Please don't try to speak for every fan. It's impossible to do, and it overstates your argument beside. I doubt most Beach Boys fans care about those things at all, frankly. There is a subset of super-enthusiast fans who do, but that's not at all the same thing.

I've long thought we needed to simply have two-disc reissues of all the albums, in stereo and mono, with each album including abundant rarities. You could then collect other odds and ends in a multi-CD rarities set. At that point, you could simply make a boxed set that included all the individual album releases, along with the rarities release, and be done with it. I guess you'd have to keep the PS Box and Smile Box in print though, simply for completeness' sake.

When I said it is what fans in advance of the 50th were expressing a desire to buy, I guess I was unclear that I was excluding "fans", as in the people who if pressed would admit to liking *a* Beach Boys song, or who will indulge in the band's summertime cheese factor and tap their toe along to "Surfin' USA" and "I Get Around" annually. To me the word "fan" suggests the core audience of something, the individuals who have a pronounced, committed appreciation of a thing over and above what's ordinary. Like you say, we're the only ones who knew the 50th anniversary was imminent, the only ones who expressed any desire to purchase product released for the occasion and the only ones who had any expectations or preferences as to what those releases might look like, so what I meant was, even the people who are now presenting themselves as the picture of satisfaction around there parts at one time fantasized about a rarities comp. And you're case in point, we've all at one time or another speculated or wished for a substantial archival rarities comp, and none of the people who hoped for something like that a year or two ago, no matter how contented with MIC they are, can honestly say, if given the choice between MIC and a six disc rarities box that totally dispensed with any pretence of "career spanning" overview of stylistic essentializing, if told they could put down $130 and buy one or the other today but not both, that they would pick MIC?

[The SMiLE Sessions]

Fishmonk, some of the stuff you say makes sense but some of it is just kinda cranky.

For instance, as far as The SMiLE Sessions goes, obviously they woulda needed one disc with the songs in a completed-as-possible state. It just had to be that way. In my opinion, there needed to be good quality, Beach Boys versions of "Do You Like Worms" and "Child Is Father Of The Man" out there, amongst many others. In my opinion, it is revelatory to have those songs in a nice, cleaned up versions with as many of the elements of the recordings as they have. They couldn't just put session material out there. It wouldn't be feasible.

However, I do agree with you that they should have put the master backing tracks on their own track rather than having them on the same track as the session highlights, since the "finished" backing tracks should be made easier to access, a la The Pet Sounds Sessions.

And then as far as complaining about the "poor selection of rarities", I think that is off-base. I think they actually gave us most of the best stuff that was in the vaults. I mean, sure, maybe there's stuff that we don't know about, but judging by what we've heard from boots and whatnot, the stuff they gave us here is probably the best. We got "Where Is She?", "(Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again", "California Feelin'", "Soul Searchin'", "You're Still A Mystery", "Barnyard Blues", "Back Home" from '63, "My Love Lives On", and more. All of those, in my opinion are better than whatever else is out there on bootleg. And let's face it, while they is likely still a wealth of good-to-great Denny material still unreleased, there probably isn't as much quality unreleased 1962-1985 Brian Wilson material.  Seriously, what is left that's worthwhile? "Stevie", "My Little Red Book", "Awake", I don't know what else. Maybe stuff like "Sweetie", the "Baby I Need Your Lovin'/Gimme Some Lovin'" medley (if it's somewhat complete), "Smokey Places", and "Little Girl"? I suppose the piano and vocal version of "In The Back Of My Mind" would also be pretty awesome, but who knows if they'd release it.

But yeah, I would really like if a rarities set came out, but I just don't think it's likely. I'm happy that we got The SMiLE Sessions and Made In California, and I feel like that has cleansed my palette for whatever new stuff Brian has coming out soon. I'm excited to look towards the future for him and Al, and maybe even the whole Beach Boys group again at some point.

