MiC up for order on Amazon, August release

[AndrewHickey]

People are moaning because they are disappointed. That's not hard to get your head round. The opposing side is the one I have trouble understanding. (I don't mean you necessaily, as you're right - this was what was announced all those months ago) I just don't understand this need to stop any negative viewpoint from  surfacing. I can only think that some people feel threatened by the negative views, as they feel their tastes are being judged or impugned in some way.

Oh, certainly in my case I don't want to shut anyone up. I just don't understand what it is that the people who are disappointed were expecting, and how they got the idea it was ever going to be anything else.

Yes, there are some things I'd have done differently if it was entirely down to me (I think -- without having heard the unbooted tracks I can't be sure how many) -- but given the brief to create a 6-CD box set, and given that it was a compromise between at least six parties (Boyd, Linnet and the four voting members -- probably many more), I think it's pretty near perfect.

[rab2591]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the price dropped down to around $75-$90 in a month or so.

I really hope so. I snagged TSS for probably $70 when it was first put up on amazon - that came with a double vinyl, 2 45s, a book, and 5 CDs. This is a book and 6 CDs - hardly $130 worth.

I'd say a price tag of $130 will actually hurt profits: I've noticed many of us here are opting to buy individual tracks - that ought to be a huge warning sign to Universal/Capitol to lower the price.

(yes I know you can get this cheaper elsewhere, but even $105 is still kinda steep - imo)

[AndrewHickey]

Man, if they had skipped some of the backing tracks and stack-o-vocals, maybe even some of the lives, they could have easily crammed more genuinely unreleased stuff there.

No they couldn't. Putting two different versions of the same song on costs less than putting two different songs on. If they put, say, This Whole World and This Whole World (vocals) on the same set they only have to pay nine cents per copy sold. If you took This Whole World (vocals) off and put Carry Me Home on instead they'd have to pay eighteen cents.

I know those nine centses don't sound a lot, but assuming all 180 tracks were different songs, with no duplications, the mechanical royalties make up $16.20 of that price everyone's complaining about.

(Actually, they probably cut a deal with the publishers, but we can't know the details of that, obviously).

By duplicating twenty-two of the songs, they save $1.98 per box production costs. Those costs would have to be made up somewhere else.

And hey, why no Battle Hymn of the Republic?! While no gem, it's historically significant part of their lore.

Because it's horrible?

[Jukka]

And hey, why no Battle Hymn of the Republic?! While no gem, it's historically significant part of their lore.

Because it's horrible?

Considering some of the songs included, that's no excuse.

[The Shift]

And hey, why no Battle Hymn of the Republic?! While no gem, it's historically significant part of their lore.

Because it's horrible?

Agreed. <Much as we has hardcores might love to have pristine versions of such stuff, the truth is that a newbie listening to that for the first time would probably never buy any future archival product. By maintaining a quality threshold, there's more hope for future issues in the future.

And while many are speculating that this will be the last archival product, I don't believe that to be the case. There's too much quality stuff still kicking around in the vaults (Carnegie live set being a no-brainer).

I hope this set gets followed up in a short while (physical product please! I'm not much of one for downloading if there're physical alternatives available) with a Dylan-style official Bootleg series – there are enough unreleased studio and live albums to fuel that for a good span.

Let me re-iterate that I'm excited by the MiC tracklist and understand the inclusion of the hits we already have. If it helps get the music heard further afield, and adds to the longevity of the band's legacy, I'm more than happy.

[Nicko1234]

No they couldn't. Putting two different versions of the same song on costs less than putting two different songs on. If they put, say, This Whole World and This Whole World (vocals) on the same set they only have to pay nine cents per copy sold. If you took This Whole World (vocals) off and put Carry Me Home on instead they'd have to pay eighteen cents.

This to me would have made it even more sensible to include an entire disc of live recordings. Some of the songs would obviously have been elsewhere on the CD which would have meant you wouldn't have needed to include 2 versions of Slip on Through or Don't Go Near the Water.

[AndrewHickey]

And hey, why no Battle Hymn of the Republic?! While no gem, it's historically significant part of their lore.

Because it's horrible?

Considering some of the songs included, that's no excuse.

It's significantly worse than any of the album tracks or unreleased tracks on the box (except possibly some that we've not heard, I suppose, but I'm betting that Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again, for example, will probably be better than Battle Hymn). The only really poor things being included, at least in my opinion, are a couple of things that *had* to be included like Barbara Ann.

