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.imagenetz.de/gRhLj

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.