Feel Flows box set

[Tony S]

I also like waves of love.

[aingevt]

I love Don't Fight The Sea as well. The story of how it finally got finished was really exciting at the time. I think it would be amazing if they did something similar with "Dancin' the Night Away". They could all trade off on the leads, combine during backgrounds/chorus and wouldn't have to be in the same room! The bridge is already finished and has Carl's beautiful contribution. A guy can dream.

[c-man]

I'm sure that would make Andy Paley very happy - and Joe Thomas less so!

[HeyJude]

"Waves of Love" is a nice song. I wouldn't have minded a version with more BBs singing on it, but once Al released it himself (in no less than three different mixes, with a fourth unreleased mix being posted online at one point), I never saw it as a tragedy that the BBs didn't do it.

Read the Jason Fine Rolling Stone article from 2012 if you haven't; Brian literally bolts out of the room to avoid even having to discuss doing "Waves of Love."

"Dancin' the Night Away" is not A-level material. It's easily the worst of the three "Beach Boys" tracks from those Paley sessions. That little Carl bridge (or whatever it is) is interesting. The rest of the song is either very similar, or literally an embryonic version of "How Could We Still Be Dancin'", and that's not A-grade material either. I wouldn't mind a future BB archival set featuring that Carl bit in better sound quality, and if there are somehow some additional vocals in the vaults we haven't hear, sure, of course I'd love to hear it. But that song is not even up to the level of most of the material on TWGMTR.

If they were *going* to do another album, it sounds like there are a bunch of TWGMTR outtakes they could use. But I'm guessing a bunch of those are more Brian/Joe Thomas compositions, and we all know how Mike feels about singing on *that* stuff these days, even when he gets to add lyrics.

Talking about that and "Dancin' the Night Away" leads me back to "Feel Flows" thusly: If the band can get back on track and issue ample archival material, then *that's* where all the gold is. Not new reunion recordings. I'm not saying those couldn't be good potentially. But they *just managed* to scrape together a solid, "whoa, this is better than I thought it could be!" album back in 2012. They aren't particularly in a better place on any level now in 2020. Their voices, save Al, have deteriorated further. The inter-band politics and relationships seem to be worse than they were in 2010/2011.

One of many ways this should (and perhaps is) pitched to the band these days is that they don't even need to record new albums. They have like a dozen new albums sitting there in the vaults!

[alanjames]

Any news regarding Feel Flows?
Everything was worked out/they gave green lit to release it?

[mtaber]

I’m hoping Feel Flows, presuming it comes out, will include studio chatter that will give insights into Carl’s producing techniques, such as how commanding he was in giving direction to singers and musicians.  We’ve seen and heard Brian giving orders, but not much on Carl and the rest of the band. 

[Matt Bielewicz]

I've never heard any Sunflower session tapes — like a lot of fans, my close awareness of the BB's sessions ends in 1968/69 with the end of the eight-track era, which, as I understand it, was as late as the guys who made the Sea of Tunes boots was able to go. The rumour I heard was that the bootleggers didn't have access to a 16-track tape machine, so there was no point them making copies of any archive 16-track tapes, with the result that all tapes made after the band switched to recording on 16-track in around 1969 were off-limits for them to pilfer. I've no idea whether that's correct, but it's certainly true that the detailed Sea Of Tunes discs pretty much grind to a halt at that point in BB history.

My point is, though, that there might not BE much in the way of session recordings for Sunflower (that's the bit I don't know, having not heard any boots of those sessions). Certainly by the time you got to the 80s and people were recording on 24-track multitrack or more, you would rarely hear much of the session even if you had the master multitrack. That's because songs were increasingly constructed ON the multitrack, instead of being the result of multiple, increasingly perfected live takes like in the Wrecking Crew era with Brian producing. We only hear all of the SMiLE and Pet Sounds sessions, for example, for a few reasons. Firstly, the Beach Boys were wealthy artists at the time and didn't mind paying for the (considerable) expense of recording everything from sessions on multitrack tape (which wasn't cheap). Many lesser (and poorer) artists would rehearse a few takes in the studio in this era to be ready to record, and only *then* roll tape to capture a good live performance. That way, you only used a few minutes of tape instead of hours (as with, say, the Heroes and Villains vocal sessions, where even the Boys can be heard complaining that they're now on Take 50 or something and they might as well spool back and record over all the earlier blown takes to save tape).

