Great article on The Beach Boys' new album

I just read a really good story on The Beach Boys, their reunion and the new album.

I won't poach the whole article, I don't want to deny the website its hits (and advertising revenue). It's one of the better articles I've read in a long time on the group, and I think it deserves getting as much exposure as it can get.

DO check out the great article HERE (click words).

Some of the great bits:



"That's Why God Made the Radio" has its roots in demos Wilson made with Thomas in the late 1990s when they were neighbors in St. Charles, Ill. The pair was working on Wilson's "Imagination" album then, but Wilson was already looking ahead to another Beach Boys record.

"Brian was very specific," Thomas said by phone from St. Charles. "He had two or three songs that he did not want to do solo. He wanted to do them with The Beach Boys. One was 'That's Why God Made the Radio.' "

To get the project started, Thomas said, Wilson sent his brother, Carl, a demo of a potential Beach Boys song.

"It had several different names to it," Thomas said. "At one time it was called 'Lay Down Your Burden,' the title of which we ended up stealing from ourselves and turning into a ballad called 'Lay Down Burden' on Brian's solo record. But the original piece was kind of an up-tempo, gospel-y kind of thing that finally ended up on the new album as 'Spring Vacation.' "


AND



Wilson's plan was to title the new album "Summer's Gone," and end the record — the final Beach Boys record — with that track. Then Wilson had a change of heart.

"Everybody was getting along so well and the creativeness started flowing again that he shelved the idea of this being the last song on the last Beach Boys record," Thomas said. "He was having too good of a time."

As work on the record progressed, an album-length suite began to develop around the "Summer's Gone" theme. "If 'Pet Sounds' is Brian looking at life as a youth, this is him looking at life as an older adult," Thomas said.

AND



As of May 7, when he was taping the Fallon show, Jardine said he had heard the song just once — when he was recording his vocals. "I was dropped in like a parachute on this song and the others," he said. "On 'From There to Back Again,' I kept dropping my voice in until I did all of the lines. They kept telling me, 'Why don't you sing this part?' It was always just one part, until I ended up singing almost every part there was."

When told the track is one of the best on the album, Jardine sounds touched — and noticeably proud. "Awwww ... are you serious? Well, I'll be a son of a gun."

Seriously, this is a great article that gives a lot of good background and some great quotes. Check it out. Props to the Ventura County Star for such a wonderful piece. Mark Wyckoff, you wrote a great piece.