Beach Boys Announce 50th Anniversary Reunion .....

[Hardrock69]

http://www.mail.com/entertainment/music/917472-beach-boys-50th-anniversary-reunion-tour.html#.7518-stage-promobox1-5



December 16, 2011 — NEW YORK (AP) — It's almost winter, but get ready for some surf and sun: The Beach Boys are reuniting.

The founding members of the classic rock group — Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine — announced Friday they are getting back together to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They're working on a new album and also plan a 50-date tour that will take them around the world.

"This anniversary is special to me because I miss the boys, and it will be a thrill for me to make a new record and be on stage with them again," Wilson said in a statement. The group also includes Bruce Johnston and David Marks, both of whom have been with the band for decades.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers gave birth to the California rock sound. Back then, the band members were Love, Jardine, Wilson and his two brothers — Carl and Dennis Wilson, who have since died. With songs like "Good Vibrations," ''I Get Around" and "California Girls," the quintet embodied the fantasy of West Coast beach life. Their albums, particularly "Pet Sounds," influenced rockers of their generation and beyond.

But Wilson suffered mental problems that caused him to withdraw from the band, and there were years of animosity between Love and Wilson, who are cousins, as well as lawsuits among members of the band. Still, they have gotten back together over the years, including for their 40th anniversary in the last decade.

Love remarked in the statement Friday on how he and Wilson were getting along well, sharing compliments together in the studio. "Music has been the unifying and harmonizing fact of life in our family since childhood," he said. "It has been a huge blessing that we have been able to share with the world." Referring to a Beach Boy hit, he added: "Wouldn't It Be Nice to Do It Again? Absolutely!"

The group was supposed to announce their reunion as a surprise during the Recording Academy's live nominations special for the Grammys last month, but those plans fell through. However, Jardine said the group planned to appear at the Feb. 12 Grammy telecast in Los Angeles.

"There will be a surprise at the Grammys," he told Rolling Stone. "We will do something really exciting. There's a lot of interest in it, which is nice. It's going to be a very big operation." The Beach Boys first concert is scheduled for April 27 at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

[FORD]

Good to hear that the three of them can stand to be in the same room again. These guys are 70 years old now, not a lot of time left for feuding.

Can they still pull it off, especially without Carl's voice in the mix? That's the real question.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS2orIE2QUQ

[Hardrock69]

Yup. Though personally I don't like their music, I cannot deny they are legends and a large part of the California music cultural history.

[Nitro Express]

Yup. Though personally I don't like their music, I cannot deny they are legends and a large part of the California music cultural history.

Pretty much. They had a unique sound and great harmonies. Pet Sounds was a unique piece of work. For some reason I never cared for the Beach Boys either. Something was unreal about them. I never got the impression they really hung out at the beach. For me Dick Dale was more of the real beach music. He really was the guy who surfed during the day and blasted the dance halls at night with his guitar. The Beach Boys seemed a bit staged.

You can tell when music is real. Like Van Halen's Bottom's Up. That's right off the Sunset Strip. It drips of the party. It's got the vibe. If it was contrived in the studio it would be obvious.

[FORD]

It's true that Brian was never actually a surfer. Dennis was though, which makes the way he died all that more ironic. :(

I wouldn't say the group was fake though - apart from the obvious fact that Brian used the Wrecking Crew on many of the records, but then so did the Byrds, and nobody accused Roger McGuinn of being "fake".

[FORD]

Oh.... and just in case you haven't heard, they FINALLY fucking released "Smile".

No, not the bootleg. Not the remake Brian made in 2004 either. The real fucking album......

http://image.space.rakuten.co.jp/lg01/84/0000003184/05/img44a2f156zik3zj.jpeg

...of course like all the other 20, 30, and 40 year old albums being reissued, it comes in the "deluxe", "super deluxe", and "only the 1% can afford it" versions.

[FORD]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptxwWt2JeGQ

[FORD]

And let's not forget that the Beach Boys invented the "unplugged" album a long time before Tesla or anybody else did it......


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_9hm5ibXOw

[chefcraig]

Beach Boys Party was actually their first fake album. The tracks were studio recordings (not thrown together in a living room) and the spontaneous atmosphere was created by some judicious overdubbing. Oddly enough, it's probably my favorite Beach Boys album, followed by Beach Boys '69 (Live In London) and Surf's Up.