By the 80s, it would be much more generally the case that you'd record maybe a basic track for a new song of just a few minutes in duration once everyone was rehearsed for the song and ready to go, maybe with just the drummer and bassist or maybe some keys to give a shape to the song as you recorded, and then add everything else gradually as overdubs onto that same 4-5 minute section of multitrack tape. The only 'session' stuff you'd hear would be a few seconds at the start and end of each of the multiple tracks that make up that single performance. You hear this kind of stuff a little bit in some of the SOT SMiLE sessions, where an instrumental perfomance is being overdubbed vocally. Often the last thing you hear after the track ends is one of the vocalists (often Brian) saying 'OK, let's add another overdub'. That's because those words are recorded on the performance of the first set of vocal tracks to be recorded. When the tape was being recorded in the studio, they would have had the multitrack with the instrumental on it, the Boys would do a take, then Brian (say) would say 'let's do another overdub' and that fragment of speech would be captured at the end of the song. After that, they'd have recorded that next overdub — but crucially, over the *same* four minutes or whatever of multitrack tape. So the net effect is that you have a multitrack with Brian saying 'let's do another overdub' at the end... but actually, the second overdub IS already overlaid on that recording. This is different to what you'd have heard for a Today or Summer Days era recording, where if we have the whole tape of the complete session, you might hear Brian say that at the end of a song, and then you get another pass at the song where they add the second overdub a few minutes after the original recording. Bottom line — the more 'multitrackular' recording got over time (yeah, I know that isn't a word, but whatever, you know what I mean), the less likely you are to hear a complete tape of the session as it happened live in the studio.

As I said at the start, what I don't know is what the case is with Sunflower — while you'd be much less likely to hear a complete session recorded at the time of Steve Levine making BB85, for example (unless, of course, SL deliberately elected to record the complete sessions for his own archiving purposes... and I have no idea whether he did or not), I don't know what the done practice was at the time of making Sunflower at the turn of the 70s. Was it more like the Wrecking Crew era or the 1980s practice? Perhaps we'll soon find out, if this damn box eventually comes out and we hear lots of Carl-heavy studio production chatter! Or we couild find out sooner if anyone who HAS (naughtily or otherwise) heard any Sunflower session tapes cares to chip in to this thread at this point...? (He said, leaving the question hanging pregnantly in the air...)

All of which is a very long way of saying... it seems to me that you might not hear *anything* of Carl producing on the Sunflower masters, or at least, not in as complete a way as we hear Brian producing in the Wrecking Crew era. It might just be that the only things captured on the Sunflower masters are a few seconds of Carl counting in the master take, say... and maybe concluding with a 'thanks, that's enough' over the talkback when the song is finished beyond the point where the master was going to be faded out on the completed record.

But I'd love to be proved wrong. 'Cause I sure loves me some BB session recording action... and I'm sure I'm not alone...

[c-man]

There are plenty of session tapes from the Sunflower era, and I've heard quite a lot of them. Some from 8-track, some from 16-track. They tended to lay down basic tracks as "live" as possible, but of course there were usually plenty of instrumental overdubs, as well as vocal overdubs. Carl's productions of his two self-compositions for the Surf's Up album, though, are another story - as he played all of the instruments on "LPR" and most of the instruments on "FF" (with the Charles Lloyd and Woody Thews contributions added later), there really isn't anything there in terms of session tape.

[Howie Edelson]

FEEL FLOWS is alive, well, and thriving.
No one will be disappointed.

[Menace Wilson]

FEEL FLOWS is alive, well, and thriving.
No one will be disappointed.

