Then I'll Be Someone by Carl Wilson & Tandyn Almer

[astroray]

My Beach Boys cover band opened for David Cassidy a couple of years ago. He was not very nice,he must be called Mr. Cassidy and he would not take a photograph with our band. But I love his records, we also opened for Davy Jones , very very nice ,we asked about Mr. Cassidy and his attitude, he said it was the hair plugs!

[Shane]

One track I've always been curious about, since we're talking about Wilson and Cassidy connections.  I've always wondering how Shaun Cassidy ended up covering this obscure Brian Wilson composition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqiZQe3ufB0

[Jason Penick]

which, to his way of thinking, no doubt was "As Kind As Summer" by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. ("Evil - live-e! Evil - live-e!")

Hear hear! Now there's a band that is ripe for re-discovery.

Token Beach Boys connection: their young guitarist Michael Lloyd was (according to an interview I read) in the studio during the "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" sessions, and apparently was something of an early SMiLE-ophile, in that the standout track from his 1968 album with The Smoke ("Cowboys and Indians") was directly influenced by "Heroes and Villains" (according to said interview).

[rn57]

which, to his way of thinking, no doubt was "As Kind As Summer" by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. ("Evil - live-e! Evil - live-e!")

Hear hear! Now there's a band that is ripe for re-discovery.

Token Beach Boys connection: their young guitarist Michael Lloyd was (according to an interview I read) in the studio during the "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" sessions, and apparently was something of an early SMiLE-ophile, in that the standout track from his 1968 album with The Smoke ("Cowboys and Indians") was directly influenced by "Heroes and Villains" (according to said interview).

WCPAEB is being rediscovered, bit by bit. RangeRoverA1 has expressed a liking for some of their songs....plus Jack White was covering the notorious "A Child Of A Few Hours Is Burning To Death" in one of his side projects; his performance is on Youtube or used to be. (I bought Vol 3 in 1977. In 1995, I finally figured out that the song was about both napalmed children and gingerbread men.)

Mentioning Michael Lloyd reminds me of Part One, the first major label WCPAEB album. (Their first album, on their (or really Bob Markley's) Fifo label, was reissued by Jeff Gold in the 1980s, which is why I mentioned the band above.)  Part One's first side finishes with their version of Van Dyke Parks's "High Coin," which Lloyd decided to cover when he heard Van Dyke play it in a club.

Apparently there wasn't enough time to ask VD if there was sheet music, so Lloyd (as he said when interviewed in one of those UK magazine articles written by premier WCPAEB-ologist Tim Forster) just guessed what the chords and melody were. 

The results did not go down well with Van Dyke. About 12 years ago, I mentioned what Lloyd had said in the article to him, and he was still unhappy, emailing: "I would never be so discourteous as to fail to properly learn someone's composition before performing or recording it."

[Phoenix]

It's hardly mentioned on this board as much as Bruce-plays-PS-for-Paul-and-John = Here There & Everywhere, but the BBs influence on Wings' music was very pervasive. "Back Seat Of My Car" is the most spectacular example but a lot of Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway shows the impact of Sunflower and Surf's Up, the way I hear 'em, and there are several other examples from the rest of the Paul/Linda/Denny et al output.

"Dear Boy" (also from Ram) was undeniably influenced by the Boys' work, and Paul went back to that same well with the break down in Wings' "Daytime Nighttime Suffering". 

Another thing that never gets mentioned is how Paul's love for "God Only Knows" is about as accurate as the whole "Al replaced Dave" thing.  The first time Paul spoke at length about Pet Sounds, he did heap praise on GOK and the album in general but said, flat out that "You Still Believe In Me", with its "gorgeous harmonies at the end" was his all time favorite song.   He also explained the flow of mutal inspiration as Rubber Soul > Pet Sounds > Revolver > Smile (sessions) > Sgt Pepper (which makes a LOT more sense than Pet Sounds > Pepper, as both he, Brian, and George Martin all say nowadays). 

My guess is (like "Al replaced Dave") both sides figures that GOK being his favorite and PS > Pepper made for cleaner soundbites than singling out an obscure album track and having to explain how an unreleased album (not liked by all members of the band) influenced Pepper, rather than the Beach Boys' "masterpiece". 

