Thanks, PF. Interesting chap.

Can someone kindly offer a link to the legendary Rocky Pamplin meltdown?

Reynaldo, I would be interested to read your book. Your take on BB history is rather different from my own, but so what. Rocky Pamplin clearly has some stories to tell, and I am very curious to hear them. If it were available as an e-book, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Is that going to happen though? Because I'm afraid I'm not quite at the level of interest where I'm willing to shell out for an expensively imported paperback. Also, I'm not sure if this is particularly your fault, but the chapter you published clearly wasn't the best one to share with this particular board. It consists entirely of exposition, and readers of this forum already know the story backwards, and - you will have noted - aren't terribly tolerant of interpretations of it that conflict with their own.

ETA: Note that I wrote all this before seeing you acknowledge the very point I was making at the top of this page.

Mike doesn't sound like Mike anymore. The only BB still recognisable as the same singer from the band's heyday is Al.

Not sure, but you've identified the biggest problem with POB - track two, in a crucial place in the running order, is a big steaming dud. For this reason, I too have wrestled with the question of how POB might have been improved. No doubt this is just me, but another issue I have is that River Song as track one is a classic case of front loading - i.e. it's there because it's the strongest track, not because it's a natural lead-off. This is hard to articulate, but I think the reason I think this is that a song that's all about "flow" naturally belongs in the middle somewhere.

Had it been down to me, the first track would have been Friday Night. We get a classic bit of atmospheric scene setting at the start, and then the song's funky groove emerges from the murk. I think that sets up the album's ethos rather well.

1. Til I Die
2. Wouldn’t It Be Nice
3. This Whole World
4. Cool Cool Water
5. The Warmth of the Sun
6. Please Let Me Wonder
7. Let The Wind Blow
8. I Get Around
9. God Only Knows
10. Can't Wait Too Long

I'm pretty clear about number one, but the other nine could have been in any old order really. Songs it most pained me to exclude: Don't Worry Baby and In My Room.

No. None.

Summer in Paradise is actually the best BB album from a, uh, "consistency standpoint".

Summer in Paradise can most certainly be salvaged -- from the landfill where they dumped all the unsold copies.

I recall Brian waxing lyrical about The Lovin' Spoonful in an interview from 1967/68, so that figures.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme on Mike Love. Related via The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey on Twitter: "She was a follower of Charles Manson and a would-be presidential assassin but she drew the line at Mike Love."

A sample, you say. That explains a few things. There were times I was almost laughing at how exactly he seemed to be getting the arrangement right.

This is epic. By Jim James of My Morning Jacket - I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, in an arrangement exactly like Isaac Hayes' version of By The Time I Get To Phoenix.

https://pitchfork.com/news/my-morning-jackets-jim-james-covers-beach-boys-i-just-wasnt-made-for-these-times-listen/?mbid=social_twitter

I do mean that, and my memory obviously isn't what I thought it was. Sadly, I misplaced my copy of that book a very long time ago.

I was hoping he'd share his track listing of his "Brian-Approved" SMiLE, has he ever expanded on this in the past? Fantastic podcast BTW!

I assume he's invoking the one described in Look Listen Vibrate Smile, which from memory ran as follows (I may have Child and Wonderful the wrong way round):

Side One
1. Our Prayer
2. Heroes and Villains
3. Do You Like Worms
4. Wonderful
5. Child is Father of the Man
6. The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine
7. Cabin Essence

Side Two
1. Good Vibrations
2. Vega-Tables (Earth)
3. Wind Chimes (Air)
4. Mrs O'Leary's Cow (Fire)
5. Love to Say Da-Da (Water)
6. Surf's Up

It was pretty much part of the formula for BB albums that Dennis had a lead somewhere, to the extent that when he didn't get one on Summer Days, Brian offered an explanation/apology on the liner notes. If Brian thought he was suited to In The Back of My Mind, it's probably no surprise that he also thought he might do for I Just Wasn't Made For These Times. But presumably he wasn't happy with the result, so re-did it himself.

SiP is not the worst album I've heard, but I'm pretty confident the only reason for that is that I've never heard it. I have no plans to correct that, but I did once, in a spirit of fair-mindedness, listen to Lahaina Aloha on account of all the die-hards on this site who swear that it's some sort of saving grace. And it was garbage.

Have you ever listened to the title track?  There's a live version of it on the MIC boxset that I think is pretty good.

 

Yeah, I've heard the MiC live version (and I've also heard Summer of Love), and I suppose I could be persuaded that it had a lingering trace of merit if only it had a totally different set of lyrics. Not as it stands though. Also, what Wirestone said.

That's fine.  I just think it's a tad unfair to judge a 12 song album, based on having heard two songs and some clips, and on the opinions of others.  

Heck, when I first got on these boards, I was really looking forward to being blown away by the Love You album.  But......not so much.  

Okay, let's crank up the YouTubes and live blog ourselves some Be Fair to Summer in Paradise.

2.14. Hot Fun In The Summertime. You know what I really don't feel like doing? Hearing Mike Love ruin a Sly Stone song. One minute of this will more than do.

2.16. Surfin. Can't locate the SiP version on YouTube. Am I being unfair in concluding this hearing this would have no chance of changing my mind about the album? I really don't think that I am.

