More great analysis. As for the story of "Finders Keepers", a "meatball flag" is a flag with a large dot in the middle (similar to the flag of Japan), meaning "no surfing today"/"dangerous conditions". So the hodad who stole the board sees the flag, freaks out, and wipes out, which brings the board back to shore.
Ha it's great to hear I sound that way because I wasn't. I was trying to get through all this material without the thing going two hours, and it was quite a wild ride.
Great stuff, as with last time. I really enjoyed the musical/guitarical insights you had on this one. SUSA is a super underrated, surprisingly interesting album in their timeline. I'm glad you're open to discussion about who played/sang what on what when etc. - making mistakes and having preconceptions challenged is part of the fun of analysing this band! They're never consistent, always more to learn. I love finding out I'm wrong and then getting closer to the truth of something. On that note, some things I wrote down as I watched... I can totally buy David's recollection that he doubled Dennis on the title track. There's some of that Surfers Rule tone happening. To my ears, the other song on the album that he may be singing on is Finders Keepers, doubling Dennis at the bottom - Carl is 100% in the middle there, either with Dennis (leaving David alone beneath) or on his own, but Carl isn't the low part. The chronology theory I buy into is that the Surfin' USA track was recorded Jan 5 at Western, with Frank DeVito, who also played drums on Shut Down - as pointed out by someone who knows a lot more about drumming than me, the drummer keeps time on the hi-hat with his left foot during the fills, something Dennis hardly ever did but DeVito does do on Surfin' USA. There's some compelling evidence that the tracks for Lana and Farmer's Daughter were actually recorded at Radio Recorders on Jan 16, not Western, and those would probably be Dennis again. Bob Norberg sings on both (maybe something to do with Brian wanting to put it out under the 'Johnny Dew' pseudonym) and to that end might also be playing guitar on Lana. Farmer's Daughter BGs are Brian/Bob/Carl, Lana is Brian/Bob/Carl & Dennis. Bob's doing some low humming under Brian on the Farmer's Daughter lead vocal track while Carl faintly doubles the guitar. The instrument in the Lana solo is an accordion, not a sax. Trust me, John knows what he's talking about. It's out there isolated on Unsurpassed Masters. Plausible scenario seems to be that Brian played accordion in the break while singing his first vocal, then while doubling and bouncing to another tape played celeste with Carl on guitar (or in reverse order). There's also accordion on Big Beat and Carl's Big Chance most likely played by Brian.
Cont'd Al is absolutely, 600% on Lonely Sea. That Dennis you're hearing is Al. Categorically, unequivocally, tellin' ya it's Al. Dennis doesn't sing on it. From high to low the backing vocals are Brian, Al, Carl, Mike. There really **isn't** a bass on Finders Keepers for some reason, basic lineup is guitar+piano+sax and guitar+drums over two tracks. I think what you're hearing are lower frequencies from the guitar and/or bleed from the sax. Cindy basic track has a similar illusion happening. Some bonus track trivia - Murry sings the bass vocal on Cindy! It's all Wilsons. Bob Norberg is also on Baker Man beside Brian and Carl, he's singing on more from 1963 than you'd expect. Keep 'em coming. I'm looking forward to the Surfer Girl ep and will probably have a lot to say there too!
