New Beach Boys album - That's Why God Made the Radio

almost as good as this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EeSuuCwaQ4

I'm sure "worst song ever" was leveled at The Beach Boys Love You also.

The lyrics scan like they were written by someone, freshly out of a 30-year-coma, as part of the cognitive therapy routine they've undertaken to compensate for extensive brain damage.

it is a close battle, admittedly

this song could be worse, honestly.

The lyrics scan like they were written by someone, freshly out of a 30-year-coma, as part of the cognitive therapy routine they've undertaken to compensate for extensive brain damage.

― You Don't Throw Oranges On An Escalator (Deric W. Haircare), Friday, May 4, 2012 6:45 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so "beach boys love you" basically

Or someone's reactionary characterization of Beach Boys Love You, perhaps.

This isn't that bad. I can see this song and video working well at Chuck E. Cheese and similar types of venues.

The lyrics scan like they were written by someone, freshly out of a 30-year-coma, as part of the cognitive therapy routine they've undertaken to compensate for extensive brain damage.

Could there be some possibility this is actually the truth.... Hmmmmmm.... ;)

(Yeah, the lyrics are horrid, but musically, Brian Wilson is still head and shoulders above the rest of the Beach Boys)

God Radio is pretty bland but that Cavalier King Charles Spaniel song is seriously the #1 thing of youtube I will playing from now on. It is probably going to be as bad as my 2008 obsession with Ode to Massachusetts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqvjfWawZcE
FREEDOM
FREEDOM
FREEEDOM

But is there a need for this type of music anymore, Geir? Why wouldn't Brian Wilson want to use his new found lucidity to do something different, even if slightly different, rather than produce what sounds like lullabies for alzheimers patients? If people want to listen to comfort food vintage Beach Boys they could just put on Pet Sounds. Sometimes trying to play it safe is the most dangerous strategy of all. This song is not an advance on Problem Child.

I realize I'm not saying anything groundbreaking. I just want to know why it matters that the song is "musically" better than other recent Beach Boys stuff when it is equally irrelevant.

Pat Finn

hi, I've read these boards for a while and just created an account. I didn't know if I should introduce myself or just jump into the conversations.

everybody otm. such a horrible, geriatric trudge. the first minute felt like five. the blood turned to butterscotch pudding my veins.

did kind of like that tennis song. "you still mean a lot to the game..."

everybody otm

Except for me. I think it's great. Sounds like a Sunflower-era big hit that never was.

wtf is this, boo

listening to this song is like finding some weird trinket ceramic cat with a fisherman's hat at yr grandma's house

Geir, what do you think of Still Cruising?

More like Still Coasting.

i have a question, which i hope isn't too intrusive or annoying. do you guys find that the beach boys' disappointing, later material affects your enjoyment of the earlier stuff? or to put it a different way, do you find the existence of this song unfortunate or merely uninteresting? personally, i tend to value artists with huge, spotty, but diverse catalogs over those who made maybe one or two masterpieces before fading away, but in the case of the beach boys, their reputation seems to have been severely damaged over the years, as the youthful earnestness of brian wilson's 60s songs is hard to disentangle from the syrupy commercial sweetness of the later, disneyfied stuff. i don't know. is "good vibrations" as enjoyable today as it would be in a world where "problem child" didn't exist?

Somewhere there's an ILX post where I bitch about "Kokomo" turning the liberating youthful freedom beach into a good deal on a time-share, but actually I really am able to completely separate those things. It might, however, help that A) I grew up on Still Cruising and Endless Summer at the very same time, and B) the Beach Boys have so many fairly dramatic excuses to have fallen off so hard that it sort of enhances the earlier stuff in this weird way - - - the tragic decline heightens the beauty of the age of innocence, so in a way the Beach Boys are uniquely suited to benefit from this since so much of their appeal was the innocence and sincerity.

do you guys find that the beach boys' disappointing, later material affects your enjoyment of the earlier stuff?

Not at all. I still rep pretty heavily for the better half of their output even in spite of the existence of "Match Point Of Our Love".

production is definitely stuck in the early 80s

disagree, this is a digital recording. I know this battle's been over for years, but really folks, a lot of your favorite oldie artists would be making much, much better records if production styles hadn't shifted over to the digital domain imo - it changes the whole "culture"/atmosphere of the studio and you get lifeless, heavily comped performances. not that you don't do plenty of comping in analog but usually nothing like the "why does this sound like nobody cared" feel of so much we're-always-tracking-don't-sweat-it stuff now

do you guys find that the beach boys' disappointing, later material affects your enjoyment of the earlier stuff?

not at all. the long decline doesn't tarnish what they accomplished early on. honestly, i think of the beach boys as a band that existed in the 60s, and the stuff that came after as something else.

