There are some standouts from the Wilson/Paley sessions, but I do think it's a bit romanticized among the fanbase. Even if the BB recorded those songs for an album in 1995, I really don't believe it would have fundamentally altered their career trajectory. Maybe some buzz in indie circles, maybe fleeting top 40; but I really don't see any of that material as chart topping material, even though there are some great songs present.

A few things to consider:

1) How much of these songs are Brian and how much are Andy with Brian being there?  I think Brian was more involved with this material than some of his later solo releases, but perhaps a lot of these songs were more written by Andy than Brian.

2) Carl had the right to be skeptical of Brian's ability to do an album. I'm sure many here have seen this Brian interview from 1995: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUHUGXDIhz0  This is the worst I've ever seen Brian. Overweight, chain-smoking, grimacing frequently, struggling to be coherent. I think this interview is one of the few times fans can see what Brian's mental illness is like behind scenes. Carl had already seen Brian get used and abused several times prior and probably felt that Brian couldn't produce an album again.

3) Melinda did not like the Paley material. She said it was good therapy but not something to be released. I disagree with that statement, but it's important to discuss in why this material was never completed back in the day. I'd much rather prefer this as an official release than Stars and Stripes or Imagination. They did re-record some of these songs, but done in the style of Joe Thomas.

god I love seeing people so incredibly wrong

What part do you feel is wrong?

Haven’t seen it, but my money would be on it being Daria.

Really great interview, guys.  Carnie is such a down-to-earth, regular person.  Gotta give Marilyn credit for raising her well under challenging circumstances.  She clearly also inherited her father's sense of humor and sweet disposition.
It made me sad, though, to hear her make oblique references to missing Brian and not being able to see him because of "what's going on around him" or something along those lines.  Not sure what all that's about, but it's troubling.

Yes it is, but we don't dare speak about that here.

Really great interview, guys.  Carnie is such a down-to-earth, regular person.  Gotta give Marilyn credit for raising her well under challenging circumstances.  She clearly also inherited her father's sense of humor and sweet disposition.
It made me sad, though, to hear her make oblique references to missing Brian and not being able to see him because of "what's going on around him" or something along those lines.  Not sure what all that's about, but it's troubling.

Yes it is, but we don't dare speak about that here.

Seriously, quit being a troll. If you don’t like it here go elsewhere where you’d probably be more welcome (unless someone has a bad day )

It certainly didn’t help. And yeah I do think it made it worse

This is PURE SPECULATION on my part. I wonder if in 2022 Brian experienced some of the same medication-type issues as those which caused him to cancel his 2019 June and July tours. Many people wondered why he continued to tour in 2022 when he was obviously incapacitated much more than he normally is. The difference was that in 2022 many tour dates involved Chicago as well as the Brian Wilson Band, and were perhaps much more difficult for Brian to cancel his band's participation without breaching some contracts. In any case, I hope he is happy, healthy and enjoying life at home.

That’s strongly what I was thinking

RIP to Rocky though I must admit I was not a big fan, especially with his flip-flopping on his "story."

To be honest though, I kinda thought his take on "California Feelin'" was pretty good.


Lastly, ain't it crazy that Brian is still alive and kickin' while so many other players in the story have come and gone?

The hero outlasted most of the villains, for lack of a better way to put it

Then we are two, Bedroom Tapes. Still better than zero... 🧐

Disclaimer to try to avoid the usual answer: of course, unless Brian wants to keep on touring.

Three and I agree with the disclaimer

We’re only a few weeks in, and I’m already completely over 2023.

I honestly don't care about Beck's comments over Brian as I've stated before that Beck was Beck and Brian is Brian; perhaps they simply weren't the right match as collaborators.

From what I’ve learned over the past few years, I think they were both too similar and too different in the wrong areas for many reasons. Sometimes, it’s that simple.

The track I was mixing when I found out he passed  He covered it on his classic "Blow By Blow" album. Here's my rendition as tribute

https://soundcloud.com/fear2stop/cause-we-ended-as-lovers/s-XqVPDI6BXD8?si=db45bb1deebd4f62901a44e6ffa86adb&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Thank you everyone for the compliments…been sick for a while so haven’t been on much

Just found out… I’ve been dealing with Covid and will post more later . this comes as a shock

Here's the version I did...I sent it off in time but I had wanted to redo it as my rhythm was a bit off since I sang it a capella and then added it to the track ; I had a bad ear infection and my ear canal was swollen to the point my ear bud wouldn't fit -_-  Glad I had already done the overdubs earlier in the week. https://soundcloud.com/fear2stop/on-christmas-day-1/s-qRJIHIGZXf4?si=4595540f748d465180b8c9bb80fc06f2&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

I know I have the art somewhere on my hard drive ... I can never find jack sh*t when I need to

Those who have been critical of Brian’s solo singing should try singing this… it “sounds” easy but it’s deceptively simple. It’s not the pitch, it’s the phrasing required. As pitchy as latter day Brian is, if you sing certain lines pitch perfect it sounds weird (“frosty the snowman has melted awayyyy”  being a perfect example).

