Does the Love You release authentically replicate the shitty quality cardboard used for the original cover?

TM is also one of the very very few songs that is unlikely to ever be abbreviated for the sale of speedy typing. Just thought I'd say…

I'm from Australia, where we take abbreviation very seriously. Our most famous sports venue is called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is formally abbreviated to "the MCG". However, this isn't enough for Australians, who have come to refer to it simply as "the G". From now on, I'm going to refer to this song as "T".

TM is gorgeous, and to my ears drenched in a Beach Boys style of the kind I'd love to have heard more of.

Yes, very much. One of the things that really strikes me on listening to it is that the BBs were selling them short in trying to go for a grittier sound on Carl & The Passions especially, when TM at least points to a style they could have pursued which had contemporary relevance, while making something of what remained their strongest selling point, namely their vocal harmonies. It would seem though that having Chaplin and Fataar on board inspired them to take a different approach which didn't entirely work, commercially or artistically.

For me, this is a real find - or at least, the song TM is. It's a really great to have some lovely BB vocals on a fresh new song that I can't get out of my head. The only thing I thought I knew about Charles Lloyd previously was that he was "Mike Love's flute player", which is not a promising CV entry. It's only just now that I've become alert to the fact that it's him on Feel Flows - for me the association was with Celebration and the MIU Album.

Bono pays tribute to everything. I suppose it's quite nice of him in his way, but it does mean his endorsements are debased currency.

Would you actually say Jack Palance was by Van Dyke Parks? Surely it's an old calyspo record he put on there as a bit of audio verite, for reasons to do with theme of the album. In any case, the song is not so much about Jack Palance as a woman bearing an unfortunate facial resemblance to him.

The golden age of my BBs obsessiveness was around 1988 to 1991, between the ages of 17 and 20. A couple of years ago I found myself revisiting everything as I went on a mission to collect everything on vinyl both as original pressings and the best quality reissues. I think the one and only song I'd really changed my mind about was Pom Pom Playgirl, which the first time around I thought a terrible song. Now I just think it's got terrible lyrics.

Are you guys crazy? There's So Many is the best track on the album, if not Brian's whole solo career!

Glad someone else thinks so. I like all the songs left in the race, but my vote is for Meet Me In My Dreams Tonight.

Someone should have administered A Clockwork Orange-style therapy on Mike Love to instill in him an aversion to ever writing about "Ha-wa-yee".

The Monkees sold more records than pretty much anyone in '66/'67 and they were doing exactly this.

True, but they were marketed to give their young target audience a very different impression. Five years earlier they could have just been presented like Fabian or Frankie Avalon, but by 1966 that wouldn't fly - The Beatles had set a new standard for how a pop act was supposed to appear (at least for the white audience), and it had indeed rendered the Phil Spector model obsolete.

I invariably hear swearing when I hear Amusement Parks USA - from my own mouth, as I reach for the "next track" button.

That was left by aliens, right?

1. In Sonic Youth's Tunic (Song for Karen), Kim Gordon relates, "I'm in heaven now - I can see you, Richard/Goodbye Hollywood, goodbye Downey/Hello Janis, hello Dennis, Elvis". Since the middle Wilson also features in the video to Sonic Youth's Teenage Riot, I think we can be pretty confident that "Dennis" is our man.

2. Soko sings that she will "never love you more than", inter alia, "God Only Knows".

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

3. I long ago lost my copy of Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!, but I recall reading in it than some manner of punk rock band had a song called Kill Mike Love.

Ooh! A challenge! Do remember all this is relative, so I don't want anyone coming back at me with "Santa Ana Winds sounds like a John Denver reject" or "Carl's songs sound like beer commercials". I know all that.

Goin' On
Livin' With a Heartache
Santa Ana Winds
Keepin' the Summer Alive
Some of Your Love
School Day
Endless Harmony
Sunshine
Oh Darlin'
When Girls Get Together

But now, the impression I get from talking to teenagers and 20-somethings is that it is pretty common to like "old" music. The fact this has now become pretty common tells me that current music is lacking in something even teenagers and 20-somethings yearn for, and which they can only find in their parent's music (and by now some of it is even their grandparent's music!).

What it tells me is that there hasn't been any dramatic historical or social upheaval since the 1960s, when a generation that had not experienced the world wars and depression of early 20th century came of age. For young people in the 60s, swing sat on the other side of a stark historical divide. Since then there has been more-or-less steady technological and material progress. My generation's circumstances were not greatly different from my parents', so it was a lot easier for us to be receptive to their music.

Was Carl Wilson afraid of goats

Has anyone gotten to the bottom of this yet?

There's a disturbing attitude to women evident throughout The Wall, actually. Pillars of Waters' alienation include a cheating wife, a bubble-headed groupie and "Mother". When a male villain emerges in the shape of a sadistic school teacher, we learn that he and his type are victims in turn - of "their fat and psychopathic wives", who "thrash them within inches of their lives" (ever so slightly at odds with the reality of most domestic violence there). In the midst of all this there appears the flower animation Dr Voldelabra refers to. The whole thing makes my flesh crawl.

In fairness, the Pamplin pic does illustrate a narrative point (i.e. that Marilyn not unreasonably wanted to hit that rather than Brian) in a way a band pic wouldn't have.

Not all huge frames are built for ass kickin', SB.

Rocky punching him. Gaines' book is on Google Books, so you can read the relevant bit here, from page 310 to 314 - with the no doubt maddening exception of page 312.

Dennis is by common consent the second great songwriter in the band after Brian

No he's not, because Mike Love is the one whose name is on the copyrights to all those hits, and it's his positivity and commercial sense which made the Beach Boys the bankable global brand it is today. Give him some doo. Wrinkles and Oh! Those Girls remain on the cutting room floor - here is a chance for such wrongs to be righted.

? Should probably try some Barrett stuff.

Damn straight. Not everybody gets him, but none of the complaints you've registered about DSOTM are going to cause you any problems with Syd. I like the solo stuff the best, The Madcap Laughs especially, though Barrett too is brilliant in parts. The Floyd stuff though (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn plus a few singles) is a lot more "together", not counting a few later oddities like Vegetable Man and Jugband Blues.

Thanks for that, Ian.

It took place at meeting with David Frost (head of Paradine-the promoters). 

He of Frost/Nixon fame, no less. According to Stephen Gaines' account, as the meeting wound up with Carl laying unconscious, Stanley Love had the presence of mind to tell Frost: "It was a pleasure meeting you. I enjoyed all your Nixon interviews."

I quite like it though.

This is Roger Waters, yes? He's not exactly a classic rock voice. Sounds better on the slower bit.

I believe the "not a classic rock voice" is David Gilmour, and the "better", "slower" bit is Rick Wright. Waters' only leads are on the last two songs, if I'm not mistaken.

I see the tour chronology was covered pretty thoroughly here - though nothing on the date of the fracas with Rocky Pamplin. I guess what I'm wondering here is whether Carl hadn't yet received his "black eye" at the time of the press conference, or if perhaps the incident was less dramatic than some have painted it.