A Cork on the Ocean: Beach Boys and Wilson Brothers song-by-song

Two comedy tracks today.

Today’s first song, or track, is “Surf’s Up: Talking Horns.”


An excerpt from a session that actually saw quite a lot of weird, very avant garde music made that was not included on The SMiLE Sessions box set, but which can be found sometimes on YouTube. This track was recorded on November 7th, 1966, a session at which Brian overdubbed horns onto track of the first movement of “Surf's Up.”

 

Today’s second song, or track, is “Vegatables Promo”.

This was made from three sessions: “the “Vegetables Argument” was recorded on November 16th, 1966. Part of a much longer track that evolved into a serious conversation between Hal Blaine and Brian about astrology, which is not released.

At the end, there’s an excerpt from “Vegatables Chant”, which was recorded a few days earlier, on November 11th, 1966, a session which saw the players ordering ice cream while Brian played “Good Vibrations” in the style of an ice cream truck, and also saw the recording of “Brian Falls Into a Microphone” and “Brian Falls into a Piano.” The backing track is of course the instrumental track to “Fade for Vegetables.”

Arguments, features mostly Michael Vosse, Hal Blaine and Brian Wilson, while the chant at the end is performed by Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, Danny Hutton, Michael Vosse, and “Bob.” (Norberg?)

"Vegetables Promo" was released on Hawthorne, CA in 2001.

A sessions extract from the "Vegetables Arguments" called "Hal Blaine Vega-Tables Promo Session" was released on The SMiLE Sessions in 2011.

By the way, I believe the "argument" is not Brian and Hal Blaine, but Michael Vosse and Hal Blaine. Brian directed and produced the thing.

 

Session extract:

 

It works better if you put it on a loop and subject yourself to it for a month.

 

Also today The SMiLE Sessions, the archival release from 2011.

This was released in three configurations: a 2-CD form, a5CD+2 vinyl LP+2 vinyl 45s form, and a 2 vinyl LP form. Later, a 1 CD version (comprising the first CD of the other two configurations) was released in Europe.

Note: we've already rrated the Linnett/Boyd "reconstruction", but this is for the entire album, it its archival aspect.

 

Surf's Up Talking Horns
Good move not releasing this. I'll bump it up slightly from a 1 to applaud that decision
Rating 1.1

Vegetables Promo
Very slightly amusing- better than most of their "comedy"
Rating 1.5

 

The Smile Sessions
I love the Smile material enough to have streamed this once in its entirety. Glad to have heard itnl all, don't need to hear it all again. I'm sure it is a great thing for some people but I don't need more than 2 cds of it at most and really the single cd is most appealing. I dislike them making you spring for vinyl to get the 5 cds.
5 cds & vinyl - Rating 3
2 cds - Rating 4

 

Surf’s Up: Talking Horns 0/5

Vegetables Promo 0/5

The SMiLE Sessions, the archival release from 2011 5/5

The first two I don’t find the least bit interesting at all. Possibly the Vegetables promo I can listen to every once in awhile but I just don’t find it funny at all.

The Smile Sessions is one of the all-time archival releases. I remember reading that this was gonna be released and I ordered it on Amazon and took the day off the day it was to be delivered. I had hoped it would be delivered early in the morning but no such luck and I didn’t get it till that evening. I opened it up though, I had the big box edition and I just held it and stared at it and I became emotional. My ex-wife(wife then) didn’t understand how much this music meant to me. I looked at all the bits and just smiled. I started uploading the discs to my iTunes and putting them on my iPod. Once that was done I started listening and reading the booklets. I loved it all. I hate that I don’t have that box anymore mostly for the vinyl that came with it. Just an amazing release.

 

Surf’s Up: Talking Horns

3/5 ? Like it's cool to hear

 

Tomorrow, I’m going to start holding up songs from Smiley Smile.



Brian and Marilyn moved into their new mansion at Bel Air, on Belaggio Drive in April. In the new home, a gated mansion in a gated community in the hills, many of the “drainers”, as Marilyn called them, fell out of Brian’s life and the wild drug-fuelled party that had been their existence for the previous two years began to finally die down, though substance abuse would continue to figure deeply in Brian’s life.

The walls of privacy came down around him, his family and The Beach Boys. To some extent Brian Wilson has been shrouded in mystery ever since.

