The Beach Boys - Friends / 20/20
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Music CD Cover
Artist: The Beach BoysEdition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2001-04-10
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
- Meant For You
- Friends
- Wake The World
- Be Here In The Mornin'
- When A Man Needs A Woman
- Passing By
- Anna Lee, The Healer
- Little Bird
- Be Still
- Busy Doin' Nothin'
- Diamond Head
- Transcendental Meditation
- Do It Again
- I Can Hear Music
- Bluebirds Over The Mountain
- Be With Me
- All I Want To Do
- The Nearest Faraway Place
- Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)
- I Went To Sleep
- Time To Get Alone
- Never Learn Not To Love
- Our Prayer
- Cabinessence
- Break Away
- Celebrate The News
- We're Together Again
- Walk On By
- Old Folks At Home/Ol' Man River
Free Music Notes for Friends / 20/20
Free Music Review: Now that we can see 20/20, let's be FRIENDS! (part 2)
Hit: 5 Stars
After FRIENDS (1968) failed to set the charts on fire, the Beach Boys shook off that setback and moved on to the next project. The 20/20 album (1969) was more a patchwork of hit (and non-hit) singles and some really good Beach Boys originals, but even with the slapdash atmosphere, it was still a finely-crafted album that deserved far better than the reception it first received on release. For those fans who hadn't yet moved on from the Beach Boys' classic fun-in-the-sun early days, a song like "Do It Again" was really a diamond in the rough. The Boys look back at their youthful innocence was just what the public ordered, and became the band's first top 20 hit in several years. While the Boys may have wanted to move forward as musicians, they certainly hadn't forgotten how they got started, and "Do It Again" works because, and not in spite of, its flashback approach. Unfortunately, that was the only real big hit on 20/20, but that's not to say the Boys weren't trying. With the Beach Boys now officially a band again and not guest stars on their own albums, Carl Wilson took over from his older brother Brian as a producer on the Spector classic "I Can Hear Music". The fact that this song only reached #24 certainly is not a measure of the song's overall importance, for it does indeed show that the Beach Boys were more than just "The Brian Wilson Show". In fact with Brian pretty much a supporting act on 20/20, we must look at the album from this viewpoint. Carl Wilson had probably the most beautiful of all the Beach Boys' voices, and building on his heartbreaking performance on PET SOUNDS' "God Only Knows", he contributes even more beautiful vocals on the folk standard "Bluebirds Over The Mountain" (check out that electric guitar!), "Time To Get Alone" and the SMILE outtake "Cabinessence". Not only are the vocals something to sing about, but the instrumentation a wonder to behold, especially on "Cabinessence". While the full scope of the SMILE project may never be fully realized, judging from the heavily-layered production of "Cabinessence", it must have certainly been a thing of sonic beauty. Your jaw will literally drop at the sound of the airy beauty of the vocals, the instrumentation, and the lyrical genius of SMILE lyricist Van Dyke Parks. If only Brian Wilson could have kept it together throughout SMILE! While Mike Love may have been the biggest meditation buff of the group, his vocal performances are anything but soothing on 20/20. His lead vocals on "Do It Again", "Bluebirds" and the ballsy rocker "All I Want To Do" show that meditation hadn't totally mellowed out Mr. Love. A huge folk music fan, Al Jardine had convinced Brian Wilson to record "Sloop John B" on PET SOUNDS, and his performance of another folk classic, Leadbelly's "Cotton Fields" shows that Al really does have a folkie heart, and once again the other Beach Boys' turn yet another outside song into one of their own. After discovering his own creative voice on FRIENDS, Dennis Wilson keeps the streak alive on 20/20 with the beautiful "Be With Me" and the infamous "Never Learn Not To Love" (if you don't know the story behind this song, you don't know the Beach Boys). Brian Wilson's onstage replacement after he retired from performing, Bruce Johnston, had just been made a part of the studio recordings, and his first crack at making his own music is the instrumental "The Nearest Faraway Place". It was clear that Bruce wasn't just concentrating on stage activity, for he masters the art of the studio recording quite well on this song that demonstrates his love of PET SOUNDS. With the other Beach Boys throwing their hats into the creative ring, their former guiding light Brian Wilson stood on the sidelines for the most part. But his spirit was not only with the other Boys, he did get a