I'm a completest. It's just who I am, I just have obsessive compulsive tendencies within my personality. When I search for "The Beach Boys" in my media player, the result, and though this is hyperbole it's perhaps truer than I'd be willing to admit, causes physical distress to my being:

2414 Songs; 4 Days, 12 Hours and 41 Minutes; 9.5 GB

And this of course doesn't include solo material, not to mention improperly tagged tracks. My collection has become like a jumbled length of Christmas tree lights, a thread so knotted and tangled physical laws appear to be violated by its existence and the possibility of straitening things out again feels beyond astronomical.

To gather together all the material out there, all the demos and unreleased and unused recordings available on official releases you have to get the twofers, you have to get Hawthorne, CA, you have to get Endless Harmony, you have to get the Good Vibrations Box, and the Pet Sounds Sessions Box, and the Smile Sessions Box, and the Made In California Box. And stereo mixes of some of those albums you already bought? Well that involves getting a whole other series of more recent reissues that don't contain the bonus material collected on the twofers and are generally just a worse value. To make matters worse, the 50th anniversary releases have raised some unanswered questions about the future availability of all the material that wasn't reissued.

On top of all that I think you also under estimate both the quantity and quality of material that has yet to be issued at all. I myself have a hard time figuring out sometimes what is and isn't available, but from the Love You/Adult/Child era for example there's a whole glut of stuff, "Lazy Lizzie", "We Gotta Groove", "Marilyn Rovell", all of Brian's demos from the period among other booted material. Even some of the stuff from Adult/Child isn't available, "Everybody Wants To Live", which is a really very strong track, and what about "Lines"? Has that been released yet? Maybe not a perfectly realized idea, but that brilliant little progression Brian teases is one of those great, unexpected moments of genius I've returned to a thousand times. Collecting all that stuff, along with things like those really low quality alternate mixes found on a boot like "Brian Loves You" totals up to a whole cd, and when you consider everything currently circulating (which is beyond mortal reckoning), and add to that all the likely to exist recordings that came out of sessions listed on AGD's site, and then add to that the further probable existence of substantial outtakes, unused material, and even entire recordings whose existence has remained so far unknown, I really don't believe anyone can honestly say "Made In California" was scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel in terms of significant rarities.

Frankly the problem with "Made In California" is that what the band actually *needs* is an official catalogue entry to bring some order to the chaotic universe of Beach Boys' rarities and bootlegs, and what "Made In California" is, "A Career Spanning Box Set"^TM, is in fact totally unnecessary and redundant. "Made In California" is just a mixtape a friend or significant other hands you that, though clever and meticulously conceived, possesses little lasting value as a "statement" or definitive representation of the band's output. Personally it has taken me years to come to appreciate many aspects of the groups musical personality and style, and considering the existence of mp3s and already existing, more manageable and specialized mix tapes focusing on those aspects individually, what's the use of this sort of set? Sure many bands put releases just like this out on a regular basis. The last few years has seen a noticeable uptick in such commemorative, career spanning, legacy boxsets hitting the market, but is anyone actually well serviced by this particular species of release besides the record labels and bands putting them out? A new fan will focus in on a very small chronological leg of The Beach Boys career, he'll listen to "Made In California" and just wade through the majority of the tracks, skipping things like "Brian's Back" no matter what infinitesimal degree of merit diehards have assigned to them through untold hours of careful deliberation.

The truly casual music fan, the older adult listener who works and raises children, who spends a very limited amount of their free time listening to music purely for enjoyment but who rather desires only something to put in the car cd player is, frankly, unlikely to radically change a lifetime of preferences and purchasing habits to exhaustively "explore" the band's obscure back catalogue and is just better serviced in every way by one of the numerous conventional greatest hits packages that already gather up the material he or she can probably be expected to want. And the more serious music listener who has the personality profile diehard fans tend to have, who takes the time to explore over the course of a number of years a much wider cross section of a band's output, well he'll undoubtedly gravitate to the Pet Sounds, and Smile material based on the reputation of those releases, find a few deeper cuts that suit his tastes from somewhere during the home studio years, buy the albums those songs were originally found on without really finding a lot to sink his teeth into elsewhere, and in several years by the time he's worked his way back around to the band's lesser, more flawed, unpopular, and critically maligned work, will have long since passed the point of "Made In California" being of any use.

