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680601 Posts in 27601 Topics by 4068 Members - Latest Member: Dae Lims March 29, 2024, 07:22:28 AM
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1  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: August 26, 2021, 09:43:11 AM
My reserved copy of the five-disc set is apparently sitting in a store less than five miles away... which is great. Not so great is that I'm not allowed to collect it for another 16 hours. But we've all waited this long... a few more hours won't make any difference.

Props to HMV in the UK for making it happen this time (assuming they haven't accidentally reserved the two-disc set for me instead of the five-disker... Wink )

And 'nul points' to Amazon UK for bogging it up big time... again!

Matt

2  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: July 01, 2021, 04:22:43 AM
[OK... I'll bite]

"That was never five minutes just now!!!!!"
3  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: California Music: Add Some Music on: May 11, 2021, 12:52:42 PM
I’ve got it on Spotify.

Re the sound. Keep in mind in all likelihood this was all recorded on devices, cell phones etc and mixed in house...literally ‘in house’. I wonder if a studio was used at all?

That surely can't be it, though, because Bruce's piano-led version of SBILA, which was recorded at some time before its 2007 release on a rare music sampler (and thus long before any lockdowns ever), sounded fine on that first release... and on this (I got the CD yesterday), it sounds as though Bruce's vocal has been put through a slightly distorting fuzz pedal. That 'effect' is completely absent on the 2007 release of the same track and performance. And yet it is there on many of the new CM tracks.

It has to be the mastering. I've listened on Youtube, Spotify and the CD versions of this CM release and they're all the same (apart from the original SBILA track released back in 2007, which wholly lacks that fuzzy quality... and was of course mastered for release 14-odd years ago).

4  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: why didnt Sinatra record \ on: March 06, 2021, 10:11:07 PM
Well, exactly! Brian does say in the interview that he might need to revise the song for Frank if he took it on... and that bit about the maid, the dinner and the kitchen would surely have to have been the first to go...!   Smiley
5  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: why didnt Sinatra record \ on: March 06, 2021, 11:28:31 AM
You're all correct - it is a fascinating topic. I must hold my hand up at this point and say that although I'm into all sorts of music, Sinatra has never done it for me and I know *very* little about him and his career. I can hear that he has a great voice, sure, but the music just doesn't 'reach' me — it always feels somehow 'insincere' and cheesy to me. But what do I know? Frank is regarded as one of the greatest singers of all time, and I accept that (without having to personally agree with it or enjoy his stuff).

So that was literally educational to me about how he chased hits with contemporary writers and producers in the last few decades of his life. I definitely don't remember that and certainly not 'disco Sinatra' (but then I wasn't following him then or now with any kind of interest). Knowing how a lot of the Beach Boys' fanbase excoriates the LA Here Come The Night remake (although for the record I think it's great, if a snad long on the LP), I can imagine how someone heavily into Sinatra's '50s stuff might look upon 'disco Frank' or Sinatra over a 1980s Nile Rodgers or Quincy Jones production with a jaundiced eye...

I still think, though, that even if Frank (or his 'people') were approaching big-name hit producers or writers in the late 70s or early 80s, Brian — at that particular, very difficult time of his life — wouldn't have been the kind of talent they were seeking. And even if someone had said 'hey, I hear Brian Wilson's writing again, and is keen to show Frank some tunes he's got'... one listen to SIDOI would have been enough to put Brian's name into the 'don't call us, we'll call you' pile... And as you say, Craig, all the more so if Brian was trying to write something in the vein of Frank's older ballads, while Sinatra himself was trying to get away from that style at that time.

It's interesting that Brian does say in the interview that he's written a song for Frank personally... but it's impossible to say whether that follow-up meeting with Frank or his people ever happened. Brian does say later in the interview 'if I get to meet him'... so it could have been something Brian was hoping was to achieve when he gave the interview, but maybe it never ultimately came off.

