Someone actually wrote an article about "Summer in Paradise"!

[astroray]

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/low_tide_the_beach_boys_hit_rock_bottom_in_1992_with_summer_in_paradise

[Bhw]

That's OK... I actually like that album!

[The_Beach]

Nice article on it! The album was ok! pretty good for the music that was coming out in the 1990s

[The LEGENDARY OSD]

Fitting review for the absolute worst piece of garbage in the history of recorded music. myKe luHv should have been immediately stripped of his rights to perform under the BB name.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Fitting review for the absolute worst piece of garbage in the history of recorded music.

Nah...the NASCAR album was much much worse. *shudder*

This at least has 'Strange Things Happen'

[CenturyDeprived]

Fitting review for the absolute worst piece of garbage in the history of recorded music.

Nah...the NASCAR album was much much worse. *shudder*

This at least has 'Strange Things Happen'

Plus Lahaina Aloha ain't too bad. There's a sorta kinda ok short EP buried in there amongst the drek.

Two questions:

1.  Is it really, really true that it only sold 1000 copies? Even for a turd like this, how is that actually possible? For his famous a band as they were, regardless of content, that literally seems like an impossible number to be true.

2. How late in the game did Al come back to the band?  And I wonder if his parts on the final record were already on there with a different person singing temp vocals, which were then replaced by Al?  Is there a version of Strange Things Happen with Carl or Mike (or Adrian?) singing those chorus parts?  It wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to have left those parts unrecorded until the last minute, unless they were certain Al would rejoin.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

No idea about the 2nd, but as for the 1st..it didn't have widespread distribution as it was sort of self released with little publicity, so it's believable.

[CenturyDeprived]

No idea about the 2nd, but as for the 1st..it didn't have widespread distribution as it was sort of self released with little publicity, so it's believable.

If that's accurate, I wonder if there are any parallels with any other band of that stature?  Especially considering that they were still making appearances on Full House, and things like that…  they may have been creatively washed up, but they were still touring a ton. I guess it's hard to have perspective on what their stature would've been like back then.  But that number is so laughable.

Was this record ever for sale at the merch booth at their shows at the time?  And was it for sale at ordinary chain record stores?

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

It may have been less...that may have been the amount *shipped*. Never did get confirmation on that.

[Lonely Summer]

I saw the cd in all the chain stores. Don't know if any of them ever left the stores, but they were there. I took a look at the back cover, saw all the T. Melcher/M. Love writing credits, and got pissed off. "It took them 7 years to put out a studio album, and Al and Carl got totally shut out." I vowed I would never buy this testament to ML's ego. I gave in when I saw a copy of the cassette for a dollar at Half Price Books.

[CenturyDeprived]

I saw the cd in all the chain stores. Don't know if any of them ever left the stores, but they were there. I took a look at the back cover, saw all the T. Melcher/M. Love writing credits, and got pissed off. "It took them 7 years to put out a studio album, and Al and Carl got totally shut out." I vowed I would never buy this testament to ML's ego. I gave in when I saw a copy of the cassette for a dollar at Half Price Books.

That's very interesting to hear that perspective. If the writing credits had not been listed on the back cover, do you think you might have purchased it at the chain store?

I remember in the days of Blockbuster Music when they would open up a brand-new CD for people to listen to and preview at a listening station, and if you did not choose to buy it, they would re-seal it, obviously not with factory shrink wrap, and then put it back on the shelf and sell it as new!  I always thought that was pretty shady.

Of course, this album predated that whole scenario by several years, so I'm surprised there weren't more people who just purchased it because it was a new record by the band when they saw if on a chain store shelf.  Maybe those visible writing credits were also a deterrent for quite a few more people…

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I remember in the days of Blockbuster Music when they would open up a brand-new CD for people to listen to and preview at a listening station, and if you did not choose to buy it, they would re-seal it, obviously not with factory shrink wrap, and then put it back on the shelf and sell it as new!  I always thought that was pretty shady.

