Albums:
Today!
Pet Sounds
Smile
Bambu
Pacific Ocean Blue
Summer Days (and Summer Nights!)
Wild Honey
Sunflower
Carl and the Passions
All Summer Long
Brian Wilson 88 is, for the record, number 11!

Songs (much harder)--to make things easier, i didn't include Pacific Ocean Blue/Bambu on this list
Surf's Up
I Guess I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
Til I Die
Let Him Run Wild
In the Back of My Mind
Sail on, Sailor
All I Want to Do
She Knows me Too Well
Guess I'm Dumb (that counts, i imagine)
Heroes and Villians
Cool, cool water (sunflower version)

There u have it!

In the bridge to Wonderful, "come on man, just be a cool guy...don't think your God." 
Brian clearly had lost confidence in his own abilities.  I don't think it was a joke, I think it was a cop-out. 
I do love the record tho...Brian just couldn't help being a genius, no matter how hard he tried.

But if Brian were planning to suck another album out of this grouping of songs, do you really think he'd have released a bunch of bonus tracks?

"I don't see how a finished 1967 version could've been much better than the 1971 version..."

I strongly disagree with that statement.  While the 1971 version is sublime, the subtlety and beauty of the arrangement in the first half implies that the second half would have been something equally special.  Who know's what Brian had in store for the second-half instrumental track, Brian himself probably didn't know at the time (and certainly doesn't know now) but i think that it's not unreasonable to imagine that it would have been as original and subtle and beautiful as anything else on the album...and probably not solo piano.  And the coda--the 1971 version is so incredible its hard to imagine improvement, but we're talking Brian in 1967 here--I would imagine that the finishing vocals would have been even more powerful, with an instrumental track to match.  So, while never will any person outside heaven actually hear the finished 1967 Surf's Up, i wouldn't downplay it as an equal to the 71 version...a healthy Brian, after all, would have given the song everything he had.

That makes sense, thanks.

Man, it sure makes me sad to think of all that music just dissapearing into the air...

"So, do you still feel productive and creative?"
"It's easier for me to write songs for myself than for others. I write on the piano; I spend six or seven hours a day at work, when I'm into it. I prefer daytime over nighttime. I like studio time the best; that's when I find I can be most creative."

the rest of the interview (http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2002/Dec/06/en/en03a.html) seems pretty lucid, although i can't for the life of me figure out what he would have been working on so hard in 2002.  But the first comment sort of implies that he doesn't really like collaborations, and perhaps, in a tragic twist, he retreats into his shell whenever he has to actually record something, while banging away the rest of the time...maybe someone should bug his piano-room :-). 

I read another interview a while back, from before TLOS i think, where brian talked about writing all these songs really quickly over the summer of 2006 (i think), and basically said he was really inspired, writing a new song every few days, and he named a bunch of titles, including some from lucky old sun and (i think...i couldn't find the interview to check) some i hadn't heard of.  Anyway, my point was just that it seems like this album really had it's origins in geniune Brian Wilson inspiration, working alone at his piano writing a whole pile of songs. 

"1970-75 had all the "living room #1s", some of which we've heard, some we haven't."

I've never heard that phrase, what songs are those?  sounds intriguing...although i imagine it would be a little to much to hope for that i'd somehow missed a whole bunch of great brian wilson songs... 

Hi all!
I've been looking around for this information and i havn't been able to find much conclusive, so i was just wondering how legitimate people feel like the lawsuit awarded songwriting credits are?

My personal hunch tends to be, maybe Mike wrote some words for California Girls and All Summer Long and what not, but the Today album i've always sort of seen as a really personal Brian Wilson record, and it's hard for me to believe that Mike Love had a hand in all those songs.  Also, Brian did in 65 gave Love the songwriting credit on Please Let Me Wonder and Carl on Dance Dance Dance, so why wouldn't Love have gotten credit for other songs he wrote?  I don't know if there are any conclusive answers for any of this, but i'm sort of wondering what the prevailing wisdom is. 

Also, the lawsuit where the Landy co-writes were thrown out--specifically on the 1988 solo album, ignoring what the credits say, who actually wrote the words to those songs?  Was Brian really working alone?   

Thanks a bunch! 

Bj

I have a serious weakspot in my heart for Hey Little Tomboy, which is probably one of the more disturbing songs ever written, particularly the whole "im gonna teach you to kiss" line, and the "shave your legs for the very first time" voice over.  It's just so, well, creepy. 

At My Window is an incredible song, but the foriegn language voiceover is pretty embarrasing. 

I was gonna say "student demonstration time," but then I remembered that  i actually do hate everything about that song. 

Is Dick Rising (Reising?) a real person?

Really looking forward to the record. I don't care if some of it was written years ago as That Lucky Old Sun as a whole seems like such a coherent and spirited piece of work to me. Dick Reising and the guys at Capitol seem to feel that way too.

Is this the Dick Reising of Bull Sessions fame?  I always thought that was a joke...
or are you joking yourself?