Outside, the legal problems between Capitol and The Beach Boys were still going on, and Carl was still facing potential prison time for refusing, for religious reasons, to go and kill and die in Vietnam on religious grounds. And the long weariness of overuse of amphetamines, psychedelic drugs and ongoing mental illness combined with the loss the original inspiration that had led to so much work on SMiLE had just brought Brian to the breaking point. He decided, actually, not to abort the already legendary album, but to put it to the side and finish it later. In fact, as late as September, Bruce told an interviewer that he thought SMiLE would be out in December ’67 and Brian may still have been toying with the idea of finishing it throughout the year and into the next.

The Beatles'celebrated album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in late May, not long before the Beach Boys began recording the new album. For the first time, Brian doesn’t seem to have been interested in taking inspiration from his friendly rivals, and instead set off on his own path of self-expression.

Brian seems to have had the realisation that making music to compete in the pop market was not necessarily what he wanted to do anymore. What he wanted to do is make music that turned him on and expressed his being. Which is not to say that commercial success didn’t matter to him. But he simply didn’t want to — or couldn’t make himself — travel down that particular path of burning ambition and desire that had resulted in so much success any longer. The High Period over, thus began the next phase of the Beach Boys and particularly Brian Wilson: what I call the “indie pop” period.

As the hipsters and pseudo-intellectuals he had called friends began to disappear from his life one by one, Brian fell back on his family and decided he wanted to involve the other Beach Boys in the recording of a new and long overdue album that The Beach Boys they still owed Capitol. He could write a few songs with Mike, which would make him happy and he could go back to using Carl as his lieutenant in the studio as he had been doing regularly prior to Pet Sounds. Harmony seems to have been what he was going for, harmony between his professional, artistic and personal life.

Furthermore, he wanted to record in his big, new, comfortable home. Brian had already built a demo studio in the house and he decided that the new album could be recorded there. Of course this presented technical challenges. To overcome these The Beach Boys rented an 8 track recording unit and Brian, his brothers, Mike and Al would record all over the house: in the echo-ey, drained swimming pool, in showers, in the living room. And, with well over a year since they had delivered their last album, it really had to be done quickly.


At the beginning of June, Brian had a piano tuner tune, or detune, his piano to specific notes, singing the notes he wanted the keys to sound like, so that they would have a slightly off, chorus-like effect, a sound which would become a feature on the next several Beach Boys albums. He also bought a big white Baldwin organ whose sound he loved, and that would also play a big role in the album’s unusual sound.

Brian was still recording modularly and most of the album was made from fragments of backing tracks copied and taped together, but the renewed sense of intention to record this new album quickly meant that little or none of the indecision and experimenting that had characterised the long, stressful SMiLE era would burden the new project. Some songs might have a couple of different versions or mixes, but they all pretty much done together in the moment. Smiley Smile was a clearing out of the detritus of the last era, in a way that Brian enjoyed, ultimately to make room for new inspiration.

The Beach Boys were free for the first summer since 1963, and didn’t play any live concerts at this time; and this and the fact that recording at home was cheap meant that Smiley Smile was recorded in many sessions, mostly by The Beach Boys themselves, with only a few guests; but all in a relatively compact period of time: the album was made in about 26 sessions from June 3rd to July 20th, 1967. During this time Brian celebrated his 25th birthday.

Recording Smiley Smile was meant to be a fun affair, and it was. By now, Carl, Dennis and Mike were avid marijuana smokers and they all enjoyed their time together making the album for their own record company, BRI, without Capitol executives breathing down their necks. It was a harmonious affair — still almost entirely produced by Brian Wilson, but informed by the others’ humor and the band's goofy character. Al, by most reports, did not partake in the pot-smoking, or if he did, it was only a few times in an experimental manner, but still contributed to the album. Bruce, however was uncomfortable with the atmosphere at the recordings, and, finding it hard to relate to the others, was absent for most if not all of the album’s recording and began to contemplate going solo as he worked on side projects or basked in the sun on an extended vacation in southern Europe.

Despite the relative speed in which Smiley Smile was recorded, and the seemingly tossed-off nature of it, analysis reveals that Brian’s attention to production detail remained intact and he continued to innovate in production methods on the studiedly minimalistic album. While it might be tempting to see Smiley Smile as the downswing of the manic period he had gone through during the SMiLE period, Brian remained his energetic, dynamic and dictatorial self in the home studio as a producer, and despite the seemingly tossed off veneer of the album, he was as perfectionist as ever.