chance to make his own contributions to 20/20. "I Went To Sleep" is the only song on 20/20 where he's running the show, and this short little song once again compresses his lyrical and musical genius into only 1:42. Like "Busy Doin' Nothin'" off FRIENDS, "Sleep" is another song about an ordinary day in the life of post-SMILE Brian Wilson. He also contributes vocals to "Time To Get Alone" and is featured with all the other Beach Boys on the SMILE cast-off "Our Prayer". This minute-long a cappella number was intended to be the first track on the SMILE album, and it would have made a great one, for the mood is set for what might have been one of the most beautiful pop records ever recorded. With the short lengths of FRIENDS & 20/20, Capitol Records' 2-for-1 deal was a good idea, for an album lasting less than half an hour costing about 10 to 12 dollars would be highway robbery for some people. Not only that, but there's more bonus tracks to demonstrate why on earth the Beach Boys decided not to include these with the original albums. "Break Away" was another non-hit that should have been, and it proved that lyrically, the Beach Boys could sing the praises of more than just girls and cars. Too bad their fans didn't want it that way. "Celebrate The News" was another great song from Dennis Wilson, showing that his burgeoning musical talent was no fluke. "We're Together Again" once again demonstrates the "back-to-basics" approach of 20/20 with the other Beach Boys actively contributing to the music for the first time since before PET SOUNDS. While the Beach Boys would soon be typed as an oldies act, they show their ability to turn any song into their own with covers of the Burt Bacharach classic "Walk On By" and a medley of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks At Home" and SHOW BOAT's "Ol' Man River". After 20/20, the Beach Boys left Capitol Records after a tense 7-year history. They would soon sign to Warner Brothers for more great underrated albums.
Friends / 20/20 Poster
Their 1968 and 1969 releases, with the bonus tracks Break Away; Celebrate the News; We're Together Again; Walk On By , and Old Folks at Home/Old Man River .What happens when the goose stops laying golden eggs? That's the dilemma the Beach Boys faced when Brian Wilson underwent a self-imposed creative cooling-off period after the mysterious Smile album debacle. And after producing what averaged to better than three albums a year for the previous half-decade, who could blame him? Nevertheless, the band's failure to capitalize on the musical revolution symbolized by Sgt. Pepper saw their American fortunes plummet from world-beaters to also-rans, seemingly overnight. But ironically, as the times were a-changin', so was the Beach Boys sound, even if few in America were listening. Friends is easily the band's most tranquil album, a missive of peaceful good tidings fatefully issued amidst the assassinations and street riots of 1968. And if Brian was absent from many of the group's photos during the troubled era, he was still involved behind the scenes, as the vocal harmonies of the title track, "Be Here in the Mornin'," and others attest; his instrumental arrangements may be low-key, though ever inventive, as "Diamond Head" also confirms. Still, the blunt, confessional message of Wilson's "Busy Doin' Nothin'" is equally hard to miss.
20/20 marked the 20th--and last--album of the band's first Capitol era. The album is a collection of singles (the nostalgic "Do It Again," Carl Wilson's vibrant showcase "I Can Hear Music") and a couple of key Smile scraps (the transcendent a cappella album intro "Our Prayer" and the American gothic-tinged "Cabinessence," with obtusely punning lyrics courtesy of Van Dyke Parks) set amidst productions that are mostly divided among various band members. Perhaps most notable is the continued blossoming of Dennis Wilson's talents on "Be with Me" and "Never Learn Not to Love" (the latter reputedly originally given to Wilson by temporary housemate Charles Manson; strange days, indeed). This digitally remastered edition of the long out-of-print twofer edition includes the reminiscences of Brian Wilson and insightful liner notes by Beach Boys and the California Myth author David Leaf and features five bonus cuts: "Break Away," the band's vocally spectacular, if woefully underappreciated, last Capitol single; the B-side "Celebrate the News," sung and produced by Dennis; the beautiful '68 outtake, "We're Together Again"; a snippet of Brian's soaring falsetto paying tribute to Bacharach's "Walk on By"; and a medley of "Old Folks at Home"/"Ol' Man River" that underscores the band's distinctly American historical and artistic heritage. --Jerry McCulley
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