Brian sounds pretty lucid in this interview, which I've never heard before... but the sniffles and coughing suggest that he may have 'partaken' beforehand, who knows, maybe to give himself some confidence. He is a little bit rambly, over-loquacious and very 'up', throughout, but without being too manic. It's fascinating stuff, though - thanks for reposting. I was particularly interested to hear Brian talking enthusiastically about hypnosis and self-hypnosis towards the end of the interview — whilst history seems to suggest that it didn't do much for him in the long run, he was clearly very into it and positive about how it could help him at the time of the interview, and that in turn perhaps explains its appearance in the lyrics of SIDOI, which he was obviously writing a few weeks before this interview was given. That lyrical theme always seemed one of the oddest inclusions in the song to me until now... but now I see that it was just Brian doing what he has often done... putting his life and then-current concerns into the songs he was writing. Like 'Don't Worry, Baby', 'You Still Believe In Me', 'Busy Doing Nothing', 'Til I Die' or 'The Night Was So Young', really...! Or not so very different...!
6  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: why didnt Sinatra record \ on: March 06, 2021, 07:55:31 AM
I know nothing about what *actually* happened with Sinatra, if anything at all, but I can speculate. At the time BW wrote this song, he was at something of a life's low (that would only be surpassed by his subsequent state in 1982). I really like SIDOI now, but there's no doubt that it's a strange song, with very peculiar lyrics (a maudlin protagonist wishing for a love that may never come, but also wondering why his housemaid hasn't finished his dinner for him yet... and then going on to ponder the possible power of hypnosis and ESP to help his predicament. Britney Spears it ain't). The first time I heard it, I could absolutely see why it had never been released. It's not even slightly commercial.

Moreover — Sinatra always belonged to a different generation to the Beach Boys... the era of smooth jazzy vocals delivered live with orchestra in a few takes, and then off to the golf course with Dean and Bing and the guys. Even when the Boys were at their 60s commercial peak, I can imagine Frank thinking they were just a bunch of punky young kids making music that didn't fit with his view of the world. And anyway, SIDOI is manifestly *not* Brian at his 1964-66 top-of-the-game peak. At the time Brian was talking about giving this song to FS, he was a washed-up, overweight has-been with a serious drug and alcohol problem, all manner of mental health issues, and yes, he was also a success again post-Endless Summer, but only for long-past achievements. I can see why Frank or 'his people' might well have passed on the song — if they even ever got to hear it.

Don't get me wrong — I came to appreciate the beauty of the song as time went on. It is musically amazing, and I've even come to tolerate the extremely odd lyrics. But I don't think this ever had a snowball in hell's chance of winning Frank over. Wrong song, wrong time in BW's life too. In my opinion, of course.

PS I really like Love You (although coming around to it sure took me a while...), but I have never warmed to Adult Child, with the exception of this track and It's Over Now. The rest of that planned album all seems even further down the road of slightly crazed weirdness that SIDOI is on, and much harder to love. I think the rest of the group certainly thought that at the time (certainly Mike and even Carl), and I think as his mental state has improved over the years, even Brian has come to think that... which may be why it's *never* properly come out, despite being finished and mastered. I remember fans bemoaning the fact on here that the Adult Child tracks *still* hadn't officially come out even on the broom-cupboard-clearing Made In California set, which solicited the deadpan, very funny and on-point-as-ever comment from the sagacious Jon Blum: "After 37 years, it's almost as if they don't want these tracks released...!"
7  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 01:52:58 PM
Like I keep saying... it's possible this isn't the full boxed set track listing. I wouldn't assume anything is necessarily definitely missing in action yet. Elsewhere, the speculation is that these are only 1970-recorded tracks... there may still be details of the 1971-recorded (and maybe even 1972-recorded) material to come.

