When I saw them in June of '97 - literally eight months to the day before he passed - Carl sounded great on guitar and vocals. The only clues to his illness where when he sat down in the middle of the show for a couple of songs, and when Mike mentioned his illness and how he was fighting it while staying on the road. I've read that he sat through almost all of other shows on that tour, so I guess I'm lucky I caught them on one of his "good" nights.

It seems that the lineup on the original version, from Halloween of 1970, amounted to just Brian on the instrumental track (playing synthesizers), and Brian, Carl, Mike, Al, and Bruce on the vocals. There's a photo from that session that includes Carli Munoz posing in a monster mask (not Billy Hinsche, as originally reported by David Leaf), but I'm not sure if he's playing on the track - it would be a couple of years before he joined their band. Dennis was reportedly absent, likely filming "Two Lane Blacktop".

The 1980 version (instrumental track only, no vocals) was recorded a couple of months after the release of Keepin' The Summer Alive - in a medley with a new version of "Shortenin' Bread" - under the title "Song Within A Song". Brian cut that at Western 3 with Chuck  and a few session guys, like drummer Earl Palmer.

Great news to start a Wednesday with. Not even caring that I just typed a grammatically poor sentence. Not caring at all!

Thanks for the info! Makes me love that song even more. Brian really wasn't that inactive during the So Tough sessions - not in charge by any means but still clearly a contributing member of the band. Makes me wonder what those early 70s albums would sound like if Brian had worked on everyone's material like this. I mean, I love those records the way they are but still...

There's a change of dynamics by 1972 in that while Brian worked a lot on his own songs (discounting Marcella & SOS), he very rarely turned up to contribute to the others' sessions. I think He Come Down, California Saga and The Trader might be the only ones to break the rule. By contrast he's somewhere on every Surf's Up track save for SDT, even if his parts tend to be minimal and he was going through a writing dry spell.

Is he on "Lookin' At Tomorrow"?

I've never actually heard a note of In Bloom's music, but they still inspired me while writing a particular song in the late '90s. Here's how: I'd read a description of their music on a BBs message board, and their sound was described as "a cross between Pink Floyd and Nirvana". I thought, hmmm...wonder what that would sound like? What I came up with was kinda like psychedelic grunge. I have no idea if it sounds even remotely like In Bloom, but I'm glad to have had that inspiration!

Y'know, that's almost exactly the size of my home studio. I'm not gonna worry about it being tiny any more - size DOESN'T always matter! 

It's about 15 by 32 or so.  The ceiling is slanted but averages about 12 feet.

I think it's important to note that while size doesn't always matter, there's a lot about that room (and most other great studio live rooms) that is not visible, or is not obvious.  What you see as the room is actually more or less a room inside a room -- acoustically isolated from the rest of the building and with a fair amount of air and/or acoustic material between the walls that you see and the superstructure of the building surrounding that room.

Also, at that time the philosophy about wall treatments was to have it super dead at sort of seated mic level (you can see in the photo how it's all white acoustic tile from about chest height down) and then adjustably reflective at standing mic level.  That's the wood-grain looking material above chest height.  Then the acoustic panels would modulate that reflective surface down to acceptable levels, while still allowing a certain liveness about the room for when people are standing to sing.  The portable screens and goboes help regulate this even more and provided absorption and to a much lesser extent isolation.  You can see how the screen behind the bass amp in that shot or the screens at the back of the studio are not there to isolate anything, but there to help frame the space and keep things pretty neutral to dead, acoustically around the band.

Would literally kill for a picture of the GOK setup.  I'd do the prison time, too.

Yeah, I'm lucky enough to have a house that came with a pre-built acoustically-treated studio (which was the main selling point for me). While the tracking room doesn't have a slanted ceiling, both it and the control room are built as a "room-within-a-room" - on a foundation of hockey pucks, no less! The control room (much smaller than those at Western) has a trapezoidal ceiling, and a big glass window separates it from the tracking room. In the tracking room, there are sound-absorption panels from about waist level down, and double doors on the one entrance into the tracking room, and both entrances into the control room. Guess the builder knew what he was doing!

Y'know, that's almost exactly the size of my home studio. I'm not gonna worry about it being tiny any more - size DOESN'T always matter! 

Pretty small room in that first shot - so I'm guessing Studio 3, which was where the first two Party! sessions occurred, with engineer Don Blake.

In this clip from 1988 it mentions that George Harrison called Brian's manager and wanted to work with him. Does anyone have more info about this? Did they ever meet up? It's interesting that George contacted Brian because the only Beatle you usually hear about with respect to the Beach Boys is Paul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRpng94KjyE

Although I've not seen a lot about it in print, George was a fan of the Boys...he spoke in interviews promoting Cloud Nineabout how he did a "Beach Boys track" ("Just For Today", with it's counterpoint harmonies) on the album (although his co-producer on that was probably an even bigger BBs fan...).

