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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: How is Brian?
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on: December 24, 2023, 02:27:13 AM
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It's funny looking back how many people for years were insisting Brian was being "forced" to tour when he was actively touring, a theory that just isn't true and has no merit. On that last run of shows in late 2019 with the Friends/Zombies lineup before covid lockdowns shut everything down, I heard Brian wanted to go out on tour again in 2020. There was no external force involved in that decision or desire to resume touring. When his health made touring impractical or impossible enough to stop, he stopped. Somewhat off-topic, but the Friends/Zombies show I saw in NYC in September 2019 was *fantastic*. Even with Brian visibly struggling a bit in the first half of the show -- not entirely sure if he was fighting a cold, back issues or some milder form of the issues he had on the 2022 Chicago tour -- he had moments of beauty, and the setlist was just one jaw-dropping surprise after another, with *tons* of deep cuts from Friends and Surf's Up and the band sounding absolutely killer on them. I really wish everyone here could have seen it.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: How is Brian?
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on: December 22, 2023, 03:37:04 AM
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I think ditching the reunion in 2012 will, as time goes by, become more and more of a strong candidate for one of the worst "bad decisions" they made, as we learn how they could have gotten a few more years of excellent touring in together before age/time took its toll on multiple fronts. It's unfortunate that we all now don't even really talk about a reunion anymore, as we kind of all understand it's just not a do-able thing at this stage. It remains to be seen if Brian can (or will ever) even do a single live show let alone something more substantial. The reunion implosion was shocking at the time, but looking back all these years later, there was probably little chance it could have ended any other way. Maybe dates could have been added into (say) spring or summer 2013, but past that? I wish it could have continued. It was a beautiful thing, and the NYC show I saw was one of the best I've ever seen, and was the reason I joined this board in the first place. But to put it a different way, it was likely baked into the DNA of this group *decades* ago that Mike and Brian would not be able to co-helm the reunited group without a whole hornet's nest of issues.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Thread for various insignificant questions that don't deserve their own thread!
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on: August 22, 2023, 10:07:02 AM
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Speaking of Their Hearts Were Full of Spring... I may have asked this here already, can't remember.
I saw the Mike & Bruce Beach Boys in 2016 and they did a "faster" version of THWFOS. It still sounded amazing IMO but was noticeably brisker than any version I've heard before, including then-recent versions by the BBs & Brian's group, with less stretching out of words. Was this arrangement sped up to e.g. reduce vocal strain for the guys in 2016, or is there a "faster" arrangement from many decades back that this was replicating?
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: The legacy of \
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on: August 09, 2023, 07:32:15 AM
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The Beach Boys never had that. Never. There was never a particularly shared vision, either of the material or the performances or the albums. The members never particularly valued their work, with a few exceptions. They not only didn’t know they were great, they couldn’t agree on what was even good.
Unlike even The Rolling Stones, who have had a few eras but orbit around the Jagger-Richards collaboration, The Beach Boys never even had a constant center of creative gravity. Brian wrote with people outside the had from the start. Various members helmed albums in the 70s and 80s. Outside musicians — even members — came in and out. The entire band and its history is best understood as some sort of loose collective, one that encompasses the Flame and the Honeys and the Wondermints and Billy Hinsche and friends.
This makes for fascinating music to explore and a unique kind of variegated fandom. But consistent or capable of making good or even rational decisions it is not.
Yes to all this, well said. This framing (loose collective, lack of center) goes a long way towards explaining the setlist of any random Mike&Bruce BBs show over the last 25 years... on the one hand, it's a crowd-pleasin'/all-the-greatest-hits set, and on the other it's a somewhat bloated, shapeless set that absorbs and offers up anything remotely related... songs from other groups the BBs came in contact with, Mike solo songs, other random beach-themed songs etc etc. Even Mike's decision to play more 1967-1973 songs for a few years... arguably some of the best music they ever made!... was a market-based decision (the competition, in this case Brian's band, trotted out this material and it was well-received) rather than any kind of organic artistic statement.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: The legacy of \
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on: August 08, 2023, 01:24:01 PM
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I was watching a film not long ago - I think it was something called Festival Express (famous hippies boozing it up on a train) which features Woodstock-ish, "dirty hippie" scenes and rock musicians like the Grateful Dead playing to a counterculture audience around 1970 or so (the crowd is unruly, and angry, and Jerry Garcia assumes the role of responsible adult and tries to talk them down from the stage.) And in this film, the group "Sha Na Na" pops up - Bronx-style greaser doo-wop - and the hippies are digging it. So why is Sha Na Na okay, while the Beach Boys, who excel at that kind of thing, are not accepted? Is it because of the "Be True to Your School" thing? I throw up my hands at this point
Festival Express was a train ride through Canada, so those are Canadian audiences you're seeing -- kind of apples and oranges when comparing to how American audiences received the BBs circa 1970. Echoing your great point about the BBs above, the Sha Na Na shtick might have landed better to an audience situated further away from its source.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Steven Gaines' Heroes and Villains can be downloaded on Amazon Kindle, but...
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on: July 26, 2023, 12:46:37 PM
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Those "dark" events of 1977 and 78 absolutely impacted the music you heard (and didn't hear) on subsequent albums, both thematically, and literally logistically in terms of what did or didn't get made or released after that point. That 'both thematically' comment is quite interesting. I often return to Goin' South on the LA Light album, and find something really poignant in the way Carl's vocal evokes a guy who knows precisely what he needs to do to move forward ("the change of scene... might do me good"), but is seemingly paralyzed and unable to act ("truth is... don't know what I'm waiting for"). Having just reread the articles about the tarmac incident etc, it resonates all the more.
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