Which... would be nice. Obviously.
8  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 01:07:02 PM
Right - that's what I meant in my earlier post about the new backing track being performed to fit the existing vocal, rather than the more usual way of doing it the other way around...!
9  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 01:01:41 PM
It sounds like the December 66 vocal from the piano version to me, but over a backing track we haven't heard before...? I thought the story was that Brian refused to sing ANY new leads for Surf's Up in 1971, and only contributed at all right at the end, when the group were adding vocals to the 'a children's song' tag in the studio in his house. Wasn't the story that he suddenly pounded downstairs from his bedroom and added his contribution in his bathrobe?

Who knows if that's true. I think that was how Jack Rieley told it... and he was allegedly fond of journalistically enhancing a good anecdote...!
10  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 12:27:42 PM
Great news FF is finally happening .....but it looks a little meagre on the new Dennis music, does it not?

Well, we don't know yet... this might not be the full track listing as far as the as-yet unreleased stuff goes. Let's wait a bit longer and see...
11  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 05:58:07 AM
Isn't it a great feeling when a thread like this, which has run into the sands of circular unfounded speculation for months, suddenly starts moving again with some REAL information on progress?    Grin
12  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Elton John Tells Stories About Brian Wilson on: November 22, 2020, 05:34:39 AM
I honestly thought maybe it was an in-joke, Salty...! As I think I've mentioned before on here, there is a curious crossover between some slices of BB and DW fandom. And the 'wiped tapes' debacle also has parallels between the BB and DW stories...!!!

The real killer fact about Surf's Up part 2, as you say above, is that no Wrecking Crew-performed 1966 or 1967-era backing track was used for the second part of the 1971 album version. So if one ever existed, it was probably unavailable for use already by 1971.

People sometimes say 'perhaps it was too experimental and Brian forbade its use in 1971, and that's why it wasn't used then'. But Brian didn't want the band to do ANYTHING with Surf's Up in 1971, and he refused to sing any new vocals for it until the last day of recording the tag (or so the legend has it). I always think if there was something, Carl didn't have access to it in 1971. He used all the other vintage 1966 pieces he could, so why wouldn't he have employed a Part 2 backing as well, if one was around then?

I suppose it's *possible* it existed but wasn't any good... but that seems unlikely. given how on fire Brian was musically and as a producer during this period. And also, Carl seems to have worked hard to use any Brian scraps he possibly could...

One final possibility - that a more developed backing track for the second part DID still exist in 1971... but having the second part covered by Brian's December 1966 piano-only performance instead was the easier option. That way, you get Brian's original vision for the instrumental backing for the first part of the song, and OK, the vocals have to be by Carl on that bit, but by using Brian's piano recording for the second bit, and wanging a few overdubs on it, you at least get also some of the composer performing on the song, and that great vocal... which they couldn't have easily overlaid on a completely different backing track at the time, even if said backing track was still around.

Not for the first time, I find myself thinking how great it would be to be the narrator in Lewis Shiner's 'Glimpses'... and just record EVERYTHING as you go on a portable digital dictaphone... how much more of this stuff was there that we still haven't heard? No-one knows, or if they do, they're not saying... or can't remember. Or they're no longer with us!!!! Gaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!
13  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 04:24:41 AM
Fair point. I'm just thinking... if I was managing the launch of this thing, I might release news of just a few bits of it at a time. So might this just be *some* of the content... with more to come?

Sadly, I have no idea if this is the case or not; I'm just speculating. But certainly there is no mention of the original albums in this playlist — the tracks excerpted here that *are* from the original Sunflower and Surf's Up albums are different in some way to the standard album mixes. So that's at least one disc's worth of set that seems to be missing from this, er... whatever it is on-line (mindful of the fact that both albums fitted on one CD back in the 2000 reissues).

Not that I would be disappointed if this was 'it', mind. The point is: to a long-standing fan like me, if this IS the whole of FF, I'm already in; it's worth the price of admission already. But if they announce another couple of discs' worth next week, say, with even more goodies on it, communities like this and the 'other place' are going to go through the roof. They're sure to sell a million units in... er... whenever it is it comes out.

