Would it be heresy to suggest letting Martin fils take a crack at a Smile-sessions remix??

Good job, guys.  It's almost shocking how Carnie & Wendy are both such down-to-earth, normal people considering the circumstances of their youth, as well as their own early fame.  Obviously, Marilyn deserve huge credit for how they turned out.

It is sad, almost heart=breaking really how the girls don't seem to have much a relationship with their dad these days.  But the same strains and stresses  exist in many of our own non-famous families due to divorces, second marriages, kids from different relationships, deaths, geographical distance, etc, so it is what it is.  Nonetheless, as a fan of BW, wouldn't it be nice to hear of happier circumstances on that front (e.g., "Oh, my dad?  My sons and I just had a bbq with Grandpa Brian this last weekend," that kind of thing)?  But alas it's apparently not to be.

New material from BW in 2023?     Bring it on ...

If I had to pick the BBs' absolute zenith in terms of the effort that they were putting into the vocal sessions and the quality of the output, I'd probably pick the Heroes & Villains sessions c. Jan-Feb 1967.

I want to see David Oppenheim's Smile-sessions footage. 

. Al's always been a sensible guy, and I doubt he is throwing wild parties every night after the show.

 Really going out on a limb with that hypothesis.   

An argument could definitely be made that the 25th show was musically superior in myriad ways (not least of which was the BBs' own performance).  But, yikes, yes, the aforementioned cheesiness .... Mike Love prancing around shirtless with a beach towel around his waist, plus the over-the-top number of bikini-clad babes

This is great.  Jim Murphy's book up-ended a lot of what I thought I knew about the BBs' history (pre-fame and the first year or so after Surfin). 

Wow, this show has shot the beach boys to the top of a lot of online charts. Always cool to see

You're right.  There it is....

Amazon.com pop rank....

1. The Beach Boys: Sounds Of Summer
2. Lana Del Rey: Paradise
....
17.  Sounds of Summer (3 cd edition)
....
30.  Pet Sounds vinyl

Still stunned "Kokomo" didn't make it in somehow.

For me, the non-inclusion of "Kokomo" was something of a highlight.  On one level it's a silly but harmless little ditty that was a legitimate hit for the group.  On the other hand, Mike Love has spent too much of the past 35 years talking up the song (i.e., "we had our greatest song ever with Kokomo!" blah blah blah).  It's been less about the merits of Kokomo itself and more about pushing a revisionist narrative that diminishes the importance of Brian Wilson to the group ("Oh, you think Brian Wilson is all that?  Then how come we had our greatest hit ever without him??").

Also, I get it that Mike Love always wears a hat or cap, but the same tired old malt-shop-script Beach Boys logo cap?  Really?  I mean, there's a certain logic to him wearing it to a general Grammy-type event. "Oh, look that's Mike Love from the Beach Boys; it says so on his cap."  But come on, it's a Beach Boys tribute show.  He's sitting in the box with Brian and the rest of the guys.  We know you're the Beach Boys.  Wear a Dodgers cap or something.  And of course, Bruce has to follow suit, sporting a nearly identical cap.  Ironically, if you go back to photos from 1966-67 era, Bruce was once a pretty well-dressed guy.

As to performances...  pretty forgettable stuff.   Beck and Jim James clearly love the material.  Mike McDonald's Don't Worry Baby was nice.   The Pentatonix truncated H&V was odd.  And, yeah, LeAnn Rimes' extended Caroline No  was unnecessarily redundant.   Overall, nothing truly "cringe,"  but noothing like the Brian tribute show from 20 years ago when you saw truly memorable, show-stopping things like the Crosby, Gill & Webb "Surf's Up."

Maybe also Denny's ex Barbara Charren, name-checked in "Barbara."

Correcting myself... not everyone name-checked in "Do You Remember?" is dead.  The song name-checks Danny and the Juniors, and one of the Juniors, Frank Maffei apparently is still alive.

"With his passing, how many celebrities are left who were name checked in a BBs song lyric?"

Hmmm, that's tough.  With Little Richard's death in 2020, everyone name-checked in "Do You Remember?" is dead.  And Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon are gone.

Let's see.... 

The Four Seasons are name-checked in Surfers Rule, and several of them (Frankie Vallie and Bob Gaudio) are alive.

And then we get into people who are name-checked but "celebrity" might be a stretch...

Diane Rovell is of course name-checked in My Diane.

Lynda Jardine is name-checked in Lady Lynda, and she's alive.

Nick Grillo, name-checked in Be Here in the Mornin, is alive I believe.

I was listening to the "Feel Flows" set on a long drive today, and Carl's stunning live rendition of "This Whole World" from 1988 really knocked me out.  CW sings it with such passion and ferocious energy, that it struck me as something that an AI bot can never completely replicate. 

With that said, once the genie of any new technology is out of the bottle, then it's out of the bottle. For good or ill, if something is useful, then, by golly, it will be used.  Let's face it. If Brian had been able to use AI bots for Smile vocals instead of the Boys in 1966, many unpleasant arguments over lyrics would have been avoided.

I'm enjoying these mock-ups.  The possibilities are truly endless.

