This was one of the most (if not the most) amazing BB-related events/shows I've ever been to. Absolutely historic. Mike Love took the stage and had such a truly, from the heart, emotional moment with his family onstage, it had to be seen to be believed.

Not to oversell it, but in all honesty, it was touching and moving like nothing people in that room (or even Mike himself) were prepared for.

I think that when footage of this is seen, it will have an impact (positive) on the history of this band, and help to heal some of the things that have happened along the way in the eyes of the public. Being there in person to see this feet away from me was unreal.

And this is overlooking the actual song performances which were utterly STELLAR and SPECTACULAR.
It's times like these that I'm so very glad to be a (lucky) L.A. native when it comes to seeing very special BB-related shows like this.

Any board members want to meet up and hang/geek out a bit before and/or after the show? 

This letter is so revealing into the bizarre psychology of the Wilson family at the time... despite that Dennis was a 23-year old rich, famous (though at the time of dwindling fame), and independent adult/rock star, he still had to write a promissory type note to his dad for borrowing the camera. I’ll bet this was written at Murry’s insistence to Dennis (the Menace). I can’t image Carl having to have written a similar note in these circumstances.

Totally something that might be expected at age 13, but just a bit unthinkable and seemingly a bit demeaning of someone who’s an adult, let alone a famous adult celebrity. Obviously to Murry, Dennis was still just Dennis the screwup kid, and that is probably all he’d ever be (Dennis was always said to have had a complex about not pleasing his dad, and this letter is a bit indicative of that, don’t you guys think?) – still, Dennis was a guy who was months away from composing stuff like Be With Me.

I guess if I put it in perspective, it might be like today finding a note that Corey Haim had to write to his parents in order to borrow something in the mid 1990s (which might not seem too weird considering his then-life circumstances), but an early 1968 Dennis wasn’t thought of as quite so unreliable as a 1990s drug addict like Haim, was he?

Maybe let's organize a Smiley Smile Board meetup there!

I missed out on tickets because a coworker was talking to me about his kids.  When I realized what time it was...it was 11 minutes after the hour and tickets were gone.

Juuuuuuuuuust great.

Go back on Ticketmaster, there are tix back up onsale! ($34+ on a $20 face ticket, thanks to this lovely company)

Great, now they've associated my fave part of the song (guitar line at 1:32) with an image of a dog's butt which is so prominently shown at that same timecode.

This video is so, so very awful.

Thanks AGD, that article was a great read. But it didn't quite get to the heart of what I was wondering... which was what was going through Al's mind as he saw the band taking off after he left, particularly since it seems he left partially because he didn't see the band ever taking off to the point where he could make a proper living at it - and he very shortly saw that assumption turn out to be false.

I wonder if Al's ever spoken about any regret/sadness, etc. when he saw what could've been (I know he's a classy guy so he probably wouldn't ever have made a big deal about it, but it was a great stroke of luck to get the chance to return at the time he did, which was the band's heyday).

I own the Lost Beach Boy book and need to re-read it too though, as it might answer some of my questions.

Time to Get Alone (Alternate Version) from Hawthorne, CA... the acapella outro of harmonies is just plain unbelievable. It's just plain near BB vocal perfection, with their voices in their just-slightly matured prime.

I'd love to hear a recording of those harmonies which doesn't fade out so quickly, as it does on that version. I seem to recall someone saying that this particular version of the song was assembled/created specifically for the compilation and a 1968 mixdown of that specific version and outro arrangement didn't exist (or did I imagine that?)

I hope the long-discussed completely alternate version (done by Carl?) is finally released this year.

We've heard the story about David Marks having a twinge of regret for leaving the band around the time of Fun Fun Fun... but I've never really heard about Al during the mythic "dental school" (or was that debunked?) era when he left and was replaced by Marks.

Has Al ever spoken of his own twinge of regret as he watched the band soar to national stardom? Must've been surreal from his end.

I wonder if he ever thought there would be a chance he'd ever be back in the band before Brian called him to take his own place on the road.
I also wonder if the '62-'63 -era Al told any girls "yeah, I used to be in that band".

While “God Only Knows” gets talked about a TON by other artists, magazines, etc - probably more so than any other BB song in their entire catalog - I hardly ever see it mentioned that Carl was only 19 years old when he sang it! (Of course, Good Vibrations would hold the same status). Once again, another amazing feat/fact about this band which goes unnoticed/under-appreciated by the general public.

I think that very few people (who aren’t huge fans/nerds of the group) that are clearly aware of this fact. In and of itself, that fact is quite mindblowing to realize that such a young guy (who’d of course already been singing beautifully for years) could bring this level of beauty and sophistication to a lead vocal. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of another song by any artist (that is held to such a high, deep artistic regard) that was sung by a teenager. 

Sadly, Brian seems to have had many unfinished/unresolved issues between himself and his brothers at the time of their deaths.
Things weren't exactly going along swimmingly between Brian + Dennis in late 1983 (with the beginnings of Brian’s Landy-induced estrangement as well as Dennis’ downfall), or with Brian + Carl in 1997 around the time Carl got sick (though at least they had time to try and patch things up near the end).