Most of the album was engineered by Jim Lockert, a veteran engineer who had cut his teeth in Nashville before moving to L.A. It was during this time that the Beach Boys also started working with Stephen Desper, who Brian commissioned to record running water that he could splice at certain pitches, program into a keyboard and make music for an avant garde album from samples of the water. (I don’t think this ever ended up being made.)

Desper also assisted Lockert as an engineer and acted at as gopher in Brian’s large house. The home studio at this time was a simple, hastily set up affair and not the state of the art facility it would become later in the year.

Outside the warm, smoky environs of Brian’s house, life was continuing. While recording Smiley Smile, the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival occurred. Brian was on the board of directors of the festival, and The Beach Boys were meant to headline one of the days of the festival, June 14th, or 13th(?). In fact, Derek Taylor was employing his considerable skills hyping the event into one of the most momentous musical watershed events of the Baby Boom generation.

While there was a break in the recording for a few days around this time, The Beach Boys ended up not showing up to the festival. Different reasons have been given for this, including:

1. Bruce wasn’t around or refused to play for the festival, either because of it’s countercultural implications or, more likely, because it was not paid gig; and the band was not prepared to play without him, Brian not having played a full show for over two years
2. Brian was afraid that the band would not be seen as cool enough by festival-goers. While Brian was pretty fine with not being a hipster anymore, his insecurities and stage-fright remained.
3. Carl, embroiled in a legal battle with the US government, may not have wanted to draw too much attention to himself at a festival that would doubtless attract a certain radical anti-war element.

Whatever the reason was, and it may have been all of those reasons, The Beach Boys no-show insulted chairman and organizer Jann Wenner, the influential bloodsucker critic, who would later write a scathing, withering put down of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, the narrative of which mindless sheep music fans still, the source long forgotten or unknown, parrot to this day.

Furthermore, as their lawyers continued to fight their legal battles at the end of June, Dennis’s wife Carol filed for divorce after two years of an marriage that had been characterised by extreme ups and downs, due to Dennis’s by now full-blown addictions to sex and adrenaline, his unhealthy generosity, and his deepening substance abuse; and his angry accusation, after one of their horses had died of pneumonia, that she had deliberately starved it to death was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

But none of this really affected the music much: Dennis was not always present on the album, but that had been standard operating procedure anyway since the Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) era. Dennis continued to race cars and discovered a new, exciting hobby of driving motorcycles at breakneck speed while consuming nitrous oxide and enjoying the buzz of both simultaneously.

Due to the modular nature of the recording, Jim Lockert would copy the intro and first verse of the instrumental track of a song and then add vocals to it. Then, having put that onto the master, he would erase the vocals, copy the track of the second verse onto the master, and then put the vocals from the second verse on top of that And he’d repeat the process for the chorus. This meant that the master was at least one extra generation removed from the original recordings, which has resulted in the original mono mix’s oft-commented on “dull” or “muddy" character. Brian’s paranoia was reportedly still active, too, with him storing various segments of his modular recordings in different safes so that no one would steal his ideas.

As per usual, the album was only mixed to mono. Over the years, a stereo version of “Heroes and Villains” and “Vegatables" were released, but the entire album was not released in true stereo until 2012. This proved somewhat revelatory, with the stereo mix revealing a delicacy and lightness to the music that had been somewhat obscured by the dark, brooding surface of the original mix and dull, bottom heavy master.

On July 18th, as the band was putting the final touches on Smiley Smile, Capitol and BRI reached a settlement to their lawsuit. One of the outcomes was that, in exchange for the unpaid royalties that Capitol owed the Beach Boys, Capitol would agree to distribute albums released on the Beach Boy’s new label, Brother Records Inc (BRI). The Beach Boys’ new “boutique" record label was one which all of the Beach Boys hoped would provide a more artist -friendly home to up and coming musicians, allow them to work on solo projects, and which Brian envisioned as outlet for his more avant garde whims, including his “comedy" album.

A few days after finishing the album, the lead single, “Heroes and Villains”(which utilised elements from the SMiLE sessions, but which was a more conventional, less avant-garde single than Brian had originally intended) was released on Brother Records. It missed the Top Ten, which Brian took (quite correctly, as it turned out) as an omen that his time as arguably the most powerful producer/artist in the United States record business was at an end.

When it came time to release the album, Brian decided to have the production credit read “Produced by The Beach Boys.” This was largely a fiction repeated to this day: while various Beach Boys had played their role in the production, Brian was still firmly in charge and directing the recording process — indeed, many of the instrumental tracks were built up largely by Brian alone.