That's where I heard it! Back in 1996. I actually heard it before Pet Sounds -_-

Needless to say, I didn't buy it until years later for like $1

[CenturyDeprived]

I remember in the days of Blockbuster Music when they would open up a brand-new CD for people to listen to and preview at a listening station, and if you did not choose to buy it, they would re-seal it, obviously not with factory shrink wrap, and then put it back on the shelf and sell it as new!  I always thought that was pretty shady.

That's where I heard it! Back in 1996. I actually heard it before Pet Sounds -_-

Needless to say, I didn't buy it until years later for like $1

No way! They had 4-year-old copies of SIP decaying on the shelves at Blockbuster Music in '96?  That is so crazy. I wonder at what point they were sent back as unsold stock.  That's a pretty late date for that album to still be sold as new from its original pressing. How many years would it have taken for the store to ship it back? There was only one pressing of this album, that much we know.

[CenturyDeprived]

Did this album kill Terry's reputation and career?  I'm not seeing that he has a single credit (BB or otherwise) after this album, maybe I'm missing something?

[Jay]

I remember in the days of Blockbuster Music when they would open up a brand-new CD for people to listen to and preview at a listening station, and if you did not choose to buy it, they would re-seal it, obviously not with factory shrink wrap, and then put it back on the shelf and sell it as new!  I always thought that was pretty shady.

That's where I heard it! Back in 1996. I actually heard it before Pet Sounds -_-

Needless to say, I didn't buy it until years later for like $1

Sadly, I bought mine for much more than $1. I still want my money back.

[Eric Aniversario]

I've always liked Summer In Paradise. I don't care what anyone else says! I used to list it in my top ten BB albums. I don't think that's the case now (maybe more like top 20).

I had never heard anyone other than hard core fans talk about it, and I had never heard a track from it in a public setting, until I heard Hot Fun InThe Summertime at a bowling alley a couple years back (2013?) My mind was blown....How did it make it to that playlist some 20+ years later??

[Robbie Mac]

Did this album kill Terry's reputation and career?  I'm not seeing that he has a single credit (BB or otherwise) after this album, maybe I'm missing something?

He was running his mom's inn in Carmel at the time. Music, at that point, was something of a hobby for him.

[JK]

I've always liked Summer In Paradise. I don't care what anyone else says! I used to list it in my top ten BB albums. I don't think that's the case now (maybe more like top 20).

I had never heard anyone other than hard core fans talk about it, and I had never heard a track from it in a public setting, until I heard Hot Fun InThe Summertime at a bowling alley a couple years back (2013?) My mind was blown....How did it make it to that playlist some 20+ years later??

I love Sly & The Family Stone but the Boys' version of "Hot Fun" is a close second to theirs, despite all the cr@p hurled at it on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3gLb_V20hQ 

[HeyJude]

The idea that the album only sold 1,000 copies seems like it might be at least a slight exaggeration. A lot of us saw it at chain stores like "Blockbuster Music." I saw it at "Fry's", and I recall seeing it back in the day at one of those price-gouging mall record stores like Musicland or Sam Goody or Camelot Music.

So you have to figure if even 2 or 3 copies of the album were shipped to most or all of the stores in these chains, that would have to be more than 1,000 copies at least in terms of what was shipped. I recall Alan Boyd mentioning that while this was a "self-released" album, they still got it distributed by a real distributor in terms of moving copies into stores (Navarre). So it's not like "Brother Entertainment" was boxing and shipping copies themselves.

At the same time, let's remember that in 1992 this album *didn't chart at all*. As in, it wasn't one of the TOP 200 albums for even one single week. Sales would have to be pretty low for that to occur. Quick research shows that Billboard started using Soundscan for sales numbers in late 1991, so SIP would have fallen under the umbrella of being tracked by Soundscan.

So I'm guessing more than 1,000 copies were manufactured and shipped to stores. Were less than 1,000 sold? Perhaps it never sold 1,000 in a single week, but I'd have to guess it sold at least a few thousand over its lifespan. Especially when we factor in the 1993 UK release, which I believe got some level of distribution through EMI.