I get it that Brian was on a very self-destructive path with coke and overeating in 1982, and I get the argument that Brian was a difficult patient, and that it took extreme measures like Landy's to get him off the path that he was on. So, yes, Landy's radical intervention in that period achieved the desired result, and it's understandable why Carl et al. were initially happy with him.  

But, man, Landy was a bad guy.   Yes, Brian did indeed need to get off his diet of cocaine, birthday cake and Marlboros.    But a daily smorgasbord of Eskalith, Serentil, Cogentin, Xanax, pot and Navane wasn't necessarily all that much better.   And in fact may have been worse in some respects.

Aside from being hacks as medical professionals, the Landy crew's separation of Brian from his family was absolutely inexcusable.  I get that it may have been necessary to separate Brian from a few people who were toxic for him, but teenagers Carnie & Wendy?  Come on.   And Audree?  Think about that one for a minute.  Audree Wilson spent almost the entire '80s separated from her oldest son.  How painful must have that been? Especially after the loss of Dennis.  

To say, "well, don't forget that Landy saved Brian's life" misses the mark a bit.  It's a bit like talking about some legitimate act of heroism of a military leader... that was followed by a long string of war crimes committed by the same dude.

We were talking about Carolyn Williams, and Landy's staff kidnapping Brian. All I was saying that something had to be done to help Brian, and in the short term, Landy's treatment did Brian a lot of good. I'm not denying that Landy then abused his position when he became co-writer, executive producer, etc.
What I still don't know is, what alternative was there to Landy? Brian had seen other doctors. No one seemed to be able to help him. I don't know anything about Carolyn, but when Brian was with her, his drug and alcohol abuse was at it's worst. I've always been told that Brian's condition was so bad in 1982 that he could have died. Is that in dispute now?

Well, Brian was in equally bad shape, or close to it, in '75, and he was with Marilyn then. So I don't think it's a case of Carolyn herself being bad for Brian, anymore than it was a case of Marilyn being bad for him. True, Carolyn was a nurse and Marilyn wasn't, but since Carolyn was also in a personal relationship with Brian, I suspect she had little to no actual control over his behavior - if that makes sense. She could take his blood pressure, change his bandage if he had a boo-boo, but she wasn't a doctor, and therefore couldn't "treat" him. Essentially, she followed a doctor's orders until she quit working for the doctor and started working directly for Brian. And remember, it's been said that Brian in this state was very, very good at manipulating people to get what he wanted. Landy - as evil as he turned out to be, and possibly because of that - was the only one would prove to be better at Brian's game than Brian himself, and therefore was more than a match in the game of wits.

The photos of the "party" with all the wives there... anybody know what house those were taken in?

Possibly Mike's - there were reports at the time, or perhaps years later, that they had actually recorded some of the album there (which of course is not true). I think Marilyn had stated that. She may have been remembering the photo shoot.

That is a great picture of Dennis. I think they all look great around this time, something not always guaranteed in future group pics

Yeah, well it's so cool to hear the studio chatter from these sessions - you realize just how NORMAL they all still were! Sadly, that would begin to change within a couple of years...

Yep, those are all Party session photos! The ones where Brian sports longer hair, the cap and the terry-cloth thing are from a different session, a month or so removed, but still a Party session.

There are plenty...for instance, the shots where Brian is wearing a white cap and the white terry-clothish overcoat thing, Mike is also wearing a cap and a striped t-shirt. The shot where they encounter Spector and the Righteous Brothers in the hallway is from that session. There are shots from more than one session, with Carl and Al playing acoustic guitars, Bruce and sometimes Brian playing bass, Dennis on bongos, Hal in the background...

I know a lot of this stuff (including Al's supposed problem) are only in the Gaines book. I've never read WIBN, but I know it's mostly a copy and paste job in addition to being biased like crazy. Seems like the only source for a lot of this stuff is Steve Korthof. What ever happened to him? Seems like he was fired/let go around October 1982. I assume being a cousin to Brian/Carl/Dennis that he still had contact with them. Brian was admitted to Brotman in part cause of Korthof, Rocky, and Stan forcing him to see Dr. Ganz. Yet Brian allowed Steve K. to visit him, while Rocky and Stan were forbidden. (Brian made the realization that he hated both of them while also being afraid of them, too.) Is he a family member that's been excommunicated like Steve Love? Or was he still in contact with them post-1982?

Unfortunately, Steve Korthof passed away fairly recently, so we can't ask him. Anyone know if he ever popped onto a message board/fan forum and answered questions?