Unfortunately, I can't find a clip of Dennis Wilson's perfect take on Lennon's "Hide Your Love Away", but here's what "Devoted To You" sounded like before the party sounds were added.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScKN_vbVKA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkn89Z2m6J4


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHvuqLeOQHw

[Sensible Shoes]

Isn't anybody going to mention the obvious - we got completely led astray by the Van Halen rumors? I feel very pissed off right now.

[FORD]

Beach Boys Party was actually their first fake album. The tracks were studio recordings (not thrown together in a living room) and the spontaneous atmosphere was created by some judicious overdubbing. Oddly enough, it's probably my favorite Beach Boys album, followed by Beach Boys '69 (Live In London) and Surf's Up.

Unfortunately, I can't find a clip of Dennis Wilson's perfect take on Lennon's "Hide Your Love Away", but here's what "Devoted To You" sounded like before the party sounds were added.

Yeah, I always thought "Devoted to You" sounded a little suspicious, but most of the tracks on that album were more authentic. It's sort of like the Stones first live album "Got Live If You Want It" which for the most part is an energetic raw performance from the band, but right in the middle of it, there are two tracks that stick out like a sore thumb, "Fortune Teller" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long".

REAL Live Stones


FAKE Live Stones

[Terry]

I quite enjoy the Beach Boys stuff...at least the stuff up to about 1972.

Can't say as this reunion means all that much to me, though. More than half of the original band are dead, and the band itself has been around in one form or another for ages; it seems that the only real difference is Brian has signed on.

I mean, if they wanna do it and people wanna see it, good for them. Honestly. However, have many people been holding their collective breath waiting for a new Beach Boys album?

[FORD]

Yeah, after Holland they kinda became a self-parody.... "Sail On Sailor" was probably the last big hit they had. Ironically enough, it wasn't even on the original master of the album, but Warner Brothers (who distributed Brother Records at the time) didn't think they had a single in the original LP.

Even more ironic is the fact that the lead vocal on the track was by Blondie Chaplin. Brian wasn't around for the sessions, and Carl & Dennis both tried a take, but neither sounded right for the track. Mike Love must have been out meditating or something, not that his nasal whine would have fit the song either. So they ended up going with a guy who had barely joined the group. Somehow it worked........


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLxYwcfR6QY

[Va Beach VH Fan]

:sleepy:

These guys have been irrelevant for what, 30 years now ??

Ironic I say this on a CVH/DLR message board....

:behindsofa:

[POJO_Risin]

:sleepy:

These guys have been irrelevant for what, 30 years now ??

Ironic I say this on a CVH/DLR message board....

:behindsofa:

I couldn't have said it better myself. While I will never profess to be connoisseur of the Beach Boys, I recall getting into a near beat down brawl with some dude in Philly in the early 90's when he and a bunch of his friends had just come from a Beach Boys show to a bar I was at with my friends. It looked like they had all rolled out of the family truckster, and their extremely loud discussion of how the Beach Boys were as relevant as the Beatles.

While I'm not a big Beatles fan, the statement was so damn idiotic (looking forward to the someone that comes rolling in on here talking about how that loon Brian Wilson was a lyrical master)...

Anyways Va...couldn't agree with you more over the last 30...

Who would you rather have in your band...Bette Midler, or John Stamos? Wow...not an easy question to answer at all, is it...

[78/84 guy]

Well at least Van Halen has been on tour once in a while, and made almost $ 100 million with Dave and no Mike. I like the beach boys but really ? seems a little late without at least one more Wilson brother. Didn't Brian play bass in the original lineup ? Something tells me he is going to sit behind his piano all night !! Good luck but i'm going to pass on this one no matter how good tickets are selling.

[sonrisa salvaje]

Good to hear that the three of them can stand

I agree. Lets hope they don't fall and break a hip.

[Satan]

Well, it looks like the album is due out this week. Carl & Dennis arranged for an advanced copy to be shipped to Hell, and I'm expecting it shortly. Meanwhile, here's what some folks across the pond had to say about it........


