I suggest they'd gone one better than that - the "lo" represents "Love". So clearly it's intended to be a composite of the full band's surnames, but for some reason there remained a concurrent entity called Brother Publishing.

I just noticed that the back cover of 20/20 features publishing credits for each song, and on looking at others it appears that Beach Boys albums had not done so previously (although I only checked a few) but would do so thereafter. The publishing credits from 1969 to 1972 paint a confusing picture. On 20/20, the songs which credit Brian along with Mike or Carl are Irving Music, but Dennis's songs are Brother and Bruce's is Wilojarston. By Sunflower, Irving Music is in the past and everything is credited to Brother, except Tears in the Morning which, like The Nearest Faraway Place, is Wilojarston. However, it's a very different story on Surf's Up and Carl & The Passions - anything with Brian is Brother, but everything else is Wilojarston (except Ricky and Blondie who are Jungle Bunny, which is an interesting name). Everything on my copy of Holland is Carlin Music, which I guess is down to it being a British pressing.

Is there anyone out there who understands why there were separate Brother and Wilojarston publishing companies, or anything else about the publishing arrangements for that matter? I'm intrigued to note that Deirdre is Brother rather than Wilojarston presumably on account of Brian's co-credit, even though I think it's pretty well known the song is almost entirely Bruce's. Given the assignment of songwriting credits appeared to have important implications for publishing, and hence for royalties, could I surmise that they might not be 100% reliable in telling us who was actually involved in the writing of the song?

There were four good things recorded for MIU, two of which (Our Team and Your Sweet Lovin') didn't make the cut (the others being My Diane and Pitter Patter). My theory has always been that they decided to hold them in reserve for the first CBS album, but then get led in a different direction by Bruce and Jim Guercio.

TWGMTR (the album I mean) didn't make the Australian top 50 when it was released, but on the back of their tour it's at #31 this week.

http://www.ariacharts.com.au/chart/albums/185

Jokes aside - The Four Freshmen continue today, with members who are all younger than the group they're part of. Why not The Beach Boys?

The Warmth of the Sun has been a pretty glaring omission from their Australian sets.

OMG, so Bruce's son is engaged to the daughter of the woman who keeps getting unflattering stories about her in the LA Times?   About how poor people deserve to be poor because they're all lazy (even though she inherited every single penny of her own wealth)?  And that she wishes the miners who work for her family company would be happy making $2 per day like African miners, even though her personal worth is $30 billion-with-a-b and she can certainly afford to pay her miners more than $2 a day?  That Gina?   She's also grossly obese and looks like a poorly-dressed, badly groomed slob.

Yeah, that one. Although her dress sense is probably no worse than most other people's in the great state of Western Australia.

HiPSTERS LOVE SMiLE and PeT SoUNdS.

Not all hipsters are good at their job.

I frankly wonder if the piece Brian turned in was an early version of Surfer Girl, not Surfin.

Yes, that was what I was thinking as well.

For all that is hateful about the book, I recall a lovely anecdote early on about Mike encouraging an initially reticent and self-deprecating Brian to write a song with him, telling him that (from memory here) "the stuff you play when you're fooling around on the piano is better than two thirds of what's on the radio" - and Brian being forever grateful for it. I don't have my copy to hand unfortunately, but it would nice if somebody who does could confirm that I have this more or less correct.

Speaking of aspects of early Beach Boys mythology which don't entirely pan out - we are told that Dennis made the revolutionary suggestion of writing a song about surfing after they first auditioned for the Morgans, and were told they needed a hook. But hadn't Brian already written Surfer Girl - supposedly the first song he ever wrote? Although I suppose one possible explanation is that Brian meant Surfer Girl was the first song he wrote by himself. Maybe the historians out there have others ...

Therefore the following scenarios are plausible:

The teacher is a sadist.
The teacher is an idiot.
Someone with no knowledge of music grafted the term "sonata" onto the story.
Hawthorne High was full of unparallelled musical genius throughout the student body.

Bit harsh. Here's another theory: the story as related combines elements of truth with a healthy serve of poetic licence, and is being taken too seriously here.

Very well spotted! Should have been between God Only Knows and California Girls. Have amended my post.

Who's Gina?

Gina Rinehart is a big (really big) Western Australian mining heiress/magnate - the richest woman in the world, in fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires

Her daughter Ginia - one of a handful of relatives from whom she is not estranged - is engaged to Bruce Johnston's son Ryan.

Gina was presumably working, TonyW, as all of us should have been.

How was the turn out for this show, sold out?

Don't know if it was sold out, but it was well attended - the bleachers looked pretty well filled out from my position near the front. Personally though, I don't think there's any point going to a show at the Burswood Dome if you're going to be in the cheap seats, given the notoriously atrocious acoustics.

Brian's lead on You're So Good To Me was pretty wince-inducing in Perth as well.

Remarkably, given what a huge and occasionally obsessive fan I've been for over two decades now, this was the first time I'd actually been to a Beach Boys concert. I saw Brian solo four times when I lived in Melbourne - twice on the Pet Sounds tour in 2002 and twice on the Smile tour in 2004 - but I always had an exaggerated disdain for the Brian-less BBs, to the extent that I even passed up a chance to see them with Carl in the mid-1990s (which I bitterly regret in hindsight). In that spirit, I went along not expecting to enjoy myself all that much, based on the current state of their vocal chops and the Mike Love-ified set lists I'd been saying around the place. So I'm very pleased to report that the show - the second half of it especially - was a delight.

