Twofer polls #10: Carl & The Passions vs Holland

[Alan Smith]

Tom Petty

[phirnis]

CATP is great but for me Holland is a clear 10 out of 10, not a single weak moment on the entire LP (and that does include "Mt. Vernon and Fairway", which I think is really moving in a way that only BW can accomplish). The singing is absolutely fantastic and I love the way the background vocals were mixed on some of the songs (especially "California" and "The Trader" I think, the humming on "Big Sur" is beautiful as well!).

[Nicko1234]

Holland is much stronger than CATP.

I know that the band members have spoken about CATP being recorded in a piece-meal way and it shows. The 2 Blondie/Ricky songs just don`t belong on a BBs album imo. If they could have cut those and included Out in the Country and 2 or 3 other odds and sods that they had lying around then it may have improved things.

Holland hangs together well to become more than a sum of its parts. Sail on Sailor has never been a favourite of mine but the California Saga is nicely amibitious and Trader, Big Sur and Only With You make for a nice threesome.

[The Heartical Don]

Note: Big Sur should have stayed in 4/4 meter (as on Landlocked).

I bet that would have changed Holland more than just the replacement of one track would theoretically indicate.

[drbeachboy]

As just a collection of songs, CATP is a good album. I'm with RangeRoverA1, Make It Good is the only weak song. Holland has a great feel to it. It really captures the imagination while listening to it. I always feel like it takes me on a voyage. It's very cohesive for an album written by so many composers. Holland has always ranked in my Top 5 Beach Boys' albums.

[I. Spaceman]

Make It Good is weak? Do you folks like Dennis Wilson at all?

[I. Spaceman]

I think it is one of the most intense things I have ever heard, let alone from The Beach Boys. It is a brilliant piece of work.

[EgoHanger1966]

There's chocolate and there's vanilla. We can all like different things and get along. I am not a huge fan of Dennis' work, but I do appreciate the passion that went into his creations. Cuddle Up is beautiful and substantial. I get the intensity of Make It Good, but it's not much of anything else, in my opinion. It's very unique and I can see how fans of Dennis would lap that up. Just not my cuppa.

[BergenWhitesMoustache]

I think it is one of the most intense things I have ever heard, let alone from The Beach Boys. It is a brilliant piece of work.

Yep, it's the absolute standout on the album for me, better than anything on Holland and up there with Til I Die and Surfs Up imo.

I'd find it easier to make a case for it being in the top 5 Beach Boys tracks they ever did than 'weak'. Folks are entitled to their opinions and all, but that's a humdinger that has me picking my jaw up off the floor every time I read it. Similarly thinking 'got to know the woman' is the weak link on Sunflower. WOW.

[rab2591]

Holland it is for me:

EVERY song is a knockout. The California Saga, Leaving This Town, Trader, Steamboat, SOS, Only With You....and ending with the cosmically beautiful Funky Pretty.

[TimmyC]

With absolute stone cold classics like Marcella, YNAMOHTSA, All This is That, and to a lesser extent, He Come Down, CATP blows Holland away. I don't get the love for Holland; it's depressing bland cover mirrors its depressing bland sound. Even Sail On Sailor to me is one of their most overrated songs. Speaking of overrated: Dennis Wilson. Holy smoke his songs are boring. Other than Slip on Through which is probably my favorite opener to any BBs album (Little Bird's ok too), he just bores the hell out of me. Count Make it Good, Cuddle Up, and Only With You in that category for sure. zzzzzz..... zzzzzz..... And his stuff is way too intense - almost embarrassing. Strike that. Definitely embarrassing.

Anyway, yeah, CATP all the way baby.

[Don Malcolm]

CATP more openly reflects the fractures existent in the band as the rest of the boys jockeyed for position, and Jack Reiley tried to push his agenda (aligning with Carl in an attempt to broaden out the band's sound). Brian was just at the beginning of his "act out" phase, consorting with Tandyn Almer--the man who should have played the Pied Piper on "Mt. Vernon and Fairway," because that's just what he was at that time: a bad influence on someone who was already showing intense symptoms of emotional distress. As a songwriting team, however, they were pretty darned good. "Mess of Help" is arguably Brian's most underrated song.

If there was any place where "Wouldn't It Be Nice to Live Again" should have appeared, it was as Side 2, Track 1 of CATP. Hell, they could have just made it an all-Dennis side--but the band politics would never have allowed something like that to happen.

Holland is a good record, but it, too, is quite episodic and more than a bit lugubrious. I like Dennis' original of "Only With You," with its rougher but still tender vocal, over the official version with Carl signing it.

These albums both reflect an interesting but indeterminate movement in the band's career, one that they would have had to resolve somehow in order to move forward. When Reiley was fired, Carl backed away from songwriting, and Brian went further down the rabbit hole. The only viable songwriter they had in late 73-74 was Dennis, and they were disinclined to circle their wagons around the band's court jester. Hence they were ripe for the revival/career entrapment that came out of that round building in Hollywood called Endless Summer.

Based on that perspective, I don't personally find it productive to rank these records in the usual way. This was one of the key points, maybe THE key point in the band's career, and these two records reflect both the opportunity and the dilemma that co-existed at that time.

[drbeachboy]

Make It Good is weak? Do you folks like Dennis Wilson at all?

I don't hate it by no means, but I happen to like everything else on CATP more. Hard to explain, but I always feel like I'm left hanging when it finishes. It seems to build up, build up, then... goes nowhere.

[Mike's Beard]

Strange that Brian provides all the rockers on C&TP, a style that is not usually his forte.

