Boys and girls
The Beach Boys, from “The Lost Concert” released 1998, recorded 1964.
Why are studio audiences limited to TV these days? The production here — sound quality, filming, reaction shots — is impeccable. Recordings of The Beach Boys in their most familiar early-singles mode are pretty few, and this, pulled out of a drawer for the first time in the late-90s, is one of the best. It was once fashionable, in the simpler days of “rockism,” to criticize the Beach Boys for making extensive use of studio musicians on the early records. This show and their performance the same year on the UK’s Ready Steady Go, give something of a refutation to that, as they are obviously live and the performance is perfectly tight without being mechanical (the same cannot be said for certain others on that show).
In the US studio appearance they play a standard assortment of early hits but some of them with more informal live treatments: especially endearing is Brian at full speed in “Papa Oom Mow-Mow,” in an instant of which he seems to reveal an underlying irritation with the Mike Love’s impenetrable hamminess. Cutaways to the audience are a valuable primary source if you happen to be researching California girls’ coiffure, ca. 1964. [See also the first and second segments of the show.]
Comments
the socks!