@@WillCrerar Haha great stuff. I'm not gonna "fight ya" on any of these because if you've got raw tracks to listen to you're going to hear things that aren't evident on the final record which by and large is what I have access to. I'm going by the final mixes with one exception (I did hear the unsurpassed for "Finder's Keepers" and listened very carefully - and I do believe the middle is Dennis based on careful listening but i wouldn't bet my pension on it). However, be careful...in a studio situation you can also have stuff that is on the raw tracks that doesn't actually make it to the record. If I heard raw tracks, I might hear what you're hearing...or I might not! If there was an accordion at some point, for example, it might not necessarily be on the record or it might be inaudible. I 100% did not hear it...but I did hear the sax, which is all over the record elsewhere. So I'll only die on the hill of what I can hear, if you feel me. I was certain for instance that Brian sang the falsetto at the end of "Baby Blue" until Alan played me the isolated track, and it's Carl. On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time in the studio and also playing this music physically and I've got pretty sharp ears...but I also know how much stuff that's just impossible to know with precision because someone might, for example, go for a pee break and someone else steps in or something like that. Things can also get buried and distorted in the mix so that A winds up sounding exactly like B. So I have some humility about what's knowable. But I also won't agree to hear things I don't hear, I'll just stipulate that others might reach different conclusions with blurry evidence. :) I hope that's fair. OK, I will fight ya on the Dennis-Al part on "Lonely Sea", because I went down the rabbit hole on this pretty far. The part DOES sound a lot like Al in the section from 1:35-1:45 and a little bit at 1:15. But the tonality of that same vocal part is smoother earlier and again shifts back at 1:54 and it's got a much rounder tone that Dennis always had, and Al never did (Al's voice, as Carl said "cuts"). Also that same part is all over the place: it goes sharp at one point, flat at another, loses breath at another and there's a complete fishing for a note somewhere else. Maybe Al was that imprecise at that point - not much evidence to tell us - but that level of imprecision is more of a Dennis thing. So I listened for it to "be Al" and in the middle yeah I'm like "that sounds like Al" but if you follow the part all the way through from the beginning to the end, the rest of it I'm going "no way that's Al. Dennis." As I say repeatedly, "I wasn't there," so someone can give me an isolated track and I might go "oh, okay, yup, that's Al." But I gotta go with the evidence of my ears and following that part all the way through from the beginning to the end, I can't make the bulk of it sound like Al in my head. There's Al-like parts, but to me that's Dennis. But "to me" isn't a fact. I could be wrong. We gotta have some humility about this stuff :) That said...I gotta go with the evidence I have. :)
Just listened to the SOT/UM "Lana": there's no accordian in the instrumental break, but there is a faint celesta. There's also no sax on "Lana" that I can hear.
@@AGD55 Thanks for sending me that same SOT letting me give it a listen, since I hadn't heard it. From what I can tell the sax is (nearly) inaudible on SOT because it's only audible as bleeding through to the drum mic, which is panned center and low to the other two tracks on the SOT version. The track with drums appears to be mixed louder on the final mix and so the sax is easier to hear, although still barely audible and only during the break. I might have missed it if it wasn't present on a bunch of other tracks sounding similarly. I can see now how someone could hear it on SOT and think its accordion, though. It's so indistinct on SOT that it takes pretty sharp ears to pick out anything at all, so kudos to John and Will. But as of now I'm gonna stick to my opinion that it's Mike's unamplified sax bleeding onto the drum mic. This whole thread is peak geek, I hope there's a lot more of this kind of thing. It's definitely sharpened my own perceptions. I think I'll avail myself of the SG unsurpassed masters before going on to Episode 3 just to make sure I'm ready for all comers!
@@karmafrog1 I promise you that's an accordion, just a noisy and badly played one. It's holding two notes a fifth apart the whole way through and that attack is only possible with a free-reed squeezebox. The tape here is divided up like this: 1 - backing vocals 2 - doubled lead vocals, lead guitar, celeste, accordion (presumably, 1st generation: lead vocal & accordion / 2nd generation: lead vocal double, guitar & celeste during mixdown) 3 - piano, rhythm guitar, bass, drums There's bleed from the basic track onto it (via studio monitors) but no bleed from it - it's definitely overdubbed and definitely something that only exists on that track!
Don’t know how many celestes were used throughout the first decade of the BB career, but there is one reported to have been used on their records near me at Larchmont Piano! Could be this very one...
In retrospect I wished I'd got a picture of it in here because I don't know what one looks like, but have an imagined visual of how it is constructed because of how it sounds and how badly it mangled Brian's solo attempt.
I'm about halfway through the episode & will watch the rest of it later tonight. Love it so far. Had no idea about the "who was really playing drums" issue. In the meantime, I have a technical question: which mastering/pressing are you listening to for this review? Orginal 1963 vinyl? Re-issued vinyl? 1990 two-fer? 2001 two-fer (which was 24-bit mastered onto HDCD)? MFSL Gold Disc? And which masterings/pressings will you be using for future reviews? "Woudn't it be nice" if you could mention the reference pressing for each future album/episode. :-)
Good question! What's on my iTunes, which is the 1990 two-fer. And then for answering specific questions, I go fishin' around on youTube for other versions. That's all that's really practical for me.
To become a Patreon patron of the KarmaFrog1 channel:
www.patreon.com/karmafrog1
Alan was on the Kenny & The Cadets single, April 1962.
More great analysis. As for the story of "Finders Keepers", a "meatball flag" is a flag with a large dot in the middle (similar to the flag of Japan), meaning "no surfing today"/"dangerous conditions". So the hodad who stole the board sees the flag, freaks out, and wipes out, which brings the board back to shore.
Oh! Wow! Well, good to know. Clever strategem.
Great job Adam! You’re much more relaxed for this one. The prep work is readily apparent. Very entertaining! 👍👍
Ha it's great to hear I sound that way because I wasn't. I was trying to get through all this material without the thing going two hours, and it was quite a wild ride.