Thank you!!! ❤️

[guitarfool2002]

FEEL FLOWS is alive, well, and thriving.
No one will be disappointed.

A Happy Thanksgiving indeed!

[Emdeeh]

          

[CenturyDeprived]

FEEL FLOWS is alive, well, and thriving.
No one will be disappointed.

Thanks Howie!!!

[MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm]

That's amazing. Thanks. 

[Rob Dean]

Many thanks Howie, I have just worn out the LIKE button

AND I do hope to wear out my F5 button awaiting any more news 

Before Christmas

[thetojo]

Thanks again Howie. Your keeping us informed is much appreciated.

And especially in saying no-one will be disappointed- which I take to mean that nothing was cut from the box. 

[DonnyL]

The reason Sea of Tunes stops at 1968-69 is because Capitol owns those masters, and BRI owns Sunflower and on. There’s definite grey area on the Reverberation tracks. Songs like “San Miguel”, “Got to Know the Woman” and several others, began on 8-track, and were later transferred to 16 when the group obtained a 3M M-56 16-track in 1969. The Capitol songs from the same period like “Celebrate the News” and “Break Away” were completed on 8-track.

[NateRuvin]

Thanks for the update Howie! Brought us a lotta joy to see that

[Shady]

Thats amazing..  Thanks Howie

[mtaber]

The board breathes a collective sigh of relief!!!  Thanks Howie!!!

[CenturyDeprived]

The reason Sea of Tunes stops at 1968-69 is because Capitol owns those masters, and BRI owns Sunflower and on. There’s definite grey area on the Reverberation tracks. Songs like “San Miguel”, “Got to Know the Woman” and several others, began on 8-track, and were later transferred to 16 when the group obtained a 3M M-56 16-track in 1969. The Capitol songs from the same period like “Celebrate the News” and “Break Away” were completed on 8-track.

This is very interesting, thanks for that insight.

[CenturyDeprived]

I've never heard any Sunflower session tapes — like a lot of fans, my close awareness of the BB's sessions ends in 1968/69 with the end of the eight-track era, which, as I understand it, was as late as the guys who made the Sea of Tunes boots was able to go. The rumour I heard was that the bootleggers didn't have access to a 16-track tape machine, so there was no point them making copies of any archive 16-track tapes, with the result that all tapes made after the band switched to recording on 16-track in around 1969 were off-limits for them to pilfer. I've no idea whether that's correct, but it's certainly true that the detailed Sea Of Tunes discs pretty much grind to a halt at that point in BB history.

It would be fascinating to hear a detailed rundown of how the SOT boots came to be. I mean, it's almost worthy of a documentary. There must be some fascinating tidbits to tell.

Was it someone entrusted to the vaults who snuck an early DAT recorder in, for the sole purpose of colluding with bootleg distributors to sell them the material, for the bootleg companies to then press to CD and sell to indie music stores?

The sheer quantity and quality is astounding, and honestly it seems like it was the heist of the century from a bootleg perspective. While the morality of how it went down is certainly hard to defend, from purely a music historical perspective it was a tremendously important and wonderful thing for that music to have been freed. I'd argue it might have help further the band's legend in terms of fans learning the band was underrated and worthy of deeper discoveries by fans.

[Dan Lega]

I'd love to see a documentary of SOT, too.  But... we're not going to get that until the statute of limitations runs out, or whoever did it passes away.  (Or until they get nabbed by the authorities and then can tell their tale.)

I'm still waiting for the ultra complete SOT, where we get everything, not the cut up sessions we got!

Of course, it'd be even better if the Beach Boys would officially release every single piece of session tape they have!  And release it in multi-track format, all 2, 4, 8, or 16 tracks so that we can listen to each track separately if we want.

And, of course, thank you Howie for letting us know that "Feel Flows" is still on track.  I just wish we had a release date for it!!! 


Love and merci,
Dan Lega

[Empire Of Love]

FEEL FLOWS is alive, well, and thriving.
No one will be disappointed.

Thank you for the update!

EoL

[hapman]

Okay, so what is this supposed to be?