Repost Help

I can't repost anything on this blog that has been taken down because my computer has crashed and needed to be reformatted (at least 4 times) since starting this blog and I lost all of my backups.

If anyone still has anything on here that has been taken down - EMAIL ME! Or upload it and leave it as a comment.

Any help would be really great at starting to reupload the lost files.

New Lexingtons Double LP

Greetings Beach Boys fans,

I don't know if you know this, but I have been recording Beacn Boys inspired music under the name The Lexingtons since 2007 and I have just finished my second release, a double album with disc 1 called "Isn't It Nice To Be Loved?" and disc 2 called "Choose Choice".

I really hope that you will download these albums and give them a chance. There are 35 songs in total that I have been working on for years to release. The first disc is traditional pop songs and the second disc is shorter, more experimental instrumental "mood" music that is designed to be put on repeat.



Released November 2010.

1. Solving Problems For You
2. Enough
3. Space Flight Is Delayed
4. Change Is Hard
5. Health Is Here!
6. Outside In The Sun
7. I Can Be Like That
8. She Tells Me No
9. Isn't It Nice To Be Loved?
10. Never Say Something You'll Later Regret
11. Piano Excursion
12. Making It Is Tough
13. Thirteen

Download




Released November 2010.

1. Born On The Moon
2. You Gotta Stop
3. After Midnight
4. Night Disco
5. Alex's Melody
6. Discovery And Recovery
7. Health Is Here! (Demo)
8. Gettin' Better
9. Little Star
10. Piano Score
11. The Feeling In The Air
12. The Wild West
13. Eye Movies
14. Old House
15. Jacob's Bird
16. Space Chase
17. Jackson Federal Hall
18. When Pollen Makes You Sneeze
19. Awful Cold In Here
20. Eric Sr's Melody
21. Under The Covers
22. Return To The Moon

Download

John E. Davis (and the Monster Orchestra) - INTERVIEW REQUEST PLEASE

I want to please ask that John E. Davis; who wrote all of the songs for John Davis and the Monster Orchestra in the 1970s and 1980s and who wrote the theme song to Beverly Hills 90210 and whose publishing company is called "MONSTEROUS MUSIC", please email me!!

I am a super fan and I can't find any information about you on the internet. I want to change that and interview you. My email address is ericwarncke@gmail.com.

And If anyone else knows the whereabouts of John (The Monster) Davis please email me.

- Eric W.

Samples of Brian Wilson's New Album!

Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin Sampler by Beach Boys Blog

In case you haven't been to Amazon or Itunes lately, samples of Brian Wilson's new album "Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin" are out. I've compiled them neatly and put them here for you to enjoy.

The new Brian Wilson album does George and Ira Gershwin songs in the Brian way. And word on the street is the album is great! It's the best solo Brian album ever and Gershwin sounds fresher than the freshest laundry you can imagine. August 17, 2010 is when it arrives and you can pre-order it here: http://brianwilson.com/

I'll be posting a review when it comes out. Let me know what you think of the songs!

C-C-C-C-CRINGE!!!

I was just looking on youtube for good videos of the Beach Boys with John Stamos in them, when I discovered this video of the Beach Boys (Mike Love's Beach Boys) doing a medley of 3 of their hit songs along with special guest star Mike Love's short-breathed, out-of-tune, uninspired singing.

And his vocals really are the unexpected guest star of this performance. His singing was so bad that it takes on a life of its' own. You can actually hear the audience cheer when Mike Love ends his slaughtering of the verses to California Girls, Kokomo and Fun, Fun, Fun and his younger, fuller-lunged backing band pull off those vocal harmonies that he [Mike Love] used to be such an important part of [in the original Beach Boys].

I know this aired on March 30, 2010 and I'm sorry, but I don't watch Dancing With The Stars for this exact sort of reason.

