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Post by kds on Aug 27, 2020 12:38:38 GMT
The full title is "Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson." Its a little wordy, and wouldn't fit in the subject line.
I'd say if anyone is going to read one book on The Beach Boys, it should be this book. Released in 2007, the story goes all the way back to when the Wilson family first arrived in California. It goes through the childhoods of the brothers Wilson, the rise of The Beach Boys and Brian, the peaks and valleys along the way, and concludes with the revival of Smile by Brian in 2003-04.
Carlin seeks out to bust some of the myths of Brian's original "autobiography," and tells a mostly objective history of one of music's all time greats. It's informative, compelling, and, at times, sad and disturbing.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 27, 2020 13:21:45 GMT
I haven't read this since it came out, but I know at the time I thought it was the best of the biographies.
Its timing was also good, coming when interest in Brian was really high: Smile had been a huge success, then he remained relatively active with the Xmas album, the "Walking Down the Path of Life" single, and the TLOS announcement (though the album came in 2008, a year after the book).
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Post by kds on Aug 27, 2020 15:04:12 GMT
Two stories from Carlin's book stuck out to me.
1. There was a version of Heroes and Villains that apparently featuring Mike making fun of the lyrics throughout the song, and that version that apparently produced by Brian in some sort of self deprecating humor. I don't know if that version has ever popped up on boots or archive releases.
2. A party at Brian's house in the mid 70s, attended by Paul McCartney, featured Brian putting a fishbowl on his head and acting like an astronaut. Brian and his guests had a great time with it, until the bowl feel off and broke, prompting Brian to look himself in his bedroom. When McCartney and some of the guests went to coax in out, they heard Brian gently sobbing like a child.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 27, 2020 15:11:41 GMT
There are definitely boots of audio of them mocking H&V, though I don't recall is being throughout the song: what I have in mind was them talking about it, as if for a radio ad. Mike says something like how it rose all the way to #100 on the charts or some such condescending thing. For the first years of my fandom, that was used as evidence of Mike hating Smile, but it was outed as something Brian was involved in. Not sure whether that's what Carlin was referencing, but it could be (and if it is, yes, you can find audio).
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Post by kds on Aug 27, 2020 15:20:00 GMT
That's probably what Carlin was referring to. I might've fudged some of the details.
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Post by jk on Aug 27, 2020 19:37:26 GMT
A brilliant book, one I really enjoyed reading from cover to cover. And it has a reputation for being faultless in its information -- at least I've never seen criticism of it anywhere. It's one of two or three books I'd say should be on every Beach Boys fan's bookshelf.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 27, 2020 19:52:07 GMT
A brilliant book, one I really enjoyed reading from cover to cover. And it has a reputation for being faultless in its information -- at least I've never seen criticism of it anywhere. It's one of two or three books I'd say should be on every Beach Boys fan's bookshelf. I agree with your sentiments, especially on the last sentence. (Sentence sentiments. Repeat those two words as fast as you can ten times!)
Great point about the information. I don't know whether it's faultless--I'm sure there are those people who really get into such things who pick nits with it--but it seems to me to be miles above most of the books about the band and/or the guys. Frankly, even some of the successful ones have some pretty obvious, major errors.
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Post by kds on Aug 28, 2020 12:33:55 GMT
A brilliant book, one I really enjoyed reading from cover to cover. And it has a reputation for being faultless in its information -- at least I've never seen criticism of it anywhere. It's one of two or three books I'd say should be on every Beach Boys fan's bookshelf. I agree with your sentiments, especially on the last sentence. (Sentence sentiments. Repeat those two words as fast as you can ten times!)
Great point about the information. I don't know whether it's faultless--I'm sure there are those people who really get into such things who pick nits with it--but it seems to me to be miles above most of the books about the band and/or the guys. Frankly, even some of the successful ones have some pretty obvious, major errors.
I think it's near impossible to get all the facts right, especially when the guys in the band can't even keep the story straight some times. But, it seems like Carlin's book is pretty consistent. And, it's also without bias for the most part.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 28, 2020 12:41:12 GMT
Yes, the reality about writing history--whether formal history such as the founding of a country or just something about a rock band--is that it's impossible in some sense. Eyewitnesses, counter-intuitively, are particularly unreliable. The best one can do is use multiple, independent sources and try to work out what is most probable to have happened.
I thought Carlin did a really good job.
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Post by kds on Aug 28, 2020 13:20:46 GMT
I think Carlin used to contribute to Smiley Smile at one time. And, I don't think he ever got shouted down like Steve Desper did. So, I guess even the experts liked Carlin's book.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 28, 2020 14:06:53 GMT
I think Carlin used to contribute to Smiley Smile at one time. And, I don't think he ever got shouted down like Steve Desper did. So, I guess even the experts liked Carlin's book. He did, I recall he joined around the time of his book (which makes sense), though I don't remember him staying on TOO long afterward. He may have popped back in later, which I'm guessing is when you'd have encountered him. But there was no drama on that front, unlike when Steven Gaines joined and got called out for his many obvious errors, and of course as you mentioned, Desper. (Though Desper had been around since the beginning, and on predecessor boards, and frankly been through the ringer a few times. It was really politics, and then the Blondie-or-Carl vocal, that made him abandon ship.)
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Post by kds on Aug 28, 2020 14:10:28 GMT
I seem to remember Carlin chimed in about something, maybe when Love and Mercy came out, and I asked if he'd planned on doing an updated CAW with TLOS, C50 / TWGMTR, etc, but didn't get a response.
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