‘In Concert’ by The Beach Boys

It’s fifty years since the Beach Boys began, and in 2012, the world can look forward to the band dragging themselves round the earth’s arenas for (presumably) one last time. It’s hard to say how long it’s been since this happened – the line-up of the band changed so often from the mid-sixties onwards – but it’s certainly been a while. There will almost certainly be recordings made and sold – whether they’ll be good or bad is hard to say, as historical precedent swings in both directions. This album, however, is a good one.

Recorded on tour around the time of ‘Holland’, it captures the Beach Boys in their final gasp of creativity. Beefed up by the presence of Ricky Fataar and ‘Blondie Chaplin’, the band are in fine form as musicians, and the setlist is sprinkled with all sorts of interesting stuff which would soon be shelved forever – ‘The Trader’, ‘Marcella’, ‘Let The Wind Blow’, ‘Leaving This Town’, and so on. Even more interesting is the presence of ‘We Got Love’, a track recorded from ‘Holland’ but then ditched – nine tracks was obviously deemed sufficient. A shame, as it’s a great song.

Only at the very end does the record start to degenerate into the sort of greatest hits sing-along which the band were soon to become on a full time basis. The band would never sound this good again – I suspect that 2012 is unlikely to change this state of affairs.

'Holland' by The Beach Boys

The career trajectory of The Beach Boys is a fascinating one. After an upward trend which peaked at ‘Pet Sounds’, the band spent several years flailing about and attempting to hit gold. Album after album was based around the scraps that fell from Brian Wilson’s broken mind, padded out with material of dubious quality written by the rest of the band. As they headed towards the mid seventies, the band were seriously low on options. For reasons that I’ve never been able to fathom, the band decided that heading to the Netherlands would help their creative juices to flow. What they achieved during this album should have set their career on a new path. It really didn’t.

The amazing thing about this album is how good it is. I’m going out on a limb here, but this is my favourite Beach Boys album (apart from ‘Pet Sounds’, obviously – I’m not mental). It’s a fascinating look at what the rest of the band could achieve when they had to – by this stage, Brian had pretty much run dry, and he had virtually no involvement in the record. ‘Sail On Sailor’, the only track Brian managed to put his name to, should have been a huge hit. ‘Steamboat’ had no hitmaking potential, but it’s a fascinating experiment in vocal atmospherics. The ‘California Saga’ is the first real sign of what makes this album special. It’s a sequence of three tracks based around a loose theme. The first, ‘Big Sur’, is that rarest of things – a track written by Mike Love that doesn’t provoke you to a murderous rage. Gentle and folky, if he could have kept this up, I’d have spent time searching out his solo albums. Al Jardine’s ‘Beaks of Eagles’ follows. On the face of things, it’s nonsense – an absurdly self-important spoken word narrative interspersed with slightly trite sung passages – but it has a real charm. Then ‘California’ completes the cycle with lush Beach Boys harmonies and squelching bouncy bass lines. ‘The Trader’ follows – a real Carl Wilson led masterpiece. He rarely sounded better, moving effortlessly from the harder ‘rock’ half to the softer more reflective ending. ‘Leaving This Town’ is a Ricky Fataar / Blondie Chaplin driven track, as is the closing ‘Funky Pretty’ – both demonstrate very clearly how much life the two newer members injected into the band. It’s a huge shame that they bowed out after this album. Dennis’s ‘Only With You’ rounds out the tracklist, another indication of his growing talent.

The album was an unmitigated flop which, in my opinion, was a great shame for the band, and a great shame for music in general. In some parallel universe somewhere, ‘Holland’ was a great success, and a creative re-birth for a band who would enter a new chapter in their career producing a whole run of albums like this. In reality, the band panicked and reverted to a ‘back to basics’ approach which saw them mining the style of their early albums with ever diminishing returns. I maintain that ‘Holland’ was their last demonstration of greatness – never again would they release anything this good.

(I should point out that I don’t consider ‘Mount Vernon and Fairway’ part of this album. The separate EP is on my mp3 player under its own name. My review of that will be, shall we say, quite different.)

'Dark Side Of The Moon' by Pink Floyd

What took me so long to hear this? Despite this album being nestled among mum and dad's vinyl collection throughout my life, I only actually listened to it for the first time two or three years ago. For the life of me, I can't remember what made me investigate it further.

It's brilliant, of course. Rarely does any album work so well as one consistent piece of work - every part of every track fits into sequence perfectly. Rarely also do a band work together so closely to produce such a unified sound. It's hard to understand how a band that could make this album could become so acrimonious.

Highlights are hard to pick out due to the nature of the album, but there are some - the harmonies in 'Time', the piano intro to 'The Great Gig In The Sky', all of 'Us And Them'. To be honest though, the highlights are joined together by other highlights - this album doesn't put a foot wrong. Essential.

'Aladdin Sane' by David Bowie

This is a great record. Often seen as a poor relation to 'Ziggy Stardust', I prefer this for all sorts of reasons. It may have been recorded in a rush during what must have seemed an endless tour, but Bowie is on such a roll here, that everything more or less comes out golden.

Stylistically, it's more muscular than it's predecessor. Not only had Bowie's performance skills continued to improve, but the support from his band is noticeably stronger. Mick Ronson, Bowie's guitarist and right-hand-man at the time earns his reputation as a great guitarist, but the real revelation is Mike Garson, Bowie's touring keyboard player, joining him on record for the first time. His contributions - sometimes bafflingly avant-garde, such as in the title track, and sometimes beautifully delicate, such as in 'Lady Grinning Soul' are utterly wonderful.

The two singles from this album are both brilliant. 'Drive In Saturday', often overlooked, is a perfectly created pop song. It's a measure of Bowie's confidence at the time that he was willing to give the song away to Mott the Hoople who happily turned it down. 'The Jean Genie', on the other hand, sounds like it was thrown together in a five minute window, but is no less fantastic for it. Other highlights include the powerful opener 'Watch That Man', the somewhat deranged 'Time', and a re-recorded version of 'The Prettiest Star' - formerly a fairly weak single, dramatically improved here.

The only weak spots are 'Panic In Detroit' which bumbles along pointlessly for its duration, and 'Let's Spend The Night Together' - a Rolling Stones cover that isn't bad, but goes to illustrate how far ahead of his contemporaries Bowie was operating. It's a shame he didn't drop it to give 'John, I'm Only Dancing' a well deserved good home.