I agree. I immediately singled this song out as my favourite when I first heard the record. Not only is it a great melody, with a really satisfying surprise chord in the chorus, but Brian's singing is pretty high. The part that had my jaw on the floor was the part where he sings I couldn't hear my heart, calling out for you... He pulls off that high note on 'calling' really gracefully, I think. But over all it's really just a great tune. It seems to pull together a lot of elements from several highlights of Brian's writing/recording career and marry them together into a great track.

It's rather sad. The original voice is there and still really shines at certain registers, but as it moves around you hear the irreversible damage that was being done through so much chain smoking. It's the thing that always amazes me about Brian. Yes, there's something to be said for the husky smoker voice. But when you have a voice as good as his was, it's such a tragic thing to see it almost totally destroyed.

When was this recording of ITBOMM done? Sounds like it falls somewhere in the adult child era, when his voice was making an impressive comeback from the gruff and pitchy Love You sound. He almost has some of his original sweetness in places.

Heard this for the first time today. From a writing perspective, it's got a some nice chords and interesting structure. The chorus is one of those that just keeps going round in my head, hours after listening. I'm not too keen on the production. There's something jarring about the quasi-pet sounds arrangement being as heavily processed and compressed as this. It'd sound a lot better if we could hear a much more dynamic mix, in my humble opinion.

The sandbox, the tent, the fire helmets and all the rest of it make total sense for a wealthy young artist exploring creativity. You don't need to take LSD to understand that. He was just trying to push his experience and understanding in as many different ways as possible, because he was smart enough to understand that it would spill over into the music.

The drugs were obviously just another part of that. But sadly, for Brian, he had no way of knowing the long term impact it would have on his capabilities (particularly as someone with underlying mental health issues), since it was a whole new cultural frontier.

I personally like to think that he would have eventually written most of those songs without the use of marijuana and lsd. But sadly, we'll never know.

Brian, no question. Best songwriter and producer of the lot by quite a stretch. It's obvious that everyone around him was painfully aware of this, at various times throughout the group's history. The fact that even when he was mired by drugs and overeating, he could create music that would trump most of the rest of the band's output is amazing. He also had, in my opinion, the best voice of the group up until Sunflower.

After that I have to go with Carl, because of his awesome voice. I think they needed his vocal talents to carry on once Brian's voice was wrecked.

Then it's gotta be Dennis simply because I find his song writing to be the best non-Brian stuff in the group's library.

Al, for vocal reasons.

Erm... Bruce, because he's on okay song writer I guess.

Mike. I think they actually needed his nasally singing to make their early singles work properly. I guess he becomes pretty expendable once you get to the Pet Sounds era (I could do without him singing lead on That's Not Me and Here Today).

The more time passes, the more it's becoming clear to me that I just #$%&ing love this album and I don't care who knows it. That is all.

Thanks! Had to buy that Uke when I saw it hehe.

Oh thanks so much for the nice comments. Funny you mentioned the SJB video, because when I was trying to come up with an idea for how to do a video for this, I was thinking about doing something along those lines. Just simple funny poses done in a faux stop-motion style although the masks from that video didn't even cross my mind until now hehe.

Cheers again, really glad you liked it and I always appreciate nice feedback!

Hey all. Not been on here for a while. Just dropping by to share my new cover of the latest Franz Ferdinand single, Right Action.

Hope you like it!

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

I actually had to wean myself off Love You in order to be able to listen to lesser recordings! Sounds crazy but it's true.

Another track assembled:

https://soundcloud.com/timothy-mcgaw/moonshine-backing-track

Ah okay then. That kinda sucks. Ah well.

When you look at The Beach Boys profile on Spotify, there's like 17 compilation releases that have been published since Fifty Bigh Ones, all of them with shoddy looking un-official artwork that seems to have been thrown together by a chimpanzee in Photoshop. These are all listed as being published by different groups such as 'Replay Records' 'Entertain Me Europe LTD' 'Play Digital' and so on. It's hard to believe that all these releases are completely legit, surely Capitol/Brother wouldn't want to approve rival compilation albums to compete with their own official release? It just looks like some guys have decided to cash in on the promotional work from the 50th tour and pushed out a load of albums to Spotify (incidentally the fact that they all came out after Fifty Big Ones puts them conveniently at the top of the album list).

I'm not saying this isn't legit. But, seriously? Something fishy going on right there, surely?

Thank you very much! Always appreciate positive feedback.

This is one of those old, old, old Christmas carols that is usually sung about 4x slower than my version by a full choir, which makes it drag out to over 12 minutes in some cases, haha. Regardless I liked the melody and whenever I cover an existing piece I try to change it as dramatically as possible, to give it my own flavour. In this case that meant bringing the tempo up to a lively pace and playing around with bouncier rhythms. Something about crazy pizz strings and enthusiastic cello sounds seemed to lend itself to the tune.

Glad you liked it, anyway. Cheers!

Another of the backing tracks

https://soundcloud.com/timothy-mcgaw/curiosity-killed-the-cat

Just a little update. Decided to share one of the in-progress backing tracks I've assembled.

This is part of "In Dreams I See". Vocals to be recorded at a later date.

https://soundcloud.com/timothy-mcgaw/in-dreams-i-see

I really like it!

Love the concept as well - can't wait to see where you take it.

Thank you!

Hey all! I've begun work on my second LP, which will be titled My Place in the Universe, and so I decided to start a thread on here to post updates from the project. This album is intended to be a concept record, reflecting on life in the context of the vastness of time and space.

I've always been interested in how we tend to give immense value to certain aspects of our lives, things which are otherwise unimportant in the context of the greater cosmic landscape. I've also been thinking a lot about the divisions that exist within human society, when in fact we are all ultimately made out of the same dust that has been drifting through the ether since the dawn of time. I've been wanting to tie all these ideas together into a musical narrative for a while now, and so I've decided to make that the vision for my next musical project.

I'm not planning to really put much of it out there until it's all fully completed. But I have uploaded the intro/prelude to soundcloud to give a little taster of what's to come. You can hear it here.

https://soundcloud.com/timothy-mcgaw/from-the-cosmos-prelude

I'll update this thread when I'm ready to share more.

Cheers.

Hey thanks guys, I'm glad you like the song.

Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it.

Writing a song about the Easter Bunny seemed like a goofy idea. So I decided to have go.

Here's the clip for my latest single 'Easter Bunny.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJsh_tX0a8I

It's also on Spotify, iTunes, Soundcloud etc.

I love the hard rocking Heroes and Villains on this. Also, no idea what people's beef about Funky Pretty being on there; it's a great song and this version has a really great live energy to it.

I think you'r right--close to perfect. For me, what stands in the way though is the tambourine. It's recorded poorly (in the context of it being such a "highlight" instrument in a pretty sparse arrangement) and i think it sits way too loud in the mix. Never understood what he was going for there.

The tambourine is one of my favourite things in the song. I particularly love what it brings to the fade tag.

For crying out loud, release a stereo version and take my money.

In Pet Sounds, whoever is doing that crazy sounding percussion when everything drops out has my respect.

One moment on Pet Sounds that never ceases to amaze me is the tremolo on the dano (?) before the last chorus of Here Today. It's really tight. I'm assuming that was Ray Pohlman?

Whoever was doing that cello on Good Vibrations had some serious stamina going on too.