This stuff definitely sounds "close enough" to Brian Wilson that when I hear it, yeah I do start to think, huh, what if we had the 1966 Beach Boys' voices singing the 2004 lyrics to "Blue Hawaii" or "On a Holiday"?  Could a complete, seamless Smile LP be created with AI?   And the answer to that question would appear to be "yes."  But should it be done?  I must admit that I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea, and we get into philosophical questions about whether something "artificial" can be an acceptable substitute for something "real"... and the extent to which the lines between "real"l and "artificial" are blurring. We're  in brave new world

It's sad, though, what became of Jim.  He was obviously a very talented guy -- a brilliant musician in his own right.  And, of course, he was all over the 'Smile' sessions.  I believe there are photos of him with in a fire hat from the MOLC sessions.   It's pretty clear that Jim was Brian's 2nd choice when Hal Blaine wasn't around.  IIRC, during the late '66/early '67 Smile period, Hal spent a fair amount of time in Vegas playing live with Frank and Nancy Sinatra and the rest of Rat Pack crowd.

He also wrote the second part of “Layla”.

... and cheated his co-author and ex, Rita Coolidge ...
https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/rita-coolidge-layla-memoir-delta-lady-eric-clapton-derek-dominos-7318951/

That's a bummer.

Note, though, lest anyone here get confused....  United is the studio at 6050 Hollywood Blvd, a place where Brian has recorded (e.g., in the Long Promised Road documentary). However, Brian's legendary '60s digs at Western 3 live on in the 6000 building as East-West Studios.

"Heroes & Villains" was a moderate hit for the group that was completely overshadowed by "Good Vibrations" despite both songs appearing on the same album.

The H&V 45 was a hell of a record, IMO, but it didn't top its predecessor sonically or production-wise.  The mix is a bit muddy compared to GV, and I imagine that it didn't particularly "pop" on AM radio.  It's a shame.  Chuck Britz, who certainly knew what he was talking about, spoke years later of early '67 H&V mixes that he considered better than GV, but that's not what the public got.  Ultimately, though, I don't think it's fair to blame H&V's failure on being overshadowed by GV.    Smiley Smile was such a dud commercially,  and GV's inclusion therein was approx. 10-11 months after the 45 had shocked the world.   Even the H&V 45 was, what? 8 months after GV?  If the public weren't ready for a new hit from the BBs then, they never would be.   I think there's something to the hypothesis that the long delay between GV and H&V caused the record-buying public to lose interest in the group.  Out of sight, out of mind.   It seems crazy to even say it now, but it's useful to remember that the Beatles released Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever because EMI and the Beatles themselves perceived that they were "fading a bit" in the public mind.

I just checked out the video of I Get Around on You Tube, and froze the beginning a few times...I don't think that was Carnie, doesn't really look a lot like her, though a bit of a resemblance. Could that be one of Brian's adopted daughters possibly?

Agreed.  I did a freeze-frame as well.  Woman appears significantly younger than Carnie.   Could be Daria or one of the other kids... or an assistant.

I've always thought that 'It's Like Heaven' was a hell of a song that should have been a chart-topping hit for someone.

What I hope is that if/when Mike (because Bruce and Dave seem to rarely do interviews) talks about this, if he did find it tough to see Brian in rough shape, he shows some tact and is able to convey his emotions about it without being too blunt or unsubtle about it. I'm not trying to anticipate a negative thing about Mike, but I know in the past he hasn't been the best at speaking with true empathy about Brian, where it sometimes kind of comes across as patronizing and/or pity. He did this a bit many years ago talking about Carl.

I'd imagine it's more of a "when" than an "if."   Summer will approach, the Mike & Bruce tour's advance publicity machine will do whatever it does, and the entertainment reporter from the Puyallup Herald (or similar) will reach out to ML for a telephone interview. After the usual pleasantries, said reporter will inquire about Cousin Brian.  Will ML take the high road?  I'd like to hope so.  Or it will be along the lines of, "You know, I love my cousin Brian, but he wrecked himself with drugs and bad habits.  Same thing for his brothers.  I, on the other hand, through meditation and diet, will probably live to 150.  Oh, and did I mention that Uncle Murry cheated me?"

Nice to see them shaking hands.  Despite all the acrimony, lawsuits, pettiness (nearly all of it ML's fault, IMO), Brian and Mike are, at the end of the day, still family.  And once upon a time, long before the BBs, they were close friends, attending church youth nights together, hanging out, etc. Mike's book recounts his taking Brian along as his plus-one on Senior Day at Dorsey High in 1958.

I'd bet my last dollar that if someone had asked members of this forum to assign seats to the five based on public knowledge of cordial interpersonal relationships (or lack thereof), 98% of us would probably have come up with precisely the same Brian, Al, David, Bruce, Mike lineup that happened. 

Carl was truly the heart and soul of the group.    In many ways, "The Beach Boys" as a thing died with him.  The 50th anniversary tour/album in 2012 was a cool period, but it never felt quite the same.  Damned lung cancer.  So weird that it hit after he had quit smoking decades before, but sometimes there's just bad luck, combined with stress, etc.  And Brian with, at times, much worse health habits survived.  Such is life.  The whole thing is a crapshoot... for all of us.