I mean, I think the idea that this release is particularly suited or ideal for anyone, for any consumer demographic or segment of the music listening public is really an illusion. And I think that criticism is easily extended to every such release put out by classic bands in the last few years. The "Career Spanning Box Set" is obsolete. It's an attempt to put out a single product for the highest price that will appeal to the largest cross section of potential buyers as possible, meaning they give every type of buyer just enough to ensure a purchase, but are so dispersed in their focus and hedge their selections so severely, the majority of what they contain is of little interest regardless of who you are. In the age of mp3s this approach is paleolithic, which is the reason so many releases of this nature seem to be coming out, because it's now or never and it's better to scrape whatever money you can out them while you're still able.

In my particular case, they didn't put enough on there to entice me, they didn't cross the threshold of desirability required for me to shell out the cash. I bought "The Smile Sessions", I'm glad I did, I don't regret it and on the whole was satisfied. The day it arrived though, the first thing I did was spend a good hour or two ripping the five cds to my harddrive and tagging the all the tracks. And then the cds were put away never to be listened to again. Why did I bother to buy the physical product? Because I love The Beach Boys, I like buying things they put out and it was fun taking part in the excitement. To me, The Beach Boys are an organization I actively want to support with my purchases, because I want to give them something in return for what they've given me, and to that end, I wanted to buy "Made In California" too, because I like being able to buy Beach Boys releases. What I find frustrating and disappointing, is that I simply wasn't able to justify doing so this time around. The project was ill-conceived and tone deaf. It missed the mark plain and simple. Like I said, there was no need for a "career spanning box set", regardless of the fact that's what "Made In California" is, that doesn't change the fact there wasn't really any *need* for such a thing to begin with.

What there was a need for, and what every fan, no matter how reserved and contented he makes himself out to be today, initially felt the 50th anniversary was in fact the perfect opportunity to finally do, was a dedicated, official overview of the confusing world of the band's unreleased recordings. Is there any fan who hasn't said at one time or another something along the lines of: "they left more genius stuff on the cutting room floor than most bands recorded in an entire career"? It's so often observed in reviews and commentaries about the band to border on cliche. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not only been one of the most surprising things I've gradually discovered about The Beach Boys, but in fact one of the distinguishing things about them that really colors my feelings of affection towards them. An exploration and celebration of that aspect of the groups career is long overdue, and it's what the band's catalogue actually needed and what the fans actually wanted. That type of release would have made a bigger splash as well. When The Beatles put out their reissues Pitchfork devoted an entire week to exclusively covering them. A rarities release, something a little bolder, a little less bland, less routine than another "career spanning box set", would have probably at least gotten a wider critical hearing than it has, and it would have brought to light and put stage center one of the truly special things about The Beach Boys that just isn't understood by their larger general audience, that they were a prolific group that compensates a thousand times over for the numerous missteps and missed opportunities littered across their career with an undercurrent of completely unreleased recordings that not only augments but actually completes their artistic canon, that renders them comprehensible on a entirely different level and without which The Beach Boys simply aren't The Beach Boys. As a thousand times before The Beach Boys zigged when they should have zagged, or released something awful while a masterpiece languished unheard, "Made In California" is the result of over-deliberation, excessive, unwarranted caution and commercial paranoia, and the characteristical flaw of the group once more repeated of doing something "safe" and unexciting when something head turning and satisfying would have made all the difference.

To quote Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: "You spent so long thinking about how you could, that you didn't stop to think whether you should".

Just leave things alone and everyone's happy surely?

