Beach Boys’ Summer Wave Continues With DVD, Reissues & Greatest Hits Sets

The Beach Boys, rakin’ it in this summer.

The Beach Boys’ celebration of their 50th anniversary this year has been a wild success, as they sold out concert venues across the country. The current band lineup with Brian Wilson will wrap up their tour next month in London, but the Beach Boys won’t disappear after that.

A new DVD, The Beach Boys: Doin’ It Again, will be released August 28 (in DVD and Blu-ray formats) will feature live performances from this year’s tour, unseen footage from the 1966 “Good Vibrations” recording sessions, tributes to founding members Carl and Dennis Wilson and behind-the-scenes footage from the recording sessions for their new That’s Why God Made The Radio CD.

The Beach Boys; Doin’ It Again should be available at the usual outlets, including Amazon.

Capitol/EMI has also announced it will  release two new commemorative hits collections on Sept. 24 outside of North America and on October 9 in North America. One will be a single disc collection, with 20 of the band’s most popular songs, including “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Kokomo”  and their single from this year, “That’s Why God Made The Radio.”

A deluxe, career-spanning 2CD box and digital collection titled Greatest Hits: 50 Big Ones will also be released, featuring 50 Beach Boys favorites, including two songs from the band’s new album — the title track “That’s Why God Made The Radio” and a new single version of “Isn’t It Time,” which will be serviced to radio in September. The 2CD lift-top box package also includes an expanded booklet with newly written liner notes by Rolling Stone contributing editor David Wild and seven postcards.

If that’s not enough, Capitol is also releasing 12 remastered Beach Boys studio albums on September 24 outside of North America and on September 25 in North America.

The 12 Beach Boys studio albums have been digitally remastered by Mark Linett and will be released on CD and digitally, most featuring mono and stereo mixes. The albums are: 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 (stereo mix only); and Surf’s Up (stereo mix only).

These releases mark the stereo debut of Smiley Smile and Beach Boys Party!, while The Beach Boys Today! and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) are being released in stereo for the first time in their entirety. The new releases include the first-ever stereo mixes of several key Beach Boys classics, including “Good Vibrations,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “I Get Around,” and “409,” among others.

On Sept. 18, The GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles will launch a special Beach Boys 50th Anniversary exhibit with “An Evening With The Beach Boys,” a public event featuring a Q&A and acoustic performance by Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks.

A career-spanning Beach Boys 50th Anniversary box set is planned for release later this year by Capitol/EMI. Details about the special commemorative release will be announced soon.

YouTube: The Beach Boys: Doin’ It Again trailer (sorry, we can’t embed it)

The Beach Boys official web site

Summer’s Here – Let’s Go Surfin’ Now!

Summer begins officially next week (June 20) but here on the Texas gulf coast it’s in full swing already. Myself, I tend to stick poolside but many of my Lone Star brethren (and sister-en) like to head for the beach, were there is plenty of surfing to be done.

I am not much of a surfer – the waves here in Texas aren’t nearly as good as those in Hawaii or California (so I hear) and I never had a damn surfboard anyway.

Most of the time, the closest I come to surfing is when I cue up a surf tune. So, here are some surfin’ (and car ridin’ down to the beach) tunes.  The final song is a Beach Boys ringer from their final (terrible) album, tossed in here just as a goofy foot kinda thing.  Or something. (Those last two sentences recycled from last year year before last, kinda like using the remnants of a 2010 2011 bottle of suntan lotion.)

MP3: “Summer Of Love” by John Fogerty

MP3: “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen

MP3: “Devil Surf” by Chiyo and the Crescents

MP3: “Surf Beat” by Dick Dale & the Del-Tones

MP3: “Dr. Who Goes Surfing” by the Surfin’ Guitarist

MP3: “Muscle Beach Party” by Annette Funicello

MP3: “Malibu” by Bruce Johnston (pre-Beach Boys)

MP3: “Hot Fun In The Summertime (2011 remake feat. Bootsy Collins) by Sly Stone

MP3: “Summer Wine” by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood

MP3: “Summer Boogaloo” by Takeshi Terauchi

MP3: “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” (live) by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band

MP3: “Bird Dance Beat” by the Trashmen

MP3: “Moment Of Truth” by the Surf Teens

MP3: “Tell ‘Em I’m Surfin’ ” by Jan & Dean

MP3: “Secret Surfing Spot” by Dick Dale & the Del-Tones

MP3: “Summertime” by Janis Joplin (live at Woodstock)

MP3: “Long, Hot Summer” (live) by Paul Weller

MP3: “Summertime Blues” by The Who

MP3: “Stoked” by the Beach Boys

MP3: “California Street” by the Jalopy Five

MP3: “Surfer’s Stomp” by the Mar-Kets

MP3: “The Hearse” by the Astronauts

MP3: “Theme from Endless Summer” by the Sandals

MP3: “Jersey Channel Islands Part 7” by Bruce Johnston (still pre-Beach Boys)

MP3: “Surfin’ (1992 version)” by the Beach Boys

YouTube: Brian Wilson goes surfin’ with the California Highway Patrol – Surf Squad (1976) (Embedding disabled)

 

Live: The Beach Boys, Houston

The Beach Boys, in their 50th year: from left, Al Jardine, David Marks, Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston.

