lol, probably just you.

There's even an episode of the Big Bang Theory about one of Brian's earworms, it's so entrenched in popular culture.

Very sad news.

I met up with him before the last Brian Wilson show in Bristol, England, and we had a good long chat before taking our seats.

A passionate fan.

@Joshilyn.  I'll disagree with your point that Jan & Dean aren't more popular because they weren't "deep" or plunging the depths of their souls. I'm a huge fan of the Monkees and a lot of their stuff is bubblegum fluff. There's plenty of great 60s music that can be enjoyed on a purely surface level, like the Beatles' covers on their first few albums.

There's nothing wrong with making music to have fun, but deliberately singing bad on an album like Folk n Roll because it's a "send up" is just a poor joke

I won't try to dissuade someone from enjoying Jan & Dean (more power to anyone who does) but it is not a mystery to me why their standing is so low.

And we'll have to agree to disagree about Dylan's singing!

Imagine if Brian wrote & produced an album for Audree instead of someone like Jasper Dailey.

Imagine if Murry wrote songs for Audree to sing instead of his instrumental album.

Missed opportunities!

Sorry for the thread necromancy here, but I've been listening to the FF box version of Big Sur and comparing it to the Holland version.

Both are lovely, and I am glad that both exist.

The 1970 version is so bright and spritely, buoyant. The 1973 version sounds a lot more world-weary, zen even.

But what I want to know is, do we have musician credits for either of these? In particular the piano on the Holland version. I would guess Carl, just due to probability, but Al had a big hand in the California Trilogy, so maybe it could be him?

Maybe if Murry weren't a frustrated over-bearing monster then maybe we'd have some happier Wilsons and more of Audree on record.

If Brian is playing, I'm buying.

I'd love to hear an album of Brian playing his songs on piano.

I really hope there is a little video somewhere of the recording!

Another vote in defense of Bob Dylan over here.

It Ain't Me Babe and Forever Young are but two examples of iconic vocal performances on popular record.

Another vote here!

To some degree, Bob and Jan & Dean "can't sing" because they don't always "hit the notes"... HOWEVER...

Have a listen to Bob Dylan singing Isis live on the Rolling Thunder tour, or Gotta Serve Somebody live in Toronto in 1980. The guy was an amazing singer. Listen to the resonance, the passion and conviction and how he inhabits the songs. He makes them feel elemental and immortal.

In contrast, to me, Jan & Dean sound like karaoke. Off-tune, thin voices, no feeling, frequently poor material.

Okay, watching Brian on Colbert, and singing Happy Birthday to Nancy Sinatra, and noticing the comments in the threads, I just wanted to start this thread in case we could get any kind of traction with this thing.

I want a new Brian album, stripped down, live in the studio, no overdubs, no autotune, no bass harmonicas, minimal instrumentation. Maybe brush drums or a stand up bass player. Maybe an acoustic guitar. Not an electro-acoustic guitar, but just an actual mic'd up acoustic guitar. A couple of backing vocalists.

There is so much more heart and soul and personality from the real life Brian in these videos than the photoshopped, autotuned, glossy Brian we keep getting from his solo albums.

I want a Brian who hesitates at the piano, who misses the beat by a fraction, who almost forgets the words, who can magically out of FREAKING NOWHERE sound like his 20 year old self at almost 80 years old.

Get Van Dyke to back him on a couple of tunes on accordion. Maybe make it a sequel to Orange Crate Art if you want, but a full collaboration in the songwriting department.

Who's with me?

That's a great video, Aejitsche, thanks!

You really intrigued me with the mention of Al Jardine's influence over the bass parts. Bring it on!

If Mars..., that's a lovely story.

I always thought Nicky's talents were so integral to the sound and that he was underrated for what he did. His guitar was always perfect to recapture the magic of Pet Sounds, Smile etc...

a sad day

I am fascinated by Brian in 1968 and 1969. I think these years are really the key to everything that happened to Brian afterwards.

I wish more was/is known, but this period is kind of glossed over in bios. I guess because it's so personal. There's no need for fans to have access to this kind of info.

There's no need to doubt you, it's still great to hear.

Wow, this is amazing! I look forward to hearing it officially in 4 years time

It also makes me sad that this might be the best quality version of I've Got a Friend out there. Does anything better exist?

edit: i got the track wrong. doh!

What sites are people using to download this set?

Apologies for the noob question, but I'm still a CD-purchaser at heart so I'm not familiar with many download sites.

I want the best possible audio quality (so not iTunes), but it's not up on 7digital yet and Tidal seems ridiculously expensive.

I was passing by another office at work and briefly overheard Richard (I don't be-lieeeve it) Wilson narrating some story about a vegan meal, and then a verse of Vegetables was played.

Must be this show:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bkqt8l

[Vineland.]

The most recent book I almost finished but didn't was Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. I'd read both V and Gravity's Rainbow twice (extraordinary books both) but Vineland didn't grab me the way its two predecessors did.

I have another fat Pynchon tome waiting in the wings. I bought The Mason-Dixon Line on a whim at a book launch where they had been serving white wine but I don't hold out much hope for it.    

Pynchon is my favourite author, and I've read everything he has written.

