Geez...these guys were good.  SOOOooooooOOOOOOoooooo good.  I always thought that Wild Honey [the l.p.] was quickly tossed together in order to cover for the sinking of Smiley Smile so that the group could get some stuff back on the radio.  Maybe it was 'cause it sounds overly simple and there's only about 25 minutes of actual content.  No song longer than 2:45.  3 of 'em less than 2 minutes.  But here are some missing pieces which could have filled it out and made the album even better than it is.

I think you were spot on with what you thought about the need to get some product out quick after the commercial bombardment that was SS.  I used to know the timing on this record, think it was even shorter than 25 mins, like 21 and change or something, egregiously short in fact.  However, from the tracks presented as outtakes there was not much else of worth recorded for this session, guess they were in a frenzy to get it out by Christmas.  I do remember seeing this album in the racks and thinking how unique a cover it was, which I also thought about SS.  I thought at least marketing wise those covers were home runs, but apparently the public was not as into them as I was.

Always thought it was interesting that Party was a gatefold album cover and even 20/20 but none of the in betweeners were....did that signify some loss of confidence in the group or was Capitol still trying to recoup on the Smile covers fiasco?  Maybe they just wanted to send them out in style, though I have wondered if leaving the titles off the permanent cover of 20/20 as opposed to a cover sticking announcing "including the hits" was a wise move.....Was this a conscious aping by the group of The White Album not having the titles listed on it.  It would be mildly amusing if it was, as I have always thought of 20/20 as the BB's White Album, with the grab-baggy approach to repertoire....I used to try to sell it to others on that basis, but met with little agreement!

Gosh, Mike certainly does appear to be the straw that stirs the drink.  He is truly living in some folks heads rent free!

WH, in the year of Hendrix, Cream, the Doors, Sgt. Pepper, etc., seemed to lack ambition : lo-fi home recordings, only 24 minutes long (and even at length there were still filler cuts). With WH, the band announced they were out of the big-time, masterpiece-making, musically ground-breaking game. In a way, it was their 'Nashville Skylines'.

Of course, removed as it now is from the context of its times,we can appreciate its virtues, especially with this new mix : an energetic collection of good-to-great soul-inflected pop tunes.

Twas/tis a humble little offering....

Oh yeah, who would want to forget this "classic"?

Well, Mike and Brian are both old no doubt about that.  Guess they all are, even the children are getting up in years.  Criticizing either for that seems pointless.

As for the performance it was ok.  Would be nice to see Brian invited to do that show someday, but doubtful it will happen sans the BBs moniker....

Wonder what the average age of board members is, I'm betting it is sixty or higher...

I doubt most people here actually agree with the premise of this thread as stated in the subject matter.

I wouldn't have thought so either but Peter Reum is a well respected source.

Clearly we all respect Peter for so many reasons, and his quoted statement certainly contains many seeds of truth. But it is too sweeping in its implications that Brian was a non-functional mental wreck immediately after the shelving of SMiLE. And other experts can correct me, but I simply do not recall cocaine taking center stage in the drug world at that time...it strikes me that this was a seventies phenomenon, which fits in more with Brian's legendary siesta from 1973-75.

Let's remember that the BBs deal with Warners had certain guidelines about how much involvement Brian would have with the LP, so it was clearly necessary for them to make it appear that he was more involved with the studio process than was actually the case. But what we know now indicates that this period began in mid-late '68 and was still nothing like the full-blown malaise that took hold in '73 (with some still continuing to speculate that it was Murry's death which triggered it...I would guess that this was more peripheral, and what really brought it to a head was twofold--the despair of having become a piñata within his own band, particularly with the Love power grab underway, and escalating mental/emotional crises exacerbated by a sharp increase in drug intake during that time (remember, we are referring to '73-'75 here).

Ok, so Brian produced Wild Honey, was fully engaged and on point, and it still bombed.  Likewise with Friends.  Hmm, I'm not too sure I would be pushing this narrative as a Brianista.  Much as I like both records, I was always kind of relieved that Brian was somewhat insulated from their commercial failure by the "Produced by the Beach Boys" narrative.  But then again, maybe HE was expecting the commercial failure and wanted the credits to insulate him from that perceived impending failure....

Having said all this, Smiley and WH, much as I like them, are pullbacks artistically and commercially.  Doesn't mean they are bad, not saying that at all, just that, well, he did bunt, like at least twice in a row and that is something you just don't expect out of your power hitter....

Thanks for this load of drivel that clearly misses the point of what Brian and the band were trying to do at this time. Ignoring the incredible backlash against Smiley is what allows this ludicrous lumping of cause, effect and result. WILD HONEY did not "bomb." Miraculously, given the press at the time, it withstood all that and cracked the top 25. "Darlin'" was a Top 20 hit. Now, FRIENDS was a different matter--it really did BOMB. Part of that seems to have been some really strange timing where the single "Friends" was released three months ahead of the LP and fell off the charts before the album was released.