[AndrewHickey]

No they couldn't. Putting two different versions of the same song on costs less than putting two different songs on. If they put, say, This Whole World and This Whole World (vocals) on the same set they only have to pay nine cents per copy sold. If you took This Whole World (vocals) off and put Carry Me Home on instead they'd have to pay eighteen cents.

This to me would have made it even more sensible to include an entire disc of live recordings. Some of the songs would obviously have been elsewhere on the CD which would have meant you wouldn't have needed to include 2 versions of Slip on Through or Don't Go Near the Water.

Oh, *that* makes sense -- though personally I'm looking forward to the Don't Go Near The Water backing track, because that's a really interesting production spoiled by crappy lyrics. I just accept that a certain level of duplication was necessary.

[tansen]

Try the canadian amazon site. It was cheaper there.

Still is cheaper - when converted into US Dollars the price is $110. But saying that the box is definitely $145 *supports* peoples position that Capitol and The Beach Boys are trying to forcibly rape us.

And for the fourth time, it will be cheaper at importCDs.com

http://www.importcds.com/music/2617315/the-beach-boys-made-in-california

$104.99

[The Shift]

No they couldn't. Putting two different versions of the same song on costs less than putting two different songs on. If they put, say, This Whole World and This Whole World (vocals) on the same set they only have to pay nine cents per copy sold. If you took This Whole World (vocals) off and put Carry Me Home on instead they'd have to pay eighteen cents.

This to me would have made it even more sensible to include an entire disc of live recordings. Some of the songs would obviously have been elsewhere on the CD which would have meant you wouldn't have needed to include 2 versions of Slip on Through or Don't Go Near the Water.

Oh, *that* makes sense -- though personally I'm looking forward to the Don't Go Near The Water backing track, because that's a really interesting production spoiled by crappy lyrics. I just accept that a certain level of duplication was necessary.

Actually I'd love to hear a vocals-only DGNTW tag. Maybe it'll be included aka the Sail on Sailor backing track had the fade vocals.  Or it'll maybe on the next set!

[tansen]

And hey, why no Battle Hymn of the Republic?! While no gem, it's historically significant part of their lore.

Because it's horrible?

Let me re-iterate that I'm excited by the MiC tracklist and understand the inclusion of the hits we already have. If it helps get the music heard further afield, and adds to the longevity of the band's legacy, I'm more than happy.

Well said, John! Where's the 'like' button when you need it.

[Smilin Ed H]

"But saying that the box is definitely $145 *supports* peoples position that Capitol and The Beach Boys are trying to forcibly rape us."

Kind of a shitty choice of words there...

[Phoenix]

And hey, why no Battle Hymn of the Republic?! While no gem, it's historically significant part of their lore.

Because it's horrible?

Agreed. <Much as we has hardcores might love to have pristine versions of such stuff, the truth is that a newbie listening to that for the first time would probably never buy any future archival product. By maintaining a quality threshold, there's more hope for future issues in the future.

Which was exactly my point about including stuff like "We Got Love", "Somewhere Near Japan", and "Chasing The Sky".  Show the casual fans that there's still gold in dem dere hills and they might go out and buy a copy of Keepin' The Summer Alive, ferchrissakes!

And while many are speculating that this will be the last archival product, I don't believe that to be the case. There's too much quality stuff still kicking around in the vaults (Carnegie live set being a no-brainer).

I'd really like to believe that but after the airbrushing Blondie and Ricky got during the entire C50 celebration, I'm VERY skeptical BRI will release an entire CD's worth (or two) of songs with them (and not Brian) on every track. 

[shelter]

More to the point, though, the reaction here seems very, very odd. We've known for eighteen months now pretty much exactly what this would be. Not the precise details, but that it'd be a six-CD set, covering their whole career, and about two CDs of it would be previously unreleased.

Yeah, 18 months ago it was "Why don't you just wait until the official tracklisting has been revealed, you can't complain until you know for sure what'll be on the thing". And now it's "Why complain about something that you already knew 18 months ago?".

(Nothing personal BTW, just a general comment.)

[Jonathan Blum]

It's not "Capitol products", it's Beach Boys products. Fans put the food on their table, fans put them where they are.

