Uncanny

SONICSTATE takes a tour of the historic VILLAGE STUDIOS. Sly and the FamilyStone, Burt Bacharach, The Beach Boys and more recently Busta Rhymes, Destiny's Child, Dr Dre, Missy Elliot, the Fugees, Madonna have recorded at the unique Village Studios.

On TV’s ET, Carnie & Brian Wilson discuss Carnie’s debut solo album, “A Mother's Gift: Lullabies From the Heart,” a collection of new and old songs that will be in stores on Tuesday, May 2.

Carnie says that, "I started recording this album about three months after Lola was born. I wanted to do songs that were touching and songs that had a loving message, a message of peace, safety and love."

"The album's very family-oriented," Carnie points out. "The first song we recorded was 'Heaven,' written by my Uncle Carl, and my cousin Justin sings all the harmonies. I also have my sister singing with me and my mother and her group the Honeys."

"This album is really special and people will love it to death," Brian Wilson adds.

"It's the perfect little story of Lola in my womb, and we're just waiting for her to be born," Carnie explains. "It could be about any baby, but it's that anticipation of waiting for your baby to be born."

"[Carnie’s] prettier than hell," Brian Wilson says. "I also love the way she sings. And three, I love her patience. She's very patient. She knows good things don't come overnight, and she's easy to work with."

For more of this interview with Carnie and Brian, tune in to tonight's ET.

"Welcome to HANG TEN media's second musical vibrations. These 4 exclusive stereo soundboard recordings are from the Beach Boys "Thanksgiving" tour of Nov. 1967. Earlier in the year, "SMiLE" had been abandoned and Brian Wilson had withdrawn even further into recluse. The Beach Boys had dropped out of the Monterey Pop Festival and had lost all credibility with the emerging underground. "SMILEY SMILE," a weaker version of Brian's original vision had been released and had flopped completely in the Summer of Love. A new L.P. "Wild Honey" was recorded in Brian's home studio using the group as the recording musicians and a great new single, "Darlin'" was about to be released. It was sink or swim time, and Brian's messengers had to stay cool and really deliver onstage. Their sense of confidence and fun really connected with the audience and the group survived against all odds. As a bonus, several radio spots recorded in march of '66 are also included in this set!! COW-A-BUNG-A!"

RICHIE UNTERBERGER’S REVIEW
SMILESHOP DISCUSSION
SHUTDOWN VOL. 2 DISCUSSION

NOT FOR BROADCAST
CARNEGIE HALL ‘72

THE ROCK RADIO "Founding Beach Boy Al Jardine has announced what many Beach Boys fans have been hoping for -- an onstage reunion featuring himself with Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Bruce Johnston.

In a world exclusive, Jardine revealed to us that plans are in the works for the group to reform later this year in London, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of their 1966 Pet Sounds album. Jardine said that if all goes well, a possible reunion tour might follow: "Actually, a reunion tour is not out of the question, because with this Pet Sounds anniversary coming up, it's a very good possibility that we'll be performing it live in London in November. It would be like a Pet Sounds reunion. Mike is open to it and Brian appears to be open to it and you never know what might spring from that. So if (a reunion tour) is in the cards, we'll do it. You never know. It might just work. "

Jardine and Brian Wilson have been in various legal battles with Love over the past few years, and have not performed with the group since 1998 and 1996, respectively. Love and Johnston continue to tour under the Beach Boys name.

Conspicuously absent from the reunion is Beach Boys co-founder David Marks, who has been performing joint gigs with Jardine over the course of the past year. Jardine explained that although Marks was a co-founder and played a crucial part in most of the group's early recordings, the reunion show would only feature group members who participated in the actual Pet Sounds sessions. Marks quit the group in November 1963 after performing on their first five albums.

Jardine did not give a date when the concert plans would be finalized, who would be backing the group onstage, or when the concert would be announced.
Pet Sounds, which was released on May 16th, 1966, featured such Beach Boys classics as "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "Sloop John B.," "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times," and "God Only Knows."

Jardine and David Marks will team up with Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean for the "Cruisin' With The Legends Of Surf Music" cruise, set for October 2nd through 6th."

TIMES HERALD RECORD ONLINE "No marketing surveys or anything," the 65-year-old Mike Love says during a recent phone interview. "We were just observing our environment. If somebody had a real great car, everybody would pile into it and go to the hamburger stand. That was how life was in southern California. 'Fun, Fun, Fun.'"

"Brian has a publicity machine, and they've done quite a bit in terms of disparaging me," he says. "For whatever reason, they've tried to make Mike Love the bad
guy, probably because I had to sue Brian."

"'Heroes and Villains' was a little esoteric and obtuse in the lyric department," he says. "We find that it just doesn't go over that great." ("Listen to these outstanding lyrics! They'll just amaze you! This nuclear disaster!" he phrased it during a 1967 rehearsal, before the song had ever been played live.)

"Teenagers, and young adults, and mature adults, and grandparents, they'll all know our songs," he says now. "We try to focus on what will please most of the people."

"If you have guys who can sing those original parts and replicate the original records, that's the most important thing," Love says. "The thing that distinguished the Beach Boys from other rock groups is the refinement of the harmonies and the great vocal arrangements. My cousin Brian was very gifted at that. People called him a genius. In vocal arrangements, you'd have to give him his due.”