But what's clear is that even as Brian continued to be the prime mover of the studio work in this time frame, the democratic principle was evolving right alongside that, with Dennis's songs emerging and Carl becoming more of an independent force in the studio (as the quotes in Howie's liner notes for ST demonstrate). It's easy to forget that Carl was still just 20-21 in this time frame--anyone who listens to the PARTY! session CD can hear that his growth into the role he would shortly have within the band was already occurring then...at a time when he was still only 18.

Trying to recover one's bearings after a trying situation was what was going on at the time, which was a helluva lot more important than coming up with a "retro" song that would somehow bring them back to pre-PS commercial glory. This ill-informed pile of ill will overlooks the fact that later in '68, Mike got his way and co-created with Brian a "retro" song--"Do It Again"--and while it has been fully "rehabilitated" thanks to the ripeness of time, the fact AT THE TIME was that it was derided for trying to calculatedly be retro and it struggled to get to the Top 20, doing no better than "Darlin'."

And then Don starts attacking Do It Again and its "retro-ness" for no apparent reason (don't really know the relevance of this to the WH topic at hand).  I have no ill will toward WH.  Nice little album, not terribly ambitious, but then I guess it was not meant to be.  Guess some folks just have a bee in their bonnet.  And you are welcome!

Ah, the irony of fans commenting on a track named Can't Wait Too Long after it was recorded some fifty years ago and "officially" released now?  Guess we could wait too long, huh?

Jann Wenner was right about one thing -- the BBs weren't much of a live unit in 1967. Listening to the Detroit recordings here, I keep thinking, surely these are just rehearsals -- but no, there's applause at the end.

William; I started seeing the band in 1965, Brooklyn Academy of Music. They were great. Saw them several times 66/67/68.  They were great.  Jann Wenner, in my opinion, at that time was in the "The Beach Boys are irrelevant; they are not The Beatles " San Francisco camp.  I am not sure if this is his quote but it sums up that period :" I would rather "Get Back" with The Beatles than "Do it Again" with The Beach Boys "

I disagree wholeheartedly with Jann Wenner circa late 60's !

Take these comments of mine with a pinch of salt, as I'm not much of a fan of live recordings, as I've often said here. I'm not very taken with the live recordings on ST either, but that's prolly just me. Live tracks have to be truly stellar to get me going... all too often, they just sound to me, at best, like slightly shoddily performed versions of the studio recordings, with mistakes, flubs, out-of-time performances, wonky vocals and irritating interjections by the crowd (er... or the band, shall we say...).

[I did say to take what I say with a pinch of salt... I am quite hard to please when it comes to live recordings].

But here's the thing. You can go and see a band and come away thinking they're great. And then listen to live recordings *from the same concert* and they don't sound half as hot. Actually BEING there live seems to, in my experience, smooth over some of the rough corners in a live performance. When you listen in your house in the cold light of day, the fluffed guitar solo seems to leap out at you more. Or that's what I've always found, anyway. (Brian is far from immune to this effect. When I listened to audience recordings of some of the SMiLE concerts I attended, I couldn't believe I hadn't heard some of the instrumental and vocal flubs on the night... the performances seemed blemishless when I was actually there).

So I actually agree with William and Ray above simultaneously. And I will say this about the Beatles and Jan Wenner: at least the Beach Boys were ANY kind of live outfit in 1967 and beyond (and arguably, had their finest days of live performances still to come). The Beatles never were a live outfit again! (and even if you say 'but what about the Rooftop concert'... it was hardly a gig of unbridled live brilliance... although that's thoroughly unsurprising for a concert given on a windy, wintery London roof in January)

I'm a realist when it comes to this stuff and the BBs surely sounded better in '66 live than the Beatles did.

But totally disagree about the Rooftop concert. The Beatles cooked on that gig, and that gig proves they could have smoked any band touring if they had wanted to.

Jann Wenner had a hangup about the BBs and that sucked. Just like he has his weird Lennon vs. McCartney thing. But "Get Back" *is* a better single than "Do It Again." And Get Back isn't like my favorite late era Beatles track or anything.

I'm actually not the biggest Beatles fan in the world, but I really can think of no time in their concurrent histories as live acts, that the Beatles were not head and shoulders above the BBs.  The Beatles were old pros by the time they made it, the Boys just the opposite.... The Beatles' Shea Stadium concert being a prime example, they rocked hard, played well and sounded very close to their records.   The BBs, bless 'em, never did sound that good in the sixties and when they finally did get their concert mojo going in the seventies it took a cast of thousands to do so.  Ok, not thousands but many sidemen and the officializing of a couple of them into temporary group member status.  I enjoyed this "big band" approach that they took.  But the original quintet never was that hot of a live band.  And I don't think without prime Brian vocally that they were even that hot as a vocal group in concert.  The Rolling Stone assessment of In Concert seems succinct and apt:  "Sloppy good".

