Showing posts with label Beach Boys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beach Boys. Show all posts

Friday, February 20, 2026

Various Artists - The TAMI Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, 10-29-1964

When I recently posted the 1964 NME Poll Winners' Concert, I got a request to post another stellar 1964, known as "The TAMI Show." Like the NME concerts, this has to be one of the greatest collection of musical talent on one stage in the 1960s. The TAMI Show was made for a movie, which was released at the end of 1964. But I haven't seen just the audio available. So I converted a video of the movie into audio and chopped it into mp3s.

There's so much to say about the TAMI Show. I'm going to try to be relatively brief. It seems some clever people decided that rock music was all the rage in 1964, so if they could get enough big stars together for a concert, it would make a profitable movie. They did, and it did. The result was a classic, regularly cited as one of the best music movies of all time. In 2006, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The key about the concert is that all the songs were performed live, at a time when lip-syncing was standard for TV appearances. Jan and Dean emceed the concert. They also performed its theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)", written by songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. The concert brought together some British Invasion bands (Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and the Rolling Stones) with Motown acts (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes), plus some other big names, like the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, and Lesley Gore.

The concert is probably best known for the performance by James Brown, and for good reason. The whole thing is worth watching, but especially his part. The Police even immortalized it in their song "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around," with the lyric:  

Turn on my V.C.R. 
Same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show
Same tape I've had for years

In other words, Sting (who wrote that song) has a video of the TAMI Show, and is fascinated by James Brown's performance, watching it over and over. It's easy to see why. Brown's dancing is so extraordinary, it almost defies the laws of physics. He was moonwalking, and more, back when Michael Jackson was just a little baby. The lyrics are also interesting in that the TAMI Show was very hard to find for decades, generally only being available as a bootleg video, so that probably was an especially prized possession for Sting. It was finally remastered and rereleased as a DVD in 2010.

I worked from the DVD version, converted it to audio, and chopped it into mp3s. The sound quality isn't great, but it's as good as you could hope for from a 1964 concert. The lead vocals were rather low in the mix, so I used the UVR5 program to boost them relative to the instruments.

There was some controversy at the time whether James Brown or the Rolling Stones should be the final act in the show. At the time, the Stones had barely toured the U.S. at all. In fact, this would be only the third stop on their first big U.S. tour. But they were rapidly rising stars, enough for them to be chosen as the final act. However, James Brown wasn't pleased about that, and made sure to steal the show.

Mick Jagger, lead singers for the Stones, later said, "James Brown was probably the best thing about our trip. He is a fantastic artist. When you've seen him, you've seen the act to end all acts. We appeared with him on the TAMI Show and we had to follow him. It was a disaster in a way because nobody can follow James Brown, it’s impossible." Despite the competition, it was a friendly rivalry, and they were on good terms with him when they crossed his path at various times in later years.

By the way, the "TAMI Show" stood for either "Teenage Awards Music International" and "Teen Age Music International" - the producers were inconsistent about the meaning. The fact that they were inconsistent shows it didn't really matter much. Apparently, they just wanted an interesting sounding acronym. 

Here's a good article about the concert, written in 2025, if you want to know more:

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/teenagers-world-unite-2/

And here's the Wikipedia article:

T.A.M.I. Show - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long. 

01 [Here They Come] From All Over the World (Jan & Dean)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Jan & Dean)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
05 Maybellene (Chuck Berry & Gerry & the Pacemakers)
06 Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
07 It's Gonna Be Alright (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
08 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
09 How Do You Do It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
10 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
11 I Like It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
12 That's What Love Is Made Of (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
13 You've Really Got a Hold on Me (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
14 Mickey's Monkey (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
15 Stubborn Kind of Fellow (Marvin Gaye)
16 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
17 Can I Get a Witness (Marvin Gaye)
18 Hitch Hike (Marvin Gaye)
19 talk (Jan & Dean)
20 Maybe I Know (Lesley Gore)
21 You Don't Own Me (Lesley Gore)
22 You Didn't Look Around (Lesley Gore)
23 Hey Now (Lesley Gore)
24 It's My Party - Judy's Turn to Cry (Lesley Gore)
25 The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Jan & Dean)
26 Sidewalk Surfin' [Surfin' Safari] (Jan & Dean)
27 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
28 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
29 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
30 Dance, Dance, Dance (Beach Boys)
31 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
32 Bad to Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
33 I'll Keep You Satisfied (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
34 From a Window (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
35 When the Lovelight Starts Shining through His Eyes (Supremes)
36 Run, Run, Run (Supremes)
37 Baby Love (Supremes)
38 Where Did Our Love Go (Supremes)
39 Hey Little Bird (Barbarians)
40 talk (Jan & Dean)
41 Out of Sight (James Brown)
42 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
43 Please, Please, Please (James Brown)
44 Night Train (James Brown)
45 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
46 Off the Hook (Rolling Stones)
47 Time Is on My Side (Rolling Stones)
48 It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones)
49 I'm Alright (Rolling Stones)
50 Let's Get Together (Rolling Stones & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vRghL7X4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IlezlVz2skiZmQ5/file

Since James Brown had the most renowned performance in this concert, I decided it was fitting to have a photo of him on the cover. That photo is from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. All the other text and graphics comes from original promotional material for the concert. But I used Photoshop to do some repositioning and other editing.

Sunday, February 8, 2026

The Beach Boys - Hollywood Palladium, Los Angeles, CA, 4-20-1973

Here's a really nice Beach Boys concert from 1973. 

Just a few days ago (as I write this in early February 2026), I found out there's been a leak of about 500 Beach Boys songs, with the bootleg called "Boots a Million." The vast majority of those are alternate versions of songs. I'm having a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff with that release, 'cos there's so much of it (and frankly a lot of it isn't that interesting). If anyone here is a big Beach Boys fan and can give some guidance about that release, please let me know. But luckily, while looking for it, I happened to stumble across this concert.

I believe this actually was officially released on-line for a microsecond in late 2023, as one of the band's many copyright extension releases. That's where musical acts release music within 50 years of origin or else they lose the copyright on that music in some European countries. But I totally missed this in 2023, and just noticed it now. 

No doubt, the band recorded this concert with soundboard quality while collecting material for their live album "The Beach Boys in Concert," released in late 1973. We know this because two songs on that album, "Sail On, Sailor," and "Sloop John B," come from this exact concert. Everything else here is unreleased, unless you count that copyright release. I don't, because it literally would only have been for sale for several hours at most on one day late in 2023.

In my opinion, when it comes to concerts, I think the band peaked around 1973. That's because they were still very creative at that time, regularly releasing a new studio album each year, and playing their new songs in concert. But after 1973, the amount of new material went down, as well as the quality, and they gradually turned into an "oldies" act. This still has quality songs they would soon drop from their set lists, like "Funky Pretty," "California Saga: California," "Marcella," and "Wild Honey."

While the sound quality is excellent overall, there were a couple of issues I dealt with. One was that there was an unusual amount of tuning between songs. (At one point in the banter between songs, one of the band members apologized for all the tuning, saying they had just restrung their guitars before the concert began.) I did a lot of cutting out of the tuning, while keeping all of the actual banter between songs. For instance, there was nearly two minutes of tuning before the first song even began, and I cut that down to less than half a minute. Trust me, you're not missing anything, and there still is a fair amount of tuning that I couldn't cut out due to talking happening over it.

The other thing is that the vocals were rather low in the mix. I used the UVR5 program to fix this for nearly all the songs. "Do It Again" needed extra work, because most of the vocals were completely inaudible for the first verse, so I didn't have enough to simply increase the volume. Instead, I took the vocals from another concert in 1972, and patched those in for a couple of lines there. That's why that song is the only one with "[Edit]" in its title. 

This concert is surprisingly hard to find. For instance, I didn't see it at any of the bootleg sharing websites I frequent. That's probably due to its weird status of being technically legally released, though just barely. Hopefully this post will help it get more attention.  

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long.

01 talk by emcee (Beach Boys)
02 talk (Beach Boys)
03 Help Me Rhonda (Beach Boys)
04 Funky Pretty (Beach Boys)
05 talk (Beach Boys)
06 Darlin' (Beach Boys)
07 talk (Beach Boys)
08 Do It Again [Edit] (Beach Boys)
09 talk (Beach Boys)
10 Heroes and Villains (Beach Boys)
11 talk (Beach Boys)
12 Sail On, Sailor (Beach Boys)
13 talk (Beach Boys)
14 Caroline, No (Beach Boys)
15 talk (Beach Boys)
16 Don't Worry, Baby (Beach Boys)
17 talk (Beach Boys)
18 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
19 California Saga- California (Beach Boys)
20 talk (Beach Boys)
21 Marcella (Beach Boys)
22 talk (Beach Boys)
23 Sloop John B (Beach Boys)
24 talk (Beach Boys)
25 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Beach Boys)
26 talk (Beach Boys)
27 Wild Honey (Beach Boys)
28 talk (Beach Boys)
29 Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)
30 talk (Beach Boys)
31 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
32 talk (Beach Boys)
33 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
34 Fun, Fun, Fun (Beach Boys)
35 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Beach Boys) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3jCRrXHV

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/f9fWkDhddhE250W/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Note also that some photos shown on the inside of the band's album "The Beach Boys in Concert," are from this concert as well.