But it seems the burden of being seen as the creative center of the band, the genius behind Pet Sounds hype was having negative effects on Brian and his creativity. And as the production was decidedly less ambitious than “Good Vibrations" and Pet Sounds had been, the group credit was intended to deflect attention from him and redistribute it among the entire band.

This has of course, fed fuel to the long-burning fire of rumors that he had turned into a quivering bowl of jelly and retired to his bed for the next several decades after hearing a single note of “Strawberry Fields Forever”; of course, the reality is, Brian was as in charge and energetic as ever, though he was beginning to take an interest in sitting back and letting things happen a little more.

Smiley Smile was finally released on September 18th, 1967, not long after Al’s 25th birthday. It received mixed reviews from the intelligentsia who had come to expect a much bigger production, and wanted Important Albums for an Important Generation in an Important Time: especially after the watershed album Pet Sounds and the months of Derek Taylor generated hype for SMiLE.

Smiley Smile was also poorly promoted by Brother Records, who were obviously not the huge machine that Capitol Records were, and it may have made its way slowly into shops.

Yet, some critics, including the influential-yet-annoying Robert Christgau, enjoyed, Smiley Smile, though it’s lack of ambition was noted by all.

Fans, too though, it must be said, did not know what to make of Smiley Smile. Compared to Pet Sounds, Sgt Pepper’s or the many brilliant, era-defining albums released in the Summer Of Love, this experiment in goofy, minimalist psychedelic art pop, released in listless, seemingly lo-fi mono seemed to truly puzzle, if not altogether turn off, fans.

Smiley Smile managed to chart at only #41 in the United States, which was seen as a dismal failure for what had been the most consistently popular American band of the early and mid-sixties, (every album had hit the Top Ten since Surfin’ Safari): it certainly was seen as a failure by the band themselves, and probably many others.

However,Smiley Smile did much better in the UK, where it went all the way to #9 and is considered a hit.

In the USA, as of 2012, sales of Smiley Smile stood at 250,000, their lowest selling album ever up to this point; their fifteenth highest selling non-compilation album (tied with Holland and 1985’s The Beach Boys) and 28th overall (tied also with 1978’s Super Hits). Additionally, in 2012, a 1974 twofer with Friends had sold an additional 75,000 and the 1990/2001 Smiley Smile/Wild Honey CD twofer had sold 20,000.

As for the Beach Boys themselves, their reactions are also mixed in their appraisal of the album. Bruce Johnston, who was not really involved in its recording, in 2018 called Smiley Smile “a thousand times better” than SMiLE, and ‘the most underrated album in the catalogue for me.” A sympathetic Carl described the album as a “bunt instead of a grand slam.” Dennis acknowledged Smiley Smile's lack of ambition in comparison with Pet Sounds, but “I listened to it in Africa and it sounded really good.” Al said that he liked it, but "rehashing the SMiLE songs" was something that “didn't work for me”; while Mike has pretty much dismissed the album, commenting that some of the tracks were not even really songs.

Brian said this:

In later decades, though, Smiley Smile's reputation has grown among both critics and fans, and it has become to be seen as a singular album in rock history; an early example of the late ’67, early 68 “back-to-basics” movement; and a precursor to later indie pop, ambient, "bedroom pop" and “lo-fi” movements. Smiley Smile was included in Larkin’s 1000 Albums to hear before you die book, and was rated at #118 in Pitchfork Magazine’s Greatest Albums of the Sixties article. Musicologists have noted it’s innovations and it’s famous fans include Pete Townshend, Robbie Robertson, Steven Tyler and Andy Partridge, who had a period of obsession for the album and cited it as a direct influence on “Season Cycle”, as well as basing some pastiches by his bands XTC & The Dukes of Stratosphear on mid sixties baroque and psychedelic era Beach Boys. Other artists said to have been influenced by Smiley Smile include Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Stereolab, The High Llamas, The Olivia Tremor Control and Father John Misty.

