Sunday, September 30, 2018

The Beach Boys - The Fading Rock Group Revival - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1969)

Today, the "Albums Back from the Dead" blog posted a couple of "lost" Beach Boys albums. That reminded me to post my own versions of such.

The typical "lost" Beach Boys albums focus on 1969 or 1970 or thereabouts, because the band went through various versions of albums under various proposed names that got rejected by their record company. "Landlocked" is a particularly popular title for this, even though that was pretty much just the name for the "Surf's Up" album before the song "Surf's Up" was added to it.

I'm taking a somewhat different approach, which is usually how I approach major artists with lots of stray tracks. I'm not so interested in hearing historically accurate "what if" albums as I am gathering up all the good stray tracks and making coherent albums out of them, even if the track listing wasn't exactly something the band envisioned.

And so it is here. Although I'm using one of the lost album titles, I'm just gathering up all the good non-album songs from 1967 to 1969 and putting them on one album, ordered chronologically by year. I don't start earlier because "Pet Sounds" and "Smile" are huge things that are big projects in and of themselves, and I'm not such a big fan of their music prior to 1966. (While I think the early Beach  Boys have many great songs, there are many songs from then that I don't like, and I haven't seen anything close to an album's worth of rare tracks.)

Anyway, with that premise in mind, I found 43 minutes worth of good songs from 1967 to 1969. 1970 is probably the peak of good stray tracks for the band, because I plan to follow this with an album just covering that year.

By the way, I should mention that one song, "Ol' Man River," uses a special edit, which was made by Scott G. of the blog "Alternative Albums and More." There are various recorded snippets of the Beach Boys doing that song, but none of them felt like a proper song. For instance, the version on the "Made in California" box set is only one minute and twenty seconds long. He stitched the snippets together to make something coherent that lasts a full four minutes.

01 The Letter (Beach Boys)
02 Can't Wait Too Long (Beach Boys)
03 You're Welcome (Beach Boys)
04 With a Little Help from My Friends (Beach Boys)
05 Mona Kana [Instrumental] (Beach Boys)
06 A Time to Live in Dreams (Beach Boys)
07 Love Affair [Demo] (Beach Boys)
08 The Gong (Beach Boys)
09 Well You Know I Knew (Beach Boys)
10 My Little Red Book (Beach Boys)
11 Soulful Old Man Sunshine (Beach Boys)
12 I'm Going Your Way [California Slide] (Beach Boys)
13 San Miguel (Beach Boys)
14 Where Is She (Beach Boys)
15 Break Away (Beach Boys)
16 Celebrate the News (Beach Boys)
17 Ol' Man River [Long Version] (Beach Boys)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mCpYk

The cover was made by Picassoson as a mock cover for an imagined "Carry Me Home" single. I changed the text of the title.

8 comments:

  1. I'd think that You're Welcome would be better as the secret closer to SMiLE after Surf's Up

    Other than that, good album!!

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    1. Thanks. I've tried to steer clear of Smile, since it's a big can of worms. I prefer to listen to reconstructions that other people have made (including Brian Wilson's 2004 version) than make my own.

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  2. So many great, non-album Beach Boys tracks. They might be the kings of unreleased gold and bad decisions hah!
    Here's a '65-'69 (up to where yours cuts off right before "Where Is She") looking at my sessionography:
    1. Guess I'm Dumb (Glenn Campbell w/ The Beach Boys)
    2. Graduation Day
    3. Three Blind Mice
    4. Trombone Dixie
    5. Hang Onto Your Ego
    6. He Gives Speeches
    7. You're With Me Tonight (Fast Version)
    8. Cool, Cool Water (First Version)
    9. Hide Go Seek
    10. Lonely Days
    11. Tune L
    12. Walk On By
    13. We're Together Again
    14. Sail Plane Song
    15. I'm Going Your Way (California Slide)
    16. Loop De Loop
    17. Walkin'
    18. Games Two Can Play

    It's funny, the later on it gets, the weirder it gets.. but I love weird Brian Wilson!

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    1. Thanks for that list. I just posted my 1970 Beach Boys album. As I said in that post, I think the glory years for that band were 1966 to 1973. I'm not really interested in stray tracks from before then, since I don't even like a lot of the album tracks. I think they were very hit or miss up until about the "Today" album.

      Re: your list, I actually have some of the songs on it already on my 1967 to 1969 album, such as "I'm Going Your Way" and "We're Together Again." And others are on the 1970 album, like "Games Two Can Play" and "Loop de Loop" which is the same song as "Sail Plane Song." I think the only things from your list that I'm missing that isn't from before 1967 is "Walk on By," which I didn't include because it's really just a snippet less than a minute long, as` "Walkin'" which I simply didn't feel was strong enough.

      By the way, I have a 1971 to 1973 stray tracks album coming next.

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  3. Nice! I like your original take

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  4. Hello, at this moment none of the links about Beach Boys is working.

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    1. Hmmm. I just checked that link, and it's still working for me. Perhaps you're in Britain? I understand Zippyshare links aren't working there lately.

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