Flex's Takes: The Beach Boys

[Flex]

My hometown Milwaukee Bucks, favorites to win the NBA Championship this year, are suddenly down 3-1 to the Miami Heat. A large part of that (in my opinion) was losing Giannis for most of G1 and then all of G2 and G3. What happened to him? He collided with Kevin Love (it was not intentional) and fell and hurt his back. It somehow all goes back to Mike, doesn't it??

Bucks should have used one of Mike's solo songs as a team anthem this year. Then these... accidents... could be avoided.

[WestwayKid]

My hometown Milwaukee Bucks, favorites to win the NBA Championship this year, are suddenly down 3-1 to the Miami Heat. A large part of that (in my opinion) was losing Giannis for most of G1 and then all of G2 and G3. What happened to him? He collided with Kevin Love (it was not intentional) and fell and hurt his back. It somehow all goes back to Mike, doesn't it??

Bucks should have used one of Mike's solo songs as a team anthem this year. Then these... accidents... could be avoided.

Kevin's dad is a real piece of work. When his own NBA career died, he was employed as a bodyguard for Brian and there have been allegations that he was both physically and mentally abusive towards his cousin. He also beat the crap out of a drunken Dennis at one point because he wanted Dennis to stay away from Brian. Dennis had been plying Brian with drugs and cheeseburgers. That whole family is crazy. I've heard Mike in interviews refer to the "Wilson blood" like it's some sort of curse that he's above, but it's like Mike, you have as much Wilson blood flowing through your veins as Brian does.

[WestwayKid]

The album cover is great. I love the layout. Al's missing (apparently he was sick). Oh well. This is also the first album to feature much from Bruce. He also could not appear on the cover due to an existing contract with Columbia Records.

Agreed, always been one of my favorites. A Yachtsman special.

The Beach Boys on CD

Unlike some bands from their era, the Beach Boys have been well represented on compact disc. Here's my review of the 12 CD's released by Capitol in 2012 to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary.

They released 12 titles: Surfin' U.S.A., Surfer Girl, Little Deuce Coupe, Shut Down Volume 2, All Summer Long, The Beach Boys Today!, Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), Beach Boys' Party, Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Sunflower and Surf's Up.

They were packaged in cardboard gatefold sleeves. In general, the packaging was pretty lousy. The print quality was fair to poor. There is nothing to protect the discs when sliding in and out of the packaging. Each album comes with very minimal liner notes: front and back cover of the LP and then inside just a track listing and some production credits. The gatefold itself is looks low budget. It's glossy, but that's it. Front and back covers are again printed. The back of the gatefold is a very, very, very basic track listing with a period photo dropped in. It's clear that Capitol was not spending money on the presentation.

So what about the music? On all the discs (except Sunflower & Surf's Up) you get mono and stereo versions. This is fantastic because Brian's mono versions had not been released on CD before. The 1990/2000 "twofers" featured the original stereo mixes done by engineer Chuck Britz in the 1960's. They sound good (for the most part), but Brian's preferred medium was always mono.

Surfin' Safari is not included because the mono mix had already been released in 1990/2000 and there was never a stereo mix done (other than a lousy fake stereo mix). That said, one of the coups of this 2012 series was something called an extraction mix. The stereo masters for certain songs had gone missing (Don't Worry Baby is an example). Engineer Mark Linett was able to use software to extract the individual parts from the multi-tracks to create new stereo mixes. I suppose they could have done this with Surfin' Safari, but for whatever reason they chose not to.

The 1990/2000 release of Smiley Smile was in mono, so for the first time in 2012 we got a stereo (extraction) mix.

Friends and 20/20 were not included in this run. There was not a true mono release ever (just collapsed stereo) and the 1990/2000 CD's did a good job covering the original stereo mixes.

I feel like this series was done to 1) cash in on the 50th and 2) fill in some gaps (and showcasing some tech). The 2012 twofers are still the gold standard for the Beach Boys on CD.