The Man From Another Place's First Video

Hello everyone,

The greatest thing that I listened to last year was The Loneliest Cowboy EP, the debut release from The Man From Another Place; brain-child of Scottish composer Daniel Hirst. I really love The Loneliest Cowboy EP so much that I listen to it for inspiration when it comes time for me to start recording my own music. It really is like every band that I love combined into one simple package. It has the compositional skill of a Heavy Blinkers song with the catchiness of a Beach Boys tune, without any vocals, which, in my opinion leaves room for you to ponder on the meaning of the songs with just your own imagination as reference.

The video stars Ron Smith and Abbra Smallwood and is directed by Justin Hannah, a director from Lexington, KY. The description of the video reads "Alone in the darkness, a man is haunted by a memory, warm, shimmering and beautiful". I couldn't agree more, so I am happy to share his first of what I know will be several, music videos. =]



myspace | website

AL JARDINE - AN INTERVENTION

Al Jardine, if you're reading this, please take a seat here among your friends. All I see is a room full of people who love you like crazy, but they're afraid they're losing you. They're scared because they see you going down the wrong path and hanging out with the wrong crowd and they just want to see you get better.

Your new album, A Postcard From California, is a real accomplishment for a little boy from Lima, Ohio. From the first time we heard your voice on Help Me, Rhonda to the next time we heard you balladeer on Then I Kissed Her, we were all hooked! Maybe some people thought of you as the least interesting Beach Boy, but the truly intelligent people saw you as the smart Beach Boy; the one who managed to avoid negative press almost completely (a huge accomplishment for a Beach Boy).

Yes, you were always the voice of reason and sanity; the reliable one! But as the years have gone on I've started to notice a change in you. I need to tell you this Al, before its too late and you can never stop.

You are addicted to writing bad Country laced Rock and Roll songs.

SONG: Susie Cincinatti
PROBLEM: Writing a song about a "Troubled Adolescant Girl"
PROOF ITS BAD: It was released as the B Side to 3 different singles from 1970-76. And these lyrics:

"Her looks aren't exactly a plus
but it doesn't matter to us...

She got the nicotine fit
And before she discovered it
Everybody in the back seat suffocated"

SONG: Lady Lynda
PROBLEM: "The lyrics to the song refer to Jardine's then-wife, Lynda Jardine. After the two divorced, the song was rewritten as "Lady Liberty", a tribute to the Statue of Liberty."
PROOF ITS BAD: Admittedly, this song charted at #39 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary Charts in June 1979 because it tried to achieve that AM Easy Listening Gold sound, but it failed in comparison to the #1 song at that time, Anne Murray's Shadows In The Moonlight (which you can hear here).


And now that your new album is coming out I can see that your problem has only gotten worse. I mean, you have the opportunity to make an album so incredible, so stupendous, so mind-altering that for the rest of eternity all Beach Boys fans would say "I never suspected it, but Al Jardine's solo album really is just the greatest record of all time."

You can still get it back! The passion that you've lost while you were busy "Looking Down The Coast", "Honkin' Down The Highway", "Driving" and "Feeling" and "Dreaming" California. You get it? While you're busy thinking about geography and driving your car (which is killing that geography you love so much) you're forgetting all about what people want to hear.

It's like this, you are covering songs that we all heard 40 or 50 years ago and covering them sub-par at that! Just look at this video you did for your cover of Help Me, Rhonda.



Just stop it! Start over, completely from scratch. Sit down at your piano and play a FM7 chord with a D bass note and just hold it for 15 seconds. You feel that? That's an incredible chord to start with. Now go grab Crosby, Stills, Nash, Steve Miller, Flea, David Marks, Brian Wilson, Mike love, John Stamos, Rebecca Romijn Stamos and your family and I want you to go into that home studio and don't come out until you're sure your album could make Beethoven cry from jealousy.