Brian wasn't in good form in the first set, and even made a hash of the highly undemanding lead on Good Timin'. But Mike was in much better voice than I'd anticipated, which counted for a lot, and Al's voice hasn't aged a day, which had me thinking they were under-utilising him. There's very little left of Bruce's voice unfortunately, although his star turn on Disney Girls did give me a chance to pop off to the bathroom to throw up. All told, by the time of the intermission I was counting the show as much better than expected, while still being a little perturbed that there was a full half of it left to go.

But like I said, the second half was sensational. There was a more rewarding mix of material (covers and Kokomo aside), much better vocal performances from Brian, a sublime rendition of Wouldn't It Be Nice, and little if any of Bruce. Most of all, I emerged with a fresh perspective on their staggering wealth of brilliant material, from which they could extract one eternal classic after enough for three whole hours while still leaving entire parts of their legacy almost completely untouched.

Set list:

Do It Again
Little Honda
Catch a Wave
Hawaii
Don't Back Down
Surfin' Safari
Surfer Girl
You're So Good To Me
This Whole World
Getcha Back
Wendy
Then I Kissed Her
Kiss Me Baby
Isn't It Time
Come Go With Me
Why Do Fools Fall in Love
When I Grow Up
Darlin'
Please Let Me Wonder
It's OK
California
Disney Girls
Good Timin'
Cottonfields
Be True To Your School
Don't Worry Baby
Little Deuce Coupe
409
Shut Down
I Get Around

(Intermission)

Pet Sounds
Add Some Music To Your Day
Sail on Sailor
Heroes and Villains
I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
California Dreamin'
Sloop John B
Wouldn't it Be Nice
That's Why God Made the Radio
In My Room
All This Is That
Forever
God Only Knows
Good Vibrations
California Girls
All Summer Long
Help Me Rhonda
Rock & Roll Music
Do You Want Dance
Surfin' USA

(Encore)

Kokomo
Barbara Ann
Fun Fun Fun

And then he sneers about Little Bird - a song which is way better than anything he's ever contributed to the catalogue.

I recall reading Bruce being asked about plans to reissue Pacific Ocean Blue, and he said he didn't care, didn't like it, he preferred Carl Wilson's solo albums, and that POB wasn't commercial and a reissue wouldn't sell (!). So clearly he doesn't rate Dennis all that highly. Funnily enough though, I also remember an interview with him from 1970 in I think the NME or Melody Maker (it's probably scanned on this site somewhere) where he's asked if he has any solo plans, and he says a Dennis Wilson solo album would be more commercial than anything he might be able to do.

Also, the verse sounds like Under the Boardwalk.

I was about to jump in with Darlin', but jpinmyroom beat me to it.

There is also the small matter of Adult Child not being very good. Let's break it down.

Life is for the Living: The converted can possibly appreciate this on a Brian-being-Brian level, but I'm sure that Mike Love expressed his noted view on the subject of Adult Child before the end of the eighth bar of its first song.

Hey Little Tomboy: Then again, Mike was apparently happy to sing on this, so who knows what goes on in his mind.

Deep Purple: Having front-loaded the quality, we now hit the filler.

H.E.L.P. Is On The Way: Doesn't count, and it's on the GV box set besides.

It's Over Now: Dick Reynolds' arrangements are tacky Vegas hackery at its worst, and Carl's vocal performances of this period are slightly depressing. As songwriting though, it's as good as everybody says. And it's on the GV box set.

Everybody Wants to Live: Now you're talking. However, we're very much in Love You territory here - sublime for the converted, "Jesus Christ, what is this sh*t?" for the other 99% of mankind.

Shortnin' Bread: Try harder, Brian.

Lines: For me, Adult Child is worth its weight for this alone. Like the best of Love You, it shows Brian's genius cracked but intact. But also like the best of Love You ... see Everybody Wants to Live.

On Broadway: I quite like this actually, in spite of myself. Who's with me?

Games Too Can Play: See H.E.L.P. Plus, not even a good song on its own terms.

It's Trying to Say: Sounds like something that was deservedly left off Love You.

Still I Dream of It: Same deal as It's Over Now. And I do wish someone of good judgement had at least been on hand to give Brian's lyrics a tweak here and there.

Runaways, I believe he's saying that the story about Audree inspiring GV was concocted after the event, so as to write him out of the picture.

I'd never heard of this until just now. Surely it's a case of Brian being terrible on purpose, by way of announcing he's is no state to take on production responsibilities as required by the CBS contract. Which reminds me of something I've often wondered about. Does anybody know what was on the demo tape which caused Walter Yetnikoff to say "gentlemen, I think I have been f**ked"?

I had no inkling of this song whatsoever when I downloaded Get The Boot a few years ago, and when I heard it I could not believe how brilliant it was. I include it now on compilations to convert skeptics to Brian. I remember coming across this on Hoffman's board, which may be of interest:

From an interview with Rich Alarian of the Survivors in the Summer 1983 issue of Add Some Music magazine (interview conducted by Brad Elliott):

"There were so many songs that Brian came up with when we were together that were never recorded. There was a thing called 'Thank Him': (singing) 'Thank him for a beauty so rare, Thank him for our lo-o-o-o-ove.' And we did a whole thing on that, a chorus. It was beautiful. It was done on the Wollensak recorder. He went to Radio Recorders and we put that thing on a disc and it went on a shelf. There were so many things like that. And it was a beautiful song. It was like going down to the ocean and the shells... It was a love song, it was a beautiful love song."

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-61084.html

I don't disagree that there was artistry in Mike's commercial sense, but I'm not persuaded that he had any particular talent as a composer.