Also, Bruce often mentions that Paul "distilled the essence of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" into "Here, There & Everywhere" which makes absolutely no sense.  The essence of "Caroline No" (with its sped up vocal), "You Still Believe In Me", "Don't Talk", or even the essence of Pet Sounds, I can believe and very much hear.  But "Wouldn't It Be Nice"?  Sure, they're both love songs but beyond that, I don't hear it.  Again, I think they just figure it sounds better to name check the well known high water marks, rather than something the general public may not have heard.

[MarcellaHasDirtyFeet]

The Fool on the Hill sounds a helluva lot more like a Beach Boys song than anything else the Beatles ever did, including Here, There & Everywhere. In my mind/universe, it is as much about Brian as it is the Maharishi. But it really sounds like an honest attempt to precisely mimic Pet Sounds. IMO

[rn57]

Not an April Fool joke.

I recently learned that Tandyn Almer maintains a presence on one of our social-media sites - yeah, the one nearly everybody is signed up on. What he writes is visible to all who are members of the site.

Until recently, he has posted there only sporadically. Recently, though, his remarks there have been more frequent. Most of them have to do with his current personal ups and downs, which need not be mentioned at this board - they're simply the kind of thing everybody, even a legendary reclusive songwriter, is entitled to write on that site, and have it stay there, as they say about Vegas.

 But Almer has also written a few reminiscences of his distant musical past - and that kind of thing is Rock History.

He's explained, for instance, how the Garden Club 45 he wrote and arranged, "Little Girl Lost And Found," might have been a breakout hit but for the fact that it took too long to put together a band to take on the road.

And yes, you Boettcherheads, he has discussed "Along Comes Mary." Somebody put up a link to the Association's version and referred to "legend" having it Curt wrote most of the music. Almer replied that Boettcher had been present when he (TA) finished the song and "did make some improvements," though he went on to state that at a subsequent meeting between himself, Boettcher, their respective publishers, and the famous entertainment attorney Abe Somer [who was involved with the BBs in the late '60s], it was decided between the parties that whatever Boettcher did, did not require his being credited as a co-writer.  (I believe Somer is still living so presumably he could confirm this.)  But that's something for the General Music area, if somebody wants to take it to a Boettcher thread there.

So let's get to Then I'll Be Someone.

One of TA's friends put up a YouTube clip which is the audio of David Cassidy singing the song on the Russell Harty show, with stills from the video. TA replied (his lower-case style retained, with my remarks in brackets):

"thanks. i didn't know about this recording. i was writing it in 1971 about the time i met Brian Wilson, who was ostensibly producing his wife & her sisters [sic] & Marilyn wanted to do it. i remember cutting a track at bri's new studio in his house on Bellagio [which raises the question of whether Mr Desper was behind the board], just below the master bedroom, but she & i had some fallings out & i guess it was shelved. for a while Carl wanted to do it & i remember selling him the publishing rights so as to have $$$ to go to Maui. i only met David Cassidy once at his house thru Billy Hinshe, & some 12 y.o. girl was waking up at 9 pm in the bed."

From which we can conclude the song was (in its initial form anyway) entirely TA's work.  And the reference to Carl's buying the publishing, I suppose, explains why Carl is listed as co-writer.  (As mentioned above, Billy said at the BBB board in March that TA taught him the song, and that until it was mentioned at the board, he had not heard anything about Carl co-writing it.)

If TA did record a track at the home studio, it could be that is still extant from all the material from the period preceding CATP. And when he says "Carl wanted to do it" I guess what Carl indeed had in mind was recording it as a BBs song.  

And since he mentions just meeting Cassidy once, my guess is that the latter learned the song from Billy.

To finish up - this is the only time TA has mentioned anything involving the BBs in his corner of cyberspace.  He doesn't go online very much - he has indicated that he's still constantly making music of some kind out of the public eye, while waiting for Sundazed to put his old demo album out on CD. And when he does go online, he's more interested in using social media for the reasons everybody else uses it, as well as promoting his upcoming CD after a fashion.

 So unlike Lor(r)en Schwartz/Daro, I would say he is not interested in using up lots of time to chew over all those old issues. No doubt best to just  let him do his thing and let him decide when he feels like putting something on the record, like that bit about "Mary's" authorship.  

But if he does care, sometime, to let us know more about Marcella, Beatrice From Baltimore, SOS, or his side of the deconstructing-Rhapsody story Brian told Carlin, will pass it along.