UPDATE: Listen to about an hour of The Beach Boys in concert, courtesy of NPR Music

It’s really rather astonishing to realize that the reunited Beach Boys are currently touring the country to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary with a pace that could make younger performers wilt. Each of the core band members may be hovering around 70 years old but the group’s music is as timeless and fresh as ever.

We caught the Boys Friday night for their show at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion just outside of Houston, and about a week removed from their triumphant sellout gig at the Hollywood Bowl near their hometown. As the band kicked in to “Do It Again” to start the show, it was amazing to hear the unique harmony of voices that seemed to have diminished very little over the course of time.

The band, consisting of Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Alan Jardine, David Marks and Bruce Johnston, along with members of Wilson’s and Love’s touring bands, ripped through 47 songs over a three-hour period with one intermission (a nap break?) and rocked a nearly sellout crowd of about 16,000. The set list was a nice mix of fast and slow, familiar hits and deep cuts arranged in a way to spotlight each member.

Wilson, the composer of many of these songs, sounded in weakest voice, particularly on the songs at the early point of the concert. He pulled off his solo vocal turn in “Surfer Girl” all right, but sounded rough on “Marcella” and, later in the show, his voice wavered on “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” from the classic album Pet Sounds. Although he’s also lost a bit of range, Love still sounded great on “Be True To Your School” and the rapid-fire barrage of car songs that ended the first half of the set: “Little Deuce Coupe,” “409,” “Shut Down” and “I Get Around.”

Brian Wilson on bass, just like the old days.

The night’s vocal MVP award has to be shared, though: Jardine sounded straight from the 1960s with his vocal spotlights on Leadbelly’s “Cotton Fields,” “Sloop John B,” his own “California Saga” and of course, “Help Me Rhonda.” The other MVP was Jeffrey Foskett of Brian Wilson’s backing band the Wondermints – Foskett held down the high vocal parts in place of original Beach Boy Carl Wilson, who died in 1998. When the Boys played two songs from their newest album That’s Why God Made The Radio (“Isn’t It Time?” and the title song) Foskett tracked Wilson’s vocal so closely that it almost seemed like they were singing along to a pre-recorded track.

The choice of non-hit, deep cuts was interesting to say the least: “This Whole World” from the 1970s, “Kiss Me, Baby” from the early days, the car song “Ballad of Ole Betsy,” and most regrettably, “All This Is That” from the equally regrettable Carl and the Passions album.

We had seen the Beach Boys a handful of times in the 1970s but we’d never experienced “Marcella,” “This Whole World,” “It’s OK” and “Add Some Music To Your Day” as well as “Sail On, Sailor” and “California Saga.” We felt privileged to have them Friday night.

Then there were covers of 1950s-1960s oldies: “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, “Then I Kissed Her,” reworked from the Crystals, and Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music.” But there was always a hit on deck, and the concert went into the home stretch with Bobby Freeman cover “Do You Want To Dance?” (which was a Beach Boys hit, too) and “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (swiped in part from Chuck Berry).

They came back for an encore with “Kokomo” then Wilson stepped out from behind his piano and strapped on a bass for “Barbara Ann” and “Fun,Fun,Fun.”

At a few points Love shamelessly hawked the band’s merchandise and the new album, explaining that they wanted to sell as many copies as possible so they could claim No. 1 on the Billboard album charts next week. That’s Why God Made The Radio was released last Tuesday, and when sales figures are released this Wednesday it is expected to be in the top three at least, making this the Beach Boys’ highest charting album in 37 years.

Observing that they are competing for that top spot with the likes of Alan Jackson and Adele, Love urged concertgoers to take advantage of a special offer: the CDs were marked down to five bucks apiece at the merch tables. As further incentive, each of the five core members of the Beach Boys autographed about 50 CDs, which were interspersed with the stacks of discs on sale.

And they sold a lot of them, as well – at one point someone announced the CDs were “sold out.” Making the whole evening a triumph for good old American capitalism, rock music and values. No better way to celebrate than with the Beach Boys; certainly it felt like the Fourth of July came a month early.

Sorry, we took the night off from taking photos to enjoy the music from up on the hill. Be sure and catch the Beach Boys live if you get a chance!

The Beach Boys setlist from June 8, Houston show

The Beach Boys official website

YouTube: Video clips from The Beach Boys’ show in Houston 6/8

Video Du Jour: The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys begin a 50th anniversary tour this week.