Thursday, January 29, 2026

Various Artists - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Waldorf Astoria, New York City, 1-20-1988

Yesterday (January 28, 2026), Bruce Springsteen dropped a new song about the current problems with ICE in Minneapolis, called "Streets of Minneapolis." It's good to see a protest song that addresses current issues, since there haven't been many of those in recent years. (He wrote, recorded, and released it in four days!) Here's a link, if you haven't heard it already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWKSoxG1K7w 

Anyway, I wanted to post something from Springsteen after hearing that inspiring song. However, some recent computer problems I've been having have flared up again, which means I currently can't use Photoshop, which in turn means I can't make new album covers until that's fixed. So I looked around to see if I had some Springsteen-related album ready to go, cover and all. Luckily, I did. (I have soooo many albums I could post tomorrow, if only I had the time to finish them off. Sigh!) This one doesn't have a ton of Springsteen content, but it's a really interesting (thought short) concert. So, in a way, my current computer issues have an upside in that they're getting me to finally post this.

Now, finally, to the music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame started in the early 1980s. In 1986, they had their first induction ceremony, complete with a short concert featuring some of the inductees and other famous musicians. This has become a yearly tradition. Some concerts have been a lot more memorable than others. In my opinion, the ones from 1988 and 1989 were the most interesting, with the biggest star power. I haven't collected the others (though I very may well do so with some of them in the future), but I've made albums of those two. This is the 1988 one.

1988 was a really big year for the Hall of Fame, because their rule is that artists are only eligible for induction 25 years after their first record (be it a single or album). And when they were making their decisions in 1987 for this ceremony, that meant they were looking at the artists who put out their first records in 1962. It just so happens that was the first year of recordings for the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys! Those are three of the biggest and most influential musical acts of all time. The Drifters and the Supremes were inducted that year as well, plus some non-performers, like Berry Gordy.

The induction ceremony had a lot of intrigue and drama in it. The Beatles are arguably the biggest (and best, IMHO!) musical act ever, so they were the main focus here, even overshadowing Dylan and the other very big names. Since John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, he was represented by his wife Yoko Ono, and his sons Julian Lennon and Sean Lennon, and each of them gave short speeches. Ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were there, and also gave speeches. 

However, the big no-show was Paul McCartney. He was in the middle of a lawsuit still connected to the break-up of the band back in 1970, so he felt he couldn't attend due to that. He put out a statement: "I was keen to go to and pick up my award, but after 20 years the Beatles still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been [settled], so I would feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with [Harrison and Starr] at a fake reunion." 

It turns out the lawsuit, which involved the division of profits from record sales, was settled a year later. So that was unfortunate timing as far as this concert goes. But at least that opened the door to the "Anthology" collaboration between the ex-Beatles a few years later.

Normally, when I post albums like this, I skip long speeches and focus on the music. But I'm making an exception here. I didn't include all the induction speeches, but I thought the ones relating to the induction of the Beatles and Dylan were important enough to include. They're all together at the beginning of this album, and they are about 19 minutes long in total. If you don't want to hear them, or just hear them once or twice, there's still about 40 minutes of music after that.

A big element of the drama involved Mike Love, a member of the Beach Boys. Love is one of the most notorious assholes in rock and roll, something I've discussed in other posts. But he really outdid himself this time. He appeared to be drunk, and used his induction speech to insult various famous musicians in the audience. This led to a funny quip from Dylan during his acceptance speech: when he listed people he wanted to thank, he thanked Love for not mentioning him in his speech!

Anyway, there are lots of interesting stories about what happened during this event. But instead of trying to summarize them all here, I'll just point out to an article from Rolling Stone Magazine that does a good job:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 

I've also posted a text file in the download zip that has the text to that article.

Regarding the music here, everything was professionally recorded, so the sound quality is excellent. However, I found the lead vocals were rather low in most of the songs, so I boosted that up with the help of the MVSEP program. Also, there was a problem in the performance of "Stop in the Name of Love." Mary Wilson of the Supremes was asked to sing the song (since Diana Ross was another prominent no show). But it was clear for this songs, as well as all the other songs, that there hadn't been any practice beforehand, so everyone was just winging it. For the first chorus at the start of the song, Wilson sang the song in one key, while the band (or at least most of it) played in another key. That sounds pretty painful to my ears. So I erased that, and patched in a chorus from later in the song. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Oh, also, during all the talking between songs, where band leader Paul Shaffer was trying to direct things, one or more people on stage kept playing guitar so loudly that it nearly drowned out what anyone was saying. So for most of those tracks, I used MVSEP to lower the volume of the guitar enough to make the talking more audible.  

The songs "I Saw Her Standing There" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" were officially released on the compilation album "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Volume 1: 1986-1991." Everything else here remains unreleased.

By the way, when it comes to the song list below, I only listed the name of the main lead singers. For all the songs, there was one of the most amazing gatherings of musical talent ever seen on one stage together. But it's next to impossible to figure out who was on stage doing what, other than the lead vocals. So that's why I kept the credits in the titles relatively simple. 

However, just as one example, it was Jeff Beck who started playing the "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" riff that led to that song being played, right when it seemed everyone was leaving the stage. Some of the others who were on stage at least part of the time but don't get mentioned in the song titles include: Neil Young, Paul Simon, Johnny Moore, Joe Blunt, Clyde Brown, Tom Fogerty, Les Paul, Arlo Guthrie, Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, Little Richard, Peter Wolf,  Dave Edmunds, Jeff Lynne, Julian Lennon, Sean Lennon, Little Steven, and Clarence Clemons.  

This album is an hour and six minutes long. 

01 talk (Mick Jagger)
02 talk (Ringo Starr)
03 talk (George Harrison)
04 talk (Yoko Ono)
05 talk (Julian Lennon)
06 talk (Sean Lennon)
07 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 Twist and Shout (Johnny Moore)
10 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan with George Harrison)
11 talk (Paul Shaffer)
12 I Saw Her Standing There (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
13 talk (Paul Shaffer)
14 Stand by Me (Ben E. King & Julian Lennon)
15 talk (Paul Shaffer)
16 Stop in the Name of Love [Edit] (Mary Wilson)
17 talk (Paul Shaffer)
18 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Hound Dog - Honey Hush (Elton John)
19 talk (Paul Shaffer)
20 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
21 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
22 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty with Bruce Springsteen)
23 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
24 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan with Bruce Springsteen)
25 talk (Paul Shaffer)
26 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Mick Jagger with Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SpmdHRju

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/yv9ChPKPJqpFcYT/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Mick Jagger.

Saturday, September 13, 2025

Various Artists - A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys, Dolby Theatre, Hollywood, CA, 2-8-2023

A few days ago, a commenter suggested I should post this concert. It so happened that I already had it all ready to go (except for making the cover), which is the case for countless hundreds, if not thousands of albums. But since it was requested, I put it at the top of the pile, and here it is. It's a Grammy salute to the Beach Boys from 2023.

This tribute was shown on prime time television, so that meant it was faced paced, and with lots of guest stars. Famous actor Tom Hanks started things off with a spoken tribute, and actors John Stamos and Drew Carey also had turns to speak. 

I found a video of this concert, converted it to audio, and then broke it into mp3s. So I don't think it's circulated as an audio bootleg before. The music is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent.

This album is an hour and eleven minutes long. 

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 Help Me Rhonda (Little Big Town)
03 talk (John Stamos)
04 California Girls (Weezer)
05 talk (Jimmy Jam)
06 Sail On, Sailor (John Legend)
07 Barbara Ann (Hanson)
08 In My Room (Brandi Carlile)
09 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Charlie Puth)
10 Don't Worry Baby (Michael McDonald & Take 6)
11 talk (John Legend)
12 The Warmth of the Sun (Norah Jones)
13 Do It Again (Foster the People)
14 Surfer Girl (Lady A)
15 talk (Drew Carey)
16 Do You Wanna Dance (Fall Out Boy)
17 talk (emcee)
18 Sloop John B (Beck)
19 Caroline, No (LeAnn Rimes)
20 talk (Mumford & Sons)
21 I Know There's an Answer (Mumford & Sons)
22 Darlin' (Andy Grammer)
23 talk (Norah Jones)
24 You Still Believe in Me (St. Vincent)
25 I Get Around (My Morning Jacket)
26 talk (LeAnn Rimes)
27 Heroes and Villains (Pentatonix)
28 talk (John Stamos)
29 Surfin' U.S.A. - Fun, Fun, Fun (Luke Spiller & Taylor Momsen)
30 Good Vibrations (Beck & Jim James)
31 talk (Brandi Carlile & John Legend)
32 God Only Knows (Brandi Carlile & John Legend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BvP9j4sK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/I8sT7w5JNg2CT8v/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It shows Brandi Carlile singing to John Legend, who has his back to the camera.