It's not impossible Al! You don't have to keep making these same mistakes. I just want to tell you to be the best you can be, Al. I care about you and I want to like you and your music, and maybe after this intervention you'll finally be able to make that perfect album.

http://www.aljardine.com/

Life's A Beach Series 20 & 21 - Christmas All Summer Long

Hello everyone,

There's one more edition of the Life's A Beach Series. This one has sessions from June of 1964 when the Beach Boys were recording songs for their Christmas album and even one song from The Beach Boys Today! album. It's not the most fascinating thing ever, but if you gotta have it, you gotta have it!







Information

Download Part 1
Download Part 2

Download Artwork

SMiLE - The New Master Painter Mix

Hello again everyone,

I'm actually very excited to share this new and different mix of SMiLE. I really enjoyed listening to this one, and I'm pretty sure you will too. Read the description and download below.



SMiLE - The New Master Painter Mix

My initial goal with this mix was to present the closest possible version to a 1967 album line up of SMiLE. Nothing more. Nothing less. It's all mono because it's a safe bet that Brian would have mixed the album in mono had it been finished back then. I did quite a bit of research and reading on every possible subject relating to the music and the time period to put me in the right frame of mind (quick plug for Domenic Priore's amazing "Story of Brian Wilson's Masterpiece SMILE"). That said, I didn't want to make a mix that anybody else had already done so more often than not, I took the road less traveled. Is it perfect? Hell no. Complete? Not by a long shot. But I hope listening to this wonderful music in this sequence will somehow move you in a positive way. - NMP

Our Prayer/Gee
Taken from the GV box set with a little touch from the Vigotone. I think the laughter towards the end of "Prayer" really lightens up the mood from the get go. It also helps the transition from the 'serious' choral type music to more fun 50's style doo-wop. The album is called SMiLE after all... you have to have laughter.

Heroes & Villains
Essentially the Smiley Smile version with the 'Cantina' section edited in from the GV box and SOT 17. Followed the 2004 edit for the most part with a few exceptions towards the end. I decided to skip the repeat of the chorus. This was slightly inspired by one of Brian's "edit attempts" heard on the Vigotone set. There's an extra "mmm" after the "ahh" before the conclusion. This, as well as the strings and whistle ending are from the original sessions. This section leads us into the barnyard suite.

I'm In Great Shape
I could be wrong, but I believe this is from Jason Penick's wonderful mix of Smile. This is the only time I used anything that was digitally manipulated in my mix. Jason was able to do it rather smoothly which is not easy by any means. If I didn't have this, one of the instrumental versions from Secret Smile would probably appear in its place.

Barnyard
A re-edit of the Vigotone mix. Not exactly the same structure as the 2004 version but close.

The Old Master Painter/My Only Sunshine
Someone's clever mix of SOT 17 and Vigotone. I found it amidst all my Smile stuff that I have piled up. I neglected to label the CD it was on so apologies to whomever deserves the credit for it. The fade is actually an edit of three different versions/mixes. The intro is my own creation taken from the Heroes & Villains sessions boot while the main body of the song is from the GV box and Secret Smile. There's a noticeable jump (to me at least) in audio quality from one mix to the other. Sometimes you have sacrifice quality for quantity. As far as I know, Secret Smile is the only place one can find a mix of this with Mike Love's faint lead vocal in tact. My guess is that his vocal was probably wiped somewhere along the interim.

Do You Like Worms
The 2004 arrangement of this was top notch. Compare my edit to your BWPS CD's and you'll notice that I followed it almost to the letter (taking several civil liberties, of course). Note how the "natives" come in before the second chorus. Left Brian's extra "Mahalo" in towards the end because it made me chuckle.

Cabinessence
I'm quite proud of this one. Most folks tend to use the 20/20 version as is but the ADT on Carl's lead vocal made it sound rather weird when I folded the track down to mono. It was then that I decided to make this song sound more mid 60s authentic. I used whatever original rough mixes from the time period I could dig up from various sources. They have that nice punchy quality that really make the song pop out of the radio (most noticeably on the chorus). I personally think this sounds more appropriate to the era it was created in than the mix appearing on 20/20 does. I hope you agree.

