On Tour: 1968 - Part 4

The next show on the docket is the second performance from December 1, 1968 at the London Palladium.  Listening to all of these recordings has been a very enjoyable experience.  The additional musicians really add to the songs and the Beach Boys are a well-oiled machine at this point.  It's the same short 11-song setlist from the earlier show, but the crowd doesn't seem to mind.  Everything is well-received, especially "Do It Again" and the songs from Pet Sounds.  After "Do It Again," Mike says "we're never gonna be able to go home if you keep this up.  My goodness!  Gonna have to establish residence."  The show is a little sloppier than the first show.  There are some drumming mishaps in "Darlin'" and after Mike disappears in the first chorus of "All I Want To Do" he says, "This is a new song, we haven't quite gotten it."  Mike says Brian is not on tour because he's pregnant.  There goes Mike with his pregnant talk again.  Brian's wife would soon become pregnant, but that's neither here nor there. 

Before we get to the final show of this On Tour release, we are given "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations" from the soundcheck at the Finsbury Park Astoria in London on December 8th.  The first thing we hear is Carl telling somebody the setlist.  He doesn't provide the entire list, however, saying "I'll give you the rest later because we may change the end of the show a little bit."  Despite being a soundcheck, Carl doesn't phone it in.  It's a very good performance marred slightly by some talking.  This rendition of "Good Vibrations" was released in 1998 on Endless Harmony but mixed differently and edited in several spots.  The most obvious change is that we hear Carl sing "softly smile, I know she must be kind, yeah" and Mike chimes in "oh yeah."  Mike is missing on the EH release.  In fact, the word "kind" on EH seems to have been flown-in from somewhere else as it's not the slower way Carl sang it in the rehearsal.  Also, the four loud drum beats after "She goes with me to a blossom world" heard on On Tour have been removed for EH.  The drums after "what an elation" are also different on both versions.  There is a bang of some sort right before "Gotta keep those lovin' good..." that was edited out of the On Tour version.  I'm not sure why they messed with a rehearsal so much.  When lining up the tracks to compare, they often went out of sync.  Starting in the first chorus, the EH version runs slightly faster than On Tour: 1968.  

Finally, on December 8, 1968, the Beach Boys played two shows at the aforementioned Finsbury Park Astoria.  The first show that day is presented here as the last concert in this collection.  Word was going around at the time of this release that the second show that day wasn't included because it makes up the Live In London album.  I will show in my next post how that is not the case.  Though it includes some of Mike's most nauseating banter yet, this is another good show by the guys.  Compared to a week earlier, "Aren't You Glad" and "Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring" are in the lineup and "All I Want To Do" is dropped.  I think the only downside to these London shows, not counting their brevity, is how Dennis lost his moment with "Little Bird" and Al's lone lead, "Help Me, Rhonda," is also absent.  These are very much Carl and Mike shows.  The medley of five early hits was dropped as well, possibly as an effort to appear more hip, though I'm sure the crowd would have loved them just as much as they seemed to love "Barbara Ann" here.

On Tour: 1968 - Part 3

The last US show featured in this collection comes from the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, AZ on July 16, 1968.  The first thing we hear are the last five seconds of "Help Me, Rhonda," so that song and "Darlin'" are missing this time around.  Mike tells us for about the third show now that "California Girls" used to be called "California Girls Are All Pregnant."  The context to that joke has probably been lost to time.  This show is notable for the inclusion of "I Get Around" which wasn't part of their setlist at the time.  Mike introduces it as a request and it takes the place of "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring."  Like the previous shows, the new songs seem to stick out when it comes to energy and quality of performance.  I get the feeling they enjoy taking a break from the hits to play "Friends," "Little Bird," and "Do It Again."