The Beach Boys are back! The surviving members of the seminal ’60s surf rock band begin a U.S. tour this week to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks will be backed by Wilson’s crack Wondermints and … well, we already have our tickets!

To help with the celebration, the Beach Boys also plan to release a newly recorded studio album on June 5. The first single is “That’s Why God Made The Radio,” and it has plenty of the trademark harmonies that characterize the Beach Boys’ music. This video features the single, as well as some short comments by the band.

The Beach Boys official website

Video Du Jour: Beach Boys

In case you haven’t heard, the surviving members of the Beach Boys are back – with a tour to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary, and apparently a new album. Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks (who was originally replaced by Jardine) are hitting the road with Brian Wilson’s crack backing band. Here is the remake of “Do It Again,” the first single off the new album.

The Beach Boys official website

The Beach Boys hit the road to celebrate 50 years

The four remaining Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Bruce Johnston and Al Jardine, are hitting the road this year to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary. It all kicks off at the New Orleans Jazz Fest in April. No other dates have been announced yet, we just know there are 50.

The band went back into the studio recently to re-do the symbolic “Do It Again,” a great mid-tempo rocker that doesn’t get the recognition of the other hits in the band’s incredible collection. The tune will be part of a new album set to be released next year. There is also a plan to reissue (yet again) the band’s catalogue on CD. This has been done two or three times already. There were the double album discs, then they pulled those off the shelves and just sold the single albums, then they pulled those off the shelves and sold the double albums again. Who the hell knows what is in store this time. One thing you can count on is another “Pet Sounds” package. I already have six copies. Please stop.

I have no idea who will be in the backing band, but I seriously don’t know any other way they can pull this off effectively without Wilson’s crew that includes musical director Darian Sahanaja and guitarist Jeffrey Foskett. The pair have been playing with him for more than a decade and were instrumental in helping him bring Smile to life back in 2004. Wouldn’t it be cool if they did again with the Beach Boys? Crossing my fingers.

Whatever happens it’s great to see these guys put aside their differences and get back together for the sake of the music…and I’m sure a mighty handsome payday.

Beach Boys Official Website

Check out our interview with Taylor Mills, former backup singer in Brian Wilson’s band.

Summertime! (And it’s time for surfin’)

When it gets warm here along the Texas gulf coast, it’s time to hit the water. Myself, I tend to stick poolside but many of my Lone Star brethren (and sister-en) like to head for the beach, were there is plenty of surfing to be done.

I can’t tell you for certain if the waves off the Texas coast are good enough for surfing, but I am fairly certain they are nothing like California or Hawaii. My surfing interest faded when I was about 12, when I took a sharp smack on the forehead from a beginner board at McFaddin Beach – I decided to become a ho-dad for life.

The closest I came to surfing after that was when I cued up a surf tune on the turntable. So, here are some surfin’ (and car ridin’ down to the beach) tunes.  The final song is a Beach Boys ringer from their final (terrible) album, tossed in here just as a goofy foot kinda thing.  Or something. (Those last two sentences recycled from last year, kinda like using the remnants of a 2010 bottle of suntan lotion.)

MP3: “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen

MP3: “Devil Surf” by Chiyo and the Crescents

MP3: “Surf Beat” by Dick Dale & the Del-Tones

MP3: “Dr. Who Goes Surfing” by the Surfin’ Guitarist

MP3: “Muscle Beach Party” by Annette Funicello

MP3: “Malibu” by Bruce Johnston (pre-Beach Boys)

MP3: “I’m Surfing” by George Husak

MP3: “Bird Dance Beat” by the Trashmen

MP3: “Moment Of Truth” by the Surf Teens

MP3: “Tell ‘Em I’m Surfin’ ” by Jan & Dean

MP3: “Secret Surfing Spot” by Dick Dale & the Del-Tones

MP3: “Stoked” by the Beach Boys

MP3: “California Street” by the Jalopy Five

MP3: “Surfer’s Stomp” by the Mar-Kets

MP3: “The Hearse” by the Astronauts

MP3: “Theme from Endless Summer” by the Sandals

MP3: “Jersey Channel Islands Part 7” by Bruce Johnston (still pre-Beach Boys)

MP3: “Surfin’ (1992 version)” by the Beach Boys

Surf’s Up?

The other day I heard someone say that late March-early April is a prime time for surfin’ off the Texas coast.  Didn’t know the Gulf of Mexico had any decent waves to speak of, in fact although I grew up along the upper Gulf Coast I don’t know a thing about surfing.  Would that make me a ho-dad?

Well, I do know this: the best surf music came out in the early 1960s.  So while our wave-riding bros are down in Galveston and Corpus waiting to hang ten on the right wave, here are some surfin’ (and car ridin’ down to the beach) tunes.  The final song is a Beach Boys ringer from their final (terrible) album, tossed in here just as a goofy foot kinda thing.  Or something.

