Beach Boys Reunion!

wrinkles deluxe is obvious. solo demo version, vocals only version, kanye remix. gonna buy the hell out of it on record store day.

David Marks! He's been waiting for this call for 49 years!

Actually, Marks came back in '97 to replace Carl in the road band, but he himself got sick two years later and resigned.

ha, had no idea. what a strange thing for a dude -- how long was he in the band? a year?

yeah he briefly replaced Al iirc. But he's been milking it for decades, wrote a book, etc.

played with Gary Busey!

This whole thing feels wrong. Wasn't Brian planning to retire?

I might have been interested in this if Carl and Dennis were still around. As it is, meh....

yea not stoked for this at all

whadayaknow, the wife got me the Smile box set for Hannukah

on first cursory listen the most interesting thing is noticing the odd bits and pieces that got recycled later on, like some brief melody in an outtake from Heroes & Villains popping up in American Spring's "Sweet Mountain"

in some ways it's reminiscent of Lou Reed - huge burst of drug-fueled creativity within a brief period that got thoroughly mined (and re-mined) over the succeeding decades

oof, i hope someone in my family got me the smile box. otherwise they can all go to HELL.

I didn't even ask for it! I asked for a t-shirt!

honestly think my favorite thing about these so far is the two 7" singles

is one of those just all heroes & villains? i like the idea of that.

yeah one is Heroes and Villains Pt 1/Heroes and Villains Pt 2 and the other is Surf's Up/Vega-Tables. The mixes/edits for each are great and had some new bits I had not heard (or maybe noticed) before

it's weird to me how that Leonard Bernstein special is so "legendary"/constantly referred to, and yet no one I know has ever seen it and it isn't on youtube

i've seen a youtube clip of the surf's up segment...but a quick search suggests its been taken down from youtube? what's weird is that I think the whole "bernstein says surf's up is the greatest song ever" or whatevs is misattributed. i think it's someone else on the show who says it, not bernstein.

unsuccessfully trying to find the thread we were discussing Smile on on real ILM fyi

Brian's piano demo of Vega-Tables is really interesting - never noticed how truly bizarre that piano part is

Did Brian tour with the Beach Boys in the late 90's?

no

he hasn't toured with the Boys since the early 80s iirc`

Good to know. Beach Boys were the first concert I ever went to and I went with my parents. I think they assumed Brian was a part of the tour

I kind of want to start a hash tag #SuggestionsForTheBeachBoys and try to help them not fuck up their next album

what year was this... Carl toured with them pretty much until he died in '98, I think? maybe they mistook him for Brian.

My parents probably didn't know anything about what the BB looked like. And I was really young. We had a blanket on the lawn and I fell asleep before the concert was over. I imagine that we saw them before '98 because I wasn't in high school yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tPs5f3kkFY

ah, yeah that's what i had seen. would be fun to see that whole uncut show, though!

looks like CBS is pretty aggro bout keeping that out of circulation, unfortunately.

not that the smile box set needs to be any bigger (or more expensive) but it might've been nice to include a dvd of the various clips and things that were made during the sessions. some funny stuff.

kinda surreal that mike love is approvingly quoting van dyke park lyrics on the facebook

I remember as a kid being at the traditional 4th of July free Beach Boys concert on the National Mall in DC in 1980 or '81. Brian wasn't there, but Dennis was (I taped it). A couple of years later, then-interior secretary James Watt infamously banned the rock bands like the Beach Boys from playing on the mall on Independence Day, claiming they encouraged drug use and alcoholism and had attracted "the wrong element" to the picnics, instead substituting Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton. This was widely criticized, including by President Reagan who was a Beach Boys fan himself. The ban was lifted the next year and the Beach Boys returned; some fans in the audience were holding up signs proudly proclaiming themselves to be "The Wrong Element".

What was Leonard Bernstein doing hosting a rock and roll TV special? This guy was a classical composer and conductor who to my knowledge never dabbled into rock any other time.

Bernstein championed anything in music he felt was important or noteworthy (cf. seeing Ornette Coleman at the Five Spot, standing up and declaring, "This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to jazz!")

His hosting a TV special about rock was no doubt a bid to convince John Q. Squaresville of the "legitimacy" of this damn hippie racket, but nothing suggests Bernstein wasn't sincere about his affection for the music.

(also, was West Side Story "classical"? I'm not saying it was or it wasn't; I've just never heard it referred to as such)

This guy was a classical composer and conductor who to my knowledge never dabbled into rock any other time.

this isn't strictly true. there's youtube clips of him playing the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" on piano for schoolchildren

I'm far from familiar with Bernstein's work, so I checked out his wiki page and didn't see any references to him liking rock, and when I've heard him mentioned IRL he was usually conduction an orchestra. I put "to my knowledge" in my earlier post for that reason though - he obviously did dabble in rock occasionally.

I can't find that youtube clip - do you have a link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygn7ORgPbEE

thanks....

I'm a big fan of "modal" music too (keys other than the usual major or minor).... "Along Comes Mary", which of course is all about smoking weed, was written by Tandyn Almer who was friends with Brian and co-wrote "Sail On, Sailer" and "Marcella".

http://www.leonardbernstein.com/educator.htm

by Jamie Bernstein

"It may have been delightfully silly to hear my father squawk his way through those pop songs, but it also signaled to the audience that Leonard Bernstein listened to contemporary pop music — and liked it. That meant a lot in those days, when parents were turning up their noses at Elvis, Motown and the Beatles, and so-called experts would criticize popular music as brainless and even harmful. But hey: Leonard Bernstein thought the Beatles were great! And the Supremes too, and the Stones, and Latin American music, and African war chants and Louis Armstrong and Balinese gamelan and... well, that was exactly it: Leonard Bernstein loved music. ALL of it. And he gave a clear signal to his audiences that it was OK to love all music — and not to put a value judgment on one genre over another. He was the unsnobbiest person you could ever hope to meet. He loved people and was curious about everything."

The only (extremely brief) clip I can find from his 1967 TV special is at 4:54 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWriMsTALF4

scored the big Smile box today unexpectedly! exciting!

oof did not get the big smile box. my family and I are through.
i did get that fahey set tho, so i guess i shouldn't complain.

Those close-ups of ancient analog tape decks in the last segment with George Martin are giving me the warm-and-fuzzies

Smile Sessions LP/CD boxset for Christmas you guys! :-D :-D

honestly think my favorite thing about these so far is the two 7" singles

― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 22 December 2011 20:36 (6 days ago) Bookmark Permalink

is one of those just all heroes & villains? i like the idea of that.

― tylerw_sandbox, Thursday, 22 December 2011 21:01 (6 days ago) Bookmark Permalink

yeah one is Heroes and Villains Pt 1/Heroes and Villains Pt 2 and the other is Surf's Up/Vega-Tables. The mixes/edits for each are great and had some new bits I had not heard (or maybe noticed) before

― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 22 December 2011 21:06 (6 days ago) Bookmark Permalink

Ah, so these 7" versions are different to the LP/CD versions?