2.17. Summer of Love. Bye.

2.18. Island Fever. Holy sh*t, this album might actually be worse than I imagined. Just run Kokomo through the xerox, why don't you. Not a second more. Skip.

2.19. Still Surfin'. I hate it even before the end of the opening drum roll. It sounds exactly like I always knew the album would sound. Why am I doing this? Skip ...

2.20. Slow Summer Dancin'. I don't think I've ever heard that 80's-ruining gated snare sound cranked up quite so hard before, so I'll at least grant it novelty value. Beyond that, it's the least bad song so far, if only because bad ballads are intrinsically less offensive than bad rock'n'roll retreads.

2.24. Strange Things Happen. Yet again, the opening lyrics are an immediate deal breaker, as is the drum sound. I'll grant you that the chorus hook has a certain heft. But will I listen to it again? Hell no.

2.27. Remember (Walking in the Sand). A good song, of course. One might even potentially derive pleasure from hearing Carl sing it. But as Wirestone points out, the thing you can never get past is that they've put so much effort into this, and any lingering saving graces you might try to identify are drowning in the album's horrible aesthetic.

2.31. Lahaina Aloha. Ugh. I thought Carl sung this, and that's why the diehards overrated it so, but no, here's skeevy old Mike Love droning stale nothings into my ear. Oh okay, there he is on the useless, stinking chorus. Next ...

2.32. Under the Boardwalk. Can't immediately find this on YouTube, and not going to waste any more time looking.

2.33. Summer in Paradise. Sorry, I get as far as "way back when when the master plan was having Fun Fun Fun and America's band", and there's no way in hell I'm listening to the rest of it. Don't insult me telling me I'm missing anything.

2.34. Forever. Jesus, this is beautiful. Why wasn't I told?

SiP is not the worst album I've heard, but I'm pretty confident the only reason for that is that I've never heard it. I have no plans to correct that, but I did once, in a spirit of fair-mindedness, listen to Lahaina Aloha on account of all the die-hards on this site who swear that it's some sort of saving grace. And it was garbage.

Have you ever listened to the title track?  There's a live version of it on the MIC boxset that I think is pretty good.

 

Yeah, I've heard the MiC live version (and I've also heard Summer of Love), and I suppose I could be persuaded that it had a lingering trace of merit if only it had a totally different set of lyrics. Not as it stands though. Also, what Wirestone said.

SiP is not the worst album I've heard, but I'm pretty confident the only reason for that is that I've never heard it. I have no plans to correct that, but I did once, in a spirit of fair-mindedness, listen to Lahaina Aloha on account of all the die-hards on this site who swear that it's some sort of saving grace. And it was garbage.

So are we going to get something similar next year covering 1968? Presumably something less interesting than ST if so, since Friends is already in stereo and the seam of unreleased material has, I assume, been mined out by now (unless you're excited by live recordings, which I'm not). Am I missing something though? A bunch of Ol' Man River recordings, maybe? Anything else?

I created my own edit of the twofer version that cuts the "way too long, been way too long baby" section in half, which as far as I'm concerned makes it perfect in every way. Hearing any new released version is interesting, but I'll only listen to it a couple of times.

I'm actually not the biggest Beatles fan in the world, but I really can think of no time in their concurrent histories as live acts, that the Beatles were not head and shoulders above the BBs.  The Beatles were old pros by the time they made it, the Boys just the opposite.... The Beatles' Shea Stadium concert being a prime example, they rocked hard, played well and sounded very close to their records.   The BBs, bless 'em, never did sound that good in the sixties and when they finally did get their concert mojo going in the seventies it took a cast of thousands to do so.  Ok, not thousands but many sidemen and the officializing of a couple of them into temporary group member status.  I enjoyed this "big band" approach that they took.  But the original quintet never was that hot of a live band.  And I don't think without prime Brian vocally that they were even that hot as a vocal group in concert.  The Rolling Stone assessment of In Concert seems succinct and apt:  "Sloppy good".

I agree with you on the whole, but I think you'll find the Shea Stadium recording with which were all familiar was almost as heavily "enhanced" after the event as Lei'd in Hawaii would have been.

I'm only an occasional visitor here, so forgive me if this is no great revelation to some of you. But I have, sort of coincidentally, just come across this recording of the 1970 Big Sur Folk Festival show, of which I have the live album that includes Wouldn't It Be Nice. It's absolutely terrific for the first 15 minutes, at which point it segues into an inferior quality recording*. Anyway, it's now apparent to me that this is the source of the version of Aren't You Glad on ST.

* The changeover happens as Mike finishes a rather churlish introduction to what surely would have been Cottonfields, but it instead links up with a tinny-sounding Tears in the Morning.

I too am rarely enthused by live recordings. But to take the opportunity to put in a rare good word for Bruce -- he's absolutely right about how great the version of Aren't You Glad on the Live in London album is, which he was quoted on somewhere up thread. I heard this before the studio version, because it's on The Capitol Years boxed set that was my first major BBs purchase, and have always preferred it to the Wild Honey version. The live Aren't You Glad on Sunshine Tomorrow is from around the same period and similar, but not as good.

Jann Wenner was right about one thing -- the BBs weren't much of a live unit in 1967. Listening to the Detroit recordings here, I keep thinking, surely these are just rehearsals -- but no, there's applause at the end.