The Beach Boys: That's Why God Made the Radio – review

There's some rotten stuff on it too, but parts of the Beach Boys' new album seem like the perfect way to end to their story

3 / 5


Alexis Petridis
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 31 May 2012 10.29 EDT

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2012/5/31/1338482031343/The-Beach-Boys-008.jpg
‘We’re back together, easy money’ … the Beach Boys. Photograph: Guy Webster


It's easy to be sceptical about the Beach Boys' reunion. Indeed, if you look at the messageboards, diehard fans seem the most distrustful of the lot, which figures: for all the warmth and open-heartedness of the band's best music, if there's one thing being a Beach Boys fan teaches you, it's scepticism. There are only so many times you can be told Brian Wilson has been restored to full physical and mental health, the better to make himself and a lot of other people a great deal of money, before you develop what the Clash called a "bullshit detector", and Beach Boys fans have been told that on a regular basis – and with a great deal of evidence to the contrary – for the last 36 years.

Anyone looking to the music itself to check for signs of cynicism need only turn to Spring Vacation. It opens with a verse in which Mike Love claims to be "living the dream … cruisin' the town, diggin' the scene". The Beach Boys' music has often involved a suspension of disbelief – all those songs depicting a perfect, gilded California youth, written by a man whose own youth had been mired in physical and mental abuse – but this seems to push unreality to its limit. You find yourself wondering why on earth a 71-year-old would be cruisin' the town and diggin' the scene: perhaps he's plannin' on askin' them to keep the noise down so an old man can get some rest. Then it moves on to the subject of the reunion itself: "We're back together, easy money," he sings, as indeed you might if, after years of playing fairgrounds and casinos, you found yourself shifting $70m [£45m) of concert tickets simply by hooking up with the cousin you have spent most of the last 20 years suing. "All I can say is, we're havin' a blast!" he offers, which isn't what a recent profile in Newsweek – depicting Brian Wilson "in various stages of distress" on stage with the band – suggested.

If the lyrics are disingenuous, the song itself isn't up to much, the music slick but unremarkable. The first two-thirds of the album passes in similarly ho-hum style, notwithstanding the wordless introduction, Think About the Days, which is beautiful. The title track is a decent pastiche of Wilson in his prime, its cascading chorus equal parts Kiss Me Baby and John Barry's Theme from Midnight Cowboy; The Private Life of Bill and Sue, however, a satire on reality TV, makes you want to curl up and die of embarrassment.

But just as you're about to dismiss the album entirely, something extraordinary happens. The final three tracks – From There to Back Again, Pacific Coast Highway and Summer's Gone – form a kind of suite that is easily the best thing Brian Wilson has put his name to in the last 30 years. Episodic, occasionally lapsing into silence, filled with shifts in tempo, the melodies impossibly beautiful, it takes the melancholy at the heart of Wilson's greatest work – from Pet Sounds to Til I Die – and repurposes it. In contrast to the rest of the album, which relies on creaky nostalgia, it concerns itself with ageing ("sunlight's fading and there's not much to say", sings Wilson on Pacific Coast Highway), death and the Beach Boys' legacy. "Our dreams hold on for those who still have more to say … it's time to go," offers Summer's Gone, undercutting all the gung-ho, we're-havin'-a-blast guff that comes before it in the same way the wistful, autumnal intro to California Girls seemed at odds with that song's sunkissed lechery. Wilson's vocals sound engaged with the subject, which seems faintly incredible given that on every other recent record he's made, he's sounded like a man forced at gunpoint to read his lyrics off a broken autocue.

For all its flaws, That's Why God Made the Radio is an infinitely better way for the Beach Boys' story to end than their last album of new recordings, 1992's disastrous country outing Stars and Stripes Vol 1, or indeed the last album that bore their name – Mike Love, Bruce Johnston & David Marks of the Beach Boys salute NASCAR – on which the trio rerecorded old hits for the benefit of a chain of US petrol stations. Exquisite beauty nestles alongside stuff that's wildly misjudged, painful honesty alongside the constant burnishing of a myth about youth and sunshine and a California that everyone stopped believing years ago, the whole thing wrapped in stories of non-existent fraternity, harmony and good vibrations: it's the Beach Boys in a nutshell. Perhaps without realising it, That's Why God Made the Radio tells you almost everything you need to know about America's Favourite Band.

