"Good Vibrations Tour" DVD Due June 18 in US

It looks like UK-based Eagle Vision is finally bringing this DVD release to North America after having previously issued it in the UK nearly a decade ago.

For those unfamiliar with this DVD, it is a re-titled release of the band's 1976 NBC TV Special, sometimes also titled "It's OK."

We'll have to wait and see what this ends up looking and sounding like, but it most likely will be identical to the previous UK release. That release featured acceptable video quality, but the whole thing was a pretty barebones affair. No real extras, middling at best video quality (it was marginally better than the best old VHS dubs floating around among collectors), and a 5.1 soundtrack most likely fabricated from mono sound elements.

But it's certainly a unique article in the band's history, well worth a release.

Review - "That's Why God Made the Radio" 7" Single

Issued last year in a couple of variations, I offer a quick look at the 45rpm vinyl single for "That's Why God Made the Radio", backed with an instrumental version of the same.

The single was issued on its own, and then later in the year it strangely appeared in a small boxed set exclusively at Target stores, offered in a box along with a "Beach Boys 50" t-shirt.

The main draw here in the otherwise-unavailable instrumental mix of the song. It's about what you would expect: it's the song with the vocals stripped away. Interestingly, it is also missing a few other overdubs, most notably the saxophone. I love hearing alternate items like this, even in cases like this where no Beach Boys are even on the backing track with the possible exception of Brian.

I only wish this would have seen a digital or physical CD release as well, as while I'm enjoying spinning vinyl, it's still kind of a pain compared to popping a CD in.

It seems doubtful the instrumental track will see release elsewhere, so this is a fun curiosity to seek out. The sleeve artwork, while not terribly exciting, is arguably what should have been used for the actual album artwork.

Hopefully a review of the album itself is forthcoming soon; I think it would be instructive to look back on the album a year later.......



Review - "Don't Fight the Sea/Friends (A Cappella)" Single

 

 

 

So I finally got around to picking up this 7" charity single, even though it was initially issued nearly two years ago I believe. The early limited edition was apparently white vinyl; what I got was on good old fashioned black vinyl.

 

I finally got my turntable hooked back up again, and figured I would finally track this single down to hear the still-otherwise-unreleased "A Capella" mix of "Friends."

 

As for the A-side, it's seemingly the same version/mix of "Don't Fight the Sea" flown in from Al's album. It's fun to see it on vinyl, and hilarious to see that it contractually/legally can't be credited to "The Beach Boys" even though there are more Beach Boys on it (five) than plenty of stuff released under the band's name over the years. I think the song is great, and great to hear Carl's awesome vocals on it. Al sounds stellar as well. The song was first tracked in the late 70's, but much if not most of what we hear on this version sounds like it comes from sessions circa 1989 during the "Still Cruisin'" era; this is apparently the era during which most of Al's vocal comes from (one later verse was recorded in the late 2000's), as well as Brian's vocals (Brian apparently briefly "on loan" from Landy to do the session), and Carl's as well as the backing vocals from Carl, Al, and Bruce. Inexplicably, Mike apparently was not on the song until Al had him add some bass backing vocals in the late 2000's.

 

The B-side is great fun, proof that they need to put out a collection of vocals-only mixes. It's just what you would expect, more layers of lush group vocals revealed. These guys sang (and sing) like no others together. For some reason, this "A Capella" mix does bring the backing track up in the mix briefly late in the song. I can't explain why, though I wonder if there was some technical reason. I don't know if this mix will ever see a wide release, but in any event, while I'd much prefer to have it on CD, this was well worth the $10 I spent for a shiny new copy.  

Mike Love Minimizes 50th Reunion Tour & Album in Recent Interview

 

I wish the headline for the entry only simply referred to Mike Love minimizing the window on his computer, but for better or worse, things are pretty much fully back to the way they were in the olden days. Mike Love has given another short, but nevertheless memorable interview. You can read it in full here:

 

http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/music/articles/20130415beach-boys-mike-love-interview-arizona.html

 

 

Time has been instructive to Beach Boys fans, as we are at least finally gaining a better understanding of Mike Love's true feelings about the whole 50th Anniversary project. A lot of what we're hearing are things many fans suspected, but it is definitely instructive to hear these things from the man's mouth.