That fact suggests to me that you really need to do yourself a favor and take a peek into their '70s catalog.

i find it incredibly easy to not acknowledge near any long-time artist's shit years in remembrance of their great. this is pretty much the case w/ near anyone from 60/70s still doing their thing today. i think there's a term for this: you don't think of beach boys now and then as being the same continuation of the same people. b/c of being able to reference their younger selves in youtube, google images (etc etc) you sort of think of them as wholly separate, at least on some level of consciousness

like the fact that the frontman from happy monday's looks like fucking darth vader unmasked still doesn't prevent me from thinking the guy def had a cocky little swagger back in his heyday. and i can still enjoy their music, definitely.

"Oldie artists" make lifeless records now because there's more comping and they're always being tracked so they never sweat it?

I mean, I know I'm just reiterating your argument, but I guess I'm skeptical.

Title of the record keeps getting Paul Simon's "That's Why God Made The Movies" stuck in my head.

That fact suggests to me that you really need to do yourself a favor and take a peek into their '70s catalog.

maybe so! i like sunflower and surf's up, but don't know the stuff after that very well, and what i've heard i haven't liked much.

This thread is full of shit. 80s Beach Boys records are great. I grew up on Still Cruising' and the S/T one, in the days before music crit exposure tried to bend me towards the status quo of Pet Sounds as the peak of human creative endeavour. For my friends and I, swallowing up every cassette we could find on the shelves of Our Price or whatever, Pet Sounds was the worst one!

There is a tracklist on Amazon...

1. Think About The Days
2. That's Why God Made The Radio
3. Isn't It Time
4. Spring Vacation
5. The Private Life Of Bill And Sue
6. Shelter
7. Daybreak Over The Ocean
8. Beaches In Mind
9. Strange World
10. From There To Back Again
11. Pacific Coast Highway
12. Summer's Gone

Spring Vacation?!

You better not be hating on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QklGU9L61Ms

Also, that said, "That's Why God Made The Radio" doesn't sound bad at all. Surely it is no "Good Vibrations" or "God Only Knows" or "'Til I Die", but it's a fairly nice piece of Beach Boys pop updated for.... well... maybe not for 2012, but at least for post 1980. :)

― The GeirBot (Geir Hongro), Saturday, 5 May 2012 00:11 (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the worst song of all time

― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Saturday, 5 May 2012 00:13 (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahaha

this sounds like it was recorded in a little studio in a caravan & they were all in there while a guy sat in the front seat and made the video with flash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LE3dpoTOvA

Christ I love that song.

And it's written (mostly) by John the wolf man Phillips.

i hope "Pacific Coast Highway" is a Sonic Youth/Hole medley

It sounds kinda creepy, but it doesn't sound bad. I listened to it like 10 times the first day it was released.

This literally sounds bad. The question is: how bad?

a) bad
b) really bad
c) sooooo bad
d) OK, if you truly believe that any new Beach Boys is better than no new Beach Boys and besides, it's the Beach Boys!
e) worst song of all time

this is not good

ok, so it's probably not the worst song of all time (although it is (c) sooooooo bad), but it may be the worst song that's ever been discussed on ILX.

no worse than any of Brian's new material over the past 15 years, you guys ever hear his 'Imagination' album? yeesh

Think I vote D)

Genuine love for 'Its paradise when I/Lift up my antennae', mind.

"Oldie artists" make lifeless records now because there's more comping and they're always being tracked so they never sweat it?

I mean, there's more to it than that, but I absolutely think that the newer production style works against people whose training/experience was geared toward performing. The always-tracking infinite-tracks sew-it-up-later style of digital recording is pretty uninterested in performances - it's about getting enough material to make a performance in mix. Brian Wilson's always had a pretty visionary idea of how to fit many different pieces of recorded sound to make one big thing that sounds like a killer, gigantic performance, but the way he got those sounds was by getting good takes. And besides, he's not producing now, as far as I know. I do really think that most oldies types making records would make much better records if they were trying to nail a take instead of just sing through five or six times til the engineer says "I think we've got enough here, let me take an hour to put it together and we'll see what you think," which is how Pro Tools vocal tracking works most of the time.

It's supposed to be produced by Brian.

And the harmonies sound pretty good.

Also, I bet putting digital edition/production tech in the hands of old school perfectionists is a bad idea. It's very Lucas-y, in the sense that I bet some of them only see the limitations of their classic work and believe had they had digital tech back then the recordings would have been much "better."

But Willie doesn't have session guy chops, does he?

beach boys concert or nursing home stand-up act

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLIbu6sJ4-I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE9xv-VcH3w

And that's it...

Beach Boys Reunion Tour Ending With Three Founding Members Sacked Via Public Statement

The Beach Boys might still be Keepin' the Summer Alive with their U.K. tour, but for three members it will be a cold harsh winter.

