Sunshine Tomorrow Cross-Pollinated: Wild Honey in Stereo and Other Recordings From 1967 by Peter Reum

Wild Honey has always been my favorite post Smile album by The Beach Boys. That said, Capitol's phony stereo has always been an abomination for my ears. After a few false starts, the Beach Boys canned Lei'd in Hawaii and Lei'd at Wally Heider's. The group, with Brian active and writing with Mike Love, then began the studio work for what became Wild Honey. Having had problems in the two Hawaiian shows performance-wise, and having had trouble at Wally Heider's studio in Los Angeles over dubbing audience response, Brian decided to shelf the two live recordings, and entered the studio to begin Wild Honey.

In other articles, I have quoted Brian stating that he became completely emotionally worn out after the initial recording for Wild Honey (Brother 9003) began. Before asking Carl Wilson to take over studio leadership for Wild Honey, a number of tracks had been begun by Brian. Two prominent tracks are Cool Cool Water and Can't Wait Too Long.

It became evident that Brian's post Pet Sounds and Smile drive to make finished music had become exhausted. Several reviews of Sunshine Tomorrow have remarked about the group's cohesion and democratic decision-making during the Wild Honey sessions. It is no coincidence. Carl Wilson was a leader who respected each member's suggestions throughout the time he was the lead producer for the Beach Boys. This resulted in nearly every group member writing and co-producing their songs in the years that followed. A close listen to Friends, 20/20, Sunflower, Surfs Up, Carl and the Passions, and Holland will bear out this trend and group growth during Carl's years as lead producer. Carl's willingness to take Brian's work as it was, even incomplete, and either finish it or polish it for release resulted in numerous memorable songs from 1967 to 1973.

Beach Boys' 1967-Sunshine Tomorrow CD Cover Art

The Beach Boys came to a realistic perspective regarding  Brian's exhaustion with the Wild Honey sessions. Brian had gamely tried to produce Smiley Smile and Lei'd in Hawaii, with results that were innovative for Smiley Smile, in that he successfully changed the scope of Beach Boys' recordings from grand and complicated during Smile to unfettered and humorous during Smiley Smile. Many reviewers, including myself, have offered the opinion that Smiley Smile as an album was closer to Brian's expression of humor in music than Smile. After Smiley Smile hit the charts peripherally in the summer of 1967, failing to achieve the spectacular results that previous Beach Boys albums had garnered, Brian realized that his ear for music had undergone significant change after Smile was shelved.

The insular pot humor of Smiley Smile was ahead of its time. The failure of the Hawaiian shows to meet the group's high standards for concert related performance albums brought a WTF??? reaction from the group as a whole and possibly Capitol Records as well. For Capitol, it justified their  "Best of..." reissues philosophy as the top vehicle for Beach Boys album sales. For Brian, his focus on recording "perfect" songs in home sessions was compromised by the American Entertainment need for the mixing board on the road in live Beach Boys concerts.

The answer for the Beach Boys was to limit Brian's studio efforts to Beach Boys records exclusively, thereby losing the group called "Redwood" who later morphed into Three Dog Night. This nullified Brian's creative motivation, and led to him eventually to what Bruce Johnston called "Brian's living room greatest hits." Brian's version of Time to Get Alone for Redwood is an example of his having studio chops when he was in a creative time and space. The Honeys' Tonight You Belong to Me single from 1968 is another example of beautifully produced pop music outside of The Beach Boys. As timed marched on, most of Brian's musical ideas stayed unrecorded, with very few exceptions. The Spring album offered some Brian productions that were finished, with the rest of the album being recorded by David Sandler and Stephen Desper.

The Brian Wilson promise to write a whole album of songs with Mike Love was finally fulfilled by the excellent set of their tunes on Wild Honey. This resulted in relative calm during the Wild Honey period with concomitant results. Wild Honey became an album about male/female relationships, which is often overlooked in essays and critical appraisal by music writers and critics. As the Beach Boys got older, relationships took center stage in lyrical content on Beach Boys albums. There were no songs about bicycle riders, cornfields and wheat fields, or deeply autobiographical themes, such as Surfs Up or Wonderful.