Whoa, pardner.  As a die-hard fan, you or I put a few extra lettuce leaves on the table.  But their dinner's paid for by the millions of greatest-hits-buying plebs, Sea World patrons, oldies radio station programmers who keep spinning "Barbara Ann", and ordinary concert attendees who wanna dance to "Help Me Rhonda".  The millions of people who "put them where they are", with their battered vinyl copies of "Surfin' USA" and "All Summer Long" and later "Endless Summer" and "Kokomo",  aren't buying the box set -- or if they are, they're not buying it out of a desperate desire to hear something even deeper than all the tracks released on albums after 1966 they never bought in the first place.

We're entirely entitled to our own opinions -- but we're not entitled to overrate their importance, in the big scheme of things...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

[AndrewHickey]

More to the point, though, the reaction here seems very, very odd. We've known for eighteen months now pretty much exactly what this would be. Not the precise details, but that it'd be a six-CD set, covering their whole career, and about two CDs of it would be previously unreleased.

Yeah, 18 months ago it was "Why don't you just wait until the official tracklisting has been revealed, you can't complain until you know for sure what'll be on the thing". And now it's "Why complain about something that you already knew 18 months ago?".

(Nothing personal BTW, just a general comment.)

I didn't see (don't remember seeing) any of that eighteen months ago, but taking your word for it -- if anyone was complaining eighteen months ago about the fact that we were getting a replacement GV box, about the basic idea of a career-spanning box, the were perfectly reasonable in doing so, and anyone telling them to shut up was in the wrong. If anyone was complaining that "I just know they'll leave Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again off in favour of Santa's Going To Kokomo!" or that kind of thing, then they were being unreasonable, and the people telling them to wait and see were in the right.

[Matt Bielewicz]

You have to blame The Beach Boys for that one. If they really wanted their unreleased tracks released it could easily happen but they could care less.

"It's almost like the Beach Boys don't *want* to release these tracks they haven't released for 30-40 years!"

Think about what you're saying here, folks...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

Aaah, Mr Blum - once again, you are the voice of reason, as you are so much of the time at a certain other on-line site frequented by a completely different set of, uh, *intensely engaged* individuals (I think the timey-wimey lot are even worse, actually). If people would just listen to you, I really do think we'd have world peace. And I actually mean that.

The answer to all this stuff is probably right there in front of us. I tried to explain it, but Mr Blum has done in one line what I struggled to do in far too many words. People say: how can they leave off Adult Child/more Dennis songs/more live stuff/wack-oh early 80s Brian stuff/delete as appropriate. One possible, super-simple answer: they don't want it released. They cancelled the Adult Child release over 35 years ago because they didn't want it out, and they still don't. The reasons may have changed a bit over time, and hell, the people making the decision certainly have: obviously Carl and Dennis are no longer involved, and Brian might as well be a different person now considering how much his life has changed since then - but a possible explanation is that, they, the people with the power to decide, still don't want to release this stuff. So they haven't. And it doesn't matter what we think of it or how urgently we think 'it needs to be out there in better quality', because it's not up to us, and it's not our box set.

The people on here who are saying there 'need to be' two boxed sets, one of hits and one of rarities, are just not thinking about why boxed sets are released in the real world. It only 'needs to' happen from our perspective, from the view of the fan who wants everything. But it would seem that there aren't enough of us to justify the commercial outlay and time required to create and sell rarities sets like that.

Boxed sets are released to sell, and to make money. An über-rarities orientated approach was attempted with Endless Harmony and then Hawthorne over ten years ago and - more's the pity in my view, because *I* think they were awesome - they didn't, overall, sell in quantities that made them a success in the eyes of the people who make this stuff happen, and who sign off on more of that kind of thing happening. So there's no way they're going to take that kind of approach again, now. The potential for sales of a set like that is even smaller today, in the iTunes era. So it's not going to happen, or at least, it's very unlikely.

For years, we've been saying on here what amounts to: it's just a problem with HOW they get this stuff out there. The problem is that there needs to be a CD set coming out on which they can put this stuff, or it won't make it out. Then we heard about Beach Boys Central, and then it was: that's it! That solves the problem, because there doesn't need to be a big release coming out, all the crazy deep-level tracks we want can be put up there for à la carte download and it will all be out there, and will all be OK. Personally, that would still suck for me, because I still like products I buy to have three dimensions, and not to be made of a string of electrons that can be corrupted or lost; however, I appreciate that I'm increasingly in the minority here.

But consider: what if it ISN'T a problem with how they get this stuff out there? What if they just, flatly, don't want this stuff commercially released? Not a problem with the medium of delivery for the content after all: just that they don't want to deliver the content.

Who knows if all this is true? But that would certainly provide one explanation for why Beach Boys Central has never (to date) happened...