These days in interviews, it seems that Brian will get sad, but generally say only nice/positive things about Carl… but Dennis doesn’t quite seem to be afforded a similar courtesy. It’s a bit heartbreaking to see.

What I've seemed to notice is that in interviews with Brian lately (and even over the last decade or so), when Dennis is brought up, less affection seems to be shown for him, and he gets brushed to the side. Brian doesn’t really seem to want to talk about Dennis at all. (Of course it's his prerogative to do so, and Brian often avoids uncomfortable topics).
When modern-day Brian does say something about Dennis, I think I’ve heard negative things about him like “he was a troublemaker” with perhaps a sprinkle of positivity of his musical talents, saying stuff like “he blew us away with Forever” every now and then.

It could simply be that simply Brian just clearly had a favorite brother (Carl) and less love (and less in common personally) for Dennis - but it seems like there is more to it than just that.

Dennis’ absence of credit on “City Blues” on GIOMH seems to clearly highlight this. Dennis appears to have co-written the song, but his glaring credit omission on the released version seems telling. Could this be due to Dennis being lumped into the people of “bad influence” on Brian (by Brian’s people), and Brian’s people wanting to airbrush away the public’s memory of the early ‘80s creative spark between Brian + Dennis (due to drugs being heavily involved)? If Dennis’ (possibly minor) contributions to “City Blues” would remind the public of this little-known era of collaboration between the two, that may not be considered “desirable” to Brian’s wifeandmanagers. I just can’t imagine that if Carl had a similar hand in collaborating on a song from that era (sans drug involvement) that Carl’s credit would be glaringly omitted like that.

This is great news.
I'd love to know if the Brian quote about Kevin is true, somehow I think it's totally BS.

I've heard that Kevin Shields is a huge BW fan, and has been spotted at various BW solo shows.

(Please ignore, posted a question that was already answered in the other thread...)

Does anyone know why Brian and Dennis used drum machines (instead of real drums) on the final, released versions of these songs?

Wondering if it was something done for the demo, where the song started out like that (with an intention to replace the drum machine with actual drums), but when all the parts were finally layered, that those songs actually wound up working well with the minimal drum machines, and well enough was left alone.

I actually totally dig the sound, really unique to the Beach Boys from that early '70s period period.

Why are we all so sure that scrap of paper contained the final draft of the lyrics?

I don't think it was, because DYLW got scrapped altogether, so there is no "final draft". Even BWPS doesn't use all of those lyrics, leaving out the "Having returned to the East or West indies" bit.

Agreed.

Amazing.

This may have taken place after or around the session that went "badly" in December and "almost broke the band up".  Shortly thereafter VDP leaves.  It appears, however, that Brian didn't give up without a fight.  He directs his attention to a single to buy some time and gets Parks to come back for a short period of time.  It would explain why so many songs are so close to being finished waiting for the lead vocals - they were arguing over the words.

This is a good point; the words were still in contention, and probably Brian wasn't able/willing to just record vocals that were outright strongly objected to by Mike.

What's interesting to me is this question: why didn't Brian just go ahead and sing his own lead vocals, or at least lay down guide/rough vocals on at least some of the songs (that are currently left without any leads)? One album earlier on Pet Sounds, Brian sang the vast majority of lead vocals, more so than any other Beach Boys album (almost where he's in the Mike Love lead singer role of the earlier albums). (This also begs the side question - were Brian's leads on the early versions of "Here Today" and "God Only Knows" done just to get ideas down as a "scratch" track, or were they at one point in consideration for being the final version?)

I wonder, did Brian have in mind for the others to sing more leads on SMiLE than on Pet Sounds? I guess we won't know which band member(s) Brian would have had sing leads on the songs, or if he had even gotten to the point of considering such things. Maybe he only started thinking in terms of laying down leads once he had the backing tracks of a good collection of songs finished and refined - to the point where the decision of which band member that Brian chose to sing each song might have been a consideration of not just each song, but its place and "feel" on the album as a whole.

I suppose a number of the songs were just not pieced together fully enough yet to even get to the point of singing a lead. So frustrating.

"Here Today" (Alternate Version) where Brian sings lead, has a bit of the old Brian voice on the choruses, IMO...

If you ever wanted to see "Forever" performed by a digital John Stamos (and backing choir) in a video game, now is your chance.
Seriously though, this is hilarious.  "Forever" starts at 1:36.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTg4KIxdpic

The BBs invented both shoegaze and chillwave with All I Wanna Do.

Totally. I also have told other people the same thing about this song and shoegaze.

I'm a huge shoegaze fan, and IMO, I can hear some trace elements of what eventually became shoegaze with All I Wanna Do.

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is a big Brian Wilson fan, and a hunch tells me he may have had this song somewhere in his head when recording and writing.

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Could someone Please Make my day with these tunes?

I've always thought it was NOT intentional, and was a screw-up that got left in there.

It's not seemingly at a proper song time interval, and almost randomly occurs during a vocal line... then after this dropout ends, the music bed comes back somewhat clunkily right as Brian says "forever", sort of in the middle of a musical phrase.

It always has kinda annoyed me, since I love this song to death. 

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