I've found that if you use the word 'hipster', it means you're a hipster ... oops

you can sometimes find it on eBay for much less (I think I got the vinyl for around $25) if you keep your eyes peeled for the listings that don't mention 'beach boys'.

I knew a girl who was a waitress at a hipster restaurant.

Was Pabst Blue Ribbon the featured beer on tap?

I think it's more 'upscale' hipster ... so probably Stella !

I think some of it is just that things look a lot different from the inside than the outside.

I knew a girl who was a waitress at a hipster restaurant.  We were having a conversation on her break.  Eventually the conversation turned to "stupid customers".  "I hate the 'ranch' people," she said.  "People are always asking for a side of ranch. We don't even have ranch and there's nothing on our menu with ranch!  It's so annoying."

we can only wonder how such a stripped down Smiley Smile-esque set would have gone down at Monterrey!!!!!!

The bigger question is: Would they have worn the striped shirts?!

The happy medium might be to give a brief answer and then refer to the search function for deeper details.

Some of these tracks are scattered on various archive releases.

The '93 box set includes 'Good Vibrations' from Michigan '66 as well as 'Surfer Girl' from Hawaii '67 (rehearsal).

The 'Concert'/'Live in London' reissue CD has 'Heroes & Villains' from the Hawaii show.

The 'Smiley Smile'/'Wild Honey' CD includes 'Their Hearts Were Full of Spring' (rehearsal).

'Leid in Hawaii' was originally planned as a live album to follow 'Smiley Smile'.  Brian went with the group (Bruce stayed home because he felt things got 'weird') and brought his Baldwin organ (a trademark sound of the period).

The performances (2 shows) were deemed to be unfit for release (there were some technical problems and the group simply felt they didn't perform very well), so they actually went back into the studio to fake the live show.  Some of these recordings have been released ('God Only Knows' on 'Endless Harmony' and 'Good Vibrations' on 'Hawthorne, CA').

Ultimately, the album concept turned into 'Wild Honey' instead, so they put that out ... 'The Letter' from the 1983 'Rarities' LP is from the same sessions I believe.

Fan opinions are mixed regarding the material ... a fairly accurate description is that it sounds like the Beach Boys playing live tracks in the style of 'Smiley Smile' ... very stripped down, kind of foggy & druggy.  I personally love it and would like to see a full 'Lei'd in Hawaii' release with the concerts, rehearsals, and studio re-recordings.

One thing notable about this show (aside from Brian's appearance) is that this is essentially what the group did instead of playing Monterey Pop, where they were a legendary no-show.

I really hope we get more '69-'72 Dennis stuff included somewhere in these anniversary releases ... and more than just a token few.

'surf's up' details the demise and eventual re-birth of 'Smile' and Brian Wilson's future ... musically and personally.

This thread is definitely reminding me of why I didn't bother with this board for a long time after initially enjoying it.  And it makes me wonder if I want to continue bothering.

hang in there!  I think there's a lot of negativity and some groupthink happening, but lots of solid information and dialog ... just not always presented in a respectful manner.  I think if the nicer folks posted more often instead of being scared away, the tone of the board could change. 

Are the songs from SMiLE that are on the 91 box set the same as the ones on TSS?

Hi Jimmy,

Yes, they are the same songs, with some variations here and there.  Basically, with the 'Good Vibrations' box, you get 30 minutes of standard 'Smile' tracks.  With the 'Smile' box, you get all of that plus many hours more, presented in a better quality and with more variations, outtakes, sessions, etc.

Pretty cheesy but I don't skip it.  Now, 'Livin' with a Heartache' ...

It's definitely nothing personal, I just saw a few posts in replay that seemed to be stating that the reason why certain things were mixed a certain way was the 3-way switch, and that's missing a lot of other reasons and history which is being posted now. Stereo more or less has been around since the 30's, and the audio folks working on Disney's "Fantasia" were getting their feet wet trying to do things with it...unfortunately it wasn't all possible outside the labs until the later 50's.

Narrow it down to the years 1965-1969, and it is some of the most radical change you'll find in how music was recorded, mixed, broadcast, sold, mastered, transferred, etc... All in the span of a few years, you had all kinds of issues including radio broadcast licensing and power issues, lawsuits centered around mono versus stereo albums and needles to play them, and how consumers heard and bought their music. The fact that it coincided with the explosion of pop music which took it from kid's music to an art form in some circles is one of those right-place/right-time coincidences, as is the arrival of an album like Sgt. Pepper and guys like the team of Hendrix and Eddie Kramer who took panning from the ping-pong novelty albums into outer space with what they were doing in the studio.

All in 5 years or so, the rules changed and were re-written, naturally there will be many answers when the questions are asked "how?" or "why?". It's good to get many more of the reasons on the table.