Mason & Dixon is such a beautiful book. Full of some of Pynchon's best prose and descriptions. Read the first few pages and savour it! If you like Gravity's Rainbow, it will hopefully resonate with you. Think of the description of the parabola of a thrown snowball as a great in-joke

My personal favourite Pynchon is Against the Day. A 1000-page monster of ideas, conscience, humour and changing styles. His magnum opus, imo. There is a great web resource for read-alongs, http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html

Vineland, and it's cousins Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, are less satisfying to me, but still contain enough Pynchon to elevate them above most other authors' works.

In Desert Drive, Foskett sings "coyote" as "Kie - Oat" rather than "Kie - Oat - E".

It annoys the poop out of me.

I've been reading a lot of graphic novels recently:

Adrian Tomine  - Killing and Dying
Chester Brown - Biography of Louis Riel
Gilberto Hernandez - Love and Rockets (vol.1)
Jeff Smith - entire Bone series
Paolo Parisi - Coltrane
Alan Moore - From Hell

All of these are brilliant.

I would HIGHLY recommend Adrian Tomine's Killing & Dying for anyone who wants to read literate graphic novels. His storytelling is on a par with Raymond Carver.
https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/killing-and-dying

and Jeff Smith's Bone series is up there with all literature.

For anyone who wants to get into graphic novels, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a great place to start!

There will one day(in the somewhat distant future) come a time where every single group and artist from the 1950's and 1960's is gone. What a horrible thought.

It's better than the alternative 

Just got back from the gig. I got to meet the great Rob Dean (and see his freshly signed Blondie solo LP, amongst other treasures) and a couple of his friends, but no Cliff...?

A sold-out concert, which is nice to see after a couple of noticeably-not-sold-out shows in Bristol over the last few years.

The first half of the show was a little by-the-numbers, mostly pre-1966 stuff. I wonder if jet lag got the better of the guys because the opening Our Prayer was all over the place, in terms of pitch and timing. It's my first time seeing this incarnation of the band. No Jeff, Darian, Scott, and I think it shows. Those guys are huge talents that provided a lot of the heavy-lifting in terms of representing the music on stage. I understand why the classic 2002 Pet Sounds line-up can't be together right now, but as great as it is to see Gary Griffin and Billy Hinsche, they aren't quite in the same league.

Okay, quibbles out of the way, onto the positive stuff. Matt Jardine has a great falsetto for this music. Maybe it's his familiarity with the music, maybe it's the family genes in the vocal pipes, but he did an excellent job and deserved his ovations. It was great to see Al with the band. His mic-positioning can be a little wayward, meaning half his lines are delivered off-mic but when positioned correctly, he sounded great and seemed to love singing this material. He had a quiet confidence to his manner that comes from knowing you've got a great songbook underpinning everything.

And then the gig transformed from the ordinary into something really rather special. Blondie Chaplin brought an incredible energy and rock n' roll spirit to his showcases. Wild Honey was a great jam, Funky Pretty was a cool surprise, and Sail On Sailor rocked. Hiring Blondie was a stroke of genius.

The Pet Sounds LP was as expected and the energy the band brought to the encores was great to see hear and feel. There were loads of people dancing up at the front by the end of it, and the band really seemed to appreciate it. Al and even Brian were full of smiles.

Brian was his usual charming and vulnerable self, and walking very tenderly. Someone in the merch queue remarked, on seeing the list of tour dates on the backs of the shirts, that there are many more dates and a long way to go to the end of the tour. Part of me really hopes it's Brian's last. I won't deny him the chance to keep touring and getting the appreciation and making money, but he's getting on a bit now and his health seems more fragile than before. It's been 14 years (wow!) since the 2002 Pet Sounds tour.

Anyone in here going to the Bristol show on the 15th?

I am.

Bit off topic though?

Thanks for posting, AGD.

I have to say, this might be the first thing since my real fandom began--greatest hits comp/reissues notwithstanding--that I'm not going to buy. It looks great for someone who doesn't have the vast majority of it. If I didn't have the previous PS box I'd be all over it. But the new stuff just doesn't warrant the (presumably) substantial cost.

Same here.

The BBs are still my favourite group of all time, and i'd definitely buy any kind of Hawthorne, CA type release, or Bedroom Tapes box set, but i think i've reached saturation with this kind of stuff. Maybe it's my age, maybe my lack of time to listen to the mounds of music i already own, maybe i resent being so frequently milked, but i'll pass.

I've got a ticket to see Brian on tour in May and i have:

original US vinyl
Carl & The Passions & Pet Sounds original vinyl
2xLP mono stereo yellow/green vinyl reissue
DVD-A
1997 Box Set
the 1999 remaster CD

That's plenty good enough for me.

I'll do my best to get to Bristol.

The Colston Hall's website says Al and Blondie are part of the band.

The tickets don't go on sale for 4 more days. Does anyone know if there are any presales?

The lyrics are by Mike Love, aren't they? Are they all by Mike?

Why is he not getting the credit for writing the lyrics on the show, when it's the lyrics that were important for the plot?

I guess Brian Wilson is cool and Mike isn't, but imagine if it were the other way around... Mike getting the namecheck instead of Brian... parallel universes.