 

Well, it was necessary for the disk 1 album construction, which in turn was necessary for making the thing marketable beyond us diehards.

Not to be a contrarian but I don't buy this idea that anything other than a BWPS recreation would not appeal to the casual fan. The non-hardcore fans did just fine with the 30 minutes of Smile on GV box. Sorry if this is drifting off-topic  

They should have kept that relegated to the single and double disc limited versions. Those were the economy versions actually designed for the "casual" fans afterall. I never listen to disc one of my TSS, and it could have been better spent both filling in some of the final conspicuous gaps TSS neglected, and giving all the sprawling, fragmented session material more room to breath, and they could have included the fully sequenced version of the album on the vinyl still.

The biggest missed opportunity though, and really what I think would have been not only much cleverer but also more generous to the fans and more in the spirit of Smile itself, is that they didn't just release the multitracks. Even after TSS you still have fans here jumping through hoops doing extractions and fiddling with a lot of painstaking editing to put together their own versions, and given that there was no way TSS would have ever stopped speculative fan recreations of every kind, it seems like it would have been preferable to just finally unlock the multitracks and give the fans the best building blocks possible to make the whole thing easier...

It's because the technology now exists to do what would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, and they just couldn't help themselves. This "mucking about" was necessary for TSS, but not for this box. The remixing and effects I'm not so bothered about, but autotuning historic recordings. NO!

I didn't mean for this to be so long, but I this post sort of turned into my review of the box, so here goes:

I have two criticisms of TSS:

1. Poor organization. For such a large boxset with so many disconnected, unique snippets, the organization makes things all the worse by not being straightforward enough. On The Pet Sounds Sessions things were handled so much better, with session highlights as one track, followed by the master take as a second, distinct track. TSS on the other hand is all over the place, with master takes appearing as the final take which closes off several minutes of session highlights. And then you also get instances where My Only Sunshine and False Barnyard are both combined in a single lengthy track. Then there's the annoying way they handled vocals, as you don't get clean a capella tracks like on The Pet Sounds Sessions that include all the existing parts you get these weird gaps in coverage where you have the finished Vegetables fade appearing in mono on disc one, and then the stereo vocals and the stereo track separate. Finally, only further exasperating things, is the sequencing, which I feel should have been chronological by session date throughout rather than based as it is on their speculative disc one track sequencing.

2. Sound. This has, over time since purchasing TSS, noticeably affected my enjoyment of the set. The disc one reconstruction is a mixed bag in terms of the versions of the songs they cooked up, but what makes it more or less a non-starter for me is the indulgence of the compilers in reverb. The lucid minimalism of the original tracks is ruined. I really feel Brian was attempting to use negative space on the Smile material in sometimes radical ways, and you get a major reduction in instrumentation as the project goes on. Given the unfinished nature of a lot of the material the compilers can perhaps be forgiven for trying to fortify the sound, but they take it much too far at times and the excessive, and unpleasant, digital sounding reverb they drench the tracks in just suffocates them. The stereo portions on the following discs suffer less from this, but overall the mixes are just so "hot" that it's genuinely fatiguing to listen to some of them. Disc two, the Heroes sessions is the worst offender, with some of those tracks just feeling unbearably loud and bright to the point where I actually occasionally prefer listening to unmastered bootlegs. The WH Surf's Up is another good example.


MIC isn't so bad as all of that, and to me WIBNTLA in particular sounds very restrained, softer, more mellow etc. On things like Why though there's an instantly fatiguing feeling to the presentation, and I agree with people here that on YLTLF it's almost inexcusably bad. However, saying that, it definitely doesn't totally spoil my enjoyment. I think it's far better than nothing, considering that though the bootleg has its distinct charm in the case of YLTLF, the fact that the quality is so poor, and there are things on it like the left channel cutting out completely at times makes the MIC version undeniably superior despite its flaws.