MP3: “Devil Surf” by Chiyo and the Crescents

MP3: “Surf Beat” by Dick Dale & the Del-Tones

MP3: “Dr. Who Goes Surfing” by the Surfin’ Guitarist

MP3: “Malibu” by Bruce Johnston (pre-Beach Boys)

MP3: “Bird Dance Beat” by the Trashmen

MP3: “Moment Of Truth” by the Surf Teens

MP3: “Tell ‘Em I’m Surfin’ ” by Jan & Dean

MP3: “Stoked” by the Beach Boys

MP3: “California Street” by the Jalopy Five

MP3: “The Hearse” by the Astronauts

MP3: “Jersey Channel Islands Part 7” by Bruce Johnston (still pre-Beach Boys)

MP3: “Surfin’ (1992 version)” by the Beach Boys

Bad Career Moves, Part 4

Ashlee Simpson made an ass of herself on "Saturday Night Live"

This is just too painful.  Remember Ashlee Simpson trying to lip-synch a song on “Saturday Night Live”?  In 2004 she appeared as a musical guest and performed one song without incident but during her second spot the pre-recorded vocals for the first song came over the PA while her band kept playing.  Caught red-handed, Simpson did an idiotic jig then ran off the stage.  Ass.

Milli Vanilli.  These guys took lip-synching beyond Ashlee Simpson … not only did they lip-synch every song they ever did – somebody else actually did the singing.  Fab and Rob also got caught red-handed on MTV but a little investigation found they never sang on any of their records.  Ass.  And, ass.  Milli Vanilli broke up when Rob died in 1998.

YouTube: Milli Vanilli not singing “Blame It On The Rain”

The Beach Boys were pretty great most of the time, and they sucked pretty much whenever they let Mike Love run the show.  But one of their worst WTF? moments came during the disco era, in 1979, and it wasn’t Mike’s fault.   Not to be outdone by K.C. and the Sunshine Band, the Beach Boys put out a discofied version of a Brian Wilson/Mike Love song “Here Comes The Night,” which originally appeared on 1967’s Wild Honey.  The album version of this momma clocks in at 10 minutes and 51 seconds – even longer than the 12-incher!  And you can’t blame Mike Love: this disco disaster was masterminded and produced by Bruce Johnston.

MP3: “Here Comes The Night” (12-inch version) by the Beach Boys

Bob Dylan has had his share of nightmares and misfires.  Remember Self Portrait?  He later tried to pass that one off as a joke, and it’s probably as close as we came to getting a joke from Dylan in the 1970s.  But along came 1990, and Under The Red Sky.  When it came out the album had listeners scratching their heads at titles like “Wiggle Wiggle” and “Handy Dandy.”  Shortly after its release even Dylan ragged the album, blaming his half-assed recording technique – it didn’t work for Paul McCartney, either.  Although Under The Red Sky had a lot of guests, including George Harrison, Slash, Elton John, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Al Kooper and others, it didn’t sell very well and Bob’s wife divorced him.

MP3: “Wiggle Wiggle” by Bob Dylan

The all-time bad career move was made by Billy Squier.  You know it’s coming … “Rock Me Tonite.”  What in hell was he thinking?  Or snorting?

Lost Classics! The Hudson Brothers

Chances are if you remember the Hudson Brothers, you don’t remember anything good about these guys.  The trio out of Portland knocked around in the late 1960s and 1970s, recording for a number of labels including Elton John’s Rocket Records.  They hit the big time in the summer of 1974 when they became the stars of their own variety show, a summer stand-in for the then-popular “Sonny and Cher Show” on CBS.  They also scored their biggest pop hit with “So You Are A Star” that fall.

The Brothers then took their TV act to Saturday mornings, where their kids-only TV show played for about a season.  When that crashed, the teen idols went into the studio with Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin and emerged with Ba-Fa, a beefier-than-usual album that nonetheless aimed squarely for teen pop listeners.  One of the songs, “Rendezvous,” wasn’t bad – written by Bruce Johnston (Beach Boys), it was power pop at its crunchiest.  And it just missed hitting the Top 20 in 1975.

But FM radio wouldn’t have anything to do with these guys, and before long the Hudsons were desperately trying to hang on in show business.  Within a year, they were all but forgotten.  Bill Hudson became involved in movie production and his company (co-owned with ex-wife Cindy Williams of “Laverne & Shirley”) produced the hit Father of the Bride movies.  Bill later married Goldie Hawn and is the father of Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson.  Mark Hudson stayed in music as a songwriter, he wrote “Living On The Edge” for Aerosmith and toured with Ringo Starr in 2005.  Brett Hudson, the “dreamy” one, now works in TV production.  For these washed-up teen idols, there are no plans for a reality TV series.  Thank god.

MP3: “Rendezvous”