The next time you cover Elton John please cover Dixie Lily.

Wow, now THAT'S a deep cut.

Ha, yes, that version with Ray Cooper is great. I toyed with doing the sort of "crazy eyes" thing Elton does on that clip when I was  filming the lead vocal or doing the Ray Cooper-style flourishes on the drums, but thought I'd just look like a madman. A madman across the water, even.

Hey, gang

Just posted my version of "Better Off Dead" from the fabulous Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy album. Hope you dig it. In particular I had fun double-tracking the drums to try and get an echo effect comparable to the original recording. Let me know what you think.

https://youtu.be/poaVXc0sMRs

Thanks
Greg

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I've been gradually working on a BB/BW tribute album, so it's good to hear that it's a worthwhile endeavor. 

OK, so I did two version of this, one with instrumentation, one without. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, particularly the harmonies. Thoughts?

with instrumentation: https://youtu.be/OZS27rzIDIg

acapella: https://youtu.be/i_IG3vokypE

Hey, gang. Here's my latest, a cover of "Til I Die". Let me know what you think!

https://soundcloud.com/gregory-luzitano/til-i-die-beach-boys-cover

Combined the 20/20 version with the Hawthorne version, as others have done. All instruments/vocals are mine. It's a little compressed on Soundcloud, but I still feel pretty good about how it came out overall. Thoughts?

https://soundcloud.com/gregory-luzitano/time-to-get-alone-remix-beach-boys-cover

Greg

I wonder how much of his usual set had to be dropped to make way for the rest of the album that he wasn't already playing as part of the shows? Or perhaps they just played a set that was 20 minutes longer?

Friend of mine at the show just said the same thing, that they did Pet Sounds front to back. Holy frijoles!

Brian's talked about his love of Bach and how his favored shuffle beat comes from "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring". So yes, I think when he did "Our Prayer" he was purposely trying to ape the sound of devotional music and probably imagined a choir of voices singing it in a cathedral. And of course the last line in the bass part of "Our Prayer" is basically one of the main melodic themes in "Rhapsody in Blue".

That said, as someone who's taught the different parts of "Our Prayer" to singers for a Christmas album I did a year ago, the parts in the middle are the trickiest to learn, which is often the case. Any altos or baritones out there know those mid-range parts are absolute arse to learn.

Now take the very best material from these album projects, convince Joe Thomas that some people actually like the sound of the human voice and get M&B to come over and sing.

Just for a moment, let's try to picture Jeff Beck in his Cuban heel boots, his skinny jeans, and all those scarves, standing next to Bruce's knees and boat shoes.

Just back from Boston show. Brian was more animated than at the Boston C50 show, and he seemed to be enjoying himself throughout. We got The White Suit. We got Blondie doing SOS and Wild Honey. Al sounded great. Brian sounded very Brian, but I'll take warts-n-all Brian over B-Pain any day. Merch was actually super cool in my humble opinion. "Our Prayer" sounded better at the C50 show, but still sounded good here.

Jeff was pretty rad, although I'm still scratching my head at what a strange combo this is.

Overall great energy. Just a bunch of musicians who all enjoy playing together. Plus it's nice to have Brian's band sort of own the stage more. With the C50 shows it was a bit "The Beach Boys! ...and those other guys in the back who make us sound good-like DON'T LOOK AT THEM! Look at MEEEEE. I will POINT at you unTIL you look ONly at ME". With this show they were able to bounce around and interact more, particularly with Brian. Plus I get all Boston Proud over Nelson and Probyn being locals.

Oh, and "The Great" running joke is still running.

To be clear, Jeff BECK was pretty rad. Foskett is a lot of things to a lot of people, but I don't think "rad" would be anyone's choice of descriptor for him.

Just back from Boston show. Brian was more animated than at the Boston C50 show, and he seemed to be enjoying himself throughout. We got The White Suit. We got Blondie doing SOS and Wild Honey. Al sounded great. Brian sounded very Brian, but I'll take warts-n-all Brian over B-Pain any day. Merch was actually super cool in my humble opinion. "Our Prayer" sounded better at the C50 show, but still sounded good here.

Jeff was pretty rad, although I'm still scratching my head at what a strange combo this is.

Overall great energy. Just a bunch of musicians who all enjoy playing together. Plus it's nice to have Brian's band sort of own the stage more. With the C50 shows it was a bit "The Beach Boys! ...and those other guys in the back who make us sound good-like DON'T LOOK AT THEM! Look at MEEEEE. I will POINT at you unTIL you look ONly at ME". With this show they were able to bounce around and interact more, particularly with Brian. Plus I get all Boston Proud over Nelson and Probyn being locals.

Oh, and "The Great" running joke is still running.

If this new album ends up actually being a reworking of some older material, I'm hoping it'll be "Adult/Child" rather than "Love You"

Though, I guess I can kind of understand Brian's handlers wanting to steer him away from an album that would involve him recording Shortenin' Bread.

