In the Back of My Mind

[Chris Brown]

Thanks for posting the track Ebb.  I haven't heard it in awhile...I forgot how brilliant it was.  Everyone should listen to this, even if they don't like the song all that much.  It's Brian at his pre-Pet Sounds arranging best.  I can't remember who said it but I read somewhere someone describing this song as Brian allowing the world to hear a Pet Sounds track a year early. 

[Alan Boyd]

Someday I'd love to hear this song with just ONE lead vocal track, with the double only coming in for the two lines, "I try to run far away, from thoughts I shouldn't try to keep away" and "I try to rationalize that someday I might realize."

[Ebb and Flow]

Like this?

http://download.yousendit.com/D202CC7030C6B5E7

[John]

That's much better.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

A-Freakin'-MEN. Well, to the instrumental. I haven't heard the remix, as I just got to work and I can't play music here!

[LostArt]

Thanks so much for those.  Wow, what a beautiful song.  There are some strings/horns overdubs missing from the instrumental track, and it would be interesting to hear the track with those overdubs intact.  The single tracked version sounds fine, but I'm one that likes the song the way it was released.  I could hear Leslie Gore singing this one (with some slight gender adjustments to the lyrics).

[bossaroo]

yeah those mp3's are great.  thanks a ton...!

Carl and Brian doubled Denny on the bridge (sung in unison).

that reason alone makes this one of the coolest tunes in the Beach Boy catalog. 
I'd like to see Brian and his band dust this one off and play it.  I'm sure Brian is proud of it?

[Alan Boyd]

Yes - that was great.  Thanks for posting that!

Even in that wonky mix, just hearing the one vocal track makes the song more intimate and powerful, somehow.

[John]

Didn't Brian rerecord the song, with a new bridge, circa LOVE YOU? I wonder if it's releaseable.

[Jon Stebbins]

Wow i always suspected that a single tracked lead vocal on this song would improve it...and now we have proof. Thanks! This is the way it should have been released. definitely more intimate...and easier to see/hear why Dennis was the right guy to be singing it.

[Third Coast]

Absolutely. I'm baffled by those who don't love this recording, remixed or not. Dennis' voice, at this point in his life especially, was perfect for this. It captured the doubt and the anguish and the hurt in the lyrics and the melancholy of the instrumental. It wouldn't have been convincing if sung by a smooth crooner. And comparing his vocal with Do You Wanna Dance is like apples to oranges.

[mikee]

I think you are correct about the signle track vocal.  I can understand what Brian was looking to get with the double tracked vocal but they quit before they got the double tracked vocal right.  A single tracked or mostly single tracked vocal might have been best take in any case. It would be interesting to hear this done by an accomplished jazz singer, like Nat King Cole perhaps.   I would still probably like Dennis's version the best though.  I consider this song an eye opening accomplishment for a neighborhood garage band best known to this point for making a string of great adolescent fad songs.  To anyone then who happened to be paying attention, this song demonstrated the enormous talent that was lurked under that image.

[c-man]

Dennis' voice, at this point in his life especially, was perfect for this. It captured the doubt and the anguish and the hurt in the lyrics and the melancholy of the instrumental.

I think a big part of it was that Dennis is able to perfectly capture the bridge from adolencence to adulthood in his timbre.  He may not have been consciously trying to do that (in fact, probably couldn't have sung it any differently), but maybe Brian knew he'd be be able to capture that special quality if he used Dennis as the vocalist.  The singer sounds just SOUNDS like someone full of doubt, anxiety, love, and bewilderment all at the same time.

[melissalynn]

Wow, that remix is AWESOME.

[Daniel S.]

This song is definitely the first sign that Brian's paranoid schizophrenia was sneaking into his work.

[Fun Is In]

After I downloaded it, the song didn't play and my browser and email program wouldn't connect to the next. Related?  Idiosyncratic?

I'd like to hear it, but don't want the problems back again......