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.
Thanks a lot!
ReplyDeleteNice to see "Beautiful Day" getting some lovin'. It's one of my fave's from one of my favorite soundtracks. Almost a great album on it's own, with it's own miss steps. (Does the world really need two Yoko's?)
ReplyDeleteL.A. is actually a pretty solid album, certainly much better than "15 Big Ones" or "M.I.U.". And even the disco version of "Here Comes The Night" isn't bad per se, production-wise it's actually pretty good (using all the hallmarks of a disco production) even if it was about two to three years late to the party (well, Beach Boys and hipness never really matched). Oh, and the fact that it's a mind-numbing eleven minutes long. At half that length that number would have still offended some folks but would probably have come off much better...
ReplyDeleteHey Paul, talking about the relative merits of "Here Comes The Night" got me thinking - and working.
ReplyDeleteI had thought about reworking L.A. and now finally did it.
So I got to the first order of the day - get out all the boring and redundant stuff out of "Here Comes The Night". So the long and boring intro gets chopped in half and the last three minutes which are essentially a long, repetive coda of moments already heard also need to go. Since the opening felt incomplete I created a new one. But the dynamics of the song, which is actually quite well built, stay the same. So "Here Comes The Night" now gets the job done in about half the time which seems much more reasonable.
The one outside track I decided to bring in the mix is "It's Not Too Late" from Dennis' long-gestating and never finished Bambu album because it's simply magnificent. And since the sentiments and voices of Dennis & Carl in this and "Baby Blue" are so complimentary I decided to combine them into a single song.
The other big change is Carl's songs. I always found the saxophone in "Full Sail" way too MOR, so it had to go. Plus, again the sentiments of both this and "Full Sail" always felt so complementary that I combined these into one track, together with a little coda.
So both album sides (in old vinyl terms) close with a suite.
Anyway, if you feel like checking out my alternative version of L.A., it's right here.
https://workupload.com/archive/agZHWJRZ