Indeed!

the five year period saw so many changes from direct-to-mono from machine to machine (still widely used in '65) to 16-track by '67 ... that in and of itself is unbelievable ... definitely some Future Shock must have occurred. Some producers and engineers were still recording mono to mono in 1970 (Shocking Blue's 'Venus')!

I can't remember where I heard the story, but upon being presented with 4-track recording, an old-school engineer asked, "What are we going to do with all these tracks?". 

Ray Davies also tells a story about recording "You Really Got Me".  They tried recording in the the sophisticated 4-track room and found the result to be too clean.  So they went to the lower-cost studio and recorded mono to mono 2-track (track to one tape, then bounced to another tape while adding vocals) to get it more raw!

I should point out that the stereo 'mixes' of the BB albums 1963/64 are in fact nothing of the sort, but rather a straight copy of the raw 3-track tape that Chuck balanced and eq'd because Capitol were demanding stereo masters.

That's not really true; mixing decisions were made on those albums.  Take 'Surfer Girl' (the song and most of the album) ... Chuck presented the stereo image as: vocal group 1-LEFT, vocal group 2-RIGHT, track-CENTER.  He could have chosen other options, such as track-LEFT, vocals-RIGHT (like some Beatles records), or track-LEFT, vocal 1-CENTER, vocal 2-RIGHT.  And on albums like 'Shut Down Vol 2' and 'All Summer Long', the stereo mixes are quite varied.

I quit.

!?

Frustration.

The way things in pop music were mixed in mid 60's stereo may have *something* to do with a three-way selector switch on certain consoles but when there are examples from 1959 into the 60's of what we'd consider "panning" in a more modern sense, where the sound travels from side to side, it suggests if the bloody Mamas And Papas records called for that kind of stereo mixing, they'd have received it, because it was technically possible. To say it wasn't because of a 3-way switch isn't 100% accurate.

The way those Esquivel records and the like achieved that panning is simple: If you have only two speakers, left and right, there is technically no "center channel". The center channel is an illusion of hearing the same sound coming out of both speakers at the same level. If you lower one channel on one side, and raise another on the opposite side, the sound appears to tilt and shift to one side, and that's the illusion. Panning equals volume. So the way they'd move the sound images is have the same sounds on two channels, and raise the volume of one while lowering the volume of another. That is panning, and it was available to anyone mixing a record after 1958, or on countless scientific experiments in labs dating back to the 1930's. The development of a pan pot made all those moves possible using one control knob rather than multiple.

And above all, a mid-60's teenager buying a Beach Boys or Mamas and Papas record really had no need for "real" stereo, top 40 stations had no use for it anyway because they couldn't broadcast in stereo, and it just wasn't what the market demanded at that time in the music biz. Therefore, stereo wasn't that big of a concern until people started listening to full albums on better equipment, and radio stations on FM started to broadcast those albums in stereo regardless of having a "hit single" to spin. None of that has as much to do with a three-position L-C-R switch on a mixing board as it does with the market itself, because albums mixed in full stereo in 1967-68 were soon using the same boards to mix, but some were just not panned the lazy way they were done in, say, 1965.

If I'm wrong, I'll gladly stand corrected.  

I see.  I'm not really saying you're wrong, just presenting some alternate ideas.  It seems we're both interested in similar aspects of recording history, with perhaps differing opinions as to why things were the way they were.  I think it's good to have a dialog that presents this contrast; no offense intended, certainly none taken on my end.


The limitations of L-C-R boards had a LOT to do with why hard-panning was the only option in many cases (Listen to the Kinks' "Phenomenal Cat" to hear a crude attempt at moving a signal from left to right with buttons instead of a pan!).

Pop music being 'disposable' kids' stuff may have also been a factor.

But I don't think that really explains it all.

There was still a lot of hard-panning going on (even into the '70s) once pan pots were standard (drums on 'don't go near the water' for instance).

I'm just adding two additional reasons I believe hard panning was standard:


1. limitations of 2, 3 and 4-track tape decks.  The multi-track was generally considered to be the working tape to get to the mono master; stereo was generally considered a fad or gimmick until about '67-'68.  When stereo was the main point (like the examples you mentioned), extra consideration was made to accomodate.  But this was not the case on a pop-rock session.  Overdubbing, not realistic stereo capability, was the function of multi-track units.  When you had the 3 or 4 track master and the time came to do the stereo mix, options were limited because it was not given priority during tracking.  When 8 and 16-track became the norm in the later '60s, producers, engineers and musicians recognized the ability to actually create a realistic stereo image and overdub as they wished to. This is where you start to see pan pots used.

2. stylistic choice.  There were instances where engineers had pan pots and could have easily narrowed the stereo field, but they chose not to ... this was a stylistic choice; making the stereo effect as extreme as possible ('wow! the drums are all the way over there and the vocals are over there!)

I quit.

!?

