I've kinda lost interest in this set now. I suppose the plan was to build up anticipation, as they slowly release tracks for streaming, but in my case it's gone from a "must buy" to "if i happen to be in a cd store in the next few months and see it, i might buy it".
Other parts of life are more important right now.

It has been a marathon, for sure, but there are quite a few bits that might grab your attention again when it hits the shelves. I'm talking about things that aren't just an alternate mix or whatever, but songs you haven't heard at all before. I'm not saying you need to be a religious zealot over this set, but my feeling is that it delivers a little more than the usual copyright extension releases we've had in years gone by. For starters, it offers a substantial book.

Hang in there!

This reminded me that I once saw a 45 of Good Vibrations from 66 that listed Brian as the sole songwriter, and sent me searching - I found this one, but given I'm in Australia, it might have been from somewhere else.

https://www.discogs.com/The-Beach-Boys-Good-Vibrations/release/2209447

I just started wondering about the fact that Al had talked about a live show being included in the Feel Flows box set, and although there are many live tracks, you couldn't say a live show is included. Am I right to be thinking we have a live show (at least one) coming our way by December?

 Okay, about 2 weeks to go now - unless my maths or memory is off.

Starting to think that I can let myself get a preliminary level of excitement here. No further delays in sight!

I know I'll probably get flack for this but "When Girls Get Together" is probably my favorite colab between Mike and Cousin Brian. I love the circle of life nature of the lyrics and the music is so joyous.

The question was "greatest" not your favourite - so you deserve what you get.

What makes something great can be subjective. For me if something is my favorite, it's great. So there. 

Appreciate what you're saying, but even the instrumental track of that stinker makes me gag.

No offense to anyone who loves it.

I know I'll probably get flack for this but "When Girls Get Together" is probably my favorite colab between Mike and Cousin Brian. I love the circle of life nature of the lyrics and the music is so joyous.

The question was "greatest" not your favourite - so you deserve what you get.

- "Buzz, Buzz, Buzz": unbooted live cover - Technically it is somewhat booted because videos from 7/4/84 or 7/4/85 are on YouTube

I think unreleased live recordings of songs otherwise unreleased by the band is a whole other rabbit hole. There are a ton. "Love Me Tender", "Come Softly To Me", "Bony Maronie", "Dancin' in the Streets", "Wishing You Were Here", "Oh, Pretty Woman", "Merry Minuet", just off the top of my head at the moment.

There are so many of these it's ridiculous. Was "Duke of Earl" ever done prior to the split of the band, or just in the Mike & Bruce years.

Add Runaway from the early 80s to that (one of my favourites) - even though it was on the Sunkist LP.

There was a list once put together in the old Aussie BB zine BBA covering this exact matter - I'll have to dig up when I get a chance.

[interesting]

We'll probably see "deepfake" audio to try to replicate Dennis's voice before we see technology that can pull an aborted, recorded-over vocal off of multi-track analog tape.

That being said, I know of a few cases on *other* songs where Dennis lead vocals exist that you'd never think would have. Hopefully we'll get to hear those....

Well some of his 1976-1977 era leads are interesting choices - I'm thinking of songs like "My Diane", "Mona" and "Sea Cruise".

We love Denny! Would love to hear more of his leads. Those 2 tracks of his leads on "All I Want To Do" were a revelation, even if the finished version with Mike does trump them.

It was incomplete and taped over. Once something is taped over, it cannot be recovered. Not lost, just erased very soon after it was captured.

Thanks. Well not accidentally lost - but lost to the world in the sense that we will never hear it!

If only SOS with Dennis on lead vocals had been saved. I always have hope that o every it may actually surface.

+1. Are we sure this one vocal pass was lost?

Well obviously it's Good Vibrations.

This gives me the chance to mention an early?? pressing of GV I once saw for sale without Mike Love listed on the composer credit. We're there many of these?

Love this.

