@tablejockey, SoCal, ay? I lived there from June 1979 through Feb 2016. Burbank, Glendale, finally up in the foothills above Glendale (in Tujunga, home to many musicians).
L.A. has a lot of record stores, always has. I miss Amoeba like crazy, nothing like that up here in the NW.
Speaking of Amoeba, one of the LP’s in the above list has an Amoeba "Clearance Sale" price sticker on it’s label: $1! How the heck did that LP get up here?! The titles of course suggest an elderly person (I got called that recently. Well!), so perhaps his wife sold the collection after he was buried or burned.
The Beach Boys were marketed by Capitol in a very haphazard and short-sighted way, figuring their shelf-life was going to be only as long as the early-60’s Surf craze lasted. They didn’t at first realize what they had in Brian Wilson.
I scoured all the stores selling cut-outs in 1967 and 68, looking for the mono Rock ’n’ Roll LP’s that were being dumped by all the record labels. After Sgt. Pepper, ALL LP’s had to be stereo. I already knew that most "Stereo" LP’s of the time were in actual fact "Electronically Simulated Stereo", one the worst ideas record company’s ever came up with. Surfer Girl was the only true stereo BB album up until the Friends album, and I found all the previous albums in mono pressings. Same with The Kinks and other Rock groups. The 1967 debut Procol Harum album was issued in mono in the UK, fake stereo in the US. So we had to go up to San Francisco to get the import at Tower (the only record store I knew of that carried import albums).
Now about the Pet Sounds album: I have bought every pressing of that album ever made (well, not the South American ;-), five or six I believe (including the one Steve Hoffman did for DCC, and a UK pressing). They’re all different, and all pretty bad in varying ways. You have GOT to get the one now available from Analogue Productions. AP offers in in both mono and stereo, and in both 33-1/3 RPM (1 LP) and 45 RPM (2 LP’s) pressings. There is disagreement amongst hardcore BB fans about the sacrilege of doing a stereo mix: Brian mixed it to mono, his preferred format. But the stereo mix lets you hear further into the dense tapestry of sound than ever before.
Seriously, you have not heard Pet Sounds til you hear the AP version! Michael Fremer graded it 11 (music) / 11 (sound), the only time he has done that as far as I remember. $35 for the 33-1/3 version (what I have), $55 I believe for the 45 (to chop the LP side into two halves, now THAT is to me sacrilege). I have both the mono and stereo versions, but I’m a Brian Wilson nut.
The early Beach Boys LP that everyone is talking about is the stereo pressing of Surfer Girl, again by Analogue Productions. Unbelievably great sound! Michael in Germany (45 RPM Audiophile in The Vinyl Community on YouTube) includes the LP in his "10 Best Sounding LP’s Of All Time" list.
L.A. has a lot of record stores, always has. I miss Amoeba like crazy, nothing like that up here in the NW.
Speaking of Amoeba, one of the LP’s in the above list has an Amoeba "Clearance Sale" price sticker on it’s label: $1! How the heck did that LP get up here?! The titles of course suggest an elderly person (I got called that recently. Well!), so perhaps his wife sold the collection after he was buried or burned.
The Beach Boys were marketed by Capitol in a very haphazard and short-sighted way, figuring their shelf-life was going to be only as long as the early-60’s Surf craze lasted. They didn’t at first realize what they had in Brian Wilson.
I scoured all the stores selling cut-outs in 1967 and 68, looking for the mono Rock ’n’ Roll LP’s that were being dumped by all the record labels. After Sgt. Pepper, ALL LP’s had to be stereo. I already knew that most "Stereo" LP’s of the time were in actual fact "Electronically Simulated Stereo", one the worst ideas record company’s ever came up with. Surfer Girl was the only true stereo BB album up until the Friends album, and I found all the previous albums in mono pressings. Same with The Kinks and other Rock groups. The 1967 debut Procol Harum album was issued in mono in the UK, fake stereo in the US. So we had to go up to San Francisco to get the import at Tower (the only record store I knew of that carried import albums).
Now about the Pet Sounds album: I have bought every pressing of that album ever made (well, not the South American ;-), five or six I believe (including the one Steve Hoffman did for DCC, and a UK pressing). They’re all different, and all pretty bad in varying ways. You have GOT to get the one now available from Analogue Productions. AP offers in in both mono and stereo, and in both 33-1/3 RPM (1 LP) and 45 RPM (2 LP’s) pressings. There is disagreement amongst hardcore BB fans about the sacrilege of doing a stereo mix: Brian mixed it to mono, his preferred format. But the stereo mix lets you hear further into the dense tapestry of sound than ever before.
Seriously, you have not heard Pet Sounds til you hear the AP version! Michael Fremer graded it 11 (music) / 11 (sound), the only time he has done that as far as I remember. $35 for the 33-1/3 version (what I have), $55 I believe for the 45 (to chop the LP side into two halves, now THAT is to me sacrilege). I have both the mono and stereo versions, but I’m a Brian Wilson nut.
The early Beach Boys LP that everyone is talking about is the stereo pressing of Surfer Girl, again by Analogue Productions. Unbelievably great sound! Michael in Germany (45 RPM Audiophile in The Vinyl Community on YouTube) includes the LP in his "10 Best Sounding LP’s Of All Time" list.