Well, OK... not a million. You know what I mean. There won't be a fan who won't want it, is what I'm trying to say. A staggered announcement might be the launch plan.

Having said that, the last few copyright releases just seemed to *appear* in December with no launch or marketing plan at all... so why should this one be any different?   Smiley
14  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 02:53:33 AM
What's missing? I got so confused through the course of this labyrinthine, up-and-down thread, that I honestly can't remember what was supposed to be on this set that now seems, er... NOT to be on it.

*IF* this thing IS Feel Flows, of course. Or part of it. Which... it might not be...

Ah, business as usual at Beach Boys Central...!    Smiley
15  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Elton John Tells Stories About Brian Wilson on: November 22, 2020, 02:49:37 AM
>snip<...but honestly, Brian keeping the tape would be a reasonable explanation for it vanishing at some point... >snip< Maybe he cut it up into little strips to use as replacement bathrobe belts, flossed with it, etc.

A heartbreaking thought. But there is a precedent. Do you know the story about the long-missing Doctor Who master video tape that it's believed may *literally* have been used for toothpicks in the 60s?

OK, sounds like nonsense, I know... but in case you're NOT familiar with the background: loads of episodes of the long-running UK sci-fi show Doctor Who are missing, because, rather like in US recording studios in the 60s, no-one ever thought these old tapes would ever be wanted again once the weekly episodes had been transmitted (or in the case of 60s recordings, once the single or album had been mixed and released). So the master tapes were wiped and re-used, or just tossed.

There's a 12-part story hardcore Doctor Who fans would love to see from 1965 called The Daleks' Master Plan... but a bit like the first ever recording of Heroes and Villains, or the GV multitrack, the master video tape for one of the episodes, a special fun knock-around Christmas Day episode, has been missing almost since transmission. Film copies of a couple of the pieces of the story have been tracked down, and there is a complete AUDIO recording of all 12 episodes which someone taped off-air in 1965 using a reel-to-reel tape recorder wired into their telly. But the master video tapes are probably gone for good. One of them may have been the tape that (if I recall correctly) a BBC engineer remembered in an interview used to hang on the back of his office door... and he used to rip strips of the tape off it occasionally and use them to pick his teeth after his lunch break!

Can you imagine Brian doing that with the Surf's Up part 2 backing track tape, after too much shrimp at the Radiant Radish...?
16  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 22, 2020, 12:09:27 AM
It's surely got to be something related to FF. I mean, there are incomplete tracks on there with parts missing, and session chatter on some tracks... you couldn't generate those without access to the multitracks, I would have thought. It's not just a Spleeter job either... the tracks sound smoother than that, and also there are some where you have the backing track AND backing vocals, but no lead. That would be hard to create convincingly in Spleeter, it seems to me. But of course, I could be wrong...

Curious about what the weird-sounding Surf's Up 'Pt I' track is, too (Track 53). It sounds like Brian's December 66 lead from the piano-only session dubbed over an instrumental track that I'm not familiar with. It's not the long-lost Surf's Up part two, though, as the title and a quick listen to the preview make clear (it's pretty clearly the first part of the song).

An attempted re-record of the part I backing track, so that Brian's 66 lead could be used in 1971? Wasn't there talk that they'd tried something like that?

I've forgotten more than I ever knew about this (if that even makes sense), but I seem to recall that:

The band wanted to use the 1966 Part I instrumental backing with Brian's separately recorded vocal from the December-only piano session. They tried to fly it in, but 1970s tech being what it was, they couldn't get the result to fit well. So... wasn't it said sometime that they tried to re-record the backing track TO the vocal, as that was the only way they could get it to fit? But couldn't make that sound decent either, so... they tried to get Brian to re-sing his Part I vocal over the 1966 Part I Wrecking Crew backing. And then Brian wouldn't do that EITHER... so they got Carl to do it. And that's the Surf's Up version we got to hear on the album.