Sunday, August 24, 2025

The Beach Boys and Friends - 25 Years Together, Waikiki Shell, Honolulu, HI, 12-12-1986

Here's a really interesting Beach Boys concert, featuring lots of special guest stars. It was a TV special filmed in Waikiki Beach in Hawaii to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the formation of the band, back in 1961. The Beach Boys stayed on stage the entire time. Often they performed their own songs, but sometimes they were the backing band for: Ray Charles, Gloria Loring, Glen Campbell, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the Everly Brothers, Jeffrey Osborne, Belinda Carlisle, and Three Dog Night. That's a pretty impressive list.

I happened to stumble across a video of this concert on YouTube. I converted that to an audio file and cut it into mp3s. While doing so, I deliberately cut out some things. For instance, there were some long talking segments by actor Patrick Duffy in which he talked extensively about the history of the Beach Boys. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't have relistening value, so I axed it. I also cut out a few other little things, like some really bad jokes or cheesy comments made by the Beach Boys between songs. 

I gotta say, I put a lot of effort into making this a better listen. One big problem was there was a constant noise coming from the crowd all the time, through every song. Probably, microphones were stuck in the crowd to capture that audience noise in order to supposedly increase the excitement level. Or some of it could have been added in later. That has happened even to officially released live albums occasionally. Regardless, I used the MVSEP to get rid of most of the crowd noise, except for the bits you'd expect at the starts and ends of the songs. The sonic difference was dramatic, like suddenly being able to hear after taking ear muffs off. 

The last two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles due to extra editing on them. For "The Spirit of Rock and Roll," an announcer came on near the end of the song and talked over it. Luckily, that didn't last too long, and I was able to patch it by bringing in a section from elsewhere in the song. "Good Vibrations" was much more difficult. For some stupid reason, the song was repeatedly interrupted by brief comments made by random people, saying things like "Happy anniversary to the Beach Boys!" These comments clearly were filmed on the beach at a different time and spliced into the footage. This happened about ten times, through random points in the song. Worse, the volume of the song itself was briefly turned way down, ruining the rhythm. I found a different live version of the song from the 1980s and patched in bits of that, or patched in sections from elsewhere in the same version. It was a real pain in the ass to fix, but all those dumb comments are gone now.

I think this is a really interesting concert, a lot better than what I'd expected from the Beach Boys at this point in their career. The main negative is that the band tried to cram in too many songs for the limited time they had for their TV special. So many of the songs are short versions, sometimes in medleys. There's even a couple that are a minute or less. But there are a lot of plus sides. One nice thing is that Brian Wilson usually didn't tour with the band, but he was here and involved. In fact, he looked as healthy and fit as he ever did, after some rough years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

And while the Beach Boys mostly played their expected classics, there was a couple of really nice surprises. One was a version of "Heaven" near the end of the concert. This was released on a Carl Wilson solo album and never officially done by the Beach Boys. The other one that is even more interesting is the closing song, "The Spirit of Rock and Roll." At the time, Brian Wilson was working on his first solo album. But there were many false starts before the album, simply called "Brian Wilson," was released in 1988. At one point, there was nearly enough material for an album to be released, only for it to be scrapped and most of the songs discarded. Some of this later became a popular bootleg called "Sweet Insanity." "The Spirit of Rock and Roll" was one of those discarded songs. So it's interesting that it was not only chosen for inclusion in this special, but it was the finale. This appears to be the ONLY time the song was ever performed by the Beach Boys, as opposed to Brian Wilson solo.

But maybe the most interesting thing of all were the special guests, the vast majority of whom have stood the test of time. Gloria Loring is better known as an actress than a singer, but she had a good voice and had a big hit in 1986 with "Friends and Lovers," which she sang here. Other than that though, the guests mostly sang Beach Boys songs, while being backed by the actual Beach Boys on backing vocals and instruments. For instance, not only did the back up Ray Charles singing and playing keyboards on "Sail On, Sailor," but Charles was the one playing the prominent keyboard part in the "Good Vibrations" finale. I particularly liked hearing Belinda Carlisle singing a Beach Boys song as well as a soul classic.

Everything here is unreleased, I believe. The sound quality is very good, though not great. 

This album is an hour and ten minutes long. 

01 talk (Beach Boys)
02 Help Me, Rhonda (Beach Boys)
03 Fun, Fun, Fun (Beach Boys)
04 California Girls (Beach Boys)
05 California Dreamin' (Beach Boys)
06 talk (Beach Boys)
07 Sail On, Sailor (Beach Boys & Ray Charles)
08 Sloop John B (Beach Boys)
09 Do It Again (Beach Boys)
10 talk (Beach Boys)
11 Friends and Lovers (Beach Boys & Gloria Loring)
12 I Can Hear Music (Beach Boys & Gloria Loring)
13 talk (Beach Boys & Glen Campbell)
14 In Cars (Beach Boys & Glen Campbell)
15 talk (Beach Boys & Glen Campbell)
16 Little Deuce Coupe (Beach Boys & Glen Campbell)
17 The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Beach Boys & Glen Campbell)
18 I Get Around (Beach Boys & Glen Campbell)
19 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
20 talk (Beach Boys & the Fabulous Thunderbirds)
21 Rock and Roll Music (Beach Boys & the Fabulous Thunderbirds)
22 Be True to Your School (Beach Boys)
23 Don't Worry Baby - Getcha Back (Beach Boys & the Everly Brothers)
24 Wake Up Little Susie (Beach Boys & the Everly Brothers)
25 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
26 Come Go with Me (Beach Boys)
27 talk (Beach Boys)
28 Disney Girls [1957] (Beach Boys)
29 God Only Knows (Beach Boys & Jeffrey Osborne)
30 talk (Beach Boys with Paul Shaffer)
31 Surfer Girl [Reprise] (Beach Boys with Paul Shaffer)
32 Surf City (Beach Boys with Paul Shaffer)
33 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys with Paul Shaffer)
34 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Beach Boys & Belinda Carlisle)
35 Band of Gold (Beach Boys & Belinda Carlisle)
36 talk (Beach Boys & Three Dog Night)
37 Darlin' (Beach Boys & Three Dog Night)
38 talk (Beach Boys)
39 Heaven (Beach Boys)
40 Good Vibrations [Edit] (Beach Boys & Everyone)
41 talk (Beach Boys)
42 The Spirit of Rock and Roll [Edit] (Beach Boys & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eYAr29uv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/lny0w2Q0FB2gE8x/file

I had a hard time finding a good cover photo by taking a screenshot from a video. If I used a long distance shot showing many people, it was too low-res and blurry. I chose this one from the "Good Vibrations" finale. From right to left, that's Gloria Loring, unknown, Al Jardine, and Belinda Carlile. I used Krea AI to boost the image quality.

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Various Artists - Songs in the Key of Brian - Remembering Brian Wilson (1975-2021) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

One of the all-time great musical geniuses, Brian Wilson, died a few days ago, on June 11, 2025. He was 82 years old. I wanted to post something to mark his passing. Luckily, I've recently been collaborating with a new musical friend, who goes by the name Fabio from Rio. He's a big fan of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and came up with the idea of creating an album consisting entirely of songs about Brian Wilson. So that's what this is. I gave him free reign, and only helped him some with suggestions on song selection.

I would have never come up with the idea for this album, because I had no idea that there would be enough songs about Brian Wilson to make up an entire album. I knew of the song "Brian Wilson" by Barenaked Ladies, since that was a hit back in the 1990s, but that was about it. But Fabio must be a really big fan, because he found so many songs that we had to cut some out to keep the album from getting too long.

The album starts with a rare demo written and sung by Wilson himself. It also ends with two more written and sung by him, including a rare live version of "Love and Mercy." Fabio explained the reasoning for this in an email, which I liked. I'll just paste in his explanation here:

"The Wilson tunes are bookends, as they serve to introduce and close the 'main event' (all the tracks written to him or about him) while bringing a personal Brian touch to the collection. The first song, a 1975, demo works as a prelude (acknowledging Brian's fragility and strength both simultaneously contained in his voice), 'The Last Song' is the epilogue, and 'Love and Mercy' is a coda." 

