California saga broken down, not so much a trilogy..

[kookadams]

Big sir a sunflower outtake, beaks of eagles the Jeffers poem with a few added sung parts and California a reworking of California girls in essence.. two songs and a poem grouped as a trilogy;;; thoughts?

[bonnevillemariner]

I'm still trying to make sense of this question.

[Mike's Beard]

No matter how it came about, it works wonderfully.

[Andrew G. Doe]

I think your punctuation,grammar and syntax could use some work. I also think the band never recorded a song called "Big Sir".

[Cam Mott]

I'm not a fan of the California Saga.

[JK]

Yes, definitely a trilogy, and as such it works very well.

[Matt Bielewicz]

I can never understand why anyone would automatically discount the worth of a track on the sole basis that it's old, or that it's an out-take from a previous album's sessions, or a re-recording of something previously unreleased. Sure, discount it because it's any or all of these things AND IT'S ALSO BAD, but if it's a quality tune and you like the recording and performance, why hate on it just because of its pedigree? Seems a bit masochistic to me. "This is good, but I know the history of the track, and it's old, so I won't let myself like or enjoy it". WTF?

So, yes, Big Sur is a re-record of a Sunflower-era recording; so what? It's the only officially released version of that song there is, and it's pretty decent, with some of the Beach Boys' best humming on record outside Little Pad, in my opinion. Like a lot of Mike's solo tunes, it owes a debt to out-of-copyright classical works (I always wonder if he did this consciously, so as to be less sue-able, or was it a 'He's So Fine/My Sweet Lord'-type accident??)... but who cares when the result is this fine?

I'm not wild about The Beaks Of Eagles — the delivery of the ripped-off poetry is just too po-faced and pretentious for my taste. The musical bits in-between are fun, though, so I did my own edit without the poem which is my go-to version of the Saga.

Finally, I agree that California owes much — perhaps too much — to California Girls, but again, the performance and harmonies on the track are just so lovely that I can forgive it and just enjoy it. Plus, I'm a sucker for synth-bass... so sue me.

So for me, there's more to enjoy in the Saga than not. Especially if you edit out the recital of the Jefferson poem. As to whether it works as a trilogy... well, we know it wasn't written that way; the separate pieces were welded together later. But it sounds OK as a through-mixed suite of tracks in my opinion, and it's harder to break the recordings up than it is to listen to them as one piece (the single version of California never sounds right to me; it always sounds as though it's starting in the middle of something, which in a way, of course, it is)... so I say roll with it as a suite.

[Smilin Ed H]

I like it. Though I'm sure Big Sur was recorded more in the sphere of Surf's Up.

Punctuation, grammar and syntax. Another great trilogy.