So this might be the backing track they tried to re-record to the vocal. Maybe. Or maybe I've got this totally scrambled. Somebody throw me a bone here...?
17  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian's role in the live band during the \ on: November 21, 2020, 07:29:33 AM
This is my take on the remake of HCTN — it gets roasted by anyone that really believed that 'disco sucks'.

Here on the other side of the pond, disco was pretty popular. I was a kid at the time, but I still like it and am also sympathetically disposed to synth-based and electronic music as well as lots of other stuff. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, I think the HCTN remake gets a rough ride in the States. I like the track, even if I do think the LA album version is too long and totally unbalances the parent album. But I don't go along with the received wisdom that the track is a terrible travesty of the legacy or whatever.  I think the single mix is really great. Dynamics, highs and lows, light and shade, great chords and vocal harmonies. All the stuff we like the Beach Boys for (even if there aren't too many of them on this track). Whatever. It works for me.

The thing I really find odd is that lots of hardcore Beach Boys fans, who love the likes of Holland and Love You, which are covered in really creative synth work, baulk at the remade HCTN. What do you guys think is providing the bass on Honking Down the Highway, or Mona, or Let Us Go On This Way, or Funky Pretty? Or virtually all the instrumentation on The Night Is So Young? Heck, there's even a Moog on Cool Cool Water and the 1971 *SURF'S UP*, for goodness' sake, and I can't imagine many Beach Boys fans think they're a travesty. Admittedly, the 1979 HCTN is stylistically different, but... I think the long, dead hand of 'disco sucks' unfairly maligns the track. Rock-inclined fans who were around and grown up then felt embarrassed that the Beach Boys had 'gone disco' and that embarrassment informs their feelings about the track today, maybe?
18  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Rare live version of “Soul Searchin'” from 2004 on: November 21, 2020, 06:10:17 AM
This does sound really great. I wonder how much has been done to it before release, but it doesn't sound TOO futzed with after the fact. Maybe the vocal is comped from a few different live performances of the song from around that time? It's either that, or BW really was on fire that night. I saw him a few times that year, and he certainly was really good some of the time. But he is unusually consistent even for that year in this recording, which is what gives me pause. I love the guy, and always will, but that's how I see it based on my recollections from that time.

On the OTHER hand... 2004 was, to say the least, a very good year for Brian... Maybe he did just knock this one out of the park. I wonder when and where in 2004 it's from?

I also wonder why it's being put on-line. It does sound like an official recording and mix. Is there a career retrospective in the works or something? Or is it just a one-off to commemorate Carl?
19  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Alt LA: Replace 10:51 HCTN with 4:28. Add Still I Dream Of It and It's Over Now on: November 21, 2020, 05:55:21 AM
Well... so shoot me, but I love the remake of HCTN. I rate it as different to the original, but still great. Even I would admit, though, that the 10-minute version overloads the album somewhat. They should have put on the single edit IMHO... maybe included another couple of tracks, and left the 10-minute version of HCTN for the 12-inch single.

Having said that, I love electronic music and a lot of disco and stuff like that as WELL as gentle acoustic things and the Beach Boys 60s recordings, so maybe that's why I'm kinder to the remake of HCTN than a lot of BB fans.

I don't know if that would have improved the album's standing in history/chart placing, though. I was 7 and a half when LA came out and thousands of miles from its home market. But I can see that by the time it was out, disco was on the wane in the States... so they would probably always have been seen as disco bandwagon-jumpers amongst rock fans. And not disco enough, outside that one track, for the disco fans. So I reckon it would still have tanked, at least in the US.

Personally, I find LA too full of really dull, over-smooth late 70s yacht-rock. Good Timing is OK but doesn't break any ground, and HCTN is (to me) fun but too over-long in the album version. The one track I think is truly great, and which always makes my personal Beach Boys Top 20, is Baby Blue. About the last thing, to my mind they ever did (even if it was mostly Dennis and Carl) that had some of the love and soul you can hear in SMiLE and Pet Sounds and the greatest of the late 60s stuff. After Baby Blue, it really is downhill all the way for me (well, until 2012, anyway).