Either way, it's by leaps and bounds their biggest failure in terms of a new album release.

It's also interesting in that when people try to suggest how much publicity and fans John Stamos garnered the band, I always point to the utter failure of SIP to disprove that idea in large part. The album was released during the middle of the run of "Full House", the album was promoted on the show itself, *and* Stamos himself appears on the album. That he or the show couldn't even help get the album in the Top 200 tells me the Stamos connection wasn't doing much. It got eyes on the group when they appeared on the show, but that never apparently translated to sales or chart action.

[The LEGENDARY OSD]

I saw the cd in all the chain stores. Don't know if any of them ever left the stores, but they were there. I took a look at the back cover, saw all the T. Melcher/M. Love writing credits, and got pissed off. "It took them 7 years to put out a studio album, and Al and Carl got totally shut out." I vowed I would never buy this testament to ML's ego. I gave in when I saw a copy of the cassette for a dollar at Half Price Books.

Here's hoping that his book will suffer the same, well deserved fate.

[guitarfool2002]

Here's all I can say about SIP - When I first moved to Boston, September 1992, I was literally a few hundred yards away from Tower on Newbury and Mass Ave. I'd go there regularly, some weeks every day, to browse the racks and check for any new arrivals. They had a Beach Boys section, of course. At that time, the two-fers were winding down. There were the usual hits packages, the bizarre import versions of such, and always at least one copy of Pet Sounds as that seemed to be selling no matter what year it was. And "Summer In Paradise" was new, so that was in the bins that fall.

Fast forward the next few years, as I lived in the same area and had the same routines of visiting Tower to check for anything new. The two-fers gave way to the single-disc CD reissues (which I always thought was a mistake on Capitol's part and a rip-off for buyers), various hits, imports, etc.

And as always, Summer In Paradise. The stock never seemed to go down. They were always just there in the bins.

So I got to trace the progression of the album over months, then a year, and into 2-3 years.

The album eventually wound up as a discount. Still a full rack.

Tower eventually moved it to their version of the "cut out" bins. Drastically reduced pricing, albums that just didn't sell which were moved to these bins. And it looked like whatever shipment they got back in '92 ended up lock stock and barrel in the cut-out section. Just a full stack of them, at a very low price. And the stack never seemed to get smaller.

Then it was gone entirely.

I have to think very few if any copies were sold, either in the new Beach Boys bins or in the cut-out bins. It was crazy. I always wondered what the heck was going on, where other titles and the years-old (at that time) Pet Sounds reissue CD and even the 24K DCC "Endless Summer" reissue would come in and go out, but SIP never seemed to go down in stock. Meaning no one bought it, or Tower had cases of these discs piled up in the storage area which they'd keep bringing out to fill the bins.

My guess is the former scenario, not the latter.

[southbay]

A now banned SS member previously posted that 10,000 copies were sold

[HeyJude]

I was at a Fry's Electronics in the mid-2000s, probably around 2005 or 2006, and in their CD section I saw what appeared to be an original 1992 copy of "Summer in Paradise", still stickered by Fry's at the original price, the thing looked dusty and beat up (it was in that original weird packaging configuration where the case was "unfolded" and then shrinkwrapped presumably to be of a similar height to the old "longbox" CD packages).

It was such a weird curio that I almost bought it (I hadn't seen the CD new in that configuration since 1992 at the mall).

I doubt many shops got anything past an initial shipment of the album.

[guitarfool2002]

It's ironic because had I brought an investor's mindset to my sometimes hazy but lazer-focused existence as a fan in the early 90's, I would have bought up a dozen copies sealed, packed them away, and sold them on Ebay when original CD copies were selling for obscene amounts!

[Debbie KL]

It's ironic because had I brought an investor's mindset to my sometimes hazy but lazer-focused existence as a fan in the early 90's, I would have bought up a dozen copies sealed, packed them away, and sold them on Ebay when original CD copies were selling for obscene amounts!

I'm thinking a sealed copy is the best way to experience SIP, in any case. ;-)