bets rather than take risks; maybe labels for similar reasons too. There will never be a short supply of music, both good and bad. I'd rather be positive about music and (like the captain said) place more emphasis on things I like about a song than too much on what I don't.

Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) is playing here on Saturday with the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. I actually have no idea what he's been up to as Bey so I'm not sure what to expect but Mos Def is/was dope as hell, and I'm listening to his collaboration with another good rapper, Talib Kweli.

I've asked this in the small questions thread and got a response from AGD which, if I recall correctly, was inconclusive. We know Murry did some singing and songwriting with The Beach Boys sporadically after he was fired as their manager -- "Breakaway", "Be Here In The Morning", and so on. Did Audree ever contribute to later Beach Boys music in a similar fashion? I would guess not otherwise I imagine by now we would have documentation or stories to this effect but I figure it's worth asking again.

I'm just going to leave this here for everyone to enjoy.

The Beach Boys are incredibly corny and I don't think the doo-wop-inspired harmonies help to mitigate against this fact for a lot of people. The bands that have been inspired by them, both in the '70s up to the present, don't often sound anything like The Beach Boys -- either because these bands don't sing merely about love songs, don't have doo-wop-inspired vocal harmonies, use a different kind of humour... there are a number of reasons you could select, basically. Obviously I appreciate these things about The Beach Boys in varying degrees at any given time but I can also completely understand why someone wouldn't like these factors as well -- and I think that's why the Holland era Beach Boys (and possibly also Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue) may have gone over so well with folks who would not have previously considered themselves "Beach Boys fans".

Justin Beiber, you ain't got nothin' on this!

Why do we need another thread where people complain about how contemporary mainstream music is not worth listening to when there's already one terrible thread fifteen pages long that accomplishes the same uninteresting goal?

"I'm 49 but Jackie, the lovely mother of Brian, is 25, so I am a ladies man. I met her, she was a contestant in a beauty contest in Waikiki Beach, yeah. So I am very much a ladies man. I admit to that, yes. Life in prison as a ladies man -- just imprison me with a few ladies, that's all I ask! No, it's true, I do like girls! I am the author of the words to 'California Girls'!"

I wish Mike would write a song like "Glow Crescent Glow" for 25-year-old me!

The original unreleased version of McCartney II

What is this? McCartney II is the only McCartney album I like so this intrigues me!

It's like the released version, but even weirder. I believe his record company refused to put it out or something like that.
So you can guess that most of McCartney's fans actively dislike it.

http://www.collectorsmusicreviews.com/mccartney-paul/paul-mccartney-the-lost-mccartney-album-strange-apple-sar-010/

Unless the mixes are different still, these previously-unreleased songs and alternate, longer mixes of album tracks are all included on the 2011 Archive Collection release of McCartney II.

I think The Beach Boys touring band in 1967 wouldn't have been well received if only because I recall their live performances from '67 being rather thinly executed. Perhaps if they had a fuller band at the time, as they would even a couple years later, they might have done well for themselves.

I came upon this split EP with contributions by Yohuna, Emily Reo, MoonLasso, and Brown Bread last night. I had not previously heard of any of these artists but it's an excellent slice of ambient pop music. The music is largely insular, dreamy and synth-based with fleeting female vocals laid over it. There isn't a weak track on the release but I'm particularly taken by Emily Reo's contributions...

The original unreleased version of McCartney II

What is this? McCartney II is the only McCartney album I like so this intrigues me!

I bet Mike could hot knife like a champ back in the day!

Wasn't he the one who lobbied hard for "Fairy Tale Music" to be included on the Good Vibrations box set? I've never read his book and know basically nothing about him but that seems like another good instance of +1 for Leaf...

I had no idea she had dementia or had died last year, what a shame. This is indeed a phenomenal album that y'all should check out beyond the excellent "God Only Knows" interpretation.

Another for Holland, although let it be known I think this question, this forced choice, is heinous since they're both excellent in different ways!

The Bilinda Butchers, named after the vocalist/guitarist from My Bloody Valentine, are an excellent dream pop group that makes gauzy snythpop and have three EPs and some demos on their Bandcamp -- all for free too!

In particular, you should check out their 2011 EP Regret, Love, Guilt, Dreams...



...and the Goodbyes EP from 2012:



They'll have a new album out sometime in 2014, possibly within the next couple months as I read in a recent interview that they're almost ready to send it off for mixing.