Can't wait for the next 4 weeks to pass - my experiments with a DeLorean have stalled-!

[For Free]

I give up. Who?

Okay, but only 'coz you made such a valiant effort to guess!

See attached - Brian's contribution, it seems, amounts to nothing more than the count-in on the last track of David Crosby's For Free - but you sure can recognise his voice!!  

[actually, it sounds like it may have been lifted from the Pet Sounds bonus track "Unreleased Backgrounds" first released 1990].

Brian is featured in a piece on the Beatles Revolver album, titled "Revolver and Me"

Brian talks about his relationship with the song "Good Day Sunshine" an interesting choice.

It should be noted that the magazine also contains a large-ish piece on the new (coming) Feel Flows.

And even that is not where things end as regards Brian's name in this mag - It also mentions Brian's name as a backing vocalist on a very well known Californian musician's latest release. No prize for guessing who.

They really should've used the "All Day" part of TLOS on the album, that's one of my favorites from these sessions. Interesting to hear that Midnight's Another Day is something that Scott Bennett made based on another Brian song. This one has always struck me as sounding a little forced, like they were trying just a tiny bit too hard to come up with a "deep" song like 'Til I Die. I much prefer something like Good Kind of Love which sounds very Brian to me (and that said, I love the entire TLOS album despite some minor flaws).

It came to me that it's probably titled "Roll Around Heaven" - and yes, it works beautifully, because I made an edit from the snippet available on the DVD or somewhere and slotted it into the place where I think it fit best in the album, and it flows and adds to rather than retracting from the album.

[I could post the way it fits together in an attachment, but not really sure if that's proper (allowed)]

I accept what I'm reading above - don't dispute any of that. And I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist. All I ever said was what my impression was.

That impression was formed in Part from interviews with Brian.

 To be more specific I recall one where he's talking about the origins of TLOS - because unusually, that album was essentially a commissioned work with a hard deadline - and I recall Brian saying he asked Scott Bennett if they would have the thing they were working on ready in time - that's Brian asking Scott - the driver doesn't usually ask the passenger how fast are we driving . .

Secondly I recall Brian being asked about some of the lyrics (maybe "Midnight's Another Day") and Brian's answer is 'I don't know, Scott wrote that'.

Does anyone know if any progress has been made in getting a distribution deal?

Maybe the producers want to absolutely explore every chance of a cinematic release before going down the streaming service route?

I'm not sure what the situation is regarding cinemas in the US at the moment - here in Australia half our population are still subject to random lockdowns and cinemas are operating at the lowest possible levels to support their staff, and that's when the authorities don't have them shuttered completely.

This song was recorded and released back in the late 90's.  Mike and Bruce were probably most likely asked to appear on the track rather than it being their idea.  Pretty sure the band's legacy wasn't really tarnished over this song.  🤷‍♂️

. . . only because nobody noticed!

In reading about the reevaluation of some of Brian’s solo albums, it brought up a question I’ve always wanted to ask here. What is Brian’s actual degree of involvement in the songwriting and production of his solo albums? I find it hard to fully enjoy a lot of these albums, because it seems so many others were involved with them, that there wasn’t a lot of pure Brian input. I also know he has to deal with mental illness, and wonder how much this affects his abilities to oversee projects.

I remember when the Wild Honey and Friends box sets came out, everyone was excited to hear how much Brian had produced these albums. I wish we had something similar with the solo albums to shed some light.

Thanks for any answers.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about Brian's capabilities or lack thereof, and generally I find them unconvincing. Yes, many of the 21st-century Brian projects are collaborative, but I think there's ample evidence of who did what. Tl;Dr: essentially Brian generates the melodies and vocal arrangements, and the rest is collaborative to varying degrees.