In fairness, I thought that remake of "Honkin' Down the Highway" was pretty good.

I'm no Mike apologist, but I do feel like it must be incredibly frustrating to him that even when discussing the mid-sixties output, it's always sort of framed as "So Brian Wilson sure is great, huh? Did you do anything on those songs? I don't remember." It's like Mike is Salieri in Amadeus or something. He DID contribute to those classic tracks, and his voice and lyrics are an indelible part of them. But there will never come a day in which he'll be regarded by the public as being able to contribute anything remotely comparable to what Brian did, whether that's a fair assessment of the band's greatness or not. So he's just naturally always on the defensive when it comes to that topic. Has there ever been a period in the band's history where he's been able to give an interview in which Brian wasn't mentioned? It's always the only thing anyone wants to discuss. "Marcia, Marcia, MARCIA!"

Doesn't the Hawthorne version also have that little instrumental section with the horns before "Lying down on our backs..."? This other youtube version mixes both and includes that instrumental "whistling" section as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ZtIkMBs_E

That said, this new mix is very sharp, nice and clean. Good work.

This song is atrocious. Truly wretched. Granted, not as terrible as "Santa's Got an Airplane", but very very close. The only track worthy of note on the second half of "Ultimate Christmas" is "Winter Symphony".

Charity is charity, so of course it's worth bidding. But since we've pretty much only seen Brian behind a piano for 30 years, it's a little bizarre to have his autograph on an instrument he's never been known for playing. Even a bass would make more sense. True for Roger as well. I can't think of a time I've ever seen him play an electric guitar. Acoustic, maybe.

I know, I know, it's friggin' October. But you want an album to come out in November, you gotta record it in Spring and Summer.

I have a theatre company (www.strivingartists.org) with whom I direct holiday variety shows every year (among other things). Skits and whatnot are all originals, and the songs are new arrangements done up by me. After a few years of doing the shows live, I decided to go ahead and record them for posterity. It's all done in my living room, Smiley Smile style, baby, with pretty inexpensive equipment. Sometimes you can tell, sometimes you can't. Most of us are amateurs, which is sometimes obvious. It ain't perfect, but I'm pretty proud of it.

Anyway, you'll hear Brian's influence all over this. I open with "Our Prayer", for instance, because I feel like it works in the context of the holiday. And because it's the greatest thing ever. "Little Saint Nick" is in there, and with a number of the other arrangements you'll no doubt be able to tell that I was listening to the BBs a lot this year.

Regardless, feel free to give a listen to the first two singles and/or the 30 second clips I've got on our Soundcloud page:
http://soundcloud.com/striving-artists-theatre/sets/christmas-with-the-sac-pack/

Feedback welcome. Just, you know, constructive rather than "don't give up your day job".

Cheers!
Greg

Stamos hasn't had the most illustrious post-Full House career, but he did have a lead role on ER for 4 seasons about 5 years ago. He's also stayed very active in the theatre scene in New York, with leads in Bye Bye Birdie, Cabaret, Nine, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Hairspray (no, not as Mama).

And Mike's not the ONLY musician to ever have Stamos onstage with him. John Fogerty played with him a year or so ago, and if he's good enough for Creedence, he's good enough for our Boys.

In all honesty, I don't personally care for the M&B version of the band, but they do have enough great musicians in there that John isn't going to ruin their sound or anything. He's as harmless as Taylor Mills and serves essentially the same purpose. Besides, I can say from the point of view of people just about my age (mid-30s), there are a huge number of people for whom Full House was our first exposure to the band, and that goofy Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, girls dancing version of them is the first thing we picture when you say The Beach Boys. Is it the version I ultimately came to love? Of course not.

In a way, it's like begrudging Adam West going to Comic Cons and appearing as "Batman". He's as much a part of the story as Christian Bale, and though he represents an incarnation of that character that most contemporary fans don't care to acknowledge, he's part of the reason the character remained popular.

If you just want to hear some of these, Grooveshark is a good place to look.

Yeah, at this point, I'd say we won't see "Our Prayer" until maybe the Europe shows. I must've done something right in a past life to be at one of the, what, two or three shows they played it.

For me, the opening of "God Only Knows" always makes me think of two things:

1. The end of Love, Actually. In fact, when I stepped off of a plane at Heathrow recently, that's what I heard in my head as well.

2. The ending of a production of Twelfth Night I was in, in which the director used the songs from Pet Sounds throughout. We ended the show slow-dancing to "God Only Knows".

1966>1967

Off the top of my head 66 has :

Revolver
Pet sounds
Blonde on blonde
Sounds of silence
A quick one

I second this.

I actually prefer Tony's lyrics. And that's from someone who likes Mike as a lyricist pretty much across the board.