I'd rank the tracks,

Mess of Help - 5
Here She Comes - 3
He Came Down - 3.5
Marcella - 4
Hold on Dear Brother - 4
Make it Good - 0
All This is That - 5
Cuddle Up - 4.5

Sail on Salior - 5
Steamboat - 4.5
Big Sur  - 5
Beaks of Eagles - 5
California - 5
Trader - 5
Leaving This Town - 4
Only With You - 3.5
Funky Pretty - 4

[Phoenix]

I don't think there's a single bad song on Carl & the Passions, but the highs are higher on Holland.

Agreed!

[Sheriff John Stone]

Speaking of overrated: Dennis Wilson. Holy smoke his songs are boring. Other than Slip on Through which is probably my favorite opener to any BBs album (Little Bird's ok too), he just bores the hell out of me. Count Make it Good, Cuddle Up, and Only With You in that category for sure. zzzzzz..... zzzzzz..... And his stuff is way too intense - almost embarrassing. Strike that. Definitely embarrassing. 

  ....But I respect your opinion nevertheless.

[BergenWhitesMoustache]

Make It Good is weak? Do you folks like Dennis Wilson at all?

I don't hate it by no means, but I happen to like everything else on CATP more. Hard to explain, but I always feel like I'm left hanging when it finishes. It seems to build up, build up, then... goes nowhere.

That's not hard to understand at all- it makes perfect sense. Make it Good has much more in common with oh I dunno...Schoenberg or something than anything Beach Boys related. Every single thing about it is like classical music bar the lead vocal. I can understand anyone who is largely into pop being a bit fazed by that, but I think it's genius.

Make it Good - 0

Mum? MUM!!!! The nasty man put a zero next to one of my favourite Beach Boys tracks! WAAAAAAAH! 

[I. Spaceman]

Make It Good is weak? Do you folks like Dennis Wilson at all?

I don't hate it by no means, but I happen to like everything else on CATP more. Hard to explain, but I always feel like I'm left hanging when it finishes. It seems to build up, build up, then... goes nowhere.

That's not hard to understand at all- it makes perfect sense. Make it Good has much more in common with oh I dunno...Schoenberg or something than anything Beach Boys related. Every single thing about it is like classical music bar the lead vocal. I can understand anyone who is largely into pop being a bit fazed by that, but I think it's genius.

You nailed it. Pick a random segment of the most beautiful symphony one could find, add a Dennis vocal. Color me nutty, but that's great with me. If Brian did anything like that, everyone would cream over it.

[Disney Boy (1985)]

Speaking of overrated: Dennis Wilson. Holy smoke his songs are boring. Other than Slip on Through which is probably my favorite opener to any BBs album (Little Bird's ok too), he just bores the hell out of me. Count Make it Good, Cuddle Up, and Only With You in that category for sure. zzzzzz..... zzzzzz..... And his stuff is way too intense - almost embarrassing. Strike that. Definitely embarrassing. 

  ....But I respect your opinion nevertheless.

I so massively disagree with all of the above i can't even be bothered arguing... I'm just very glad indeed that i don't feel the same way coz, boy, to get Dennis' music is such a wonderful and endlessly rewarding pleasure. 

[runnersdialzero]

I can't get into "Make It Good", but I certainly don't find it bad and can appreciate it and understand why people think it's as great as it is. And hay, it very well could grow on me - I'm still regularly finding songs in their catalog that are somehow only now making a connection with me, several years into being a fan.

Dennis' arrangements (not necessarily songwriting) aren't far off from some of the stuff Brian was doing in the mid-60s. "In The Back Of My Mind" is extremely fitting for Dennis considering the direction he went, for instance. Brian wrote it, though, and thus I've never heard anyone call its heavy use of strings and the bits of "intensity" in spots anything other than great, stunning, brilliant - whatever, never "embarrassing".

Calling Dennis' work "embarrassing" is a bit much for me.

[Aegir]

Make It Good is weak? Do you folks like Dennis Wilson at all?

I don't hate it by no means, but I happen to like everything else on CATP more. Hard to explain, but I always feel like I'm left hanging when it finishes. It seems to build up, build up, then... goes nowhere.

That's not hard to understand at all- it makes perfect sense. Make it Good has much more in common with oh I dunno...Schoenberg or something than anything Beach Boys related. Every single thing about it is like classical music bar the lead vocal. I can understand anyone who is largely into pop being a bit fazed by that, but I think it's genius.

You nailed it. Pick a random segment of the most beautiful symphony one could find, add a Dennis vocal. Color me nutty, but that's great with me. If Brian did anything like that, everyone would cream over it.

oh my god, a Make It Good backing track would be the greatest thing since sliced pie*.

*which, being a dessert, is better than sliced bread

[rogerlancelot]

I went for CATP because it is quite simply the most played BB album I own. People object to material like "Here She Comes" or "Make It Good"? f*** em. Those are masterpieces to these ears. The whole album is playable and memorable. Holland on the other hand has that California Saga thing which is quite forgettable. "Sail On Sailor" is one song that I am soooooo burned out on (not to mention I didn't care for Brian singing it when I saw them on this last tour). I do love "Trader", "Steamboat" and "Only With You" but the versions of both "Leaving This Town" and "Funky Pretty" are way better on In Concert. Actually "Only With You" from that 1972 Carnegie Hall recording is better than the studio version but of course the DW solo version on POB set brings a tear to this man's eyes.

And "Cuddle Up" was the last song played at my wedding to wind things down.

Future Twofer votes:
15 Big Ones / Love You
MIU / Light Album
KTSA / BB '85

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Holland is my favorite BB album, and quite possibly my favorite album by anybody. CATP is in my top 5, so it's close, but...

[Peadar 'Big Dinner' O'Driscoll]

Holland for me but Make it Good is a fantastic song IMO. Surprised there is not more love for it.

[Youre Under Arrest]

CATP-ST for me. I find Holland kind of boring after the first listen. Carl And The Passions, although it doesn't flow well, is a great collection of great songs.