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Post by Kapitan on Mar 20, 2019 13:52:34 GMT
L.A. (Light Album) is another one of those Beach Boys albums whose reputation seems to have grown in the past five or ten years. Reasons for change in opinion are interesting to speculate about: new fans wanting different cult favorites than their predecessors? Old fans needing some “new” object of fetishization? Broader changes in music trends changing which legacy albums are (or sound like) influences? Regardless, I think I’m still of more or less the same mind with respect to L.A.: it has some decent material, but it isn’t anything to write home about. Sometimes people argue whether it’s better than MIU; I’d argue that it doesn’t much matter. How proud can you be about that fourteenth-place medal? Some fans praise “Good Timin” as a minor classic; I rate it as a minor song that benefits from context. Pretty in the refrain, pointless in the verse. “Lady Lynda” is decent, and I guess if you’re going to pilfer a tune, you could do worse with the source material. “Shortenin’ Bread” is more fun as an idea—there goes Brian on his wacky fixation again!—than as a listen. “Here Comes the Night” isn’t quite as awful as its reputation, which is a funny thing to say. “Sumahuma” is a song that is also on the album. Carl’s and Dennis’s songs are the oddballs. I think the recent adoration for the album boils down mostly to those songs: “Full Sail,” “Angel Come Home,” “Love Surrounds Me,” “Baby Blue,” and “Goin South” … and I struggle with those songs. They’re not good or bad. I don’t like or dislike them. I neither seek nor avoid them. At times, usually if I’m not entirely sober late some night, listening through headphones, something about them is really appealing. At others, they seem like filler tracks from some other band entirely. Probably the best I can say about L.A. is that it is better than anything else they did for the next 33 years. But had I been conscious of the band’s work at the time (as opposed to being tied up in the business of being a 3-year-old), I can’t imagine having felt good about the situation.
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Post by sebevedomy on Mar 21, 2019 8:03:00 GMT
I like most of the songs, but "Here Comes the Night" does not fit or is too long; and the version of "Shortenin' Bread" is kind of lame -- that goddamn guitar.
I think the Adult/Child version is better. Knowing that they had a number of decent songs they could have used in lieu of those two means that the album is just fodder for a new improved playlist for me. I give it a 6.
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Post by Keepin' The Worms Alive on Mar 21, 2019 22:08:13 GMT
If you got rid of "Here Comes The Disco", "Sumahama" and that version of "Shortnenin' Bread", replaced it with "It's A Beautiful Day", the early version of "Santa Ana Winds" and the Adult/Child version of "Shortnenin Bread" it could've been a much better album.
Also, "Angel Come Home" was one of their last masterpieces.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 21, 2019 22:41:01 GMT
I'd grant you that it would help.
For me personally, you could just get rid of all of it, replace it with all of Adult/Child, and then you'd REALLY be on to something! (Though actually I would keep a few of these songs over a few A/C songs. But not many.)
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Post by kds on Mar 24, 2019 3:55:41 GMT
I'm sure that The Beach Boys will learn from the misstep of this disco Here Comes the Night and never release another remake on a future album or solo album.
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Post by Kapitan on Jun 7, 2021 16:36:24 GMT
L.A. (Light Album) [Caribou, 1979] I quite like the electronic disco extension of "Here Comes the Night," but more as an oddity than a pleasure. The chief pleasure--Brian's "Good Timin'"--is not a new song. What is new is the pop orchestration on "Lady Lynda." C+
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2022 18:41:41 GMT
Posted in the song ratings thread for this album, I thought it made sense to add the Rolling Stone review to this thread, too. Here is what Dave Marsh wrote in Rolling Stone. It's a great example of what makes the public hate critics.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2022 18:47:01 GMT
In addition to noting some reviews, I think it might be fun to dig up some stories, contemporaneous discussion, and band members' impressions of this one, as we did with MIU. With this album on the mind these next couple of days for the ratings thread, I'll see about transcribing some of those.
As I said in the MIU album thread, I look at the 70s as something like a pendulum swinging. The last album was Mike and Al with a passive Brian; this one is more Carl and Dennis with basically no Brian, but with a heavy dose of a returned Bruce as a producer. It's both better and worse in different ways for the changes.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2022 18:52:46 GMT
It's easy enough to post what Wilson said in his autobiography, in that it's the same thing I posted in the MIU album thread: he blew through several albums in one fell swoop. From I Am Brian Wilson, I believe the only reference to the album: (p. 17, I Am Brian Wilson, B. Wilson w/ B. Greenman)
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Post by kds on Oct 18, 2022 19:03:21 GMT
Unpopular opinion, much like Surf's Up, CATP, and Holland, I really do not think less Brian was necessarily a bad thing at this point of the story.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2022 20:39:16 GMT
Maybe a little table-setting of this period is in order, too (to use as background for the various books/memoirs/interviews to be included). To be clear, I'm no historian and this is cobbled together from basic sources (the books we all have, wiki, etc.) somewhat quickly. Just meaning to set the stage generally, not claiming this is The Story.
First, this album was due to CBS by January 1, 1978. Obviously, they hadn't even released its predecessor (MIU), the final album for Reprise, by this deadline, and the Christmas album was scrapped. They went to Australia and New Zealand in early 1978, with well known, somewhat disastrous results: Dennis scoring Brian heroin, Carl hammered on stage, Rocky punching Carl over the aforementioned heroin, and Stephen Love subsequently fired despite having only just returned a year or so prior.
Back in Los Angeles, Brian vanished only to be found days later in San Diego, either playing for drinks in a gay bar (Carlin) or lying under a tree in a park (Gaines). He was again hospitalized--seemingly more than once during 1978, according to Carlin.
There were sessions throughout the first half of 1978, but many of Dennis's sessions were for what we know as Bambu. In late August they went to Miami to record, after which they had the famous meeting with CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff uttered the famous line, "Gentlemen, I think I've been fucked." However, specifics on this vary. Love says they decamped to Miami when Brian unexpectedly spoke up during the Yetnikoff meeting; others indicate they had already been to Miami by the time of the meeting. Carlin says Wilson checked himself out of the hospital and flew directly to the sessions.
I believe it was in LA where Bruce Johnston was brought back into the picture, which would make this early fall 1978. They held sessions the latter part of 1978 into early 1979. During this same time, Mike Love also recorded First Love and Country Love. Brian may have been institutionalized again during this stretch.
The saga ended in February 1979, when the album was finally released.
In other words, if Brian was physically but not mentally or emotionally present for MIU, he was also mostly physically absent from LA. Dennis provided what amounts to solo music. Carl's music presumably was intended for the Beach Boys--as far as I know, anyway, though I'd love to hear if anyone knows otherwise--but it sits better beside Dennis's solo songs than the others' material. "Good Timin" was old. "HCTN" was a Bruce project plus Beach Boys vocals. "Shortenin' Bread" is what it is, I guess. "Lady Lynda" is obviously Al's baby with Altbach, and one wonders whether any other Beach Boys had anything to do with it before being told to sing backgrounds. (Honestly I think I hear Al and Bruce singing, but am not sure what other Beach Boys are even singing on it. Mike just before and during the vocal break part. But also female singers.)
It's almost like another Carl & The Passions: So Tough, but where the lows were that much lower and the differences between the competing "bands" were even greater.
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