 

The interview is pretty short, so I won't excerpt much here since it only takes a few moments to read the link above.

 

Basically, Love is even more firmly standing by the idea that he's done with more reunion activities for the forseeable future, and seems to feel he went above and beyond in even participating in the tour and album last year. He still interestingly refuses to acknowledge the actual offers the band supposedly had on the table for more immediate concerts, TV appearances, and recording and instead once again has brought out his vague assertion that some promoters told him the reunion should "give it a rest" for at least a year to presumably build up demand. This idea seems even more useless in light of the fact that he certainly doesn't seem as if he's ready to get back with the reunion in 2014, so I'm not sure what point he's making here other than to justify not continuing the reunion in 2013.

 

Asked about last year's new Beach Boys album, Love's comments are particularly interesting (and not surprising given what we know about the album's creation):

 

"Well, I wasn’t consulted very much with that album. Brian and I had spoken about a year before we even got started with that album. He wanted to do some re-records of some of our favorite songs. And I was up for that. We mentioned a couple of songs to each other. But that never happened. Nor was I able to actually get in a room and write with Brian like I did back in the ’60s. So that was, to me, unfortunate.
On the other hand, he had some songs he had been working on for several years. Brian has done a lot of things as a solo artist over the past 10 or 15 years, but it was nice to get together and do something in the studio together for the first time in many years. It sounded great, reminded me of 1965 again. And Brian said that, too."

What Love says here does make total sense. We knew based on interviews and the credits on the sleeve (and what the album simply sounded like) that this was largely a Brian Wilson/Joe Thomas project with some lyrical input from Love and vocal input from the rest of the group. Not completely unlike the days of "Pet Sounds."

Love seems to be hung up on not writing songs from scratch with Brian. I think most fans agree this would be lovely if the pair could actually produce quality material. But Love's track record on writing material from scratch in recent years, or even recent decades, is spotty. While Brian often has collaborators and other musical partners flesh his stuff out, Brian has written album after album that includes at least *some* quality material and material that doesn't all sound like Papa Doo Run Run trying to ape the sound of either "Kokomo" or "Surfin' USA." Love's track record makes this additional comment from the interview regarding the album particularly, well, just read this crap:

"Well, it debuted at No. 3. That’s not bad. But it didn’t stay up there very long. To have sustained success, like we’ve been known to do, you need a single that will chart and stay in the Top 20 or the Top 10 for three months. And that didn’t happen with this album."

There are about 50 things wrong with this statement. I would imagine the first thing that popped into many fans' minds when reading this was 1992's epic "Summer in Paradise" album. For those that don't remember, this was the previous "final" original Beach Boys album, and was essentially a Mike Love solo album recorded without Brian, with Al "suspended" from the group for most of the sessions, and with Carl, Bruce, and Al making some vocal cameos. This was the album where someone decided that if "Kokomo" was a hit, then an album full of nothing but "Kokomo" knock-offs would be a bigger hit. Yes, I know some of the songs are not literally "Kokomo" rip offs, but the whole thing was lackluster to put in kindly. Most pointedly, the album literally DID NOT CHART. As in, not in the TOP 200! This was the purest example we've ever had of what happens when Mike Love wrestles full control of a project. Even his 1981 solo album wasn't as much of a concentrated serving of Love, as he didn't have as many songwriting credits on that one.

Love's comments also ignore that the charts are tabulated, and sales occur in a far different way today than they did in the 60's, or even the 80's. Old fogey bands like the Beach Boys don't have "hit singles" often anymore. Guys like McCartney sell albums, and then get Grammy nods for albums. They don't hit the top of the "Hot 100" singles charts anymore. They don't even release physical singles anymore.

Love also fails to point out that it would have at least theoretically been possible to promote the album and it's second single ("Isn't It Time") if the reunion lineup had done more dates, and/or more TV appearances and so on.