Which leads to something interesting I realized…Brian’s solo songs are generally MUCH harder to sing than Beach Boys songs. Your Imagination is mostly easy, but the “cause you KNOW it’s just “  part, you have to kind of push the “know” just right…. Again , it’s not the pitch , it’s the *way* you have the kind of force it cause otherwise it sounds flat even if it’s directly on the pitch. I always thought the “shouty” vocal delivery was poor technique, and it was…but he wrote  his parts specifically for the way he sang at that time.

This discussion should be its own thread so I’ll make one a bit later on, but it kind of makes it a bit more clear as to how “involved” Brian is solo. If it sounds like the lead melody would be more suited to his younger self, then Brian’s creative contributions likely are elsewhere. It’s why when people thought Brian wrote the tag on solo Sunshine, I couldn’t agree, as the rest of the song has that chill yet somewhat gruff vibe that would’ve sounded like sh*t had he sang it in the 60s. Would’ve sounded great timbre wise in the 70s but phrasing wise he couldn’t have pulled off. The tag, however, sounds like a pastiche of 60s Brian, if that makes sense

I sure didn’t…I thought it was just me!

🤣

Screw that, I’m entering 😂

I’m listening right now on Spotify and it freaking says “Make it Good- Aternate Version”… that typo is driving me nuts!!!

Btw…after hearing the alternate Marcella it’s very clear now it’s Carl doing the Marcella Hey part on the tag… which seriously makes me wonder how I ended up with a snippet of Brian singing it in the first place. I had done an extraction mix on a version of Marcella I “acquired” from someone many of us knew (who has since passed)…not a bootleg, a copy of So Tough …I think it was a needle drop. Can’t remember as I no longer have my original Facebook account. Could there be a possibility that this could be a We Got Love/Holland situation where there was a mispressing, and somehow the wrong mix slipped under the radar for decades?

If anybody here downloaded it when I posted it all those years ago from RapidShare , please let me know. This was two laptops ago!

Do these sound like they were recorded in the “wrong” speed to you? Cause to some, they are 🙄

They should have released the version of Make It Good without strings on Disc 1 on CATP.

I could not agree more! I have found "Make It Good" unlistenable for a long time, but dropping the strings out reveals a far more interesting and listenable song. "Cuddle Up" also benefits from having the strings dropped out, but I find them less disruptive than the strings in MIG.

100% agree…I always thought it was overwrought…this works.

It just dawned on me this is the very first archival compilation where there is not a single track I skip

Can we also acknowledge, thanks to the a capella Marcella, that it WAS Brian in the tag singing the high-ish “Marcella heyyyy” and NOT Jack (who did a small “Hey Marcella” in a lower voice while Brian was singing)?

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=b399XCqDbcY&feature=share

2:39 is Brian, Jack comes in at 2:42

*drops mic*

Brian's part was completely absent from the original mix though, sadly. It is Carl singing "Marcella hey" on an Eb while Jack harmonizes "hey Marcella" beneath - the console strip even marks "Carl and Jack" for that track. Brian's over on the right soon after singing a squeaky little "ooh, I need ya, deh-deh" on G and improvising other lines, and doubling his elfish "deh-deh" on another track later. Exactly the kind of thing he described to Howie where he just plugged in an extra part on his own after the others had been in. We're blessed with a lot of new Brian elf voice moments on this release.

This is one song where I think the new mixes really bring out the 'Beach Boysness' that it was missing - the pinball machine vibes in the chorus, horns, growly edge to the Moog bass, Wurli proto-Bread riff, more audible pounding piano, and having Brian's voice on the end add a ton of life to the track. Hearing all this, it sounds as if Carl consciously wanted to veer away from the eccentric ideas to more conventional rock territory in the mixdown, but the arrangement just wasn't built to support that kind of thing with enough oomf. It's better off being spooky and weird.

Hmm…that would explain why Jack said Brian sang that part… didn’t think to ask if it was an unused  overdub!

I think that our culture has finally gotten away from the stranglehold the boomer generation had on the history of rock and pop. This has had some dramatic effects. Disco, which I was somehow taught to despise as a classic-rock child of the 90s, is now rightly seen as a path-breaking genre with a far more lasting impact than hard rock. And bands like the Beach Boys are finally coming out of the shadow of how they intersected with popular taste and being seen as artists defined by how they approached their music, rather than by how audiences received it.

Bingo…hindsight really is 20/20 (and So Tough, and Holland, and…). A lot of artists unfairly derided as square have found a new life with Gen Z. Growing up I was made fun of for being a Billy Joel fan, for instance. He’s another artist popular with the younger set. Those who think stuff like this due to stuff like TikTok and Stranger Things (not referring to you GF…I see this a lot and you reminded me of it!) are only partially correct… this is the first generation that has an appreciation of what came before. My generation (Gen X) wouldn’t mark out if we heard an older song on a tv show or movie! If it wasn’t new, it was lame! One of the side effects of it being easy to distribute music these days is that people are generally more educated musically on a informal basis… if someone wants to learn music theory, instead of going to college and hearing a dry course, bring on Rick Beato!  There’s a far greater appreciation of music now , regardless of what grandpa and grandma are saying on the other board.