Some of Brian's first phase Wild Honey tunes were later finished in subsequent albums. The most prominent of these is Cool Cool Water, finished in 1970 by The Beach Boys at the insistence of Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker. The 1967 Beach Boy sessions documented on Sunshine Tomorrow and covered in album notes, prepared excellently by Howie Edelson, are illustrative of a change of guard in production of albums that resulted in seven more productive years of Beach Boys studio and live lps, primarily overseen by Carl Wilson. The Beach Boys became a more democratic type of band in their decision-making, and this change also helped move every group member to compose songs and to produce them.

The stereo Wild Honey is a revelation, offering new dimensions soundwise that the mono version does not have. As was customary in the late Sixties, Wild Honey was mixed in monaural sound for the benefit of the AM section of the radio dial. The Capitol "Duophonic"  version, supposedly designed to emulate true stereo, was a disaster for the Beach Boys and any listener who purchased it. The true stereo mix on 1967 Sunshine Tomorrow of Wild Honey is a listener's delight, offering some subtle and not so subtle sounds that neither a mono or a "duophonic" mix could even approach. Songs that sounded "flat" in the old Wild Honey mixes, are clear and have new dimensions added that essentially rework the entire tune. Two examples of this phenomenon are How She Boogalooed It and Darlin'.

This writer has already covered the content from the Lei'd in Hawaii and Lei'd in Wally Heider Sound Studio in a separate article on this blog. The Hawaiian tapes reveal a Beach Boys group that included the original five members. Brian's organ dominates the instruments and the tunes have a "stoned" sound that many bands would share in their live albums over the five years or so after  The Hawaiian concerts. There are highlights, a rehearsal version of Their Hearts Were Full of Spring, for example, and three Beach Boys covers of Beatles, Mindbenders, and Box Tops tunes, With a Little Help From My Friends, The Game of Love, and The Letter. The Wally Heider Sessions offer almost a sterile approach to some of the Hawaiian Concert songs, and also sound like those sessions were "herbal" as well. Still, the live highlights of the proposed live album are excellent, such as a great version of Gettin' Hungry, performed as the single by Brian and Mike was being released, the Hawthorne Boulevard introduction to the concert, and an eye-opening version of Heroes and Villains live that delivered all the studio version promised.

Personally, I love Brian's sketches of tunes during late 1967, such as Cool Cool Water, Can't Wait Too Long, and Time to Get Alone. Brian seemed to fold during these early Wild Honey Sessions, possibly due to being told that he could not share his compositions and/or produce them with groups outside of The Beach Boys. This seemed to have a negative effect on Brian, and his contributions to Beach Boys albums dwindled over the next nine years, until 15 Big Ones, by which time anti-psychotic medications and self-abusive overuse of substances had altered his day by day functioning, mostly in a deleterious manner.

The incomplete productions on 1967 Sunshine Tomorrow date from the canning of Smile through the second half of 1967. The unfinished "sketches" of ideas for tunes offer tantalizing glimpses in the subtle yet creative process that took a group member's idea from inception to what amounted  to incomplete status in the group's creative process.

Some of the fragments are complete versions that have been "pruned" to a shorter, more concise final version. Examples of this "pruning"  process on Sunshine Tomorrow are Stevie Wonder's I Was Made to Love Her from Wild Honey and Vegetables from Smiley Smile. Some selections on Sunshine Tomorrow are  Wild Honey tracks without vocals, such as Honey Get to Home and Hide Go Seek.

The sessions from which several Wild Honey tracking sessions were developed are deceptively simple sounding and offer some insight into Brian and Carl's studio work methods. As on many other Beach Boy tracking sessions, the work done by Brian and Carl on the pieces done on sessions work and the effect of their clarity made Wild Honey an immediately accessible album.

