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Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 July 2015 CE
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flashbackcaruso
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Re: Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 July 2015 CE
Jul 28, 2015, 12:13
Rather optimistically loaded up my MP3 player with summer sounds before heading off for a Queensland winter. After a cold start we quickly had temperatures in the upper 20s while by all accounts the UK had to endure rain and cold, so the following worked pretty well:

V/A - The Big Beat 1963
The Beach Boys - Keep An Eye On Summer: The 1964 Sessions

Thank you whoever decided to change UK copyright laws and force the record companies to release official bootlegs. The first of these collects Brian Wilson's unreleased early productions for The Beach Boys and others, while the second boils down several volumes of Unsurpassed Masters boots into the essential highlights. Revelatory stuff for someone who like me who'd never found the time to trawl through those Sea Of Tunes releases.

Jan & Dean - Jan & Dean Take Linda Surfin'
Jan & Dean - Surf City
Jan & Dean - Drag City
Jan & Dean - Dead Man's Curve/The New Girl In School
Jan & Dean - Ride The Wild Surf
Jan & Dean - The Little Old Lady From Pasadena

Jan Berry is often cited as being an overlooked rival to Brian Wilson in the production stakes, and there is certainly evidence of him being ahead of the game from Drag City onwards, with some big arrangements and occasional exotica-style instrumentals that beat Pet Sounds by more than a year. But the goofy humour, while occasionally endearing, does sometimes make them harder to take seriously, and the first two albums are almost entirely made up of songs that didn't need covering, including some lacklustre versions of Beach Boys hits. Like The Beach Boys they had a fondness for concept albums which occasionally resulted in songs appearing more than once, although Surf City wasn't such an auspicious start to this trend. The title is a classic of sorts, but doing an album of city songs forced them to take on some right hoary old chestnuts. The weirdest concept album is The Little Old Lady From Pasadena which mainly consists of songs about old people behaving like teenagers, culminating in a song about a 90-year old going topless. Yuck! At least The Beach Boys did J & D the honour of adding the title song to their live set.

The culmination of this week of listening was going to a local screening of the film Love & Mercy and having the whole cinema to myself. What a treat it is to see those Pet Sounds and Smile sessions recreated in such meticulous detail. Highly recommended.
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