I remember an interview with Lowell George where he said he had done a Beach Boys session in about 1972. I used to assume this was Steamboat but I know that isn't the case.

Anyone have any info on that?

Red Rhodes would make sense as he was a brilliant pedal steel player, Carl couldn't have played those parts.

Don't forget Brian has ALREADY put an album out just through his web-site.

When Live At The Roxy was first released it was only available from his web-site. It was how I got hold of it and how I discovered the Blueboard and later this site and others!

It then got released by labels in the US and UK (all of who added bonus tracks damn them!) later, but the Brimel label version was the first.

The trouble was then no-one takes it seriously without a full release in shops - so there were no reviews in the UK rock mags or anything to push sales.

Bit of a different scene now.

Wild Honey and Friends were a two disc set in the UK (vinyl) issued in the mid 70's and I still have my copy, so I sort of associate those two together more than Smiley Smile and Wild Honey.

ANd yes, I would love Brian to do 'Today' straight through, but I was pretty pleased with the set he was doing at the RFH with a good chunk of tha album, and I've seen him do Kiss Me Baby and Please Let Me Wonder as well.

It was indeed a brilliant show.

Just posted a full review which you can find at

http://s3.excoboard.com/exco/thread.php?forumid=31674&threadid=172164&page=5

but I thought Brian was operating on a much higher level than I've seen before. Really involved and having fun. I think he was even playing that bass this time. Great gig!

Er, the new board appears to be down now too. 

I had problems this morning trying to get there from my link to the main page but managed to get in OK by going into my history and clicking on a topic, and it was OK from there.

Odd though!

Why did the old one die?

Technical problem - no-one could log in! Nothing serious!

I remember that interview (I'm sure I still have it somewhere) - it was 'When GIrls Get Together' that was mentioned.

[Surf's Up]

Surf's Up, CATP & Holland are almost exclusively played by the core band.

And In Concert, of course. 

Thereafter the sidesmen proliferate. Except on Love You.

Although Bruce did a very handy note on the BBB a while ago giving the musicians on Disney Girls - which was largely session men other than (I think) himself and Carl. Could be slightly wrong on that - wish I'd kept the response - though it wouldn't surprise me if someone else here has! The drummer certainly wasn't Dennis though. I remember that much!

Obviously there are a number of other players credited on Holland (Tony Martin doing the guitar solo on Steamboat for instance). One suspects Dennis's tracks on CATP had very little BB involvement other than vocally.

Lowell George once claimed to have played on something around 71-73. Anyone know what? I used to think he was on Mess of Help but the solo would probably have been better if he was.....

Of course Brian toured 'Smile' with a 17 piece band.  In 1966 and 1967 the Beach Boys were still touring as a 5 piece (it was a year before supporting mucisians were added).   

Considering how awful their performances of Good Vibrations were at the time, I'd hate to see the 5-piece try SMiLE.

Even if they had released SMiLE the touring band would have carried on with the crappy 45 minute hit shows they were doing till 1970. They wouldn't have attempted it the same way they barely reconised Pet Sounds - or any of their LP tracks, until late 68 anyway if memory serves me.

Wow...how did this get released on CD without an announcement spreading like wildfire on the BB message boards?  It looks pretty official...I scooped one up very quickly.  Even if it is a boot, I'd be happy just to hear it, regardless of sound quality.  I've been waiting YEARS for this!

Good vibes,
Eric

Well, I did mention this to mass indifference on The Smile Shop in June sometime (June 26 in fact)....Spin (a UK record shop and internet dealer) mentioned it on their web-site of upcoming stuff that it was finally getting a UK release. 

Spin is quite useful for upcoming news before it gets printed elsewhere.

Good records by a major band on a major label don't stall at #151, even if the company isn't promoting it much.

I'd agree with this wholeheartedly, but then I think of SUNFLOWER...

Um.

Er.

The exception that proves the rule ?

So why the fear that other readers are somehow less able to do the same thing? Even if they haven't heard 'MIU,' say, they surely have heard enough of the other BB/BW ouevre to figure out where they agree/disagree with my analyses. And if they think that I'm usually full of crap, then they can proceed through the unknown terrain confident that my compass points south virtually all of the time. That's how I read a lot of critics. You're free to read me like that, too.

Heck, some people may read that and say..."if that album sucks THAT bad, I MUST hear it, just to see how bad it is." Then they might be pleasantly surprised. 

Or if all they've heard before is Summer In Paradise......in which case it will sound like a work of genius .....(well, no it won't, but it will sound better than hearing it in the right order!)