Songs like Wild Honey, Darlin', Country Air, Let the Wind Blow, and Aren't You Glad in the sessions presented on Sunshine Tomorrow illustrate the "complicated simplicity" that Brian and the Beach Boys' best work exhibits.

The live show tunes presented on disc 1 of this set dating from 1967 through 1970 are examples of how Beach Boys tunes played live in those years retained their infectiously melodic arrangements but did not show any difficulty in live performance that Brian's more complex songs had. The group had expressed their frustration to Brian about performing tunes in concert such as Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains during the Smile recording sessions.  Tunes from Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and 1968's Friends albums amply demonstrate the ease that the Beach Boys tunes could be played live.

Sunshine Tomorrow's second cd covers some sessions from Smiley Smile and the various tries at recording a live record which would help reduce the number of album's that The Beach Boys owed Capitol. The group's united desire to be done with the onerous Capitol Records contract which burned out Brian and the group united them in studio work in the late Sixties.

The selections showing Brian and the group's work on tunes from Smiley Smile comprise one of the most fascinating parts of Sunshine Tomorrow.  Brian's track for the single version of Heroes and Villains is as amazing as his work on Heroes during the Smile sessions. Backing tracks are also presented for Wonderful and Little Pad. The track for Little Pad easily illustrates the modular approach that began with Good Vibrations. The Smiley Smile album is the first successfully completed album using modular recording, a method that is nearly universally used in today's recording process, often on huge soundboards. There was no protools software in 1967. Brian simply rehearsed the group ad nauseum until he could get the harmonic blend he heard in his head.

The tracks selected for illustration of how Smiley Smile was recorded are quite insightful. The two most fascinating segments are a different soundmix of Fall Breaks and Back to Winter and a tiny segment labelled "Redwood" which is quite different from anything else on this set. My personal favorite is  the Fall Breaks and Back  to Winter alternate mix, which inverts the note heard on the fourth note of the repeating theme. The note is high, rather than the lower note heard on the fourth beat of the repetitive theme. The snippet of tape labelled "Redwood" offers some unusual clicking sounds that are unlike anything Brian recorded with The Beach Boys. The alternate versions of All Day All Night are mostly unusual artifacts, as is the chant titled With Me Tonight, done in a more interesting version by Sandy Salisbury on Together Records in 1968.

My friend Fred Vail introduces the Lei'd' in Hawaii shows on tape, and the tracks that follow are pulled from the Honolulu concerts, a separate session that I like to call Lei'd in Wally Heider's Studio. The array of tracks from the Hawaiian Shows and the Heider Studio sessions is unique. For example, the group does Surfin' live with Brian announcing that they will do it in commemoration of The Beach Boys' Anniversary. The anniversary that is so young for the group  is an undisputed 6th anniversary.

Having written  an extensive article on the Lei'd in Hawaii shows in this blog, I will say that the versions of The Letter and the two versions of With a Little Help From My Friends are interesting artifacts cut at Wally Heider's Studio and are very good cover versions of those two tunes. I wondered why the versions of The Game of Love might not sound as great as the others. I 'll
suppose that radio people would appreciate the more fm stereo radio sounds these types of tunes potentially offer.

There are some clear and unique sounds on this double CD set, illustrating the creativity and the originality that Brian still had, despite his emotional condition. Lyrically, Brian's utilization of Mike Love brought a consistent theme to Wild Honey. Harmonically, Brian's use of different blends of sounds was a positive addition to the album. Clearly,  Carl Wilson's growth as a lead singer added a dimension to vocals that was new and unprecedented. His production skills, honed by watching Brian produce,  brought a fairly rapid change in participation in songwriting and production that had been Brian's domain until Wild Honey.