Love at one point in the short interview senses that the interviewer is getting hung up on the reunion tour and album, which is also telling as it indicates Love's potential lack of awareness of how bad the press has been for him in the aftermath of the reunion, and also of course tells us that he is back in full "Pre-2012" mode in promoting his touring "Beach Boys", continually asserting that this has been the way it was since 1998, as if that means anything to anybody.

I do want to continue to see interviews like this, though, as we are slowly getting a more honest picture of the reunion, and interviews like this make me more and more thankful and frankly shocked that they held the reunion tour together for as long as they did. 

Brian and Al in the Studio.....

 

 

 

Brian has been posting a number of pictures recently on his social media platforms depicting a variety of studio sessions for which no explanations have been offered. We’ve seen some pictures of studio sessions with drummer Jim Keltner, old cohort from the 90’s Don Was, Jeff Beck (who may well have simply been working with Brian prepping for the upcoming odd “Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp” project), and now the most interesting of all, Al Jardine.

The first picture from the control room suggested the possibility that Al and Brian may have simply been attending a listening session for the upcoming “Made in California” set or some other Beach Boys project. Speculation that his has anything to do with the upcoming live album seems unlikely, as we're only four weeks out from its release; it most likely has already been mixed, mastered, and potentially already manufactured. But then we got a few “studio floor” shots:



 

 

 

 

 



What exactly Brian, Al, and Jeff Foskett could be working on is a mystery, but the fact that they are doing presumably *new* recording is promising, whether it’s a Brian solo project, an Al solo project, some sort of joint project, or some potential Beach Boys project.

 

 



"The 50th Anniversary Tour" CD Set - We Have Cover Art!

 

 

Here's the artwork for the new live album. Not bad, not bad at all. It could have been far worse. Major props to the guys for *not* putting either a surfboard or a car on the cover. 

"The BAD Tour 2013" - Brian, Al, and David

Someone on the Smiley Smile Message Board dubbed the Brian/Al/David tour dates as the "BAD Tour", and I certainly believe it will be anything but bad (unless we're talking about the good kind of "bad", but that's a discussion for an old fuddy-duddy parent to have circa 1990).

What remains to be seen at this point is how much of a "tour" this will be. Here's what the schedule looks like so far:

• July 20 — Atlantic City, NJ (The Grand @ The Golden Nuggett)
• July 21 — Pittsburgh, PA (Stage AE)
• July 23 — Interlochen, MI (Kresge Auditorium)
• July 25 — Kettering, OH (Fraze Pavilion)
• July 26 — Highland Park, IL (Ravinia Festival Pavilion)
• July 27 — Apple Valley, MN (Minnesota Zoo, Weesner Family Amphitheater)
• October 20 — Los Angeles, CA (Greek Theatre)

So we have six dates bunched together in late July, and a random October date in L.A. It might be tempting to believe they will literally fill in the entire time between 7/27 and 10/20 with tour dates, but that seems unlikely. But I certainly hope we get some additional dates, at least something akin to a standard Brian solo tour from the old days, a good 20-30 shows or so that hopefully gets around most of North America.
What can we expect from these shows? I think they could be awesome, especially if they allow David and especially Al to have more than just cameo roles in the show. When Al played a few gigs with Brian in 2006/2007, he was really relegated to a few leads. Beyond that, it was more just the novelty of seeing the two guys together. Let's hope Brian hands over a substantial number of leads to Al, and some to David as well. Let's also hope we see Al and David introducing their own stuff into the setlist. I'd love to see Al sing "Cottonfields" and "California Saga" again, but I wouldn't mind seeing him add "Don't Fight the Sea", or "Lady Lynda", or "Santa Ana Winds", and so on.

We'll be getting essentially/presumably the 50th Anniversary tour lineup minus Love, Johnston, Cowsill, and Totten and probably one additional person to fill in on drums and/or bass (Brett Simons?). So it should be an awesome show, and maybe Brian will be more at east not having to do all the vocal heavy lifting on the tour.