Again, I'm fairly disappointed by this release. WITBNTA, the alternate Meant For You, Where Is She?, My Love Lives On, Why, the two versions of California Feeling (let's be honest though, the demo is really primarily a novelty...), a couple of upgrades like Sound of Free and YLTLF, the Be With Me Demo, and I guess Barnyard Blues, these are the tracks I consider essential additions to my collection. There's a real "big-whoop" feeling among the other rarities and bonus material. I've had Mona Kana for a long time in relatively good quality on bootleg and it's a mostly uninspired track that I very rarely feel an urge to listen to. The instrumental tracks of DGNTW and TM are nice I suppose, but generally uninteresting, poor choices considering how many better choices anyone who spends 5 seconds thinking about it could probably come up with. There's one "new" stereo selection from Wild Honey, which of the ones to yet appear in stereo is actually the one that's already been circulating for some time. There are completely undesirable, bottom of the barrel selections like Da Doo Ron Ron, some dubious remixes of things like Rock and Roll Music, a slightly improved version of It's Over Now, which is a nice though certainly lesser song I doubt I'll listen to much more than I already do following the upgrade it receives.

I mean, sure, there's decent stuff here, some absolutely essential material appears here for the first time, but given the frustrating issues with the mixing and mastering, the overabundance of material everyone has already purchased several times (like on 50 Big Ones last year...), the poor selections of rarities and the fact that there's maybe a disc worth of material among the six included really worth having, and the fact that the thing is, there's no other way to put it, overpriced, I'm very satisfied that I elected to not purchase it.

I have so many things in my collection of boots that still need to be released, and a lot of it exists only in poor or very poor quality. There are really solid, original songs like California Slide. There are things like the decidedly more enjoyable early version of Santa Ana Winds. In the space allocated on disc 6 for material that already appeared on TSS, you could have probably fit in Brian's Love You demos. The list goes on and on, and that's only things we already have available to us in one form or another on bootlegs. Given what a treat something like Where Is She? and the extended Meant For You are, many of us are left drooling at the thought that the vaults still contain lots of little gems like these. We get all sorts of tantalizing bits, reports from insiders and privileged fans about some of the yet uncirculating material, hints dropped by Mark and Alan themselves about things like a deluxe reprinting of Friends with bonus tracks, I mean, few of us ever really dreamed something like the Wild Honey Surf's Up was out there until it suddenly appeared out of the blue.

Give the fans what they want already, either a definitive rarities box, or a deluxe reprinting of the catalogue with extra discs attached to each entry containing relevant unused material and outtakes, and possibly a contemporary live show here and there. I think it would additionally be a cool, and given how things were executed on TSS and MIC, even a prudent idea to recruit Desper in particular to oversee the mixing and mastering process, at least on the albums he was involved with, given especially the fact that he could then also restore those releases to the HD stereo he's demonstrated in his videos.

Amusement Parks USA has must be the first incident of a cuss word in the BB discography. (Which I never noticed until I heard this mix) 

It's very clear on SOT Vol. 9 (Disc 4) - goes on even longer on the boot than on MIC.  Hal Blaine's finest hour as a carnival barker.  It faded out on the released version. Probably would have been too risque to include it full lenth in 1965.

Don't say puss

There are a lot of instances in the box set where I wonder if some far out artistic liberties were really taken by BDW, or if it's a retcon by Linnet. Either way, it works here.

Lots of retconning. More successful on some songs than others.

Is there anything vintage about Sail Plane Song? It feels like a modern attempt by Linett to polish off a demo into a real song by adding lots of effects and I'm not really sure I like it.

It was released on the Endless Harmony soundtrack back in 98, and Mark wasn't involved in that project. (At least not the first CD issue with the horrid orange cover.) All of the instrumentation is on the original, but the mix is new and rather ... um ... experimental. Panning and reverb effects at the end. Can't imagine that was Brian's intent, but it was certainly Al's with Loop de Loop.

Oh I mean compared to the EH version, is there anything vintage about this new mix? I know that the basic track is vintage.