Regarding the rest of the songs, what Fabio calls the "main event," tracks 2 through 13, are basically divided into two parts. Tracks 2 through 8 are direct tributes to Brian. That's obvious by their titles, but it's not just that: the lyrics and musical style ooze reference and admiration for the man. That's followed by tracks 9 through 13, which are indirect tributes to Brian, or direct tributes to things related to him (the Beach Boys, his health shop, girls, his genius, family), all mentioning him either in the title or lyrics.

So, a big thanks to Fabio from Rio for coming up with the idea for this album and then finding and selecting the songs. As you could guess from the name, he's Brazilian, and hopefully in the future he'll be able to assist in sharing more music from Brazil. I like a lot of music from Brazil, despite not speaking Portuguese at all. I haven't really shared any music from Brazil until now, because I don't have worthy rarities. But he does, so look forward to that in the future. He also has some other plans, including creating one or more albums as a further tribute to Wilson that will consist of songs in a Beach Boys style composed by other musical acts. 

Fabio has also taped a great number of concerts in Brazil. You can find some of them on his YouTube page, here: 

https://www.youtube.com/@musicadequalidade2020/videos

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 In the Back of My Mind [Demo] (Brian Wilson)
02 The Love Songs of B. Douglas Wilson (Splitsville)
03 Mr. Wilson (Hormones)
04 Dear Brian (Chris Rainbow)
05 Brian Wilson Said (Tears for Fears)
06 Brian Wilson (Barenaked Ladies)
07 Mr. Wilson (John Cale)
08 Brian Wilson (Queers)
09 Crazy = Genius (Panic at the Disco)
10 Radiant Radish (Pearl & the Oysters)
11 Brian Wilson Is My Dad (Breakup Shoes)
12 Minnesota Girls (Shackletons)
13 Since God Invented Girls (Elton John)
14 The Last Song (Brian Wilson)
15 Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Kn42WH9u

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/EMCkcQ343EW7g0m/file

The cover photo shows Wilson in 2007. I added the font colors and type to match those used on the cover of the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" album.

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Brian Wilson - PBS Soundstage, Palazzo Theatre, Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, NV, 12-11-2014

Here's another episode of the TV Show "PBS Soundstage." This one stars Brian Wilson, the genius songwriter behind most of the hits by the Beach Boys.

There aren't many Soundstage episodes that have been officially released as audio albums, but this is one of them. The album is called "Brian Wilson and Friends." Normally, I would shy from posting released episodes, since they can easily be found elsewhere. However, I'm making an exception here because it turns out a DVD version was released as well that had a bunch of extra songs. I managed to combine the CD and DVD versions to create a closer approximation of the actual concert.

In 2012, the Beach Boys had a reunion that included most of the long-time members of that band, including Brian Wilson. Wilson remained on good terms with most of the others (with the exception of Mike Love, who kept the rights to the band name). So Wilson reunited with some former Beach Boys in this concert. The main one of note is Al Jardine, who played on a bunch of songs and sang lead vocals on a few. But Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar were also guests. They were members for a short time in the early 1970s.

On top of that, there were some other guest stars. Sebu Simonian, who is part of the indie pop duo Capital Cities, sang one song here. (He actually sang another one, but I thought it was a terrible attempt to mix the Beach Boys sound with the modern pop sound, so I didn't include it.) Mark Isham, who plays trumpet and keyboards and scores films, played trumpet on a couple of songs. Finally, Nate Ruess, singer-songwriter for the band fun, sang on a couple of songs.

This concert took place at the end of 2014. However, it was aired on TV around the time of the release of Wilson's next studio album, "No Pier Pressure," released in April 2015. Many of the songs come from that album. So do most of the collaborations with guest stars. That album was criticized for its use of AutoTune and other bad production choices. So it's better to hear those songs here, in my opinion.

The DVD was rather strange because the vast majority of it stuck to showing the concert, but they occasionally stuck in extra things not from the concert at all. For instance, there were a couple of songs featuring actress and singer Zooey Deschanel. But I didn't include them because they were recorded in a studio, not in this concert. I also cut out some interview segments between songs. Luckily, I managed to get rid of most of them without much trouble. But the song "Saturday Night" has "[edit]" in the name because some of the talking overlapped the start of the song. I got rid of that, as I usually do, with the UVR5 audio editing program.

I found a complete song list of the concert at setlist.fm, which you can see here:

Brian Wilson Concert Setlist at The Venetian Theatre, Las Vegas on December 12, 2014 | setlist.fm 

Both the CD and the DVD has some of the songs out of order, so I did some rearranging to get it as close to the actual concert as possible. Two more songs, "Pacific Coast Highway" and "Summer's Gone," appeared as DVD bonus tracks. When I first posted this, I couldn't find them. But a kind commenter had them and sent them to me, so I added them in. There still are some missing songs, however, including some great ones like "God Only Knows" and "Surfin' U.S.A."

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

01 Our Prayer (Brian Wilson)
02 Heroes and Villains (Brian Wilson)
03 Sloop John B (Brian Wilson with Al Jardine)
04 Dance, Dance, Dance (Brian Wilson)
05 Good Vibrations (Brian Wilson)
06 This Beautiful Day (Brian Wilson)
07 Don't Worry Baby (Brian Wilson with Sebu Simonian)
08 talk (Brian Wilson)
09 Marcella (Brian Wilson with Blondie Chaplin & Ricky Fataar)
10 talk (Brian Wilson with Blondie Chaplin & Ricky Fataar)
11 Wild Honey (Brian Wilson with Blondie Chaplin & Ricky Fataar)
12 Sail On, Sailor (Brian Wilson with Blondie Chaplin & Ricky Fataar)
13 Sail Away (Brian Wilson with Al Jardine, Blondie Chaplin & Ricky Fataar)
14 Half Moon Bay (Brian Wilson with Mark Isham)
15 Don't Talk [Put Your Head on My Shoulder] [Instrumental] (Brian Wilson with Mark Isham)
16 The Right Time (Brian Wilson with Al Jardine)
17 California Saga- California (Brian Wilson with Al Jardine)
18 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Brian Wilson with Al Jardine)
19 Help Me, Rhonda (Brian Wilson with Al Jardine)
20 talk (Brian Wilson)
21 Saturday Night [Edit] (Brian Wilson with Nate Ruess)
22 Hold On Dear Brother (Brian Wilson with Blondie Chaplin & Nate Ruess)
23 Darlin' (Brian Wilson)
24 Pacific Coast Highway (Brian Wilson)
25 talk (Brian Wilson)
26 Summer's Gone (Brian Wilson)
27 California Girls (Brian Wilson)
28 All Summer Long (Brian Wilson)
29 Fun, Fun, Fun (Brian Wilson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/x22YU9ao

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/et3AwKg21SxqTRI/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Monday, March 3, 2025

The Beach Boys - BBC In Concert, Mermaid Theatre, London, Britain, 9-24-2012

It seems that every musical act of reasonable popularity gets to perform for the BBC eventually. That's less so for American acts who don't make it over to Britain much, such as the Beach Boys. It seems they almost missed doing something special until decades after their heyday, when they did this concert in 2012. If it was just the Mike Love-led version of the band, bereft of nearly all original members, I wouldn't bother posting it. But in 2012, the Beach Boys had a legitimate reunion to celebrate their 50th anniversary as a band, putting out a very good new album called "That's Why God Made the Radio." So I'm posting this concert that took place shortly after the release of that album.

The Beach Boys were great for many years. But by 1997, founding brothers Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson had died, and the band's genius songwriter Brian Wilson had long ago left the band for a solo career. Founding member Mike Love kept the band going with lots of touring, but it was a nostalgic oldies act that just played the same hits over and over again. So it was a surprise in 2012 when all surviving members of importance reunited for a new album and tour: Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and David Marks. It was even more surprising to me when their new album of original material was so good.

Unfortunately, the reunion didn't last long. Love was making a very good living performing concerts with his version of the band, with only Johnston of the other long-time members taking part, and he wanted to get back to that without having to share the profits with the others. Plus, there were long standing tensions between Love and Wilson in particular. Despite strong demand for more albums and touring, the reunited band only did about 75 concerts. This one was the third to last one, with the reunion ending four days later. 

It's probable that the BBC edited this unreleased concert down to fit an hour-long time slot, as the BBC often does. If so, they probably cut out songs from the band's then-new album "That's Why God Made the Radio." There's only one song here from that, "Isn't It Time."

This album is an hour long.