COURIER POST ONLINE "The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Motown are the top three musical entities from the '60s that are still performed on the radio today," notes Mike Love.

"That's pretty good company. We're up there in the top three in most cities across the USA for airplay. It spikes a little for us in the summer because the Beach Boy's music seems to become synonymous with summer months."

"The crowds range in age from children to grandparents now," he says. "If a person was 20 years old when the Beach Boys started, and got to like us, well heck, they're 65 now, which I turned a couple weeks ago."

"When we did our first year's worth of shows, we drove in a station wagon with a U-Haul behind it, and set up and broke down our own equipment," he explains.

"Now, we have a crew that goes out in advance, and we fly first-class and stay in really nice hotels. The travel part of it is far more comfortable these days."

"Brian and I are OK," he reports. "It's the people around Brian who have gotten him to do things that I don't know if he even knows what he's doing.

"A situation arose in England where they gave away 3 million copies of a record . . . they used our name, our photographs, rerecorded songs that I co-wrote with him . . .

"We weren't asked, we weren't told, they just did it. It's just an abuse. Brian was manipulated into it, that's my belief.

"I had to sue him 10 years ago, or nine years ago, or whatever. It was to get the credit and start getting compensated for writing songs like "California Girls,'

"I Get Around,' "Be True to Your School' and all these other songs. I was never given credit by he and my Uncle Murray (Wilson, Brian's father and the group's first manager) back in the '60s.

"He, actually, and I spoke and he said, "Mike, let's work this out.' But he was under a conservatorship, which was overseen by an attorney. Because of his mental and emotional state he was so easily influenced, and negatively by some people.

"I knew he wanted to resolve it, but he was not able to, or capable of, doing it legally because he was in a conservatorship.

"But I did prevail because there was fraud involved. The relationship between myself and Brian has never been bad. It's obviously a strain to have to go to court, but I knew it was never his fault."

Mike Love's top ten Beach Boys songs:
1. California Girls
2. Don't Worry Baby
3. Their Hearts Were Filled with Spring
4. Fun Fun Fun
5. Kiss Me Baby
6. Kokomo
7. Good Vibrations
8. The Warmth Of the Sun
9. Wouldn't It Be Nice
10. The Ballad of Ole' Betsy (?!?)

COOLFER
YAHOO NEWS

Matthew Sweet talks to SUICIDE GIRLS about “Under The Covers Vol. 1,” his recently released collaboration with Susanna Hoffs (The Bangles). The album consists of strictly cover versions, including tunes by: The Beach Boys, the Velvet Underground, Love, the Bee Gees and many more. The backing musicians include VAN DYKE PARKS, IVAN JULIAN (Richard Hell & The Voidoids) and RICHARD LLOYD (Television).

Matthew Sweet: My very favorite studio in LA, which most recently was called Cello used to be the western side of United Western Studios. That’s where they made all these classic recordings like Beach Boys and Sinatra records. One of my favorite, if not my favorite engineer in the whole world, Jim Scott, worked only in those rooms and that studio is gone. They couldn’t keep it alive because of the advent of home recordings. The quality of which has gone up to where you can do a really good recording at home. For us it meant not having the pressure of a big budget.

Daniel Robert Epstein: I read that you and Sue each had a list of songs you wanted to do and both of you had the same song at the top. That’s bizarre.

Sweet: That was really bizarre. It was “He May Call You Up” by the Left Bank. It’s only a really well known song to people who already know the Left Bank really well. It was an uncanny thing that set us off on a really good tone.

DRE: [laughs] What did having Van Dyke there do for you?

Sweet: Van Dyke is an amazing guy. I did a lot of work with him on a record of mine called Living Things that came out a couple years ago. On this record he just did a couple of songs so he came over on one day and recorded. I’ve known him a long time and he isn’t just a musical genius. He’s beyond that, he’s just a genius in general. We didn’t want to have it slip by without having him work on the record. I’m sure we’ll be using him around more because I’m producing a solo album for Sue and I’ll get him to do some stuff on that as well.

DESERTNEWS "We didn't want any pressure when we were making this album," Matthew Sweet said by phone from his Los Angeles home. "In fact, we didn't have a list of songs we wanted to cover. Sure, we had friends give us CDs and suggestions, but there wasn't really a long list of songs we had to choose from."

"There were a couple of songs where Su had some reservations of recording her version of songs," said Sweet. "The originals are great, and it seemed to her that she couldn't live up to the expectations of the original singers — Sandy Denny for instance. Su was worried about recording Fairport Convention's 'Who Knows Where the Time Goes?' because Sandy's voice was perfect. But when Su recorded it, she made the song her own."

"I don't know why I change things around when I do covers on my own," Sweet said with a laugh. "It might be something in my mind when I hear a cover song, I think to myself, 'Oh, who is this making a mess of this song?' But when Su and I decided to do this, we wanted to keep the original arrangements because that's what made these songs good."

"We recorded all the songs in my home studio," said Sweet. "And we didn't feel any pressure until last November when the record company said, 'Your deadline is the end of December.' But we did it and we love it."

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
BLOGCRITICS

"Under The Covers Vol.1"is released by SHOUT FACTORY.

CMJ

DESIGN

Link: http://music.for-robots.com/

Link: http://www.philipsherburne.com/

Link: http://www.thefader.com/blog/

The old site can be found at UNCANNY MARK I