The Beach Boys started their sold-out British Tour with two shows at the London Palladium on December 1, 1968.  This next recording is the first concert from that day.  The setlist is trimmed down to only 11 selections with songs like "Friends," "Little Bird," "Surfer Girl" and the medley of five early hits being shown the door.  Bob Farmer wrote a glowing review of the shows in Disc & Music Echo, mentioning how polished the performance was and how the band "were a brilliant and faithful reproduction of all we've come to expect of them on record."  He goes on to say, "If there was any doubt about the on-stage ability of this recording ensemble, forget it.  In fact, don't dare suggest it."  This was a time when their popularity was certainly waning in the US, but Britain was very friendly and open to our guys.  The addition of "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" and the guts to end the show with a song that was unreleased at the time ("All I Want To Do") shows a band with great confidence that they can not only survive these years with Brian taking a more part-time role, but could also grow and evolve on their own.  

As recently as 2001, in the liner notes to the Concert/Live In London twofer CD reissue, these December 1st shows were said to be the source of the Live In London album released in the UK in 1970 and in the US in 1976 under the name Beach Boys '69 (The Beach Boys In London).  This is not the case as we will see in the next and final entry.

On Tour: 1968 - Part 2

The next concert on this set comes from the McElroy Auditorium in Waterloo, Iowa on July 10, 1968.  This recording begins after "Darlin'" has started but before the vocals occur.  There is not much to say about this particular show.  It is well-performed and a very good soundboard recording.  Mike repeats some of his dialogue from the previous concerts, but even he isn't as talkative as usual.  He introduces the medley as a "Beach Boys mudley of oldies but moldies," which is funny as these songs are not that old and he would still be performing them 50 years later.  Twice at the end of "California Girls" the lyric is changed to "I wish you all could be California girls."  The list of songs performed is the same as before except "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" is not included.  I don't know if it was dropped that night or edited out of the recording here.  Overall, it's a fine show and a better performance than Fargo.

We catch up with the guys three days later at the Pershing Municipal Auditorium in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Like Iowa, this is another quality show.  Mike is more talkative on this date and gets the audience to laugh a couple times.  The first time is right before "Surfer Girl" where the song is often announced as the first slow song they ever wrote.  Mike says, "Wish we'd turn off these laser beams up there.  They're beginning to sterilize us here.  I'm not taking any chances on this one."  "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" returns tonight and Mike introduces it by saying "we'd like to do this song a capella, which means naked."  There is no band instrumental on this show and there does seem to be a few edits between songs for whatever reason.  I think the horn section was a nice addition to this tour.  It really helps fill in the backing and moves songs like "California Girls" and "Sloop John B" slightly closer to their studio versions.  New songs like "Friends" and "Little Bird" really stand out in these shows.

On Tour: 1968 - Part 1

This is the first post in a four-part series on the digital-only live release On Tour: 1968.  On December 14, 2018, the band put out this 114-track set consisting of eight concerts from a very productive, though commercially underwhelming, period.  It's one of my favorite years in the history of the group.

The first five shows come from their July 1968 US tour and the last three are from London that December.  The band augmented their sound by bringing some extra musicians with them.  There are no liner notes with this set, but digging around the Internet suggests we have Daryl Dragon on organ, Ed Carter on occasional bass and lead guitar (in the fall), possibly John Guerin on drums for two songs in the summer shows, Mike Kowalski with some percussion (in the fall), and a horn section of unknowns.  These guys really flesh out the sound and add a lot to the performances.

We start things off with a show at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago on July 5, 1968.  The Beach Boys released their Friends album two weeks earlier, Dennis Wilson had a gang of unsavory characters living at his house, and Brian and the guys had been working on some beautiful recordings the world wouldn't hear for over 20 years with names such as "We're Together Again," "Old Man River," and "Walk On By."  This 43-minute recording starts in the middle of "Darlin'" from Wild Honey.  They play the usual songs like "Help Me, Rhonda," "California Girls," and "Surfer Girl" before playing both sides of their three-month-old single: "Friends" b/w "Little Bird."  Mike introduces "Friends" saying "we're going to do a song of ours, a bomb of ours."  They pull off an excellent performance and it sounds like it was very well-received by the crowd.  "Little Bird" is next featuring Dennis on lead.  These songs are not common occurrences in Beach Boys setlists so it's cool hearing them when they were new.  The guys run through the same medley of five early hits they were doing in 1966 and nobody even tries doing the falsetto parts.