Unless Mark or Alan say otherwise, I would wager money on the answer being no. Seems like they really wanted to give the impression that all the studio tracks on the first five discs were finished -- which means futzing around with the things like Sail Plane Song that were really just demos.

That's how it seemed to me too, and again, I'm not so sure how I feel about that sort of revisionism

There are a lot of instances in the box set where I wonder if some far out artistic liberties were really taken by BDW, or if it's a retcon by Linnet. Either way, it works here.

Lots of retconning. More successful on some songs than others.

Is there anything vintage about Sail Plane Song? It feels like a modern attempt by Linett to polish off a demo into a real song by adding lots of effects and I'm not really sure I like it.

It was released on the Endless Harmony soundtrack back in 98, and Mark wasn't involved in that project. (At least not the first CD issue with the horrid orange cover.) All of the instrumentation is on the original, but the mix is new and rather ... um ... experimental. Panning and reverb effects at the end. Can't imagine that was Brian's intent, but it was certainly Al's with Loop de Loop.

Oh I mean compared to the EH version, is there anything vintage about this new mix? I know that the basic track is vintage.

There are a lot of instances in the box set where I wonder if some far out artistic liberties were really taken by BDW, or if it's a retcon by Linnet. Either way, it works here.

Lots of retconning. More successful on some songs than others.

Is there anything vintage about Sail Plane Song? It feels like a modern attempt by Linett to polish off a demo into a real song by adding lots of effects and I'm not really sure I like it.

Years later after some of my books had come out, my friend and collaborator Dave Marks and his wife Carrie are visiting my home. It just happens to be the weekend that I'm moving my family to another (better) house across town. So here's Beach Boy David Lee Marks schlepping my moving boxes from my garage to my van. That's right, David Marks is helping me move. As we're loading the van for another trip across town my phone rings. I run into the house and grab the phone, the caller ID says "Al Jardine"...i say hello, the voice (obviously Al) says, "Hi..is Dave there?" Ummm...yeah...hang on a sec, he's carrying boxes of my sh*t to my van..as I'm tracking down Dave, the phone beeps, its another call, I have call waiting...with Al on the line, the caller ID says the call coming in is from "Neil Young"...I say to Al, "can you hang on a minute...Neil Young is on the other line"...Well, it wasn't actually Neil himself, it was John Hanlon Neil's recording engineer who was at Neil's house mixing that day. "Sorry John i can't chat right now I have Al Jardine on the phone, and Dave Marks moving my furniture." This was one of those head shaking moments. BTW Al was confirming with Dave that he was driving up to see him, which he did the next day, my house is near Morro Bay, just an hour drive or so to Big Sur.

This is probably the most amusing post I've ever had the pleasure of reading on this board.

"If you look at their entire career, particularly through the ’60s and ’70s, they did so many kinds of music so well that they actually developed multiple divergent and, at times, completely incompatible fanbases."

That really sums it up doesn't it

MIC and TSS are really the only major archival releases I've experienced since I became a fan, and I've noticed that I don't always prefer the official versions to the lower quality bootlegs I'm used to listening to. I can't bring myself to delete my booted stereo Country Air for example because I like the little noise at the beginning of it, and this got my wondering, are there any old fogeys here who kept listening to something like Leggo My Ego even after stereo Pet Sounds was released? Just curious.

Do we know if "Why" was intended as an instrumental or if Brian had written lyrics?

No way it's an instrumental. Way too repetitive. It's clearly meant to be a backing track for something.

But what wirestone?...but what?....

And gosh darn, what's with all the added reverb on some of the songs? It's a bit extreme, so "wet", like Brian Wilson was secretly a dub reggae artist this whole time.

My feelings exactly.

The new Meant For You is my absolute favorite of everything here. It's just a shame they didn't include more stuff like this.

Maybe someday a Smiley Smile/Friends/Wild Honey box set!