The tracklist was:

1. Heroes and Villains (Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks)
   *Heroes and Villains [Lei’d in Hawaii Version]
2. Vegetables (Wilson, Parks)
3. Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony) (Wilson)
4. She’s Goin’ Bald (Wilson, Parks, Mike Love)
5. Little Pad (Wilson)
6. Good Vibrations (Wilson, Love) 4.9618
   Good Vibrations [Lei'd In Hawaii version]
7. With Me Tonight (Wilson)
   With Me Tonight [early versions]
8. Wind Chimes (Wilson, Parks)
9. Gettin' Hungry (Wilson, Love)
10. Wonderful (Wilson, Parks)
11. Whistle In (Wilson)
    All Day All Night [Alternate Version 1]
    All Day All Night [Alternate Version 2]

In addition to the above, I will hold up the following tracks for discussion:

• Hawthorne Boulevard (B.Wilson) {live in Hawaii August 26th, 1967, released on Sunshine Tomorrow in 2017)
• With a Little Help from My Friends (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) {outtake from Lei’d in Hawaii sessions, released on Rarities in 1983}
• Heartbreak Lane (Murry Wilson, Brian Wilson [uncrdited]) {from The Many Moods of Murry Wilson) (co-written by an uncredited Brian)
• The Many Moods of Murry Wilson
• Not For Rating:
• I Believe In Miracles (B.Wilson) - {outtake from Smiley Smile, released on Made In California, 2013)
• Italia (Al Jardine)- Murry Wilson {from The Many Moods of Murry Wilson}

I’m going to hold up the Murry Wilson songs up along with his album on the same day. So, I should start on Wild Honey on April 4th.

Note: The songs “The Letter” and “Game of Love” were first recorded in the session between the complection of Smiley Smile and the beginning of the Wild Honey sessions for Lei’d In Hawaii; but as they were worked on further during the Wild Honey sessions (and considered for release on it) I’m planning to hold them up after the Wild Honey discussion, along with the unreleased and unfinished album Lei’d In Hawaii, which I’ll hold up on the same day as the archival album Sunshine Tomorrow. Lei'd In Hawaii of course was meant to be a contractual obligation fulfillment album, but once work got going on Wild Honey, it was postponed until 1968, and with Brian immediately working on Friends, it was eventually just cancelled. More on that later.

I’m going to hold up the Murry Wilson songs up along with his album on the same day. So, I should start on Wild Honey on April 4th.

 

Surf’s Up: Talking Horns

I know it's been said drugs were not involved in a lot of Smile, but I mean, some of these ideas make it hard to dismiss the idea totally. Hearing someone laughing through a horn towards the end of the first half is pretty neat though.

I'm thinking all this "stuck in" business might have been a reflection on Brian's mental state? Maybe?

Vegetables Promo

Well, that happened. Avant garde a clue indeed.

 

This is interesting. There was some discussion a couple pages back whether Brian had listened to somebody like Steve Reich. Well, he was listening to something real advanced since this is a very similar concept to something from 1955:


Hugh Le Caine: Dripsody (1955)

The sounds of water droplets painstakingly spliced together. That's a lot of razor bladin'; what might have been Brian's Mellotron-style setup sounds a lot easier to work with.

 

It should be said that, almost the week after Capitol and The Beach Boys settled their lawsuit with each other, and before Smiley Smile was released, Capitol released Best of the Beach Boys, Vol. 2.


Best of The Beach Boys, Vol. 2 of course was another cash-in affair. But it didn't make a big splash, going only to #50 on the American charts. The UK version,which had a slightly different tracklist was an enormous hit, though, going to #3 on the charts there. Despite it's low showing on the US chart, it was a slow and steady seller remaining on the charts for nearly two years, and it ended up going double platinum in the US and platinum in the UK. As of 2012, the long out of print Best of the Beach Boys, Vol. 2 had sold 2,500,000 copies, making it the fourth highest selling Beach Boys album.

The tracklist in the US: (cut and pasted from Wikipedia)

1. "Barbara Ann" (Fred Fassert) Beach Boys' Party!, 1965 2:11
2. "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" (Brian Wilson/Mike Love) The Beach Boys Today!, 1965 2:01
3. "Long, Tall Texan" (Henry Strezlecki) Beach Boys Concert, 1964 2:30
4. "Please Let Me Wonder" (B. Wilson/M. Love) The Beach Boys Today! 2:45
5. "409" (B. Wilson/M. Love/Gary Usher) Surfin' Safari, 1962 1:59
6. "Let Him Run Wild" (B. Wilson/M. Love) Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), 1965 2:20
Side 2
No. Title Original album Length
1. "Don't Worry Baby" (B. Wilson/Roger Christian) Shut Down Volume 2, 1964 2:47
2. "Surfin' Safari" (B. Wilson/M. Love) Surfin' Safari 2:05
3. "Little Saint Nick" (B. Wilson/M. Love) The Beach Boys' Christmas Album, 1964 1:59
4. "California Girls" (B. Wilson/M. Love) Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) 2:38
5. "Help Me, Rhonda" (B. Wilson/M. Love) Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) 2:46
6. "I Get Around" (B. Wilson/M. Love) All Summer Long, 1964