Yeah, Surf's Up is what got me into this group hardcore too, because it absolutely shattered my preconceived notions of what music by "The Beach Boys" was supposed to sound like -- and I, like most casual listeners, was at that point only familiar with the early hits (and maybe I had heard Pet Sounds but it didn't immediately resonate with me) -- that it was honestly shocking to me. This album is almost the antithesis of everything that this group is musically, at least to most people I would imagine. Look at that gloomy, defeated cover! Hear those socially-conscious, mystic, or downright depressing lyrics! Behold the musical psychedelia of much of the material, and the complexity as well! Even "Take A Load Off Your Feet" and "Disney Girls", if not exactly fitting into any of those other proclamations, provide a nice respite from the heaviness of the rest of the album, the nostalgia and humour are in these cases appreciated!

I don't think this album is The Beach Boys conforming to trends so much as it is making the trends conform to The Beach Boys, and having it work very well indeed by putting their own spin on what was popular at the time as only this group could have done.

I think "Good Timin'" is pretty overrated, it sounds Beach-Boys-by-numbers to me and a half-baked attempt at that. It's one of those songs that never gets going and ends before you figure it will begin to get interesting.

It seems to me it was around the time they began recording what would eventually be reconfigured for release into Sunflower that Brian had already been experimenting with synthesizers and having them -- rather than keyboards -- be the bedrock for his tracks with increased frequency. I find that shift just as interesting as when he began composing primarily on keyboards rather than guitars (The Beach Boys Today! seems to be where this was most obviously introduced sonically).

I find your question interesting about the synthesizers, but about the composing being done on "primarily guitars" earlier, I don't think that is true. I'm pretty sure Brian nearly always composed primarily on the keyboard. Although apparently "Melt Away" grew out of a bass line or something, and supposedly some early stuff.

Ah, well, I am assuming that their early songs sound a lot more guitar-driven until you get to Today!... where the shift in emphasis (maybe that's more what I'm getting at than his composing on or for) is much more obviously a keyboard-based sound rather than focusing on guitars per se.

That I agree with. A lot of the earlier things were more "guitar rock" whereas a lot of the stuff from like 1965 and after really weren't.

Right! And I find that fascinating, both that original shift from guitar to keyboards as well as the second shift from keyboards to synthesizers. I actually find the latter far more interesting than the former, to be honest. (And around this time he became enamoured with synthesizers, he also began to use drum machines rather than live drums as well, I believe?) These are the sorts of things I would like to hear Brian Wilson consider and discuss at length. To hear his motivating thoughts for the initial change, the process by which he built tracks around this new-to-him technology, and so on. It's interesting as well that the albums with probably the least amount of involvement from Brian Wilson during the '70s -- Carl And The Passions: "So Tough" and Holland -- are also more or less the most guitar-oriented albums The Beach Boys had released since 1964, and once Brian was "back"... 15 Big Ones and Love You!

As far as musical atrocities go, I'd have to say "Smart Girls" is one of the greatest awful misfires any established musician could have made. It fails as a pop song, it fails as a hip-hop song, Brian Wilson's rhymes are beyond terrible and the samples were obviously handled by someone (Landy?) who had no idea how to use them to actually make a hip-hop beat. It's funny, yeah, but in the way that schadenfreude is funny.

It seems to me it was around the time they began recording what would eventually be reconfigured for release into Sunflower that Brian had already been experimenting with synthesizers and having them -- rather than keyboards -- be the bedrock for his tracks with increased frequency. I find that shift just as interesting as when he began composing primarily on keyboards rather than guitars (The Beach Boys Today! seems to be where this was most obviously introduced sonically).

I find your question interesting about the synthesizers, but about the composing being done on "primarily guitars" earlier, I don't think that is true. I'm pretty sure Brian nearly always composed primarily on the keyboard. Although apparently "Melt Away" grew out of a bass line or something, and supposedly some early stuff.

Ah, well, I am assuming that their early songs sound a lot more guitar-driven until you get to Today!... where the shift in emphasis (maybe that's more what I'm getting at than his composing on or for) is much more obviously a keyboard-based sound rather than focusing on guitars per se.

I wonder how his drug use would change if he grew up now instead of in the '60s. Maybe he'd do a lot more ketamine or MDMA than heroin or coke. And how would that change the music he'd end up making!

I have a question for the author as well: If you recall, did you find anything noteworthy regarding Brian's seemingly new-found interest in, emphasis on, and shift towards composing on analogue synthesizers during this period that these tapes might shed light upon?

It seems to me it was around the time they began recording what would eventually be reconfigured for release into Sunflower that Brian had already been experimenting with synthesizers and having them -- rather than keyboards -- be the bedrock for his tracks with increased frequency. I find that shift just as interesting as when he began composing primarily on keyboards rather than guitars (The Beach Boys Today! seems to be where this was most obviously introduced sonically). Any further info about this kind of stuff would be very interesting to hear about should there be anything worth mentioning!

Back when I used last.fm, which was a couple months ago now, it was "All I Wanna Do".