SURF'S UP
1. Don't Go Near The Water
2. Long Promised Road
3. Student Demonstration Time
4. Disney Girls (1957)
5. Take A Load Off Your Feet
6. Lady
7. Feel Flows
8. Lookin' At Tomorrow
9. A Day In The Life Of A Tree
10. 'Till I Die
11. Fourth Of July
12. (Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again
13. Surf's Up
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The general narrative about the Beach Boys spewing out from both the music press and significant numbers of their fans, at least as I have come across it, is that their LP Pet Sounds (1966) stands tall, high above all their other albums, give or take its' notoriously unfinished follow-up release Smile (1967, check out my version of it here). During those years, bandleader, bassist, songwriter, and vocalist Brian Wilson sort of usurped the group, in the process bringing them to the very cutting edge of popular music at the time. The other members were lending only their voices to backing tracks of Wilson's songs, which were put down by teams of session musicians under his guidance. The fabled story of Smile's collapse, as one can read about in great detail in a multitude of places all over the internet, led to the gradual return of relative creative democracy within the group, as Wilson began a slow retreat from any sort of leadership position. He came to compose less and less of the band's new material, which forced (or, alternatively, allowed) the other members to pick up the slack and begin churning out more material themselves. Indeed, by 1968, drummer Dennis Wilson started blossoming as a songwriter, and a good one at that. By the next year, he had recorded "Forever," a Beach Boys song that remains cherished by fans to this very day. That track was featured on their album Sunflower (1970), which was the band's first fully democratically written record, having songwriting contributions from all six members.
Sunflower's follow-up, Surf's Up (1971), was crafted in a similarly democratic fashion. At the final moment, though, Dennis Wilson's (excellent) songs were removed from the master tape and thusly not included on the LP when it hit the shelves. That was apparently done to keep tensions within the group at a reasonable level, but came at a great musical cost to the resulting album. Despite maintaining some incredible highs, I always found the official release to feel a bit slight, and it doesn't help that the tracklist gets pretty janky at the end of side one. So, the version of the album that I'm posting today has had all three of Dennis' songs ("Fourth Of July," "(Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again" [funny Pet Sounds connection in that title], and "Lady," which I think features an early drum machine) reinstated. One can rarely insert more than one or two songs into a pre-existing tracklist without messing up the flow severely, so I carefully reworked the song sequence so as to significantly improve the entire listening experience. I would now argue that this expanded version of Surf's Up stands right near Pet Sounds in terms of quality, cohesion, and lushness, while the official version, I am sure most fans would agree, falls just slightly short.
Sunflower (1970)
But that's not all! Pet Sounds was incredibly influential in terms of its production, and Surf's Up may have been too, if only it wasn't for those meddling label executives! One of the band's key engineers for both the Surf's Up and Sunflower LPs was Stephen W. Desper. Quadrophonic (i.e., four-channel surround) sound had not quite been invented yet, so, looking to create the most immersive production possible, Desper developed (and later on patented) a technique to simulate 3D sound that could be listened to using no special equipment beyond the standard two-speaker setup that everyone already has (one can read his description of it here). He eventually went on to use it on TV broadcasts of the Olympics, so, like, it's the real deal. I will call this Virtual Surround Sound, or VSS, from here on out. With the band's permission, he encoded all of the songs' final mixes with VSS. However, the VSS would only be activated if the encoded signal was resolved. Despite many requests over the decades, the Beach Boys' record label has never agreed to release the mixes in resolved form, with the end result being that the album has always played in normal stereo, without VSS. However, this version of Surf's Up, including Dennis Wilson's tracks, has been resolved and therefore has VSS 3D sound! Personally, I can't say that I really hear sounds coming from particularly unexpected angles, even with my head positioned perfectly in front of my two bookshelf speakers. But all of the sounds in the mixes certainly blend together exquisitely, far more so than they do on the standard, unresolved stereo versions. I did always find that the standard mixes for this album and its similarly VSS-encoded-but-left-unresolved predecessor Sunflower sounded slightly unusual, though not bad by any means, so it's fantastic to hear them with the full, immersive sound that they were originally intended to have. As a little bonus, I've included Sunflower with its fully resolved 3D sound as well, without any changes to its' tracklist or anything. Also, everything here is sourced from Desper's study videos and sounds phenomenal.
Before I wrap up, I do want to discuss my choice of album closer. Surf's Up's title track - in my eyes one of the group's greatest numbers - is an unfinished song from their Smile album. At the time of its original recording during those 1966/1967 sessions, only a portion of the backing track for the first of the song's three sections was ever put down. Luckily, though, Brian Wilson, alone in the studio at the end of that day, recorded a stripped-down version of it with just one piano and double-tracked vocals. This breathtaking demo is probably the only reason the song ever survived. In 1971, the band hauled out the old tapes for it and added a number of overdubs onto what little had been recorded the first time around; Carl Wilson sang lead on that opening section, bass and keys were added, and a whole choral part at the end, newly arranged by Brian, is the cherry on top. This was the only time that he ever creatively contributed to the finishing up of any of his Smile material between 1967 and 2003, before the severe (and seemingly intentional) degradation of his voice in the mid-70s. One wonders what could have been if they'd decided to finish the rest of the tracks in 1971. Anyhow, despite the fact that I dislike including duplicates of songs on these reconstruction projects of mine, and I already included the song on my version of Smile, after some thought I made the decision to include "Surf's Up" here as well. Not only because it's the title track, but also because it feels like a slightly more perfect closer than the other option. One of the points of contention that caused Dennis to remove his songs was that he wanted "(Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again" to be the closer for the album. I find that it serves the spot of penultimate track much better, so decided to have it there instead. The title track just has more of a finality to it. Sorry Dennis!