Lastly, I have a feeling no-one ever COULD have got 'It's Over Now' and 'Still I Dream Of It' onto LA in the late 70s, even if anyone had wanted to... which they didn't. The 'clean-livers' in the band were in the ascendant at the time (witness MIU and the yacht-rock smoothness of LA). Even Carl was addicted for some of this period, Dennis was starting the long slide down and out, and Brian was declining towards his very lowest point. The Brian-heavy Love You DID come out but bombed... and the album that DID feature those tracks, Adult Child, was subsequently canned by the band and didn't EVER come out, even to this day. Who, quite simply, would have fought to put those tracks on LA? No-one.
20  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Elton John Tells Stories About Brian Wilson on: November 21, 2020, 05:16:39 AM
Well, who knows how legit this is... but 'Brian' ALSO said in 'his' first autobiography, 1991's 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' (which I'm always tempted these days to call the 'Landyography'...) that he played Elton John the multitrack of Good Vibrations. I can't recall the exact quote, but I seem to recall that Brian (or was it Todd Gold...? we'll never know for sure!) wrote something along the lines that he played the Good Vibrations master to Elton 'with all the faders up to reveal the subtle intricacies in the track'... or something like that.

However, I find it interesting in this interview that Elton says that Brian played him the track... but kept complaining that all he had was the wrong mix. I may be reading far too much into a throwaway Elton comment made on a talk show decades after the fact (hell, I probably AM reading far too much into a throwaway Elton comment made on a talk show decades after the fact! that's what we technically-orientated Beach Boys fans DO, isn't it?) but that to me suggests that maybe what Brian was playing back were some stored mixdowns he had, not a performance from the multitrack. Another possibility is that Brian did have *a* GV multitrack at that time... but that it wasn't the final one with all the parts cut together in the right order and all the final vocals on the tracks from which the 1966 single was made. There were, after all, a lot of versions of GV on tape in Autumn 1966... and maybe Brian still had one of those multis a few years later, but not the final one. If I remember rightly from something Mark Linett said when the upgraded Pet Sounds sessions box came out a few years back, there IS a multitrack tape in the archives for GV (a four-track tape, if memory serves?) that has a few bits of vocals on it, but not all of them. That's the tape that was used to make the true stereo mix of GV that has some of Carl's vocals on it, the track at the very end of the updated PS box (Disc 4, Track 23). And also the few bits of the genuine vocal session that we heard in 'Love and Mercy'. But of course, that still-extant multi doesn't have ALL of the GV vocal overdubs on it. Maybe THAT 4-track tape is the one Brian was live-mixing for Elton in 1970 — if indeed that IS what he was doing...?

Or, of course, perhaps he DID have the final GV multitrack in 1970, that IS what he was playing for Elton... and it IS still behind Marilyn's sofa, like down the back of the cushions or something. That would be hilarious if true. And although it is vanishingly unlikely, nothing would surprise me. This IS the Beach Boys, after all...
21  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: November 21, 2020, 04:54:22 AM
I've never heard any Sunflower session tapes — like a lot of fans, my close awareness of the BB's sessions ends in 1968/69 with the end of the eight-track era, which, as I understand it, was as late as the guys who made the Sea of Tunes boots was able to go. The rumour I heard was that the bootleggers didn't have access to a 16-track tape machine, so there was no point them making copies of any archive 16-track tapes, with the result that all tapes made after the band switched to recording on 16-track in around 1969 were off-limits for them to pilfer. I've no idea whether that's correct, but it's certainly true that the detailed Sea Of Tunes discs pretty much grind to a halt at that point in BB history.