As an album, 1967; Sunshine Tomorrow stands as as one of the most well assembled and illuminating reissues in the Beach Boys catalog. It answers many questions regarding The Beach Boy's transition into a more diversified and productive group. The obvious growth of the other five Beach Boys in songwriting, production, and adult lyrical themes is close by.....check out the songwriting credits on their next studio album-Friends from 1968.


Copyright 2017 by Peter Reum-All  Rights Reserved

International Treasures: This Is Their Planet Too by Peter Reum

The reach of unbridled capitalism is exacerbating the delicate balance of this world that we all live on. I am mystified by the craven slovenliness that we treat our fellow residents with on this planet. As humans, we are as responsible for other species on this planet as for ourselves. There is not a continent or an ocean that has been spared the destructive footprint of homo sapiens. The more oil we drill for, precious metals we mine, the fracking of our aquifers, the toxification of our oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, the warming and polluting of the atmosphere, and the devastation caused by nuclear reactor accidents, the more we hasten our own extinction.

The indigenous peoples of this world have learned to  keep the balance of this planet's ecosystems in check. They realize that overheating, overfishing, and removing the native ground cover of their homelands will  lead to their own demise. What is it about humankind that overwhelms every region of this planet? What moves humans to devastate our own homes and moves us to ruin the homes and lives of our cohabitants on this Earth?

We seem to chase wealth and comfort that allows ourselves to be free to reflect upon our lives and accumulate "things." It seems that as a species, we fool ourselves with the belief that we are superior to the flora and fauna that are here with us. There are more species lost every day. Using somewhat of a utilitarian approach to life, we overuse species that are helpful to our lives, and we devalue species that do not serve our purposes. Witness your own thoughts on exotic species that experience our misanthropic "value filter." Consider that wealthy class that has hunted various species to extinction, and feels little to no responsibility for  their destructive lifestyles. At what point does freedom for one form of life irretrievably harm another? These are questions that are ignored daily by the people who are chasing power and wealth without reservation worldwide.

Recently, I have witnessed a growing alliance of Indigenous  tribes, "Green thinking and acting people", scientists, progressive Christians, and students who consider themselves to be members of a larger community of species that have an interlocking bond to leave a light footprint upon Mother Earth. Conversely, we are witnessing the dying gasps of a money worshipping destructive class of earth raping, conscienceless, exploiting oligarchs who want the middle class in developing  and developed nations eradicated.

There have been victories intermittently. Bristol Bay in Alaska, an undesecrated ecosystem that Native Alaskans and area Alaskan residents whose livelihood depends upon clear fresh water and clean ocean water. The streams around Bristol Bay which rise inland are treated as the treasures they are. The salmon run there is one of the world's largest.

The Arctic North Shore of Alaska inside the Arctic Wildlife Refuge has been closed to mineral development and offshore drilling for gas and oil for a decade. This area is being considered for development, mostly by several oil companies. The various environmental groups that have fought Big Oil had success in the years of the Obama Administration. Things have turned somewhat dire with the Trump people, and most environmental groups are hoping that, with enough stink made, the various industries like  Big Oil will be denied entry into express their colluding to ruin Bristol Bay, The Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and other pristine ecosystems.

Under The Obama Administration, there was a concerted effort to bring various groups, companies, and states together on an issue where needs of all parties that have interests can express their desired outcomes without being shouted down and ridiculed despite their not having all of their views adopted. The outcome desired of the group as a whole was  what was usually adopted. Perhaps some interest groups had a better outcome than other groups. In the end, most groups felt okay about the outcome of the process.

If we do not continue to use this process, the groups with the most money will have the best outcomes. The process will inevitably become a sham exercise that is performed simply to rubber stamp what big oil, the nuclear power groups, mining interests, or corporate farms need to continue business as usual. It is very important that each environmental group working for building pristine ecosystems and maintaining them keep the common interests of the country, state, and regions within each state at the forefront. Many industries are trying to diversify to make their interests known and can be merged into an entire position presentation for several ecological and other advocates to make known.