Great stuff, as with last time. I really enjoyed the musical/guitarical insights you had on this one. SUSA is a super underrated, surprisingly interesting album in their timeline.
I'm glad you're open to discussion about who played/sang what on what when etc. - making mistakes and having preconceptions challenged is part of the fun of analysing this band! They're never consistent, always more to learn. I love finding out I'm wrong and then getting closer to the truth of something. On that note, some things I wrote down as I watched...
I can totally buy David's recollection that he doubled Dennis on the title track. There's some of that Surfers Rule tone happening. To my ears, the other song on the album that he may be singing on is Finders Keepers, doubling Dennis at the bottom - Carl is 100% in the middle there, either with Dennis (leaving David alone beneath) or on his own, but Carl isn't the low part.
The chronology theory I buy into is that the Surfin' USA track was recorded Jan 5 at Western, with Frank DeVito, who also played drums on Shut Down - as pointed out by someone who knows a lot more about drumming than me, the drummer keeps time on the hi-hat with his left foot during the fills, something Dennis hardly ever did but DeVito does do on Surfin' USA. There's some compelling evidence that the tracks for Lana and Farmer's Daughter were actually recorded at Radio Recorders on Jan 16, not Western, and those would probably be Dennis again. Bob Norberg sings on both (maybe something to do with Brian wanting to put it out under the 'Johnny Dew' pseudonym) and to that end might also be playing guitar on Lana. Farmer's Daughter BGs are Brian/Bob/Carl, Lana is Brian/Bob/Carl & Dennis. Bob's doing some low humming under Brian on the Farmer's Daughter lead vocal track while Carl faintly doubles the guitar.
The instrument in the Lana solo is an accordion, not a sax. Trust me, John knows what he's talking about. It's out there isolated on Unsurpassed Masters. Plausible scenario seems to be that Brian played accordion in the break while singing his first vocal, then while doubling and bouncing to another tape played celeste with Carl on guitar (or in reverse order). There's also accordion on Big Beat and Carl's Big Chance most likely played by Brian.
Cont'd
Al is absolutely, 600% on Lonely Sea. That Dennis you're hearing is Al. Categorically, unequivocally, tellin' ya it's Al. Dennis doesn't sing on it. From high to low the backing vocals are Brian, Al, Carl, Mike.
There really **isn't** a bass on Finders Keepers for some reason, basic lineup is guitar+piano+sax and guitar+drums over two tracks. I think what you're hearing are lower frequencies from the guitar and/or bleed from the sax. Cindy basic track has a similar illusion happening.
Some bonus track trivia - Murry sings the bass vocal on Cindy! It's all Wilsons. Bob Norberg is also on Baker Man beside Brian and Carl, he's singing on more from 1963 than you'd expect.
Keep 'em coming. I'm looking forward to the Surfer Girl ep and will probably have a lot to say there too!
@@WillCrerar Haha great stuff. I'm not gonna "fight ya" on any of these because if you've got raw tracks to listen to you're going to hear things that aren't evident on the final record which by and large is what I have access to. I'm going by the final mixes with one exception (I did hear the unsurpassed for "Finder's Keepers" and listened very carefully - and I do believe the middle is Dennis based on careful listening but i wouldn't bet my pension on it).
However, be careful...in a studio situation you can also have stuff that is on the raw tracks that doesn't actually make it to the record. If I heard raw tracks, I might hear what you're hearing...or I might not! If there was an accordion at some point, for example, it might not necessarily be on the record or it might be inaudible. I 100% did not hear it...but I did hear the sax, which is all over the record elsewhere. So I'll only die on the hill of what I can hear, if you feel me. I was certain for instance that Brian sang the falsetto at the end of "Baby Blue" until Alan played me the isolated track, and it's Carl. On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time in the studio and also playing this music physically and I've got pretty sharp ears...but I also know how much stuff that's just impossible to know with precision because someone might, for example, go for a pee break and someone else steps in or something like that. Things can also get buried and distorted in the mix so that A winds up sounding exactly like B. So I have some humility about what's knowable. But I also won't agree to hear things I don't hear, I'll just stipulate that others might reach different conclusions with blurry evidence. :) I hope that's fair.