[GIOMH]

My biggest problem with "MIU" is the cynicism. For the first time you can hear them straining to sound like themselves. Or some earlier, more successful version of themsleves. "I wanna go surfin' where I dig it the most, in Hawaii." Help me, Jesus. For one thing, none of those guys were surfing anywhere by 1978. For another, they didn't realize that literal surfing -- the sport -- had nothing to do with why people loved their earlier work. It was the way they sang about it. . . the risk, the beauty, the promise of transformation. It was the whole dream of the west, wrapped up in one spiffy youthful New Frontier image. Trying to re-claim that world as their own in '78 was just sad....particularly because the music beneath those words was so lame and pedestrian. And ripped off, in places, from their better songs (see also: 'Go to hawaii!' nicked from 'Hawaii,' and "When I Grow Up"'s '...won't last forever' at the end of the dismal, soupy, schlocky, 'Winds of Change.' I'm not even that big a fan of "My Diane," to tell the truth, 'cause the rhythm seems so lethargic and plodding. I know others disagree, and yes, it's nice to hear BW up there on the high falsetto, which he actually pulls off with emotion, etc. etc. I'll give it another spin.

But everyone makes crappy albums eventually, and I wouldn't be quite so harsh on this one except for the cynicism thing, which was not only bad enough in this context, but even worse when you realize (in retrospect) that it was just the start of a long and dismal era in which a band that had once set standards for musical adventure and spiritual derring-do was now in the business of cashing in on their own history.

I'm sorry if that sounds too harsh. I'm calling it like I see it.

Peter -- I see what you are saying about cynicisim, but I don't really agree with it.  I think MIU was really the Al and Brian show, not the Mike Love show, and I don't see Al as a cynical person.  I honestly think Al was trying to produce a good, solid album when he (with Altbach) took the reins of MIU.  I don't believe he was cynically trying to recapture the earlier sound; I think he genuinely wanted to make a really good Beach Boys album.  I am perfectly willing to consider Mike cynical, and I'm sure he was, but I just don't think Mike was a driving force behind this album.  The way I see it, musically, the album is mostly Brian -- She's Got Rhythm, Hey Little Tomboy, Wontcha Come out Tonight, Sweet Sunday, My Diane, and Matchpoint all have BW fingerprints all over them musically, if not lyrically, and I believe he contributed significantly to Belles of Paris and Pitter Patter.  The first six songs I listed above there just blow me away, and I also happen to like BOP and PP.  This is still Brian Douglas Wilson we're talking about, back when he still had most of his powers left, and he was the driving force musically behind half the album.  I happen to like Kona Coast and Winds of Change, though I understand people who don't.  Frankly Al's two covers do the least for me on the album.

Whether you like the album or not is of course a matter of taste.  I was just troubled by how severely you savaged it in the book.  I do not consider any Beach Boys album until Still Cruisin to be cynical; even the '85 album has some truly magical moments, mostly courtesy of Brian, as you pretty much acknowledged in the book.

My point is, there are plenty of non-believers out there more than happy to savage everything the Boys did post 1966, and I hate for an otherwise thoughtful, sensitive portrait of Brian and the group to give those people fodder.  And I would hate for a young, would-be Brianista to be turned off their later stuff by the criticism of a Beach Boys expert (which is what David Leaf's writings did to me in my younger days).

If you don't have anything nice to say (in terms of opinion), I think it's better not to say anything at all.

Stuff and nonsense - a big part of Brian's career problems of late have been that he's been surrounded by yes-people. As a case in point I cite the vocals on GIOMH: surely someone, at some point must have felt like pressing the talkback and saying "Brian, you know you can do that better. Take two."

But no-one did...

Andrew -- I am not suggesting that no one should say no to Brian.  I personally agree with you 100% on GIOMH.  But if I were writing a bio of Brian I would not criticize GIOMH musically.  I just wouldn't want to publish negativity about his music.

You could write one on that basis but I can't imagine anyone wanting to read it. AGD made the excellent point earlier about your original comment, but Peter has every right - nay, DUTY to chart the decline of The Beach Boys albums. I bought MIU on the day it was released and after playing it sat there in disbelief. It is a piece of crap in comparison to what came before. Only in hindsight and in the light of the further crimes against good albums has MIU picked up any points at all. I don't read a book to be told that everything is wonderful when it clearly wasn't. I can look at a record company blurb for that. Don't you have functioning critical faculties that can listen to Pet Sounds on the one hand and MIU on the other and realise there is a large gap in quality between them?

If I have a complaint about the book it is that I would have liked more about the music - much more could have been written about the 64-66 period which seems oddly rushed, and generally later the music plays second fiddle to the personal goings on, but that is probably right. It is certainly the best written biography so far, but I suppose the fact that it is a Brian WIlson bio rather than a Beach Boys one excuses to an extent the lack of real musical examination.

And, to restate the obvious, we know that Brian would go home after the studio with a collection of acetates and was continually playing them in a different order. By the time he stopped work it is by no means likely he had any sort of finished order, merely a set of tracks, some of which had an obvious thematic and musical link that could be placed together - even if some of the order of parts within songs themselves still needed to be worked out - and others which really were of themselves.

Surely part of the recoginised problem was that Brian had lost the will and the facility to finish what he had started, hence the decision to stop.

37 years later he puts the pieces together in an order that works. There could have been many ways in which it would have differed back in 67 - in fact in any given week there would probably have been at least 7 ways it could be put together.

It is what it is, the only version we are ever going to have that can claim to have been assembled by the people that wrote it, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, Darian and pro-tunes!