01 talk (Beach Boys)
02 Do It Again (Beach Boys)
03 Catch a Wave (Beach Boys)
04 Surfin' Safari (Beach Boys)
05 talk (Beach Boys)
06 Please Let Me Wonder (Beach Boys)
07 Then I Kissed Her (Beach Boys)
08 talk (Beach Boys)
09 Isn't It Time (Beach Boys)
10 talk (Beach Boys)
11 Why Do Fools Fall in Love (Beach Boys)
12 Don't Worry Baby (Beach Boys)
13 talk (Beach Boys)
14 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
15 Heroes and Villains (Beach Boys)
16 God Only Knows (Beach Boys)
17 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Beach Boys)
18 California Girls (Beach Boys)
19 Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)
20 Help Me, Rhonda (Beach Boys)
21 Rock and Roll Music (Beach Boys)
22 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
23 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
24 Fun, Fun, Fun (Beach Boys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qXrJ8EGX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/vzxqoETNImuOO7N/file

The cover photo isn't from this exact concert, but it's close. It's from their next concert, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, on September 27, From left to right: Brian Wilson, David Marks, Mike Love and Al Jardine.

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Jamaica World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 11-26-1982, Part 6: The Beach Boys

The sixth and final set from the second day of the 1982 Jamaica World Music Festival was the Beach Boys. Keep in mind there's one more day of the festival after this, with another six musical acts.

The Beach Boys were great for most of the 1960s and 1970s, but by 1982, they were definitely in musical decline. One reason was the loss of Dennis Wilson, who was not only the band's drummer but also a key songwriter and lead vocalist. He had a lot of personal demons, and tried to fight them with an increasing level of drug abuse. He died in December 1983 by drowning, after blacking out in the ocean from drinking. But if he hadn't died then, he probably would have died soon thereafter, because he was on a downward spiral. Wikipedia's entry on him notes, "By the last year of his life, he had virtually lost his normal speaking voice, struggled to sing, and had forgotten how to play drums, often missing Beach Boys performances in the process." 

So given all that, I was surprised that not only was Dennis Wilson the drummer for this entire concert (he got mentioned by name a couple of times during the banter), but he certainly did a good job on drums. However, it's noteworthy that he didn't sing lead vocals on any songs, as far as I can tell. With his involvement here, I consider this possibly the last good recording of the "real," full Beach Boys. (True, Brian Wilson wasn't at this concert, but he rarely took part in their concerts.) Other band members would die or leave later, so even though the Beach Boys are still technically going as I write this in 2024, the band is but a shadow of its former self.

In the early 1980s, Dennis Wilson was far from the only band member having troubles, especially with drugs. They had effectively become an oldies act by this point. But, as an oldies act, they were firing on all cylinders in this concert, with a dizzying number of classic songs to perform. They managed to cram in a ton of them because they did a lot of partial versions in medleys.

Note, by the way, that this performance must have taken place very late at night. The night before, the Grateful Dead was the last act, and they didn't get on stage until about four in the morning. I'm sure it was similar with the Beach Boys. They made some passing references to how late it was in the banter between songs.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long.

087 talk (Beach Boys)
088 California Girls (Beach Boys)
089 I Can Hear Music (Beach Boys)
090 Sloop John B (Beach Boys)
091 Darlin' (Beach Boys)
092 Dance, Dance, Dance (Beach Boys)
093 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Beach Boys)
094 talk (Beach Boys)
095 In My Room (Beach Boys)
096 Do It Again (Beach Boys)
097 talk (Beach Boys)
098 409 (Beach Boys)
099 Shut You Down (Beach Boys)
100 The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Beach Boys)
101 Little Deuce Coupe (Beach Boys)
102 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
103 talk (Beach Boys)
104 Runaway (Beach Boys)
105 talk (Beach Boys)
106 God Only Knows (Beach Boys)
107 Come Go with Me (Beach Boys)
108 talk (Beach Boys)
109 Be True to Your School (Beach Boys)
110 talk (Beach Boys)
111 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
112 talk (Beach Boys)
113 All Summer Long (Beach Boys)
114 Help Me, Rhonda (Beach Boys)
115 talk (Beach Boys)
116 Rockin' All Over the World (Beach Boys)
117 Rock and Roll Music (Beach Boys)
118 talk (Beach Boys)
119 Surfin' Safari (Beach Boys)
120 Surf City (Beach Boys)
121 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
122 talk (Beach Boys)
123 Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)
124 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
125 Fun, Fun, Fun (Beach Boys)
126 talk (Beach Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17314991/VA-JmicaWrldMsicFstvlMntgoByJmica__11-26-1982Prt06BchBys_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mwdZWH99

The cover photo comes from this exact festival, though it probably was taken backstage. It only shows Carl Wilson, the band's lead guitarist and one of the key lead singers. By chance, this was the only good photo of anyone from the band, so I decided to use it, even though all the other band members are left out. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Palette program.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Thank You and Farewell - The Closing of the Fillmore East, Fillmore East, New York City, 6-27-1971, Part 5: The Beach Boys

This, the fifth album from the closing of the Fillmore East in New York City in 1971, is an extra special one. That's because although this has existed as a bootleg ever since the live broadcast on the radio, the recording has had serious flaws. But I believe I have mostly fixed them through the magic of audio editing. So one can hear how they really sounded for the very first time.

Before I describe the sound edits I made, I want to tell a story about some backstage intrigue relating to this concert.

First off, note that Chip Rachlin and Michael Klenfner were employees of Graham helping to run the Fillmore East. They also happened to be huge Beach Boys fans. Jack Rieley was the Beach Boys' manager. Also, note that the Beach Boys were considered very uncool at the time, since their earlier hits about cars and surfing were out of sync with rock music culture by 1971. Rachlin and Klenfner managed to convince Graham to let the Beach Boys play at Carnegie Hall in February 1971. That went very well, and helped restore the band's reputation a bit. They also had a guest spot during a Grateful Dead concert at the Fillmore East in April 1971. That helped their reputation some more. Bob Dylan watched that show from backstage, and was heard to exclaim, "They're fuckin' good, man!"

So, with all that in mind, when it came to this concert, according to Rachlin, "Jack Rieley nearly got [the Beach Boys] thrown off by insisting that they close the show, even though you had J. Geils there and you had the Allman Brothers there. The Beach Boys were lucky to be on the show and we had to work very hard to convince Bill (Graham) to put them on the show and then for Jack to take the idiotic position that they had to close the show. Klenfner showed his disgust with Jack in the lobby of the Fillmore, with the glittering lights and all the beautifully lit Fillmore posters. Klenfner threw Jack into a glass case and said he would kill him if he didn't change his mind… He told him 'If we go to Bill with this request he'll throw you out of the theater, so don't hurt the band by being such a jerk!' We won that one."

Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band, who closed the show, has a somewhat different account, where their demand did reach Graham. "Everyone wanted in on that gig. The Beach Boys showed up and unloaded all their stuff and said they'd have to play last, and Bill Graham said, 'Well, just pack up your shit. I have my closing band.' So the Beach Boys had to swallow their pride."

I'm guessing Rieley's demand did make it to Graham, but then Klenfner confronted Rieley and got him to back off. That makes sense and reconciles the two accounts.

Anyway, I think it's possible that someone sabotaged the recording of the Beach Boys for this conflict due to that behind the scenes dispute. This is just a guess, based on the fact that all the other acts sounded great on the live broadcast of the show, but the levels were seriously off for the vocals in the Beach Boys set. It seemed one microphone was fine, but other microphones were turned way, way down, to the point that the other vocals from the other microphones were almost inaudible at times. And of course multiple part harmonies were essential to the Beach Boys sound. This problem wasn't fixed for the entire duration of their set. So the bootleg of their set has been almost unlistenable, in my opinion. What was on there sounded perfectly fine, like a pristine soundboard, but large portions of the vocals were completely missing, including the lead vocals on some songs. At times, it almost sounded like a karaoke version of the band.

Luckily, nowadays, audio editing technology has progressed to the point that much of this problem could be fixed. I spent a lot of time and effort repairing this recording. The first thing I did was split all the songs into vocals and instruments. Then I boosted the vocals where that could help. In many cases, the vocals were there, just buried way down in the mix. Sometimes, I had to carefully fix the volume levels line by line, because they were highly variable. 

But in other cases, the vocals were so low that they were essentially gone. So I had to take more drastic measures. I isolated vocals from other Beach Boys concerts around this time, and I patched those in to replace the missing vocals. It was tricky because I had to match the pitch and speed, but I believe it worked nearly all the time. You be the judge. The songs where I did a lot of this are marked with "[Edit]" in their titles. For the others, just boosting up the existing vocals managed to fix things.

I could have done even more, there are still some missing vocals here and there, but I think that overall, the recording has been drastically changed for the better.

In my opinion, the band was still in a very creative mode. and they sounded very good here. Their next album, "Surf's Up," released in August 1971, would be one of their very best, in my opinion. However, they mostly stuck to their older hits, with only one song, "It's about Time," from their most recent album, and another one, "Student Demonstration Time," from their upcoming album "Surf's Up." (By the way, note that "Student Demonstration Time" is really just the 1950s classic "Riot in Cell Block No. 9" with different lyrics. The band messed up in this performance, singing the chorus to the original version, for almost every chorus.) One nice surprise was that the band also did an excellent cover of "Your Song" by Elton John, which had only been released a year earlier. The Beach Boys have never officially released any version of this song.