The funny this is… those pop culture moments are a great introduction…but notice how the newer fans of things end up gravitating towards other things? Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams went viral…but two years on, “Everywhere” is getting hyped. I found out Christine McVie died when my daughter texted me…they were talking about it in her school. Kate Bush was already popular with the younger set before Stranger Things. I can usually tell now when someone from the past is about to get popular again .

As a  side note, this is why A&R reps being too much older than the artists is a horrible idea on this day, but I digress.
 

This also explains why a certain subset of “fans” are acting like complete douche waffles and making personal attacks on those who worked so hard to bring this to the fans 😒

This has already been voiced, as respectfully as possible, but why equate legitimate complaints (from *both* young and old fans alike) about mildly-severely suboptimal mixing/mastering on portions of these recent sets with personal attacks? Hardly any of it resorts to ad hominem.

We're all grateful, but there is distinct and very noticeable over-compression in places, distortion on certain tracks, hiss, bizarre EQ'ing choices, and so on. Makes for an uncomfortable listening experience at times. Don Goldberg's vocals were nixed when this was a chance to give his and BW's song a little justice. Less of a grave mistake, maybe, but still, definitely worth noting.

Oh, and I'm in my early 20s, myself, like many others with grievances, so I'm not exactly a "grandpa" or anything, just someone with ears who wants the absolute best for the Beach Boys' music, above all.

I’m referring to a couple of specific people who have indeed made personal attacks, including someone who posts under the name “tomtomplayboy” elsewhere. Some saggy dude  used the word “scum” which would also fit the bill. That’s the stuff I’m specifically referring to. Criticism is one thing…

["One of my favorites, yeah. Carl did a great job, he was really good. 'Marcella,' y'know, I'm gonna tell ya, I was having mental difficulties during that time and I didn't even know if the guys got in the studio and recorded 'Marcella' without me on it! So, I said, 'I wanna be on it!' So I overdubbed my voice on it."]

Billy -- as Brian told me re: "Marcella": "One of my favorites, yeah. Carl did a great job, he was really good. 'Marcella,' y'know, I'm gonna tell ya, I was having mental difficulties during that time and I didn't even know if the guys got in the studio and recorded 'Marcella' without me on it! So, I said, 'I wanna be on it!' So I overdubbed my voice on it."

😎 Am I the only one who read that and heard it in Brian’s 1995 speaking voice? 🙂

That is so awesome…

Can we also acknowledge, thanks to the a capella Marcella, that it WAS Brian in the tag singing the high-ish “Marcella heyyyy” and NOT Jack (who did a small “Hey Marcella” in a lower voice while Brian was singing)?

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=b399XCqDbcY&feature=share

2:39 is Brian, Jack comes in at 2:42

*drops mic*

I think that our culture has finally gotten away from the stranglehold the boomer generation had on the history of rock and pop. This has had some dramatic effects. Disco, which I was somehow taught to despise as a classic-rock child of the 90s, is now rightly seen as a path-breaking genre with a far more lasting impact than hard rock. And bands like the Beach Boys are finally coming out of the shadow of how they intersected with popular taste and being seen as artists defined by how they approached their music, rather than by how audiences received it.

Bingo…hindsight really is 20/20 (and So Tough, and Holland, and…). A lot of artists unfairly derided as square have found a new life with Gen Z. Growing up I was made fun of for being a Billy Joel fan, for instance. He’s another artist popular with the younger set. Those who think stuff like this due to stuff like TikTok and Stranger Things (not referring to you GF…I see this a lot and you reminded me of it!) are only partially correct… this is the first generation that has an appreciation of what came before. My generation (Gen X) wouldn’t mark out if we heard an older song on a tv show or movie! If it wasn’t new, it was lame! One of the side effects of it being easy to distribute music these days is that people are generally more educated musically on a informal basis… if someone wants to learn music theory, instead of going to college and hearing a dry course, bring on Rick Beato!  There’s a far greater appreciation of music now , regardless of what grandpa and grandma are saying on the other board.

The funny this is… those pop culture moments are a great introduction…but notice how the newer fans of things end up gravitating towards other things? Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams went viral…but two years on, “Everywhere” is getting hyped. I found out Christine McVie died when my daughter texted me…they were talking about it in her school. Kate Bush was already popular with the younger set before Stranger Things. I can usually tell now when someone from the past is about to get popular again .

As a  side note, this is why A&R reps being too much older than the artists is a horrible idea on this day, but I digress.
 

This also explains why a certain subset of “fans” are acting like complete douche waffles and making personal attacks on those who worked so hard to bring this to the fans 😒