The Beach Boys "Sail on Sailor" is fantastic...but Dance Dance Dance is woeful..
Agreed! "Sail On Sailor" is the mix highlight of this set...hell, the
only one, alas....
hit and miss in more ways than one...
Well, yes...mostly miss, IMO, after listening to it just now. And while it won't have anything to do with my rating of the disc, the song selection is at times a crying shame. For one thing, why "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" and not the superior "Dead Man's Curve"? Why "Dance, Dance, Dance" and not(to note a remixable example), "California Girls"? And how can you choose "Pipeline" for the Ventures when A)they actually had more than a few hits, and this was an Lp cut, a cover of the Chantay's superior original, and B)it must have been(judging by the result)taken from a 3-track mix? Sheesh...
The real dud here is "I Live For The Sun," though this does confirm something I forgot to ask Steve Hoffman about way back when. On the DCC BEACH CLASSICS, which Steve compiled and remastered, he used a stereo underdub of this one, from the original session tape(3-track, presumably). That's the one used here. Trouble is, while it may sound more 'surf music' this way, it isn't the original mono/stereo mix, and certainly NOT the hit version, as it lacks the brass overdubs used on the original recording. Granted, brass may not have been what the band or surf fans may have wanted, but removing them has also removed the hit. Worse, the sound is dull here, with a mix to match. Bleh....
The best I can give this one is a '4', unfortunately(a revision of my original impression in the previous post. Mix aside, the sonics are very good here, so it goes up one notch for that). Not sure, even if better songs had been used that it would rate a lot higher unless a mix of "Good Vibrations" had been assembled. Wouldn't we all go ga-ga for a great mix of that great work, stereo or 5.1?
ED