This album is 41 minutes long.

38 talk by Bill Graham (Beach Boys)
39 Heroes and Villains (Beach Boys)
40 Do It Again (Beach Boys)
41 Cotton Fields (Beach Boys)
42 Help Me, Rhonda (Beach Boys)
43 talk (Beach Boys)
44 Wouldn't It Be Nice [Edit] (Beach Boys)
45 talk (Beach Boys)
46 Your Song (Beach Boys)
47 talk (Beach Boys)
48 Student Demonstration Time [Riot in Cell Block No. 9] (Beach Boys)
49 talk (Beach Boys)
50 Good Vibrations [Edit] (Beach Boys)
51 talk (Beach Boys)
52 California Girls [Edit] (Beach Boys)
53 talk (Beach Boys)
54 I Get Around [Edit] (Beach Boys)
55 It's about Time [Edit] (Beach Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376040/VA-ThnkYounFrwll197105BchBys.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. However, the original was in black and white. I used the Palette program to convert it to color, then I used Photoshop to fix it up some more. Also, I added the blobs in the background, taken from a different photo of a light show. That roughly matches with images of the light show I saw in other photos from this concert. 

Finally, I'm pretty sure that, from right to left, that's Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, and Mike Love. The other band members weren't included in the photo. Also, drummer Dennis Wilson wasn't at the concert since he had badly injured his hand in an accident a couple of weeks earlier. He was temporarily replaced by a drummer named Mike Kowalski.

Monday, September 25, 2023

Live Aid - JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA, 7-13-1985, Part 2: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Judas Priest, Bryan Adams & The Beach Boys

Here's Part 2 of the Philadelphia portion of the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert. With this part, we generally get to bigger name acts than those in Part 1.

Later on in Live Aid, Crosby, Stills and Nash would reunite with Neil Young for a short Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young set. But first, they did a set just as Crosby, Stills and Nash. 

Next up was the heavy metal band Judas Priest. (I'll bet that was the only time CSN was followed on stage by a heavy metal band!) They were followed by Bryan Adams, then by the Beach Boys. Note that Brian Wilson, the genius who wrote most of the Beach Boys' hits, only occasionally played live with the band. But he did play Live Aid, since it was such a big occasion.

As with all the parts, I had to do a lot of work to get the recording to sound its best, including remixing the balance between vocals and the instruments for all the songs using UVR5. Also, sometimes I was able to find introductions to the musical acts, and sometimes I wasn't. As I explained previously, Live Aid wasn't professionally recorded, so sometimes when DJs talked over the introductions, they were lost. Sometimes, celebrities made the introductions. For this part, actor Jack Nicholson introduced Bryan Adams and Marilyn McCoo of the band the Fifth Dimension introduced the Beach Boys.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

027 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
028 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
029 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
030 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
031 Livin' After Midnight (Judas Priest)
032 talk (Judas Priest)
033 The Green Manalishi [With the Two-Pronged Crown] (Judas Priest)
034 talk (Judas Priest)
035 You've Got Another Thing Comin' (Judas Priest)
036 talk (Jack Nicholson)
037 Kids Wanna Rock (Bryan Adams)
038 talk (Bryan Adams)
039 Summer of 69 (Bryan Adams)
040 talk (Bryan Adams)
041 Tears Are Not Enough (Bryan Adams)
042 talk (Bryan Adams)
043 Cuts like a Knife (Bryan Adams)
044 talk (Bryan Adams)
045 talk (Marilyn McCoo)
046 California Girls (Beach Boys)
047 Help Me, Rhonda (Beach Boys)
048 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Beach Boys)
049 talk (Beach Boys)
050 Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)
051 talk (Beach Boys)
052 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
053 talk (Bill Graham)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CCG6sJr3 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/4xjOzfQNog1I1e8/file

For the cover, I generally noticed there are four big acts per album, so from here on in I'm dividing each cover into four parts so I can show all of them. All the photos are from Live Aid. Crosby, Stills and Nash are in the top left, Rob Halford of Judas Priest in the top right, Bryan Adams in the lower left, and Al Jardine, Mike Love, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys in the lower right.

Thursday, March 9, 2023

The Wild Honey Orchestra - Tribute to the Beach Boys. 1967 - 1977, Alex Theatre, Glendale, CA, 2-13-2016

Here's yet another concert from the Wild Honey Orchestra (WHO), that collection of mostly Los Angeles-based professional musicians. 

This time, the target of their tribute show is a little unexpected. The tribute is to the Beach Boys, but not that band's most popular era, in the early and mid-1960s when they had hits like "California Girls" and "Help Me, Rhonda." Instead, it focuses on the years 1967 to 1977. By that time, the band's resident genius was less involved. But the other band members stepped up with surprisingly strong songwriting efforts, leading to more variety. Personally, that's my favorite Beach Boys era, even though there were a lot fewer hits in those years.

The Beach Boys are an ideal tribute subject for the WHO, because their music sounded simple but actually was surprisingly complicated. How many bands of that era would use instruments like the glockenspiel and theramin? But the Beach Boys did. The WHO could have twenty or more musicians on stage at a time, and these songs were well rehearsed, so they were able to nail the arrangements while a carousel of different lead singers sang the songs.

This time around, the WHO was joined by one actual long-time member of the Beach Boys, Al Jardine. But his role was relatively small compared to that of John Sebastian at the WHO's Lovin' Spoonful tribute show. Jardine only sang three songs, two near the beginning and one at the end. David Marks was also there and sang one song. But his involvement with the Beach Boys was much less. He was a member of the band in its very early years, 1962 and 1963, then joined again for their 2012 reunion album and tour.

Other than them, it was mostly the "usual suspects." By now, I've noticed that certain people seem to have taken part in the WHO show every year, or at least most every year. People like Thomas Walsh of Pugwash, Susan Cowsill of the Cowsills, Syd Straw, Mike Mills of R.E.M., Micky Dolenz of the Monkees, Darian Sahanaja of the Wondermints, and so on.

The source for this bootleg is the same as the others, which means excellent sound quality. But there's the same quirk that it's only the songs and not much talking between songs, except usually giving out artist names at the end of each song. In fact, this time there are no banter tracks whatsoever. 

But on the plus side, there's a heck of a lot of music. This album is two hours and 17 minutes long, which I believe is the longest of the WHO shows I have recordings for.

Unfortunately, I only have one more WHO concert after this one, a 2016 tribute show for the Band. There are many more shows than that, including a 2022 Big Star tribute show, so let's hope quality bootlegs of more of them emerge. If you have any, please let me know.

By the way, the bootleg I found had a nice graphic included that shows which songs played were originally from which Beach Boys album. So I've included that in the zip file as well, and you can see it here.

01 Our Prayer (Wild Honey Vocal Group with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
02 Heroes and Villains (Al Jardine with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
03 California Saga- California (Al Jardine with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
04 Feel Flows (Thomas Walsh & Carnie Wilson with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
05 Country Air (Rachel Haden & Anna Waronker with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
06 This Whole World (Chris Price & Emeen Zarookian with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
07 Breakaway (John Wicks & Debbi Peterson with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
08 Sail On Sailor (Susan Cowsill with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
09 Add Some Music to Your Day (Willie Aron with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
10 Thoughts of You (Syd Straw with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
11 Let Us Go On This Way (Steve Wynn, Mike Mills & Linda Pitmon with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
12 Our Sweet Love (Steve Stanley with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
13 Be Still (Stephen Kalinich with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
14 Surf's Up (Skylar Gudasz & Brett Harris with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
15 Funky Pretty (Scott Bennett with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
16 Disney Girls (Rumer with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
17 'Til I Die (Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
18 The Trader (Rob Laufer with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
19 I Can Hear Music (Nick Guzman with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
20 Friends (Nelson Bragg & Carnie Wilson with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
21 Wonderful (Muffs with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
22 Busy Doin' Nothing (Mike Randle & Monique St. Walker with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
23 Be Here in the Mornin' (Mike Randle with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
24 WIld Honey (Micky Dolenz with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
25 Time to Get Alone (Matt Jardine with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
26 Wake the World (Jason Brewer with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
27 Little Bird (David Marks with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
28 Darlin' (Darian Sahanaja with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
29 Let the Wind Blow (Danny Henry with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
30 Marcella (Cosmo Topper with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
31 Only with You (Chris Price with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
32 Bluebirds Over the Mountain (Carla Olson with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
33 Pacific Ocean Blues (Bobby Figueroa & Carl B. Wilson with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
34 Lookin' at Tomorrow (Cindy Lee Berryhill with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
35 Forever (Billy Hinsche with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
36 Back Home (Bill Mumy with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
37 Day in the Life of a Tree (Andrew Sandoval with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
38 Long Promised Road (All Day Sucker with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
39 Honkin' Down the Highway (Al Jardine with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
40 Hold On Dear Brother (David Goodstein & Monique St. Walker with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
41 Good Vibrations (Probyn Gregory with the Wild Honey Orchestra)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Qrx17wqx

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/3bBPM9tImq65GYs/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/guGh7

I made the cover art from two sources. The top and bottom parts both come from promotional art for the show. I split that in two and made some other adjustments. In the middle, I put some artwork by someone named Thomas Leparskas. This is a collage of everyone who participated in the show.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

The Beach Boys - Party! - Expanded Version (1965)

"Party" by the Beach Boys is arguably the first "unplugged" style album. In 1965, the Beach Boys were taking their time recording their next album "Pet Sounds." But they'd been churning out more than one album a year, and their record company wanted more product. So as a stop-gap measure, the band recorded a bunch of songs, mostly covers, in an acoustic style in the studio. Then they've overdubbed some banter by friends and family to make it sound as if the whole thing had been spontaneously recorded at a party. It worked. The album was a big hit, and it contained the hit "Barbara Ann" as well.