(Watch it launch next week now, and totally booger up my point...)

It doesn't matter what I say, though. The posts after this will still consist of people saying 'I can't believe they didn't put Thank Him on there! How is that possible?'

[Paulos]

"But saying that the box is definitely $145 *supports* peoples position that Capitol and The Beach Boys are trying to forcibly rape us."

Kind of a shitty choice of words there...

Possibly, apologies for any offence caused.

[Matt Bielewicz]

Actually I'd love to hear a vocals-only DGNTW tag. Maybe it'll be included aka the Sail on Sailor backing track had the fade vocals.  Or it'll maybe on the next set!

Great point John - I was thinking that too. Instrumental for most of the track, then switch to the vocals only at the fade. Wasn't there a Do You Wanna Dance mix like that somewhere as well?

[Matt Bielewicz]

PS In the same vein, people are moaning about the instrumental track to Transcendental Meditation being included. Well, hold your horses. The placing in the listing would suggest that this is going to be the backing track to 15 Big Ones' 'TM Song' rather than the unlistenably dischordant final track from Friends. And I know which I'd rather listen to an instrumental track from. And even if it IS the Friends track, a lot of the dissonance is in the vocals, so the instrumental may be far more listenable. If it is the 15 Big Ones Track, I will be delighted; to me, that one is another great BW curio that the vocals rather spoil, a bit like Fairy Tale from Holland....

Do you find any dissonant music listenable or is it something specific about Transcendental Meditation's dissonance that you find unlistenable? By the way, there is absolutely no chronology to the 6th disc, so song placement doesn't suggest anything on disc 6. I don't think there's any reason, based on the tracklist, to believe that "Transcendental Meditation" might be "TM Song."

You're totally right regarding placement, monicker. I looked more closely at the track listing and there IS no order on that disc. So if it walks like Transcendental Meditation, quacks like Transcendental Meditation (huh, the track is kinda 'honky', too), and is called Transcendental Meditation, it almost certainly IS Transcendental Meditation. That is: the Friends track.

Oh, I loves me some dissonance (the only Beach Boys example I can think of off the top of my head is the tag of In The Back Of My Mind), but for whatever reason, it just doesn't work for me on the Friends track. Honking saxes have never been my thing; that's prolly just me. I regard that track, in the form I've heard it up to now, at any rate, as a ham-fisted attempt to sound like some of the late 60s rock that was getting popular at the time. And that is SO not my thing, so no: I'm not a fan, I don't judge it a success. My judgement: it doesn't have to be yours or anyone else's. Clearly some here feel that that means I can't understand Brian Wilson's music or whatever. Fine, that's *their* judgement. I don't share it, though.

Despite all of that, though, and as I said yesterday, I remain stoked to hear the backing track (until I hear it, at least...!). These instrumental-only mixes are a revelation sometimes, and also, something else... there's got to be a reason why it's on the set in that new mix. Someone must think it's worth us hearing it. Given that Mark and Alan are two of the major influences on the contents of the box, and I trust their judgement, I have a feeling that there must be something different or in some way arresting about the instrumental that makes it worthy of inclusion.

Course, maybe I've got that wrong, it sounds like ass, and Mike just wanted it on there again to up the TM quotient of the set, or some such nonsense. Until the end of August, who knows?

I will say again i am really excited to hear Transcendental Meditation and Don't Go Near The Water backing tracks because i love those songs, but it's outright comical that those are being included, as it is my understanding that those two songs are pretty much universally hated amongst hardcore fans and completely unknown to the casual fan.  

I am even more interested to hear the DGNTW track. I agree with a few people who've posted here recently: to me, it's a very interesting instrumental track totally wrecked by unbelievably bad lyrics. If the end of the new mix presents the vocals without the banjo, as John Manning speculated above, I will be even happier.

So I don't think it's 'outright comical' that those two tracks are being included to the exclusion of others. Au contraire, I'm keen to hear them. But that's just my opinion.

So many posters here can't seem to see past their own personal wants for this set, and have been outraged when these haven't been met. One person's idea of what 'should have been included to lure more people into the joy of the Beach Boys' is another man's appalling load of tosh that's guaranteed to turn people off. That's the crazy world of subjective opinions for you. Some people think a whole disc should have been live stuff, other people think there should be NO live stuff, or it should come out on another, future set. Just as well they didn't try to base the contents directly on fans' opinions; they'd NEVER have got the damn thing out. Compromise is impossible.