It's always the same, you solve a mystery and people debate what sort of mystery it could be if someone has actually managed to solve it, and is it the right answer anyway. They want their mystery back!

There is a monster in Loch Ness that could do with photographing anyone has the time.....

OK, my tuppence.....

How much input did Brian have? THe brief was to prepare SMiLE for a set of live performances. Darian and Brian got together and they went through what was there. Darian asked where things went, Brian answered as best he could remember. Sometimes he has a very good memory, other times not so good. Van Dyke got involved and the project moved up a gear so that songs that were unfinished were finished - some by the addition of the original unused lyrics, others by new ones. The Blue Hawaii lines are new and would not have been anything like that back in 67. Darian helped with some linking stuff following the structures and melodies that were already there.

SO - Brian wrote all the music and there were guidleines in the vaults for all the basic tracks and most of the vocals. All it needed was stitching together in an order that worked and the finishing touches.

Having done the shows to an incredible response the obvious move was to record what they had, and the album is a pretty straight version of the live show.

For me as a thirty year plus BB fan all of this was better than the second coming (I'm not christian so that one would be a bit of a shock) - and just as unexpected.

The very existence of BWPS is a miracle. If you don't like it fair enough, but you can't be much of a Beach Boys fan, as it's the nearest we are ever going to get to hearing what it might have sounded like back then, as we will never know.

Some people don't know when its Christmas in Beach Boy land. What do you want? A magic copy of the finished SMiLE to appear and validate your lives? NOT going to happen. BWPS is what we have and if you asked any fan in the 1980's or 1990's if that was a possibility they would have laughed in your face. Be happy with what we have.

Yup, the yanks showed they can play tonight - and were the better team. Anything could happen in the last two games - Ghana looked very good today but they will miss their striker who scored the first goal.

I have so far watched EVERY game so far - I took three weeks off work - and am LOVING IT. Hard work on the backside though....

All I need now is for England to remember how to pass a ball.....

Bill is on it; wow, I knew it sounded like it was "filipino". =)

Happy Days? On Imagination? I don't get it. We talkin' Scott Baio here?

Thanks, guys.

As it sounds like you aren't familiar with this, it was Brian's second (not counting Wasn't Made For These TImes) solo album - Imagination in 1998 - the track 'Happy Days' - nothing to do with the Fonz. It is a obvious rewrite of My Solution.

Not one of my favourite songs or albums I have to say.

I've got a lot from 15 Big Ones onwards in the UK (from the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker) and almost all are bad - and get worse as they go on. I've got a huge batch of clippings of interviews and stuff from about 74 onwards that was in the UK music press, including Nick Kent's original 4 week piece on the band and Brian in particular that I have kept.

Yeah, I do remember reading somewhere that it was the first track that Brian had no input on at all.

I think it was easier hearing it Mono first - all the extra stuff was a lovely surprise - I wasn't expecting new guitar licks to pop up hear and there. I don't have a favourite - I tend to think that the stereo version is more what they wanted and it's what is on the CD, which was a well put together package.
The BIG difference of course is the guitar solo on Our Love Was, which are two totally different approaches. Love em both equally.

I only had the mono version for years - total shock when I finally got a stereo copy and found out the difference! Not exactly a matter of just separating the tracks and adding reverb was it!

Pete's 'legal troubles' - by which I take it you mean his caution for looking at Child porn websites - are something that I as a long-term Who fan have no problem with. I have read his web-sit efor years and he has always maintained a VERY strong position against child pornography and had stated ON his web-site shortly before this came to light (but not that shortly...) about his issues with it and that he was going to try to do something about it - he was appalled when he came across a site with hie 9 year old son while they were looking for something else.

I do believe Pete's explanation - he is guilty of arrogance in thinking that the laws against looking at this stuff did not apply to him if he was researching against it. It's because I saw his previous comments as they were made that I think he was telling the truth. I don't think ROger would have worked with him again if he thought this was the case either.

Pete is a man who bears his soul and his thoughts over the internet quite regularly and I thought at the time that he'd better be careful.

He's a good man who made a mistake, not a paedophile or a pornographer.

Why would you want a mono version of Who's Next?  More to the point I can't find any record of there even being a mono version. The last Who LP issued in mono was Direct Hits in the UK and Magic Bus in the US.

Nez would paint himself with Liquid paper and could become invisible.

As a drummer of no little brutality myself I have a LOT of time for Dennis. Listen to the Live In London version of Do It Again - that is SO rocking. Ricky was better technically but Dennis was no mean drummer. Look at the Knebworth DVD as well. Steve Gadd may be a great drummer but he was never in a great band. He just played FOR great people.

No its er...free, and try googling soulseek and see what happens......

It worked for someone I knew.....

I always thought that was Mike on the backgrounds - AGD (I think) insisted previously that it was all Brian and I think he's probably right, though sometimes I can still hear Mike.

I've asked loads of times for info about this wonderful song but no-one seems to know much other than the facts on the record sleeve. Who wrote what? Who produced it? DOes any other Beach boy sing on it. Why didn't he keep it for the Beach Boys!

Love that song!