Another highlight is hearing both sides of their soon-to-be-released single: "Do It Again" b/w "Wake The World."  The horns take the place of the high vocal parts in "Do It Again."  Afterwards Mike had a funny comment where he said, "Anybody heard it lately?  Not counting just now."  This is likely about lack of radio support, though the song would go to #1 in the UK.  "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations" are nicely executed and appreciated by the audience before launching into "Barbara Ann."  Mike then says "I'm going to introduce Ernie and the band," but unfortunately doesn't.  Ernie Small was considered a "touring bandleader" at the time.  Mike closed with "they're going to demonstrate to you their abilities on their own for a few minutes here and we'll be back shortly."  The band then plays us out.  I'm unaware if the Beach Boys came back on stage.  This is where the Chicago recording ends.

The second show in this collection is from three days later, July 8th, at the Memorial Auditorium in Fargo, North Dakota.  I'm assuming the show started with "Darlin'," though it's not included here.  We begin with Al singing "Help Me, Rhonda" and the setlist is nearly the same as Chicago.  The only changes are that the band instrumental takes place after "Wake The World," "God Only Knows" is played after "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" instead of before, and "Johnny B. Goode" is featured at the end.  The horn section does a great job on "Little Bird" and the intro to "California Girls."  The Chicago performance was much better than this Fargo show (the second of two that day).  "Surfer Girl" is very weak vocally, there's some goofing around during "Friends," and many cues are missed in the medley.  The beginning of "Johnny B. Goode" is butchered and there seems to be odd guitar problems throughout that song.

Our Car Club

One early Beach Boys song that doesn't seem to get a lot of love is "Our Car Club" from the Surfer Girl album.  I'm not going to make the case that it's some great songwriting achievement, but it sounds really good and I like it!  The lyrics would be seen as super corny today, but in the pre-Beatles world this probably passed for "cool."  I'm assuming Mike wrote most of, if not all, the lyrics, but some of them are very Brian.

"I've been cruisin' 'round the town now with the guys for quite awhile," Mike begins.  "We've been thinkin' 'bout starting up a club that shows some class and style," Brian continues.  Everyone then chimes in with "And we'll get the finest cars!"  It's an early song in the line of "Little Deuce Coupe" or "I Get Around" where we find the guys bragging about their hipness.  In this case there's just something so charming and innocent about it.  "We'll get the roughest and the toughest initiation we can find / And if you want to try to get in we'll really put you through the grind."  These guys look too clean-cut for anyone to take that seriously.

The song has a sophisticated arrangement and is the first time drummer Hal Blaine appeared on a Beach Boys recording.  According to Jon Stebbins in The Beach Boys FAQ, Steve Douglas and Jay Migliori both play saxophone on the track.  We don't know exactly when it was recorded.  The CD liner notes say July 16, 1963, but they ascribe that date to ten songs on the album and that's not realistic.  Unfortunately it seems the documentation has been lost.  I think the song is more powerful in its stereo mix versus the mono.  The vocals are louder in stereo and Hal's drums sound quite aggressive compared to other tracks on the album.

My favorite part of the song is Brian's voice.  I've heard some say that their favorite singer could sing the phone book and they'd love it.  I guess I'm the same with Brian.  Twice in the song he chimes in with: "We'll set a meet and get a sponsor and collect some dues / and you can bet that we'll have our jackets on wherever we cruise."  I don't want to belittle it by calling it cute, but I find it very sweet.  This is right before the Beatles showed up and redefined what "cool" is.  It takes me back to the world of The Mickey Mouse Club or a town like Mayfield, where the Cleavers lived.  In a very good way.