Music Junkie Opines On Dennis Wilson
By DJ M on June 29th, 2008
In Brian Wilson/B. Boys
BROOKLYN EAGLE "Kudos to Epic Records/Legacy Recordings for producing a reissue that is worth every penny of its $29.95 list price in Pacific Ocean Blue, the lone 1977 solo album from Dennis Wilson."
"Garnering most of his headlines from a brief association with Charles Manson, the only Beach Boy who surfed was also the only band member to fully take up the gauntlet of Pet Sounds, older brother Brian Wilson’s undisputed masterpiece. While earning favorable reviews and outselling the band’s contemporaneous Love You (itself a cause celebre among hardcore Beach Boys fans), the album lapsed out of print over the years, with CD and vinyl copies fetching hundreds of dollars on EBay. Wilson succumbed to lingering addictions while producing the follow-up to the album and eventually drowned to his death in 1983."
"Usually, bonus tracks hinder an otherwise great album. But Bambu (comprising the unfinished album and disc two of the package) places Wilson’s emerging artistry in a vital context. If Pacific Ocean Blue is blithely derivative of his brother’s past glories in places — a Smile for the Seventies — the recordings that followed were more spontaneous, sexually off-the-cuff, and triumphant in their bleary-eyed, ragged glory. Had Wilson deigned to finish the final mixes of the Bambu material (original producer/longtime Wilson confidante Gregg Jakobson and biographer Jon Stebbins have sequenced a more or less complete album), he would have been fully extricated from the Beach Boys’ rancorous legend."
"And, yes, if you have owned the bootleg for several years … 'He’s A Bum' is no longer hampered by generations of tape hiss."