In 2015, the album was re-released in greatly expanded form as "Beach Boys' Party: Uncovered and Unplugged," with 81 tracks. That's way too many tracks for my tastes, since the vast majority were just slightly different versions of the same bunch of songs. But this version did contain seven outtakes of unique songs. So I'm posting the original album in full, with the extra songs at the end. That's the best way to do it in my opinion, because the songs flow into each other due to all the banter and noises between the songs.

Although this was designed as a stop-gap measure, it's a really fun album in its own right, in my opinion. The original version was only 31 minutes long. It's a more satisfying listen with the extra songs, making it a 46 minute long album instead.

01 Hully Gully (Beach Boys)
02 I Should Have Known Better (Beach Boys)
03 Tell Me Why (Beach Boys)
04 Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow (Beach Boys)
05 Mountain of Love (Beach Boys)
06 You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beach Boys)
07 Devoted to You (Beach Boys)
08 Alley Oop (Beach Boys)
09 There's No Other [Like My Baby] (Beach Boys)
10 I Get Around - Little Deuce Coupe (Beach Boys)
11 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Beach Boys)
12 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
13 Ruby Baby (Beach Boys)
14 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Beach Boys)
15 The Artist [Laugh at Me] (Beach Boys)
16 California Girls (Beach Boys)
17 One Kiss Led to Another (Beach Boys)
18 Riot in Cell Block No. 9 (Beach Boys)
19 Blowin' in the Wind (Beach Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376725/TBECHBYS1965cPrtyExpndd_atse.zip.html

I kept the original cover. The only change I made was that I added the words "Expanded Edition" in the same font as the original.

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Dennis Wilson - Bambu - Alternate Version (1979)

I wasn't sure whether to post this album or not, because it's kind of been officially released. But then again, kind of not. (I'll explain more below.) But before I leave the Beach Boys' 1970s music, I decided to post this after all. I figure if I don't, many people are likely to overlook it.

Before I go on, let me make clear that Dennis Wilson was one of the original members of the Beach Boys, if you don't know that already. He was the brother to the band's main songwriter, Brian Wilson, and also brother to arguably the band's best singer, Carl Wilson. At first, for most of the 1960s, Dennis was mostly along for the ride as the band's drummer. But he slowly developed into an excellent singer and songwriter. He was very much in a similar role as George Harrison of the Beatles though, because the other members of the band didn't fully appreciate his talents and usually only allotted him one or two songs per album. He put out one solo album in 1977,  "Pacific Ocean Blue." It's great. In my opinion it's easily the best solo album by any of the Beach Boys, including being better than any of Brian Wilson's many solo albums. But it was little noticed at the time, though it has slowly gained a following over the decades.

Dennis attempted to record a follow-up solo album, to be called "Bambu." (Apparently that was named after cigarette rolling paper and not the Asian plant.) It was more or less finished in 1979. But he was a tortured soul, and his life was slowly falling apart, helped along by lots and lots of drugs. He never got his act together enough to definitively finish it and release it. Things spiraled further down for him after that. He died at the end of 1983 due to drowning while drunk, but if that didn't kill him something else probably would have before long, because his life was so out of control by then. 

Now, let me explain when I said this album has kind of been officially released. In 2008, a deluxe edition of "Pacific Ocean Blue" came out, and all of "Bambu" was included as a second disc. Then, in 2017, a vinyl album version of "Bambu" was released for a limited time as part of that year's Record Store Day. So it's out there, but you couldn't go out and buy just that album in a store today. 

To make matters worse, the 2008 and 2017 versions are different, with differing song orders and a few songs on one but not the other, and vice versa. Personally, I think both versions are imperfect. The main issue for me is they have some songs, mostly instrumentals, that aren't as good as the rest, such as "Common," "Album Tag Song," and "Piano Variations on Thoughts of You." I've honed it down to what would have made the best album of 45 minutes or less, which was the typical length of that era.

Note that I also didn't include "Love Surrounds Me," because it was included on the 1979 Beach Boys album "L.A. (Light Album)." He also donated "Baby Blue" to that album. However, there's an alternate version to that song that's pretty good and somewhat different, so I've added that at the end as a quasi-bonus track.

Also, I've included a slightly different version of "Constant Companion" from a bootleg. Most of it is identical to the official version, but there's an extra instrumental section that's about 15 seconds long at the end.

A lot of people think that everything good the Beach Boys did was due to the genius of Brian Wilson. And while Brian undoubtedly was a genius, most of the band's songs after 1967 were written by other band members. In a better world, the Beach Boys could have been mainly led by Dennis Wilson from the mid-1970s onwards, if his personal demons hadn't gotten the best of him. As Fleetwood Mac songwriter Lindsey Buckingham said of him, "I knew him pretty well... He was crazy, just like a lot of other people, but he had a really big heart, and he was the closest thing to Brian there was too. He was halfway there."

If you're not aware of Dennis Wilson's solo work already, I hope you'll check this out, and also listen to "Pacific Ocean Blue."

01 Under the Moonlight (Dennis Wilson)
02 It's Not Too Late (Dennis Wilson)
03 Love Remember Me (Dennis Wilson)
04 Wild Situation (Dennis Wilson)
05 Are You Real (Dennis Wilson)
06 He's a Bum (Dennis Wilson)
07 Cocktails (Dennis Wilson)
08 I Love You (Dennis Wilson)
09 Constant Companion [Alternate Version] (Dennis Wilson)
10 Time for Bed (Dennis Wilson)
11 All Alone (Dennis Wilson)
12 Mexico [Edit] [Instrumental] (Dennis Wilson)
13 Baby Blue [Alternate Version] (Dennis Wilson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700626/TBECHBYS1979_BmbuAlternte_atse.zip.html

The album cover is the same as the 2017 version, mostly. I tweaked with the contrast to make it sharper. I also removed the text "The Caribou Sessions" from under the word "Bambu," since I thought that was unnecessary.

Saturday, May 1, 2021

The Beach Boys - Full Sail - Non-Album Tracks (1979-1981)

I've been posting Beach Boys stray tracks albums off and on for quite some time now. For the 1960s and early 1970s, they only consisted of songs not on the band's studio albums. From the mid-1970s onwards though, their albums were so hit and miss that I've made these albums from every good song I could find, on their albums or not. 

With this album, I feel like I've come to the end of an era. In terms of releasing new music, the Beach Boys started going downhill after their 1973 album "Holland." All through the rest of the 1970s though, they continued to put out enough good music for nearly an album a year, if only they'd done a better job of figuring out which songs were worthy of their albums. However, after about 1980, they basically became an oldies band that made money through concerts. They didn't put out as much music as before, and what they did often was really bad. I still plan on posting more stray tracks albums after this one, but it'll be rough going finding the occasional good songs among many bad ones.

That said, they still were decent through the time period featured here. In 1979, they released the album "L.A. (Light Album)." I have four songs from that here, plus two more songs from it on the previous stray tracks album. (I also included a live version of "Angel Come Home" that I find superior to the "L.A. (Light Album)" version.) In 1980, they released the album "Keepin' the Summer Alive." I only have four songs from that total, all of them here. Furthermore, I've added five more non-album songs, three of them still unreleased. So yeah, you basically have to pick the best from two albums plus a bunch of other songs to get one decent album. This isn't a lost "Pet Sounds" masterpiece by any means. But had they put out an album much like this around 1980, I think it would have been much better received.

A couple of the unreleased songs are interesting enough for further comment. "Stevie," in my opinion, is a really good song, sounding like the Beach Boys in their prime. It turns out it's a song about Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks. It seems Brian Wilson had a bit of a crush on her from afar. I suspect the reason the song wasn't released then was because of the somewhat embarrassing subject matter. It's been reported that it was seriously considered for inclusion on the 2013 box set "Made in California," but didn't quite make it. Perhaps Wilson was still embarrassed, and nixed it?

