God, how I wish I could attend a live show that featured Carl along with the rest of the original band.
Me too! I often wonder if Carl's voice would have held up as well as Al's has over the years.
I think Carl's voice was holding up well and would have continued to. But it did change over the years a lot more than Al's did. Al sounded virtually identical in 2000 as he did in 1980. In the late 2000s he added a new verse to his 1989 lead vocal to "Don't Fight the Sea" and if there wasn't a slightly different timbre to how he recorded that vocal overdub, it would almost be indistinguishable.
Whereas, a 1995 Carl vocal sounded different from a 1989 Carl lead, and both different from a 1979, and different from 1979, and so on.
His voice did get a bit more raspy now and then, and he seemed to take on a slightly "congested" sound to his voice in later years. But it was always only different, not worse.
And indeed, the few extant bits we have of 1997 shows show him in great voice.
Also, Carl had a great ear not only for (obviously) singing, but music in general such that he could have continued to sing melodies and transpose keys if needed to optimize the range his voice would have had in subsequent years.
So yeah, I don't think he would have kept doing his higher register part in "Kokomo" for instance, but he and Al (and Brian) would have maintained that rock solid mid-range that makes something sound like "THE Beach Boys" instead of just some BBs singing with other guys. Those mid-range vocals are key, along with Mike's bass, such that you can *almost* hear Carl in there on something like the vocal intro on "Pacific Coast Highway." Man, if he had actually been on those vocals instead of Jeff, how cool would that have been?
I like to think Carl would have gotten past his easy listening/AC phase with stuff like the "Beckley/Lamm/Wilson" album and would have maybe done a Tom Petty/Rick Rubin sort of deal, maybe even with Rubin producing.
Which brings me back to the other point I made in another thread, which is that I sense Carl's estate is sitting on a LOT more Carl demos and songs that we might be thinking exist.