For example, here are some of my opinions, which, at the end of the day, are just as unimportant in the grand scheme of things as yours. Laugh all you like.

I'm not wild about Our Car Club, but as regards Susie Cincinnati and Solar System, to name some tracks that are getting it in the neck for having been included amongst the 'true fans' here, I think the latter two tracks are absolutely excellent, and splendid representatives of the band during the era they were made and/or released (I think the bass on SC rocks, especially the subsonic thunder in the tag, courtesy of Mr Desper's engineering skills, and as for Solar System: Crazy mid-70s Brian! Mad Love You synths! Absurd, throwaway lyrics! It works for me, although I can see that it may well not gel for everyone). It seems entirely right that they should be on the box to me, given what the box is and what it's trying to do. My opinion. You may not share that, of course.

I rarely enjoy live tracks. They hardly ever sound as good as the studio versions and you don't get the buzz that comes from actually having been at that particular concert, even if you were, back in the day! I'd have left *all* of them off, consigned them to another release. On the other hand, I'm delighted to get Help You Rhonda and California Girls from the Wally Heider Lei'd In Hawaii recordings. Can't get enough of those, and those two, together with the already released God Only Knows from Endless Harmony are, in my opinion, the pick of the bunch.

People want *more* 80s tracks? For me, they could stop the set right after Baby Blue and skip straight to Soul Searching and You're Still A Mystery. I'm almost certainly in a minority here in that I think some great music was made in the 80s. But I don't think much of it got made by the Beach Boys. I'm very happy with the fact that Chasing The Sky and Somewhere Near Japan haven't made it on this. I think they're over-produced 80s schlock, anodyne photocopied 'rawwk' that drags down the name of The Beach Boys, and that a few nice harmonies from Carl cannot rescue from the pit of sub-Peter Cetera hell where they belong. I think their 'standing' with fans may result from the fact that these songs number amongst the only even slightly decent tracks the boys managed to dredge together during this period. But that doesn't make them good in my ears, or make me want to buy them or listen to them. There you go. But like I said - that's just me. And just to prove how crazy and apparently inconsistent personal opinions can be, I quite like Make It Big and She Believes In Love Again - they're something of an 80s guilty pleasure for me. But even I can see that they pretty much derive from a similar circle of the netherworld as CTS and SNJ. Maybe the one just above the sub-Peter Cetera one?

...so, thank goodness they didn't base the set around *my* opinions either, right?

[Nicko1234]

More to the point, though, the reaction here seems very, very odd. We've known for eighteen months now pretty much exactly what this would be. Not the precise details, but that it'd be a six-CD set, covering their whole career, and about two CDs of it would be previously unreleased.

I can only speak for myself here...

Quite a while ago I posed the question, 'Does the world need another box set?'. The group has done so little since 1993 that from an artistic point of view it didn't really make sense to me (especially as that box can still be bought new for a much lower cost than MiC). The big question to me was could they make this set a really worthwhile purchase for people who already had the earlier box.

I agree that we knew that 2 CDs worth would be unreleased songs.

But do the 4 radio spots really count as being unreleased songs in the same way that things like Stevie, Glow Crescent Glow, It's Trying to Say would have?

Does an 'unplugged mix' of There's No Other (Like My Baby) really count as being as unreleased as stuff like One Kiss Led to Another, I Can't Get No Satisfaction or anything else they could have included from the Party sessions.

Does an alternate mix of Brian's Back (?!?) really count as being as unreleased as anything else from the First Love album?

Now we knew some time ago that the last disc of this box was going to be reserved for instrumental tracks, vocal only versions and other oddities and this looks great. The big question for me was how well would the other rarities be scattered through the other 5 discs and they haven't been at all. Those first 4 discs we could make ourselves with very few exceptions and it needn't have been that way.

I don't blame Mark Linett and Alan Boyd for that at all. If the band didn't want their own genuinely rare songs released (it seems like the reason we have so much Dennis stuff is because he's not around to veto it) and wanted to include album tracks like Our Car Club, Susie Cincinnati, Solar System etc. then all they were doing is making the set much weaker and much less interesting.