He Gives Speeches
From the SOT boot, speed corrected. I added a fade section following a three note bass line that I ripped off from Ryan Guidry's amazing fan mix. However I added some 60's style slapback echo to these bass notes to make it sound more like a true solo.

Wonderful
Taken from the GV box set version. The repeated line at the end was inspired by the way Carl Wilson performed the song in concert during the 70s (when the group was planning on finishing the Smile album for release). I liked the way it made the ending slightly more climatic, happy yet in a sad way. Some more editing and cross fading leads us into...

Look
Edited down from Mok's mix of Smile.

Child Is Father of The Man
Taken from the Vigotone boot and re-edited to fit the 2004 arrangement. There's fan mixes that have added vocals but I like the bare bones sound of this track. It makes the following track seem even more climatic. It took me a while to come up with a decent transition to end it with before I stumbled upon the session for "Surf's Up" where the percussionist and Brian are trying to get the right sound and eureka! Similar to the transition that Brian and band used for "Child..." into "Surf's Up" when performing Smile live in 2004. The bass at the end of this track also adds a nice touch of R&B to the mosaic.

Surf's Up
From the Surf's Up album completely unaltered besides being folded down to mono. I may catch grief for not using Brian's vocal over the 60s backing track. Truth is, I have never heard a mix of the two that really convince me. My ears detect too much digital manipulation of Brian's vocal. He's obviously playing at a different tempo in spots and one has to digitally stretch his vocal to make it fit. Nobody can touch him singing this song, but Carl did a great job putting this track together in the 70s.

Holidays
A nice breather after the drama of "Surf's Up". This either came off Secret Smile or Vigotone. Only thing I added to it was the fade out.

Wind Chimes
Based upon Jason Penick's mix of this track but with some additions from me to make it slightly more cohesive. Mostly from GV box set and Archaeology.

Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
My own mix but based on Ryan Guidry's.

Love To Say Dada
My own mix created by following the 2004 arrangment until the ending where I added on a tag from the Heroes & Villains sessions boot (slightly sped down to match the pitch of "Dada").

I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night
Domenic Priore and others still claim this is the "rebuilding after the fire" in addition to being "the repairing of the broken heart". Thus, in the interest of accuracy, I have adjusted the sequence of songs as such. The workshop section is actually taken from the 2004 version of smile since it had the original sound effects (and sounded better than the original recording, mix wise, when folded down to mono). You might not have even noticed this if I didn't tell you. Another tricky transition (that I hopefully pulled off) into...

Vega-Tables
From GV box set, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Archeology, and Mok's mix. This one was the most tricky of them all. As usual, I followed the 2004 arrangement but added my own touches along the way (Listen closely for a little bit of "Mama Says" from the Wild Honey album). While I was creating this mix, I kept in mind that this track was planned to be a single and that it should be both commercial and yet completely out of left field (like "Good Vibrations"). I consider this a worthy 'single mix' if you will. Long slow fade out and then...

Good Vibrations
I doubt that anybody who listens to this mix hasn't heard "Good Vibrations". Therefore, I added one or two things to make my GV both familiar and new. The original lyrics (as well as Carl's wonderful lead vocal) are still left in tact. However, be prepared for one or two small surprises that hopefully won't ruin it for you and, more than anything, make you SMiLE.



Download Here

Wrightfan Presents Smile Version Infinity

Hello everyone,

I'm happy to post the new version of SMiLE by Wrightfan! This mix is mastered down to mono and has these 12 tracks.

1. Our Prayer
2. Heroes And Villains
3. The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine
4. Do You Like Worms?
5. Vega-Tables
6. Cabinessence
7. Good Vibrations
8. Wonderful
9. Child Is Father of The Man
10. Wind Chimes
11. The Elements
12. Surf's Up

Download Here