[Satan]

"You find yourself wondering why on earth a 71-year-old would be cruisin' the town and diggin' the scene: perhaps he's plannin' on askin' them to keep the noise down so an old man can get some rest. Then it moves on to the subject of the reunion itself: "We're back together, easy money," he sings, as indeed you might if, after years of playing fairgrounds and casinos, you found yourself shifting $70m [£45m) of concert tickets simply by hooking up with the cousin you have spent most of the last 20 years suing."

Ouch! http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d025.gif Every word of it's fucking true though. Mike Love is a fucking douchenozzle!

[Satan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGke6pnT1d0

[Satan]

A Devil's first impressions of this album......

I'd say the British reviewer above pretty much got it right. This album's got it's definite highs and lows. Actually the differences between the two are so obvious at times that I'm wondering if this album was really a single group effort, or rather the equivalent of the Yes album "Union" where you had two different camps working on material separately. It's like you have that classic Spectorized trademark Brian Wilson production one minute, and then the next you have three fucking Kokomo retreads in a row, and they sound as though Brian was absent from them, just as he was from the actual crap song Kokomo.

The Beach Boy harmonies are present as ever, of course. But Carl Wilson's voice is sadly missed. (Maybe I'll have him do some overdubs here in Hell for my own copy?)

If you like the earliest Beach Boys material or the 80s/90s stuff, you'll find something to like about this record. If you're looking for something that would fit on Pet Sounds or Smile (as the British review above indicated) just fast forward to track 10 immediately and listen to the last three songs. The common thread in these songs is basically "Yeah, we had a good run, but we're in our 70s now, so time to hang it up" which is kinda depressing, but how many bands actually make a "goodbye" song for their fans. Despite the message, at least it comes of as genuine reflection and not contrived gimmickry. Carl & Dennis really loved this part of the album.

Satan's overall review: 6.66 out of 10

[chefcraig]

We recently received Brian Wilson's Wouldn't It Be Nice autobiography as a donation, so I picked it up, struggled to get through it and finally fucking gave up. It makes absolutely zero sense, a rambling bunch of finger pointing and bizarre as hell allegations of abuse, supposedly based upon the recollections of a guy who admittedly was using alcohol, pot, dope and LSD at the time. This thing was published in 1991, years before the whole sordid dealings of Wilson's life-coach Eugene Landy came to surface, along with the lawsuits. The pisser is, this garbage might have been written by Landy himself, as about roughly the last half of it is devoted to what a wonderful character he (Landy) is.

What I'm getting at is, it sucks. If you want a really good take on the band, find a copy of Tim White's The Nearest Far Away Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience . Even though it came out in 1995 or so, it still is the final word about this band, more so than the crummy album just put out to serve as a tombstone for their career, which to all extents and purposes ended with the passing of Carl Wilson in 1998.

[sadaist]

I don't care too much for the Beach Boys. Like a few tunes. To me they were the perfect so CA football game halftime band. (which they have done quite a lot)

[Satan]

Here's a prediction from our own Dark Lord of the Sith from November 2005....




Moreover, from the realms of Fantasyland, it would be FUCKING GRATE if Mike, Al, Bruce and Brian could all get eye-to-eye on a project in the future to put the Beach Boys away CORRECTLY. But I'm really not fooling myself on that...we'll get 5 new albums from CVH before that happens, I think.

Very tragic.

Well..... Bob was a little off. We only got ONE new Van Halen album before the Beach Boys managed to get together. But at least the Van Halen album was more representative of their classic work

A Different Kind of Truth vs That's Why God Made The Radio? No question, VH wins by a landslide. I doubt even Warham is gonna argue this one. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d025.gif

[SilvioDante]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGke6pnT1d0

Sounds like a commercial or bumper music for a "Golden Oldies" station.

[bueno bob]

Well, I'm going to try and hit up the Eugene show on July 14th...I've never seen the Beach Boys live, but owning every album with the exception of Summer in Paradise (and, I guess, the new one), I can definitely say without any fear that their music was pure fucking GENIUS...up til, oh, 1980 or thereabouts.

They are still an American tradition and absolute legends. With Brian, Mike, Al and Bruce all on the same stage for the last time, I can't NOT go. No doubt Mike and Bruce will hire a supporting band after this tour and keep it going at casinos and state fairs for as long as they can afterwards, but...I just won't be able to live with myself if I don't go. I have loved that band all my life and I always will.