The band's frontman Mike Love announced that the group will split after this week in the U.K. and three members -- Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marks -- have been dropped from the group. The three did not find out they had been dropped until Love and Bruce Johnston released a public statement.

The statement announcing the big shake up reads: "The post-50th anniversary configuration will not include Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marks. The 50th Reunion Tour was designed to be a set tour with a beginning and an end to mark a special 50-year milestone for the band."

The exiting Beach Boys will be replaced by the group's long-time backing band, which includes Love's son Christian, according to the Telegraph. Love added that the decision to drop the three members was financially motivated. "You've got to be careful not to get overexposed. There are promoters who are interested [in more shows by the reunited line-up], but they've said, 'Give it a rest for a year'. The Eagles found out the hard way when they went out for a second year and wound up selling tickets for $5."

Wilson was blindsided.

"I'm disappointed and can't understand why he (Love) doesn't want to tour with Al, David and me," he told CNN. "We are out here having so much fun. After all, we are the real Beach Boys."

If the five members of the Beach Boys do not rekindle their bond, the September 28 concert at Wembley Stadium may be the last show they play together, CNN noted.

There is already a petition on iPetition.com asking for Love, who owns the rights to the band's name, to rethink the decision to break up the original Beach Boys.

The petition, addressed to Love, reads: "In order to preserve the validity of 'The Beach Boys' as a whole, and not as a 'money saving, stripped down version' that only contains 1 original member, and 1 member that joined in 1965, we ask you to re-instate the 3 other members to the touring group for your final years performing."

"It's the right thing to do, and it's what the fans want," the message concludes.

Jardine linked to the petition in a tweet. As of Wednesday morning, it had over 2,000 signatures.

In December 2011, the Beach Boys confirmed 50 shows to celebrate their 50th anniversary, Rolling Stone previously reported. The band formed in California in 1961. The reunion tour marks the first time the Boys have toured together in more than two decades.

Although the group had problems in the past, like nasty comments in the press and numerous lawsuits, Love swore that all the negativity was behind them. "All that stuff is long forgotten," he told Rolling Stone.

Back in June, Rolling Stone had reported that Love booked shows for his version of the Beach Boys without consulting the other members.

On Sept. 19, the group played at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles to celebrate the opening of the new Beach Boys exhibit.

how could this possibly come as a surprise to anybody

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A3veWDHCMAA041u.jpg

.. including brian ..

xpost

If the five members of the Beach Boys do not rekindle their bond, the September 28 concert at Wembley Stadium may be the last show they play together, CNN noted.

serious lol at this -- only mike love would fire a bunch of his bandmates and still expect them to show up for one more concert.

Two more, Royal Albert Hall tomorrow night.

the most dysfunctional family in pop ever ?

of course, the use of the word 'family' is being stretched .. but hey ..

I would really enjoy watching Brian Wilson beat the tar out of Mike Love.

The Beach Boys might still be Keepin' the Summer Alive with their U.K. tour, but for three members it will be a cold harsh winter.

The infinite number of lead sentences they could do in this vein . . .

"Beach Boys audiences might be pickin' up Good Vibrations, but behind the scenes things are anything but groovy . . .

"This summer's reunited Beach Boys tour has been a success by any measure, but God Only Knows if there will be another . . ."

I would really enjoy watching Brian Wilson beat the tar out of Mike Love.

pretty much anyone would like to watch anyone beating the tar out of Mike Love.

has anyone ever publicly assaulted Mike Love? besides probably Dennis?

you almost wonder if mike was running a long con and just did the whole album and tour so he could have the satisfaction of firing the guys at the end

i feel like mike might get beat up at some point in 'heroes and villains' but tbh that book is basically one nonstop horrorshow so it doesn't stand out much

Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marks were informed of the news via a statement issued by Mike Love - the band's frontman and Wilson's cousin - that the tour would be continuing without them.

there's definitely fistfights in heroes and villains. dunno if any of them could be described as Mike receiving a beatdown though.

why does Mike Love care about any of this. i will never understand.

Brian responds to Mike:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-brian-wilson-al-jardine-respond-to-mike-love-on-beach-boys-flap-20121008,0,6270223.story

As far as I know I can't be fired--that wouldn't be cool.

I don't know why, but it's funny to think of Brian Wilson saying lines like this like Brad Pitt in "True Romance."

Brian responds to Mike:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-brian-wilson-al-jardine-respond-to-mike-love-on-beach-boys-flap-20121008,0,6270223.story

Sounds like both of them need to get in a room together and talk it out, rather than hearing shit second-handed through PR guys.

What they need is another centralized PR guy to handle the PR.

Need Mike Love to intervene on Brian's destructive relationship with Joe Thomas.

did he produce No Pier Pressure? that's a really boring record

Mike's bitchiness about this record in his new book is hilarious