Speaking of which, there's still plenty of known Wild Honey and Friends outtakes which could still see the light of day. Maybe there were some leftovers from Smiley too? Ofc a SS/WH/Friends box is unthinkable, but there certainly is more jewlery to be found in the vaults from those years.

Would especially like to hear what the original songs for WH sound like.

It's annoying also because the one new WH stereo track released on this compilation is Country Air, even though it's the one track for which an official stereo mix has already been circulating.

And gosh darn, what's with all the added reverb on some of the songs? It's a bit extreme, so "wet", like Brian Wilson was secretly a dub reggae artist this whole time.

My feelings exactly.

The new Meant For You is my absolute favorite of everything here. It's just a shame they didn't include more stuff like this.

I was really excited for You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling. It's always been one of my favorite unreleased tracks, but I'm very dissapointed with it on the box set. It sounds too, I guess, over produced. Still, it's nice to hear the song in good quality.

There's too much echo on the vocal for my taste

God this oreo advertisement is annoying

The Beach Boys name had no traction at all so not so much I would have thought. Especially as while Brian was contributing some excellent stuff at this point, most of it was very uncommercial.

If the stories of DJs neglecting to preview new material based solely on "The Beach Boys" name are true, in that way, Brian may have one upped the band!

How publicised was Brian's reclusively at this time? I can see why "The Beach Boys release sixteenth studio album" may not have created too much hype, but "Brian Wilson, reclusive genius releases debut album" might have generated some buzz, even if the Beach Boys' stock was low at the time. At the least, I could see it performing as good as/better than Sunflower. It's still pop music, not exactly the gestation of Japanese noise rock. Some quirky records reached the mainstream at the time, a late 1970/early 1971 release along these lines may have seen some success:

Soulful Old Man Sunshine
Good Time
Sherry, She Needs Me
H.E.L.P. is on the Way
Sail Plane Song
Can't Wait too Long

Guess I'm Dumb
Take a Load Off Your Feet
Back Home
Games Two Can Play
Where is She?
Ol' Man River

The fun thing to think about is what otherwise clandestine "Where is She?" numbers could have been included/developed with this type of avenue in his hands...

I've played around with mixes like this several times. They did after all ditch a bunch of Brian numbers from earlier versions of the Sunflower LP, and though I'm not sure I've seen it explicitly stated, I've gotten the impression that was something Brian was somewhat hurt by. With all the unused material he was cranking out (not to mention This Whole World...etc), had he finished these songs, I think a Brian solo LP in 1970 would have been killer. Consider also what Desper has said about Brian's recording habits during this time, that Brian would record and erase songs and simply never share them with the rest of the band. There was definitely a lot of bitterness there but Brian still had a solid LP in him I feel.

Here we go again

To me Fallin' In Love should be with Sunflower.  And I'd consider using H.E.L.P. Is On The Way (maybe over Feet).  Barbara is another possible track.  One song I just don't get is ADITLOAT.  I just don't like it.  Why would they use Jack to sing (if you call it that) when they have 6 lead singers, all of whom could have done it way better?  I'm sure it's about the lyrics, but it's never been much for me.  Once I make my version of SU, I'll give it another spin.

One of the thing that's really striking about A Day In The Life... is how much Jack sounds like older Brian. I always see it as evidence that Brian wanted to sound the way he became.

Cuddle up? No way.

In no particular order:

- Slip On Through
- Be With Me
- Companion
- Sound of Free
- River Song

Better than I could have ever imagined.

I am blown away, easily my favorite Dennis song ever.

Don't tell me you broke down Shady

I lasted all of 22 hours. 

This is worth it though. Magical song.

Yes! Join us.

Better than I could have ever imagined.

I am blown away, easily my favorite Dennis song ever.

Don't tell me you broke down Shady

Put this on first thing again when I woke up this morning. Ok, yeah, sure, it's pretty good, what of it? It's great yeah big deal. so what...

It certainly holds up to multiple listens doesn't it?