OK, I will fight ya on the Dennis-Al part on "Lonely Sea", because I went down the rabbit hole on this pretty far. The part DOES sound a lot like Al in the section from 1:35-1:45 and a little bit at 1:15. But the tonality of that same vocal part is smoother earlier and again shifts back at 1:54 and it's got a much rounder tone that Dennis always had, and Al never did (Al's voice, as Carl said "cuts"). Also that same part is all over the place: it goes sharp at one point, flat at another, loses breath at another and there's a complete fishing for a note somewhere else. Maybe Al was that imprecise at that point - not much evidence to tell us - but that level of imprecision is more of a Dennis thing. So I listened for it to "be Al" and in the middle yeah I'm like "that sounds like Al" but if you follow the part all the way through from the beginning to the end, the rest of it I'm going "no way that's Al. Dennis."
As I say repeatedly, "I wasn't there," so someone can give me an isolated track and I might go "oh, okay, yup, that's Al." But I gotta go with the evidence of my ears and following that part all the way through from the beginning to the end, I can't make the bulk of it sound like Al in my head. There's Al-like parts, but to me that's Dennis.
But "to me" isn't a fact. I could be wrong. We gotta have some humility about this stuff :) That said...I gotta go with the evidence I have. :)
Just listened to the SOT/UM "Lana": there's no accordian in the instrumental break, but there is a faint celesta. There's also no sax on "Lana" that I can hear.
@@AGD55 Thanks for sending me that same SOT letting me give it a listen, since I hadn't heard it.
From what I can tell the sax is (nearly) inaudible on SOT because it's only audible as bleeding through to the drum mic, which is panned center and low to the other two tracks on the SOT version. The track with drums appears to be mixed louder on the final mix and so the sax is easier to hear, although still barely audible and only during the break. I might have missed it if it wasn't present on a bunch of other tracks sounding similarly.
I can see now how someone could hear it on SOT and think its accordion, though. It's so indistinct on SOT that it takes pretty sharp ears to pick out anything at all, so kudos to John and Will. But as of now I'm gonna stick to my opinion that it's Mike's unamplified sax bleeding onto the drum mic.
This whole thread is peak geek, I hope there's a lot more of this kind of thing. It's definitely sharpened my own perceptions. I think I'll avail myself of the SG unsurpassed masters before going on to Episode 3 just to make sure I'm ready for all comers!
@@karmafrog1 I promise you that's an accordion, just a noisy and badly played one. It's holding two notes a fifth apart the whole way through and that attack is only possible with a free-reed squeezebox. The tape here is divided up like this:
1 - backing vocals
2 - doubled lead vocals, lead guitar, celeste, accordion (presumably, 1st generation: lead vocal & accordion / 2nd generation: lead vocal double, guitar & celeste during mixdown)
3 - piano, rhythm guitar, bass, drums
There's bleed from the basic track onto it (via studio monitors) but no bleed from it - it's definitely overdubbed and definitely something that only exists on that track!
Excellent review!! Thanks for posting.
Don’t know how many celestes were used throughout the first decade of the BB career, but there is one reported to have been used on their records near me at Larchmont Piano! Could be this very one...
In retrospect I wished I'd got a picture of it in here because I don't know what one looks like, but have an imagined visual of how it is constructed because of how it sounds and how badly it mangled Brian's solo attempt.
I'm about halfway through the episode & will watch the rest of it later tonight. Love it so far. Had no idea about the "who was really playing drums" issue. In the meantime, I have a technical question: which mastering/pressing are you listening to for this review? Orginal 1963 vinyl? Re-issued vinyl? 1990 two-fer? 2001 two-fer (which was 24-bit mastered onto HDCD)? MFSL Gold Disc? And which masterings/pressings will you be using for future reviews? "Woudn't it be nice" if you could mention the reference pressing for each future album/episode. :-)
Good question! What's on my iTunes, which is the 1990 two-fer. And then for answering specific questions, I go fishin' around on youTube for other versions. That's all that's really practical for me.
You probably know this but listen to Duane Eddy's intro to "Movin & Groovin"...songwriting credits could have been "Eddy/Berry".
OK. So Carol Kaye didn't play the drums on Surfin USA. But the cello and the theremin on Good Vibrations were definitely Carl's ideas. 😉
Another home run. Loved it and am now a Patreon patron of Karma Frog. :)
Much obliged, sir.
Another good Beach Boys album.
Lana is played over the changes of The Bell Notes I'VE HAD IT.
Lonely Sea on the Safari album would made the rest of the album sound like dog crap, love it ;-)
Wake me when you get to Summer In Paradise ;P
It’s sure to sell a million units....in January.
With all the mentions of great syncopation, this album HAD to have been produced by Murry. ;)
The hidden genius of the band after all...
@@karmafrog1 If Murry truly wrote the lyrics to Break Away (my favorite Beach Boys song), as Brian says, one has to wonder...