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.