The other unreleased song I want to mention is "Oh Lord." This powerfully emotional song was much better than anything on an album like "Keepin' the Summer Alive." Apparently, it was written too late to be considered for that album. But it's been reported a full Beach Boys version was done for their next album, the 1985 album simply called "The Beach Boys." That's a terrible album, and this song would have stuck out like a sore thumb on it. But still, it would be interesting to hear the full band version someday.

01 Country Pie (Mike Love & Celebration)
02 Lady Lynda (Beach Boys)
03 Night Bloomin' Jasmine (Brian Wilson)
04 Full Sail (Beach Boys)
05 Angel Come Home (Beach Boys)
06 Love Surrounds Me (Beach Boys)
07 Sumahama (Beach Boys)
08 Goin' On (Beach Boys)
09 Livin' with a Heartache (Beach Boys)
10 Santa Ana Winds (Beach Boys)
11 Endless Harmony (Beach Boys)
12 Stevie [Edit] (Brian Wilson with Dennis Wilson)
13 Oh Lord (Brian Wilson & Dennis Wilson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17168583/TBECHBYS1979-1981FllSail_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NA7TfZ98

I believe the album cover dates to 1976. That doesn't quite fit the time period here, but I used it because it fits the album title so well. It's a rather low res photo though, and it seems to have some color and contrast issues that I can't entirely fix. If anyone can find a better version, please let me know, so I can replace it.

UPDATE: On September 27, 2024, I used the program Krea AI to upgrade the image. That fixed the issues I had.

Monday, December 21, 2020

The Beach Boys - Paramount Theater, New York City, 11-26-1993

I love the Beach Boys, but as far as I'm concerned, nearly all their great stuff is from the 1960s and 70s. They haven't done much that's musically worthy after about 1980. But there are a few exceptions, and when it comes to a recording of an entire concert, this one from 1993 could actually be the best of their entire career.

There are a few reasons for that. I do prefer their live recordings from their peak years in the 60s and 70s, but all the best recordings I know of are either short or incomplete. (I plan on posting some collections of their best live stuff from those years.) This concert is usually long for the band, at just over two hours.

Critically, the sound quality is absolutely fantastic. It's a pristine soundboard, so pristine that one can barely hear the audience at all. I considered trying boosting the volume of the audience reactions to songs, but there simply wasn't enough to work with. I've decided instead to enjoy it as it is, as if it was an entire concert performed for a soundcheck. The sound is so incredible, it beats the pants even off most of their official live material!

Not only that, but it happens to have been recorded at a remarkably fortuitous time. In 1993, the band released their great "Good Vibrations" box set. To celebrate that release, they played only nine shows in which they dug deeper into their back catalog and played songs to celebrate the box set release. If you look at the set lists from other shows they did in 1993, they played more songs from their recent albums, which generally were terrible. This only has a single new song from their most recent album at the time, "Still in Paradise."

Even better, the early 1990s was the time when the "unplugged" trend was all the rage. Perhaps due to that trend, they did portions of the concert in a semi-acoustic format, which was a very rare thing for the band.

In terms of personnel, there were four surviving original Beach Boys in the concert: Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston. (Brian Wilson technically was a band member, but for the vast majority of the band's existence he hasn't played with them on stage.) In my opinion, the presence of Carl Wilson is critical. He probably was the best singer in the band (which is saying a lot!), and sang lead vocals on some of their best songs, such as "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations." He died of cancer in 1998, but he still sounded a great as he ever did here.

By the way, two performances here have been officially released: "Caroline, No" and "You Still Believe in Me." I'm still including those, though, so you can hear the full concert just as it was. The only editing I did was I boosted the volume for some of the banter between songs, and I cut out some of the guitar tuning and other dead air.

01 California Girls (Beach Boys)
02 I Can Hear Music (Beach Boys)
03 Come Go with Me (Beach Boys)
04 talk (Beach Boys)
05 Rock and Roll Music (Beach Boys)
06 Do You Wanna Dance (Beach Boys)
07 talk (Beach Boys)
08 In My Room (Beach Boys)
09 Do It Again (Beach Boys)
10 talk (Beach Boys)
11 Catch a Wave (Beach Boys)
12 Hawaii (Beach Boys)
13 talk (Beach Boys)
14 Darlin' (Beach Boys)
15 talk (Beach Boys)
16 Be True to Your School (Beach Boys)
17 talk (Beach Boys)
18 Under the Boardwalk (Beach Boys)
19 talk (Beach Boys)
20 Little Deuce Coupe (Beach Boys)
21 409 (Beach Boys)
22 Shut Down (Beach Boys)
23 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
24 talk (Beach Boys)
25 California Dreamin' (Beach Boys)
26 Summer in Paradise (Beach Boys)
27 talk (Beach Boys)
28 Heroes and Villains (Beach Boys)
29 talk (Beach Boys)
30 Vega-Tables (Beach Boys)
31 Take a Load Off Your Feet (Beach Boys)
32 talk (Beach Boys)
33 Little Saint Nick (Beach Boys)
34 talk (Beach Boys)
35 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
36 Hushabye (Beach Boys)
37 talk (Beach Boys)
38 Add Some Music (Beach Boys)
39 talk (Beach Boys)
40 Their Hearts Were Full of Spring (Beach Boys)
41 All This Is That (Beach Boys)
42 Wonderful (Beach Boys)
43 talk (Beach Boys)
44 Disney Girls [1957] (Beach Boys)
45 Caroline, No (Beach Boys)
46 You Still Believe in Me (Beach Boys)
47 God Only Knows (Beach Boys)
48 Sloop John B (Beach Boys)
49 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Beach Boys)
50 Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)
51 Kokomo (Beach Boys)
52 Help Me, Rhonda (Beach Boys)
53 talk (Beach Boys)
54 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
55 Fun, Fun, Fun (Beach Boys)
56 Surfin' Safari (Beach Boys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/L152PpM8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0iF4oo1teDystUn/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/eACdb

I had a heck of a hard time finding a good photo to use for the cover art. I couldn't find any good ones of the band from 1993. I ended up using the cover of a bootleg of this concert. I don't know where the photo they used comes from, but it looks to be from the early 1990s. PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" helped me by replacing the text at the bottom. Otherwise, it's exactly the same as the bootleg cover.

Thursday, October 29, 2020

The Beach Boys - It's a Beautiful Day - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1979)

Here's the next in my long series of stray tracks albums for the Beach Boys. 

Their official studio albums in the late 1970s were very spotty, so I'm taking the good songs from those. The band's material came down a lot in quality from their earlier peaks like "Pet Sounds," but they were still putting out a lot of good stuff in this era. Brian Wilson still had flashes of brilliance, and his brother Dennis Wilson in particular was hitting a creative peak. 

Unfortunately, they were making big missteps too. For instance, their 1978 album "L.A. (Light Album)" was ruined by the inclusion of an 11 minute long disco version of their previously released song "Here Comes the Night." Ugh! But if you separate the wheat from the chaff, this is actually a pretty good album.

In my opinion, a big part of the reason the late 1970s are not considered a good time for the Beach Boys was that they made terrible decisions about what to include or not include on their albums. "Here Comes the Night" was just one of several really bad clunkers they put on. Meanwhile, they left off lots of good songs. This album includes two songs that remain unreleased, plus another four that only came out as rarities at the time (such as a song on the soundtrack to the movie "Americathon"), or were put on archival releases much later. Six songs can make a world of difference between a good album and a bad one.

Note that I'm not including any songs from the two Dennis Wilson late 1970s solo albums, "Pacific Ocean Blue" and "Bambu." That's because they're solid albums and any Beach Boys fans should have both of them. I think they're the best solo albums by any members of the band, including Brian Wilson. ("Bambu" was never quite finished, and was only officially released decades later.)

I also only have two songs from the band's 1979 album "L.A. (Light Album)." I'll have more of that on the next album in this series. They continued to make good music as a bad through 1979 and 1980, and then pretty much dropped off a cliff after that.

01 California Feelin' (Beach Boys)
02 Winds of Change (Beach Boys)
03 Winter Symphony (Beach Boys)
04 Come Go with Me (Beach Boys)
05 Pitter Patter (Beach Boys)
06 Kona Coast (Beach Boys)
07 My Diane (Beach Boys)
08 Sad, Sad Summer (Mike Love & Celebration)
09 Angel Come Home (Beach Boys)
10 Goin' to the Beach (Beach Boys)
11 It's a Beautiful Day (Beach Boys)
12 Lookin' Down the Coast (Beach Boys)
13 Baby Blue (Beach Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376783/TBECHBYS1978-1979ItsaButfulDy_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a promotional picture of the band from the late 1970s, but I'm not sure about the exact year.