The oil industry probably is planning for when a paradigm shift will radically revise what energy model is used worldwide to replace Big Oil. Countries worldwide know that, like the tobacco companies in the mid Twentieth Century, that when a business plan that uses an outmoded framework is used, the companies doing so are riding on a river of change with a water fall just ahead. There are examples of partnerships where, despite being superfund status, some parties have united to build plans that make a gradual cleanup of such a site possible. There are superfund states all over the United States, and in the Marianas Islands where nuclear testing made island like Bikini Atoll unfit for native Bikini people to return to their traditional homes and fishing sites some seventy years past the testing.

When the Interstate System in the United States was constructed in the mid to late 50s and 60s, oil was the fuel dominant in transportation. As a country, we employed a huge number of people in the construction and maintenance of the Interstate System. We must look hard at the use of high speed rail in various countries around the world, and evaluate what sort of trains are apropos for long-term development. Countries such as Japan, France, and a few others have made building and maintaining such rail systems their highest ground transportation priority.

Japanese Bullet Trains are the fastest in the world with exceptional safety histories

There has even been discussion of using single person high speed tubes as a possibility. The position of the Republican Party, and some people in the Democratic Party regarding energy and transportation national policy is desperately in need of revision. It is imperative that young people alive today, and the needs of people whose time has not yet arrived be considered in this important discussion.

Among the myriad organizations who fight these battles are Greenpeace, Sierra Club, The World Wildlife Fund,  and dozens more. These groups must continue to build consensus among themselves and tribes/people who want a clean environment in a specific location which is of interest to the consortium of groups as a whole. Of particular interest to this writer is the various of going into the such organizations such as Ducks Unlimited, and so forth, who realize that if the ecological balance is disturbed, that there will be a ripple effect among all species. The controversies enveloping the various organizations must be set aside to effect a broader consensus that will be in effect for the environmental areas that are still salvageable. The number of sites or areas where species and plant preservation are on the agenda must contend with a Cro-Magnon Republican Party whose slogan seems to be "frack, baby, frack!

Fracking Literally Makes People Sick, New Study Finds (from Eco-Watch-1/20/14 issue)
  

A new study provided more ammunition for what public health experts and environmental activists have been saying since fracking became widespread in the last half decade: chemicals used in the natural gas drilling process can be hazardous to health. Fracking Literally Makes People Sick, New Study Finds
  

FThe Yale-based research team that produced the study looked at families in southwestern Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale region who use ground-fed water wells.

A study "Proximity to Natural Gas Wells and Reported  Health Status: Results of a Household Survey in Washington County, Pennsylvania," published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that people who live near fracking sites have more health problems than those who don't.

The Yale-based research team that produced the study looked at families in southwestern Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale region who use ground-fed water wells. Surveying 492 individuals in 180 households, researchers found a significantly greater number of skin and respiratory problems among those who lived within one kilometer of a natural gas well than those who lived two kilometers away.

A new study provided more ammunition for what public health experts and environmental activists have been saying since fracking became widespread in the last half decade: chemicals used in the natural gas drilling process can be hazardous to health.(See Graphic Above)

Washington County Pensylvania, where one study was done, has 624 active gas wells with 95 percent of those fracked.

"Despite assurances by the drilling industry and numerous government officials that fracking chemicals do not pose a risk to nearby populations, scientists and environmentalists have repeatedly voiced concern over the high volume of chemicals used in the process and the potential for both groundwater and airborne contamination," writes Lauren McCauley at Common Dreams.

The researchers explained the impetus for the studying saying, "Little is known about the environmental and public health impact of unconventional natural gas extraction activities including hydraulic fracturing that occur near residential areas."