My point is, though, that there might not BE much in the way of session recordings for Sunflower (that's the bit I don't know, having not heard any boots of those sessions). Certainly by the time you got to the 80s and people were recording on 24-track multitrack or more, you would rarely hear much of the session even if you had the master multitrack. That's because songs were increasingly constructed ON the multitrack, instead of being the result of multiple, increasingly perfected live takes like in the Wrecking Crew era with Brian producing. We only hear all of the SMiLE and Pet Sounds sessions, for example, for a few reasons. Firstly, the Beach Boys were wealthy artists at the time and didn't mind paying for the (considerable) expense of recording everything from sessions on multitrack tape (which wasn't cheap). Many lesser (and poorer) artists would rehearse a few takes in the studio in this era to be ready to record, and only *then* roll tape to capture a good live performance. That way, you only used a few minutes of tape instead of hours (as with, say, the Heroes and Villains vocal sessions, where even the Boys can be heard complaining that they're now on Take 50 or something and they might as well spool back and record over all the earlier blown takes to save tape).

By the 80s, it would be much more generally the case that you'd record maybe a basic track for a new song of just a few minutes in duration once everyone was rehearsed for the song and ready to go, maybe with just the drummer and bassist or maybe some keys to give a shape to the song as you recorded, and then add everything else gradually as overdubs onto that same 4-5 minute section of multitrack tape. The only 'session' stuff you'd hear would be a few seconds at the start and end of each of the multiple tracks that make up that single performance. You hear this kind of stuff a little bit in some of the SOT SMiLE sessions, where an instrumental perfomance is being overdubbed vocally. Often the last thing you hear after the track ends is one of the vocalists (often Brian) saying 'OK, let's add another overdub'. That's because those words are recorded on the performance of the first set of vocal tracks to be recorded. When the tape was being recorded in the studio, they would have had the multitrack with the instrumental on it, the Boys would do a take, then Brian (say) would say 'let's do another overdub' and that fragment of speech would be captured at the end of the song. After that, they'd have recorded that next overdub — but crucially, over the *same* four minutes or whatever of multitrack tape. So the net effect is that you have a multitrack with Brian saying 'let's do another overdub' at the end... but actually, the second overdub IS already overlaid on that recording. This is different to what you'd have heard for a Today or Summer Days era recording, where if we have the whole tape of the complete session, you might hear Brian say that at the end of a song, and then you get another pass at the song where they add the second overdub a few minutes after the original recording. Bottom line — the more 'multitrackular' recording got over time (yeah, I know that isn't a word, but whatever, you know what I mean), the less likely you are to hear a complete tape of the session as it happened live in the studio.

As I said at the start, what I don't know is what the case is with Sunflower — while you'd be much less likely to hear a complete session recorded at the time of Steve Levine making BB85, for example (unless, of course, SL deliberately elected to record the complete sessions for his own archiving purposes... and I have no idea whether he did or not), I don't know what the done practice was at the time of making Sunflower at the turn of the 70s. Was it more like the Wrecking Crew era or the 1980s practice? Perhaps we'll soon find out, if this damn box eventually comes out and we hear lots of Carl-heavy studio production chatter! Or we couild find out sooner if anyone who HAS (naughtily or otherwise) heard any Sunflower session tapes cares to chip in to this thread at this point...? (He said, leaving the question hanging pregnantly in the air...)

All of which is a very long way of saying... it seems to me that you might not hear *anything* of Carl producing on the Sunflower masters, or at least, not in as complete a way as we hear Brian producing in the Wrecking Crew era. It might just be that the only things captured on the Sunflower masters are a few seconds of Carl counting in the master take, say... and maybe concluding with a 'thanks, that's enough' over the talkback when the song is finished beyond the point where the master was going to be faded out on the completed record.

But I'd love to be proved wrong. 'Cause I sure loves me some BB session recording action... and I'm sure I'm not alone...
22  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Feel Flows box set on: October 31, 2020, 08:56:19 AM
If they actually have a decent quality recording of one of the shows where Brian subbed for mike, I might be ok with losing some of the Dennis material.

And as they used to say in my family (more or less): "If your uncle was a lady, he'd be your aunt".