I know that Eddie was still on bass when the band played Lake Tahoe in January of '80, but Joe Chemay had taken over in the bass spot for the February/March tour (including the taping of their appearance on ABC's "Fridays" show, which was not broadcast until June). By April, Eddie was back, but this time on lead guitar, and Joe was still there on bass (incidentally, this was when Dennis was out of the band and Bobby was playing drums). In the post-concert radio interview with Brian and Bruce following the live broadcast of the April Philadelphia Spectrum show, it's mentioned that the record company asked them to "beef up" their live sound for the tour, hence bringing Eddie back to add a third guitar while keeping Joe on bass. This lineup endured for the European tour in June, except that Dennis was now back on drums. But by the time of the July 4th show in Washington D.C., Joe was gone and Ed was back to his usual bass duties.

Of course, with Carl out of the band for most of '81, you had Eddie on lead guitar to cover his parts, and Ernie Knapp on bass. However, there's a photo of the group onstage somewhere (the Hollywood Bowl, perhaps)? in 1982, with someone other than Ed playing bass. Whoever it is, he's in the shadows so it's hard to distinguish his face, but he's wearing a Pink Floyd "The Wall" tee-shirt...leading me to believe it's Joe (since he sang on that album). The photo is in John Milward's book "The Beach Boys: Silver Anniversary".

One correction: Brian joined the band for the March 1, 1979 opening night of their run at Radio City Music Hall, not Madison Square Garden.

Also, there was some discussion here awhile back (I think when Rocky himself was posting) about whether the infamous, violent Super Bowl Sunday episode was '81 or '82...anyone remember which conclusion we came to?

For ML $$ trumps (pun intended) scruples, basic human decency, et al. 

It's important to remember that ALL the guys (except Carl) played those South African shows. I don't think Mike deserves all the heat.

Personally I'd give somewhat of a pass to the judgment of Denny and Brian who were pretty deeply f*cked up on substances at the time. 

Yeah, I don't know about that - f*cked up as they were at times, Brian sounded pretty darn lucid in that hotel room chat with Les Chan and his buddies. He even said he hoped Carl would return for the shows in South Africa, and thought that he would. No hint of guilt or dismay that they would be playing in Apartheidland...event though his then-girlfriend, Carolyn (an African-American) was in the very next room. Maybe the guys had the mindset that the Byrds claimed they had, when they played Apartheidland more than a decade earlier, which was "Well, maybe us being there will a good thing for the culture, and will maybe result in a positive change". Who knows.

Tom (or anyone), do we know how much Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music pay labels per play?

Per the web

Spotify pays whoever holds the rights to a song anywhere from $0.006 to $0.0084 per play. The rights “holder” can then split these earning between the record label, producers, artists, and songwriters, which means splitting pennies between many parties.

This is a pretty good resource

https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-services-pay-musicians

Now on Spotify’s own artist site they don’t say, and say it’s affected by “various factors”. I’d like to know how that works for an independent artist both on an indie label or on their own label. I’ve had months where I got paid more for less streams, for instance.

IIRC, YouTube or Spotify or Apple or all of them have a stipulation that for an artist's music to be available to stream on their services, ALL of that artist's music must be PERPETUALLY available on their service? Just wondering if indie artists would be able to pull their music off these platforms, and either only allow their music to be streamed from their own websites at a price they dictate, or band together and launch their own streaming service with a subscription rate that makes it more profitable for the artists. I'm sure this has been thought of before, and if so, there's probably some logistical or practical reason it won't work, 'cause I'm assuming if it COULD work, indie artists would already be doing it? What's stopping a new indie artist from having their music out on the big services long enough to get "known" in the general public consciousness, then pulling their work so it can only be streamed under their terms for a more reasonable profit?

Tom (or anyone), do we know how much Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music pay labels per play?

For ML $$ trumps (pun intended) scruples, basic human decency, et al. 

It's important to remember that ALL the guys (except Carl) played those South African shows. I don't think Mike deserves all the heat.

Landy was let go in December of 1976?  That's interesting, considering how thin and healthy-ish Brian looked in late 1977.  He did that on his own?

Also, good lord, this 1976 interview.  Brian just can't stop talking about drugs. 

Yeah...that bit about having lots of money to buy cocaine was actually broadcast on my local radio station on Brian's birthday back in 1986! It was a little soundbite they threw out there when wishing him a Happy B-Day.

I wasn't my intention to being dismissive of his playing, just stating the fact that he was one of the regulars at Joe's sessions

Agreed. He's a Nashville guy, and most of Joe's men are in Nashville or Chicago.

Rocker, you could be right on both notes. I think Brian doubles Matt on some high parts in "You're Still A Mystery", recorded the previous year.

Always believed that was Carl and Matt

Based on track sheet notation, there's reason to believe it's Carl and Matt in places, and Brian and Matt in places, or all three in places...

The clacker or castanet sound that appears in say San Miguel for example - is it one person over dubbing them? Or multiple people playing it?

Was there some mind of delay effect applied? Or did the player slightly delay the second play thru?

I believe it's Hal Blaine and more Hal Blaine.

I believe you're correct.