Again, quoting the same study, "While much of the hydraulic fracturing process takes place deep underground, there are a number of potential mechanisms for chemicals used in the fracturing process as well as naturally occurring minerals, petroleum compounds, and other substances of flow back water to enter drinking water supplies," they warned. "If contaminants from hydraulic fracturing activities were able to enter drinking water supplies or surface water bodies, humans could be exposed to such contaminants through drinking, cooking, showering, and swimming." That same study also suggested that there could be airborne contamination through flaring, operation of diesel equipment, and leakage. And with stress from the noise and other activities around the wells mentioned by many respondents, they suggested this could be impacting health outcomes as well.

Their conclusion: "While these results should be viewed as hypothesis generating, and the population studied was limited to households with a ground-fed water supply, proximity of natural gas wells may be associated with the prevalence of health symptoms including dermal and respiratory conditions in residents living near natural gas extraction activities. Further study of these associations, including the role of specific air and water exposures, is warranted."

They also warned of even greater potential danger lurking down the road. Since most of the wells are only five or six years old, they said, "one would not yet expect to see associations with diseases with long latency, such as cancer. Furthermore, if some of the impact of natural gas extraction on ground water happens over a number of years, this initial survey could have failed to detect health consequences of delayed contamination."

The information concerning the deleterious effects of hydraulic fracturing appeared in Eco-Watch in the January 20, 2014 issue. Article author is Brandon Baker.

Just Released Docs Show Monsanto 'Executives Colluding With Corrupted EPA Officials to Manipulate Scientific Data'

Four months after the publication of a batch of internal Monsanto Co. documents stirred international controversy, a new trove of company records was released early Tuesday, providing fresh fuel for a heated global debate over whether or not the agricultural chemical giant suppressed information about the potential dangers of its Roundup herbicide and relied on U.S. regulators for help.

By Tomorrow, We Will Have Consumed More Resources So Far This Year Than the Planet Is Capable of Regenerating

We humans use a lot of stuff — so much stuff, in fact, that we consume more in a year than the planet is capable of regenerating. That wasn't a problem until a few decades ago. Back in 1987 the "overshoot" date for Earth's resources was December 19, less than two weeks before the end of the year. That's not too bad, right?

Gulf of Mexico's Dead Zone Could be Largest Ever, Thanks to the Meat Industry

Scientists predict that so much pollution is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico this year that it is creating a larger-than-ever "dead zone" in which low to no oxygen can suffocate or kill fish and other marine life. The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is expected to announce this week the largest recorded hypoxic zone in the gulf, an oxygen-depleted swath that's even larger than the New Jersey-sized, 8,185 square-mile dead zone originally predicted for July.

 Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Chemical Sources/Areas

Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Range (22,000 square miles and growing)

Levels of Toxicity of Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico

(deep red zone = high toxicity causing sea life death)

   
We Have Less Than 5% Chance of Avoiding 'Dangerous' Global Warming

Our chances of keeping warming under dangerous levels by the end of this century are increasingly slim, according to two new studies published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The first study took a statistical approach to examine likely warming scenarios by 2100, finding a less than five percent chance of holding warming below two degrees C and a less than one percent chance of keeping it under 1.5 degrees.

Chemical Spill in Virginia ​Kills Tens of Thousands of Fish

About 165 gallons of an agricultural-use chemical leaked into a Roanoke, Virginia-area creek over the weekend, resulting in fish kill estimated in the tens of thousands, Virginia officials announced Monday. The chemical was identified as Termix 5301, a type of surfactant (detergent-like substance) added to herbicide and pesticide products before application, according to the Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)

Roanoke Tinker Creek After Chemical Spill

'Cancer Alley' Residents Sue DuPont

Thirteen Louisiana residents who live in the shadow of one of the most toxic factories in the country recently filed a lawsuit against the facility's co-owners, DuPont and Denka, in an attempt to stop or reduce the production of an air pollutant linked to serious health problems, including cancer.
The plaintiffs are currently seeking approval from a local judge to file a class action lawsuit that would allow anyone who has lived, worked or attended school within a defined boundary around the plant over the past five years to take legal action against the plant's owners.

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There it is, need I say more?