A very nice writeup. I will say, I just finished completing a switchover of the catalog to the Analogue Productions SACD remasters and I'd generally say they seem to better the 2012s a bit (more dynamic range pretty consistently, for one thing) but the difference isn't, like, huge. I also read that on a couple of tracks (need to find where this was detailed) incorrect fold-down mixes were used instead of true mono mixes or something.

I remember how excited I was when the 2012s came out and I could finally hear the mono mixes of these albums for, mostly, the first time.

Have you ever checked out the Japanese Pastmasters series for any of the Beach Boys releases? I read they're supposedly flat transfers, mostly bettered by the 2012s and AP SACDs but was thinking of trying to track down some copies of the Pastmasters for the live albums and Friends/20-20/Wild Honey.

Also, you may know the answer to this: are there still tracks from the old 2-fers that only appear digitally there? I haven't gone through the various box sets to see if all the bonus tracks appear elsewhere but I'm debating finally parting with my 2-fers where I've upgraded to the 2012s or APs...

I've heard a few from the Pastmasters series and haven't been blown away. I think they sound a bit flat, with poor bass response.

[Dr. Medulla]

Offered without comment:

[matedog]

Offered without comment:

This from that same show where Piscapo does the Springsteen parody? Yeesh, the 80s, am I right?

Belinda does a fine job on Wouldn't It Be Nice. Real timpani is a nice touch too. Don't know what the hell that other song is.

[Dr. Medulla]

[Flex]

Correct.

[Dr. Medulla]

Correct.

On the other hand, the virtue of being true to your school was also discovered only a few years earlier, which is clearly a bad vibration.

[matedog]

Whole thing is up on streaming. I don't get why this exists. It sounds like it was done 12 years ago.

[Dr. Medulla]

Whole thing is up on streaming. I don't get why this exists. It sounds like it was done 12 years ago.

Take a Beach Boys song everyone likes and then remove all the Beach Boys stuff from it!

[Flex]

Streaming has really allowed a bunch of pointless shit to fester

[Dr. Medulla]

Streaming has really allowed a bunch of pointless shit to fester

Perhaps only tangentially related, but it reminds me of what a few older comic book pros argue about the comics code: it forced them to be more creative, more nuanced, to tell the stories they wanted and evade the censors. Without those limitations, writers and artists don't have to struggle in the same way. There's this famous Steranko page from Nick Fury. As I recall, it was originally more explicit, but he was told to change it. The final panel is perfectly done to convey message while staying within the censor's boundaries, while also elevating the composition.

[Silent Majority]

Streaming has really allowed a bunch of pointless shit to fester

Perhaps only tangentially related, but it reminds me of what a few older comic book pros argue about the comics code: it forced them to be more creative, more nuanced, to tell the stories they wanted and evade the censors. Without those limitations, writers and artists don't have to struggle in the same way. There's this famous Steranko page from Nick Fury. As I recall, it was originally more explicit, but he was told to change it. The final panel is perfectly done to convey message while staying within the censor's boundaries, while also elevating the composition.

I've just this second got a reference from a baffling Simpsons comic twenty five years ago. Krusty, Agent of Known had this exact layout.

[matedog]

Streaming has really allowed a bunch of pointless shit to fester

Yet I still can’t listen to “Make It Big” or “Strange Things Happen” on Spotify

[matedog]

Streaming has really allowed a bunch of pointless shit to fester

Perhaps only tangentially related, but it reminds me of what a few older comic book pros argue about the comics code: it forced them to be more creative, more nuanced, to tell the stories they wanted and evade the censors. Without those limitations, writers and artists don't have to struggle in the same way. There's this famous Steranko page from Nick Fury. As I recall, it was originally more explicit, but he was told to change it. The final panel is perfectly done to convey message while staying within the censor's boundaries, while also elevating the composition.

Wow, that’s subtle.