Confusingly, now I look back, I think it actually *was* my uncle who used to say that. Perhaps he was trying to tell us all something...?  Cheesy

But you take my point - it's about as uncertain as can be (at least to 99 percent of the uninformed target market for this set, including myself) what this mystery release might contain. Firstly, hardly anyone knows exhaustively *what* recordings exist for this period at all, and of those that do know, they are probably not going to tell us publicly, for very sensible reasons. Secondly, it seems likely (but is again actually just speculation) that of the stuff that exists, only some of it will come out on this set, assuming, of course, that this set ever does come out. Thirdly, the line-up of what might have been slated to come out at one point may have been changed since the original speculatory news leaked out. But actually we don't know this either, as that's all just hearsay and speculation too and also hasn't been anything like confirmed.

So: we don't know what the big circle in the Venn diagram comprises (the set of all 1969-1971 recordings that might possibly be included). We don't know what the smaller circle within that set comprises (the set of recordings that may allegedly, at one point, have been slated for release before the end of this year on something that, it seems likely, would have been called Feel Flows. Probably). And we don't know for sure yet if that smaller circle has changed and if so, what to.

That's quite a lot of what Donald Rumsfeld (lawd lavv'im) called 'unknown unknowns', right there.

I thought unravelling SMiLE or 'Can't Wait Too Long' was impossible enough, but at least we had a tracklisting for the former and some recordings for the latter. This set, at least at time of writing, seems even more elusively impossible to pin down. It's a riddle wrapped inside an enigma and sat on by at least two probable iterations of Schrödinger's Cat (Schrödinger's *Set*, anyone?   Grin  ). Although hopefully it won't be long before that changes...

Disclaimer: as usual in these matters, I know nothing and am privy to precisely no inside info. It's dull but true.
23  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Mark Linett interview with multitracks on Produce Like A Pro Youtube Channel on: March 01, 2020, 09:07:03 AM
Just a quick note to say sorry to all on this thread, as I have done elsewhere on-line, for shining a spotlight on something (the untrue so-called lead on the whereabouts of the GV multitrack) that was ultimately just a waste of everyone's time... and which I guess, somewhere, must have given the warped 'Megabirdman' his trolling kicks (Why!!? Why do this? What a waste of space!!!!).

As I said at 'the other place', it seemed suspicious and dodgy, sure... but I figured I *had* to draw attention to it just in case there *was* something in it... which of course must have been exactly what Mr Megabirdman was hoping someone somewhere would do.

My feelings on the whole thing are best (and most politely) summed up in the words of good ol'Charlie Brown: "Rats!".

Now, back to the main purpose of the thread before I blew it off course. Thanks to IK and Mark for the interview, which was great. And I'm afraid I can't add much to the former great studios conversation. I watched a string overdub at CTS Studios once, and that's now just a Wembley Stadium car park... does that count? I think some cool artists recorded there back in the day...? Not as impressive as Craig's excellent recollections from the Record Plant, however...!!!
24  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Mark Linnet interview with multitracks on Produce Like A Pro Youtube Channel on: February 28, 2020, 01:53:51 AM
Yeah, that's it Craig... in Doctor Who fandom (which I also graze along the edge of...) they're always looking for missing tapes of old material recorded in the 1960s and 1970s too (the parallels with the BB archive are a bit uncanny sometimes...) and one of the arch-episode-hunters has pretty much exactly what you've just said as his watchword when looking for this old stuff. "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". And "Don't believe anything until you have experienced *first-hand* incontrovertible evidence that it's true". So no 'my mate whom I really trust says he heard/saw it... so it must be true'.

It's still got to be worth a quick look at this stage though, eh?

Matt
25  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Mark Linnet interview with multitracks on Produce Like A Pro Youtube Channel on: February 28, 2020, 12:16:40 AM
Craig, did you clock the discussion above about the Good Vibrations multitrack? Does that sound like it might be worth exploring... or is it just a load of smoke and mirrors from some guy on-line...?
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