[Nicko1234]

People want *more* 80s tracks? For me, they could stop the set right after Baby Blue and skip straight to Soul Searching and You're Still A Mystery. I'm almost certainly in a minority here in that I think some great music was made in the 80s. But I don't think much of it got made by the Beach Boys. I'm very happy with the fact that Chasing The Sky and Somewhere Near Japan haven't made it on this. I think they're over-produced 80s schlock, anodyne photocopied 'rawwk' that drags down the name of The Beach Boys, and that a few nice harmonies from Carl cannot rescue from the pit of sub-Peter Cetera hell where they belong. I think their 'standing' with fans results from the fact that they number amongst the only even slightly decent tracks the boys managed to dredge together during this period. But that doesn't make them good in my ears, or make me want to buy them or listen to them. There you go. But like I said - that's just me.

I wouldn't say that I want more 80s tracks but just different ones. As you've intimated there, Somewhere Near Japan does have a decent standing with fans. As the 45 mix is also rare and unavailable on CD as far as I know, wouldn't it have made more sense to include that rather than some of the other choices? If they were going to choose around 25 songs from 1976 onwards then I think they could have done much better. The alternate mixes of Rock and Roll Music and It's Ok seem like good choices and It's a Beautiful Day is also sensible as it is quite rare...but the other stuff.

Where are Glow Crescent Glow, the Love You demos, the early mix of My Diane, It's Trying to Say, Life is for the Living, the movie version of Lady Lynda, something other than Brian's Back from First Love, the unreleased originals from KTSA, Al's version of California Saga, unreleased songs from the MiC sessions.

I presume the band members vetoed all of these things so I don't blame the compilers as I've previously said.

[Shady]

You have to blame The Beach Boys for that one. If they really wanted their unreleased tracks released it could easily happen but they could care less.

"It's almost like the Beach Boys don't *want* to release these tracks they haven't released for 30-40 years!"

Think about what you're saying here, folks...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

Isn't it common place for a lot of bands to empty their vaults with unreleased tracks. The Beach Boys have a vault that's probably only matched by a few artists, quality tracks that really do deserve to be heard. We're talking about a band that only released the smile tapes officially last year.

Come on a lot of those Adult Child songs are really, really good. We had 6 discs here, why could it not have been 3 for the hits and 3 for the rarities.

[AndrewHickey]

I am even more interested to hear the DGNTW track. I agree with a few people who've posted here recently: to me, it's a very interesting instrumental track totally wrecked by unbelievably bad lyrics. If the end of the new mix presents the vocals without the banjo, as John Manning speculated above, I will be even happier.

Absolutely agreed here. I think, in fact, if it weren't for the lyrics (and for the fact that it's by Mike and Al, and so automatically dismissed) people would view Don't Go Near The Water as the missing link between Smile and Mt Vernon And Fairway. Yes, I am serious.

So many posters here can't seem to see past their own personal wants for this set, and have been outraged when these haven't been met. One person's idea of what 'should have been included to lure more people into the joy of the Beach Boys' is another man's appalling load of tosh that's guaranteed to turn people off.

Couldn't agree more with this. There are half a dozen tracks I'd have loved to have seen get a proper release on this, but the decisions that have been made are far from bad ones.

I hate live tracks. They never sound as good as the studio ones and you don't get the buzz that comes from actually having been at that particular concert, even if you were, back in the day! I'd have left *all* of them off.

I can see this -- but then there are things like the Live In London version of God Only Knows, where while the backing is obviously not up to the quality of the studio version, Carl's vocal is to my mind the definitive version of the song.

And sometimes a radical rearrangement can really work -- the early-70s live arrangement of Lookin' At Tomorrow is staggering, almost proto-trip-hop.

People want *more* 80s tracks? For me, they could stop the set right after Baby Blue and skip straight to Soul Searching and You're Still A Mystery. I'm almost certainly in a minority here in that I think some great music was made in the 80s. But I don't think much of it got made by the Beach Boys.

Couldn't agree more. Even the very best 80s stuff is blighted by horrific production and terrible vocals -- Al and Bruce seemed to be the only ones even trying vocally in the 80s, between Mike's nasal self-caricature, Brian's off-key caterwauling and Carl's utter boredom.

[Nicko1234]

So many posters here can't seem to see past their own personal wants for this set, and have been outraged when these haven't been met.

I respectfully disagree.

For example, the criticism of things like Our car Club, Salt Lake City, Don't Go Near the Water, Brian's Back etc. doesn't seem to be 'I hate these songs so they shouldn't be included'. It seems to be more, 'these have never really been celebrated by either reviewers or fans and they aren't rare so what is the purpose of their inclusion'.

And ironically your comments about Somewhere Near Japan kind of contradict what you're saying now. You admit it has a 'standing' with other fans and yet say it shouldn't be included because you don't like it.