Additionally, many of these early tracks were 3-track masters.  When recording with 3-track with a mono end result in mind (certainly the way Chuck Britz and Brian Wilson were), you're not thinking about stereo relationships -- you're thinking in terms of what makes sense for overdubbing.  In the Beach Boys' case, this was often 1-track, 2-vocal, 3-vocal overdub w/ maybe lead guitar overdub.  Later on, they started getting more sophisticated, bouncing from one machine to another.  When you are making a stereo mix from 3-track, your options are fairly limited.

Certainly, the left-center-right setup of many studio systems was a big factor (many studios actually had 3 speakers for monitoring; 'center' was an actual channel, not a phantom channel as it is now), but I think this was still a stylistic choice of the period as well. Hard-panning was preferred as stereo was a 'gimmick' and an afterthought in the AM-radio era, as such, the effect as more striking when presented as extreme as possible.  The concept of realistic stereo imaging was not in vogue until the later '60s when 8 and 16-track recording made this more feasible.

The stereo mixes (old and new) are very cool and interesting, nice to have as a supplement to the original mono mixes.   The problem is the stereo mixes have replaced the mono mixes as the 'standard' in many cases ... I think their stuff just sounds better in mono until 'Friends'.

Thank you very much for your inspiring words!

I remember reading it a long time ago and this is a very good time for me to read it again ... I have actually applied it and found it to be very helpful.

Also, The Beach Boys were doomed (or blessed) from day one to stand apart from the uber-hip San Francisco/Great Britain/Dylan crowd in that they really WERE suntanned, golden haired/prematurely balding Southern California beach kids. Even Brian. They wrote songs about their lives and their emotions and their desires. They created an entire myth about California which they more or less accurately represented. There was no attempt at intellectualism, nor was such a thing necessary with them. Sure they were dorks but the Grateful Dead were even bigger dorks in reality, but those guys wrote about THEIR world which revolved around Bluegrass, drugs, old blues/country tunes: all which resonated with the hip kids and they looked/dressed accordingly (at least in the early days).

I agree with you in terms of public perception, but in reality, most group members were quite 'hip' as individuals.

Until Jack Rieley came along, I think the group were not ready to give in to the 'hip' angle ... it's as if their public image was still being presented as a straightforward pop band from '67-'70 ... like their management/record labels felt it best to keep them groomed for the Carpenters/Monkees/Partridge Family scene.  Even Warner releasing 'Add Some Music' as the lead single was perpetuating this.  They were probably apprehensive to claim 'hip' for fear of losing their bread and butter audience.  Striped shirts in '67, matching white suits in '68 ...

i also just realized i unintentionally left out 'in my room' ...

yeh ... it's not really feasible!

I stopped at 1980 and came up with:

1 - surfin'
2 - surfin' safari
3 - 409
4 - surfin' USA
5 - shut down
6 - surfer girl
7 - little deuce coupe
8 - catch a wave
9 - be true to your school
10 - fun fun fun
11 - don't worry baby
12 - warmth of the sun
13 - when i grow up
14 - dance dance dance
15 - do you wanna dance
16 - please let me wonder
17 - help me rhonda
18 - california girls
18 - let him run wild
20 - girl don't tell me
21 - barbara ann
22 - caroline no
23 - sloop john be
24 - wouldn't it be nice
25 - god only knows
26 - good vibrations
27 - heroes and villains
28 - wonderful
29 - cabinessence
30 - surf's up
31 - wild honey
32 - darlin'
33 - friends
34 - little bird
35 - do it again
36 - i can hear music
37 - break away
38 - cottonfields
39 - add some music to your day
40 - this whole world
41 - forever
42 - feel flows
43 - 'til i die
44 - marcella
45 - sail on sailor
46 - rock and roll music
47 - the night was so young
48 - come go with me
49 - good timin'
50 - goin' on

I agree it's pretty different from 'Pacific Ocean Blue', but I think it's potentially just as good ... but it doesn't really seem finished.  Think of all of the outtakes from POB ... he may very well have ended up recording more songs and selecting a set that flowed together differently.  But I do think the material is there and it's just as good in it's own way.

Bellagio 10452 - mono/stereo

Great resource!

I have a couple of questions ...

any idea who or what is responsible for the 1991 xmas CD mess?  I can assume that the compilers just thought the mono mixes of the 'rock' material were better or something, but it seems like there ought to be a better explanation.  I was always really puzzled by the choices on that CD.

was 'stack o tracks' really released in mono originally?  I've only ever seen the duophonic copies ... would love to find an original mono if this is the case, although the fake stereo isn't too bad on this one

also, you may want to address the CD release of 'endless summer' -- quite a few duophonic tracks on that (the only place to find duophonic mixes on CD?) ... that's another mess.  I think it has duophonic tracks for 'all summer long' and the 'summer days' material, along with some mono ('help me rhonda' and 'shut down') and stereo.

wasn't the first CD issue in 1987 (Japan)?