The TRacklist in the UK:
Side A

1. "Surfer Girl" – 2:26
2. "Don't Worry Baby" – 2:51
3. "Wendy" – 2:22
4. "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" – 2:02
5. "Good to My Baby" – 2:16
6. "Dance, Dance, Dance" – 1:58
7. "Then I Kissed Her" – 2:15

Side B

1. "The Girl from New York City" – 1:53
2. "Girl Don't Tell Me" – 2:19
3. "The Little Girl I Once Knew" – 2:36
4. "Mountain of Love" – 2:47
5. "Here Today" – 2:52
6. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" – 2:22
7. "Good Vibrations" – 3:35

If you have any memories or thoughts on this album, it's sound or packaging today's the day to share them. I won't be counting any ratings for this kind of "hits" compilation, but feel free to discuss as you please. I personally have never owned a copy of the album and have no interest in it -- to me it seems almost an artifact of the ancient, long-gone, forgotten world!

 

The artist losing his ego in his art, but to a scary extent that poked Brian into making several tracks iwth that theme, as humor.

 

Not sure if this adds any importance or not, but I’m pretty sure that the Baldwin organ was actually a gift from Murry.
Also, are we going to be covering the original “Smiley Smile” Version of cool, cool water?
The whispery harpsichord lead version labeled as “version one” on the smile sessions box.

 

Finally, and Not For Rating:
While Brian was still laboring on SMiLE, or not long after, Bruce Johnston sang on this Gary Usher project, which was a cover of a British psychedelic band. Bruce is very audible int he chorus. Gary Usher was by now producing The Byrds, which was something of an upgrade from doing Beach Boys knock off songs. "My World Fell Down"



I love this song. does anybody have the album? and would you recommend it?

 

I'm going to do "Cool Cool Water" after Wild Honey.

 

Both of them? there are two different recordings, one from “Smiley Smile” and one from “Wild Honey”.
Labeled “version one” and “version two” respectively.

 

Mainly because it didn't exist. Smiley came out in September 1967, Rolling Stone was launched in November.

 

Maybe. I should have said "Brian acquired" rather than Brian bought.

 

Those insidious, sneaky bastards! Anyway, I think I'm confusing this tidbit with the Wild Honey. I'll remove that sentence and put it during the Wild Honey essay, where it belongs.

 

Does make one wonder if he used the Baldwin because he genuinely liked the sound of it which I’m sure he did, but also if it was to make Murry happy as well.
I think it’s notable that by early 68 Murry was back in the studio during several “Friends” sessions.

 

Vegetables Promo (Instrumental Section) from Hawthorne, CA.

This was assembled by Linett and / or team for this 2001 compilation, yes? Well it's a fine job. Funny it doesn't land on the dedicated SMiLE box in this format, which actually plays into — spoiler — part of my review of box set.

So this to me is like the best of the comedy / spoken word numbers going back to start of band even though it's a latter day assembly and yeah not a high bar. It's not funny, not really. It's antagonistic, but uh aggression is in The Beach Boys "humor" (and their competitive high school dudes lyrics, etc) going back to start, okay not the Parks lyrics but before and since. A bit of cruelty ahead on next LP , won't go there yet. As always, @Lance LaSalle excellent album preview! Has me currently wondering across all your threads how often folks jump ahead to an album wrap-up right after a fine intro to upcoming LP; anyway I digress.

I give this a maybe generous high score. For what is, I'll say 4.53/5. The backing sure is welcome. And there is something funny about it, which really makes it: Blaine's delivery, deadpan and a little more.

 

I think he genuinely liked the sound of it. I'm just going to do the early versions of "Cool Cool Water" all at once as a Wild Honey bonus.. I think the Smiley Smile version is presented with session extract tracks, which is annoying. I love that track in any form, to be clear, but I don't need to go over it three different times, (four if you count "Da-Da") also the Sunflower version has an alternate mix that I'll be putting up, and I guess that's quite enough.

 

Yes! It has some brilliant songs on it.