Ok, so Brian produced Wild Honey, was fully engaged and on point, and it still bombed.  Likewise with Friends.  Hmm, I'm not too sure I would be pushing this narrative as a Brianista.  Much as I like both records, I was always kind of relieved that Brian was somewhat insulated from their commercial failure by the "Produced by the Beach Boys" narrative.  But then again, maybe HE was expecting the commercial failure and wanted the credits to insulate him from that perceived impending failure....

Having said all this, Smiley and WH, much as I like them, are pullbacks artistically and commercially.  Doesn't mean they are bad, not saying that at all, just that, well, he did bunt, like at least twice in a row and that is something you just don't expect out of your power hitter....

The bigger question is whether Mike would have been a better choice for lead on Help Me Rhonda....

The BBs Unleash 'Sunshine Tomorrow', hmm.  Wait a minute, that's familiar somehow, oh, oh, "Unleash the Love"??....

Mr. Love call your attorneys ASAP!!

This is wonderful news, more exposure for the band's music, a lot of peeps watch this event each year!  Being asked back is an honor....

"56 years into this band and people still don't get the concept behind a "Best of" compilation? They're meant for casual fans/consumers, and as just an extra piece of promotion for the artist".

Oh, I understand the concept, I just don't think there will be much of an audience for this release, while concurrently thinking there would a be quite a bit more interest in releasing unreleased stuff.  Don't think there will be that many "casual fans/consumers" buying this release.  A very niche audience, one would think...

Plus it propagates the usual b.s. tactic of including a couple of unreleased tracks, so fans will again have to buy stuff they already own.  That seems to be life as a fan of this band though nowadays.

No  really just wish they had put out something that was mostly unreleased tracks.  Would you not find that more desirable?

The Boys should have covered Get Back featuring Burton Cummings on keys, ala Billy Preston.  He could have been referred to variously as the sixth, eighth, ninth or whatever BB depending on when it was done....they could have released it on Bropple Records....

Big Burton fan, I especially enjoyed GW during their post-commercial years, kind of reminded me of BBs 67 through 69 period for being very good and under-appreciated.  When I was in college in the early seventies, there was a little local AM station that played all those singles, like Orly and Sour Suite that I never heard anyone else play....I was like, how are these songs not hits, but they really weren't.  Same station also played Sunflower in its entirety upon its release, and this was a little 500 watt AM station, not a college station either.  I really miss those days, they were even playing Move singles like Do Ya upon its release.

Just an album of officially "unreleased" tracks would have been more worthwhile than this release.

The cover blows but it still shows where he was at, at a certain point in time, unfortunately.....the ol' career was kinda blowing too then.

They reported Bri's 75th birthday on the top of the hour report on Fox Sports Radio, which I thought was rather impressive, only place I actually heard it reported, but I don't watch/listen to a lot of entertainment media.

I always felt this would have been a good single!  Can it still be....do they have such things anymore??

Especially in view of the pending probable "hitlessness" of the Friends album!  Heck that far back in the day, could it have even charted R&B??

Well jimmy crack corn, he's putting out an oldies album after all.  What, no Proud Mary?

Seriously though, one wonders who will buy this...most of the cult already owns this stuff.....

Still not funny or entertaining...

Wow, Mike's stance against sugar consumption was very progressive, way ahead of the times.  He was a food nazi before food nazi's were cool...

I have read Fleetwood bios where it appears that the rest of the group excepting Christine got pretty annoyed with Dennis as he was viewed as a bit of a hanger on, nuisance wild-man and some felt he was sponging off of her by that point in time.  His "charm", such that it was at that point, apparently wore thin pretty fast with FM group members who were not in love with him....

It's Getting Late was not much of a tune.  One of those songs that sounds good initially, but upon more repetitions, is simply monotonous.  Carl doing his funked up "I'm a soul daddy thing", er, no you are not!  Oh Darlin' was not much either.  Hated the "God only knows how I love you" part, I just hate it when they use self-referential lyrics like that and referencing a much better tune at that is not so smart and really just highlighted how much the current material sucked in comparison to oh, say, Pet Sounds....or even Carl and the Passions!

Everyone I have ever played that particular two-fer for has hated it.   I as a fan am more forgiving in general, but 85 and KTSA are definitely for fanatics only, IMHO.  You had to have had a history with them to appreciate the rot that had set in by then....

It was the BR549.