Some basics that I've put together over the years:

Imagination/That's Why God/No Pier Pressure: apparently these all drew from a common well of songs where generally Joe Thomas would be running through progressions and if Brian heard something he liked, he would improvise a melody on top. Joe would then wrangle this material into songs. Then for the first two projects Brian would focus on the vocal arrangements while Joe would arrange the band. For No Pier Pressure, Joe left the project fairly early on and Brian worked with Paul von Mertens and the guests on the arrangements.

Gershwin/Disney: Paul von Mertens would work up the basic band arrangements which Brian would modify to greater or lesser degrees as he saw fit. Paul would then handle the orchestrations while Brian arranged the vocals

Christmas: I think Brian was really in the driver's seat for this one. The two new songs were repurposed from existing, relatively recent Brian compositions.

Smile: Darian Sahanaja essentially put this together, albeit in close consultation with Brian

I Just Wasn't Made...: Reportedly no production/arrangement involvement from Brian

That Lucky Old Sun: Brian generated all the basic tunes in what was apparently a tremendous late rush of creativity, some of the lyrics, and the basic band arrangements, which Scott Bennett then had the job of reshaping -- to make everything fit together, changing tempos and dynamics, adding instruments, reconfiguring songs and then writing the bulk of the lyrics to fit the theme.

I'm sure I've made some mistakes here but that's what I gather off the top of my head. I haven't mentioned the 1988 album or Gettin In Over My Head because those projects are a bit more mysterious.

Your impressions seem about right. I think most of what you say is probably correct. I did think that Scott drove the songwriting a bit more than Brian on TLOS.

I think Brian had the concept / initial inspiration for the theme, but I somehow think Scotty did most of the writing. Not to suggest Brian didn't contribute enormously. Just my impression.

Thinking back, that "All Day - Lucky Old Sun Theme" can't remember what it ended up being called - dropped from the album, but performed live a few times - that's gotta be pure Brian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK60SsCN7UE

Where on earth did that come from???  

Missed it ... it's been taken down already,  damn.

.

That version of "Spirit of Rock n Roll" is a revelation. Brilliant to finally have a good clean full length release of the 1986 'finished' song. It's hands down the best version out there now.

I really like this version! From the new "Jem Records Celebrates Brian Wilson ".
https://youtu.be/pz9t8BQI0eM

Phew, when I read the topic title I thought our boys had re-recorded this one again . . again.

Whoever did the color tinting did a terrific job. That looks accurate and full of life too.

Watching the original clips in B&W I never noticed Mike kneeling on a chair while tracking that vocal. I saw Al's box, but not Mike's chair. I wonder if he did that regularly for breath support and other vocal technique considerations, or if it was for certain vocals? Kneeling like that does put one into the "proper" upright position for breath support while singing.

Very cool images, thank you for posting this!

Now can we please get the full 45+ minutes of that footage before it becomes irrelevant?

How could it ever become irrelevant?

I keep seeing a two cd Japanese import of Feel Flows that allegedly has exclusive bonus tracks listed on Ebay. Any idea what the "exclusive" tracks are?

Disc 1
+ Sunflower Promo 1
Disc 2
+ Surf's Up Promo

It looks like these tracks are "hidden" - but may appear following the album remasters, rather than at the end of the disc. It's all pretty unclear to me.
This info gleaned from various retailers websites.

Eg. https://diskunion.net/rock/ct/detail/1008322706

Of course these tracks will also appear on the 5 CD set anyways!

Seems like it's a bit of marketing deception from the Japanese??? [No offense to anyone out there - love Japan!]

In fairness, I think it has been acknowledged that "Some of Your Love" was a literal re-write of "Mike Come Back to LA." In that particular case, I don't think they just accidentally wrote a similar song. They were taking the old song and retooling it.

I assumed everyone knew this - I took it for granted. We've heard the Mike Come Back lyrics (chorus at least) which have been out there for decades.  I didn't mean to suggest they were two different songs, but just that in some ways I wish I'd never heard the original lyrics, because they've stuck in my head.

Maybe I'm using quotation marks recklessly in my posts??