"Get ready to wail, Carl, right on the beat," says a producer at the beginning of seven minutes of rough tracks for "Fun, Fun Fun" that kick off
Keep an Eye on Summer, a double-disc collection released to preserve copyrights on recordings
the Beach Boys made in 1964. Released at the end of 2014, just as the clock was running out for these recordings, this is a clearinghouse of stereo mixes, a cappella versions, session highlights, alternate takes, and a few live cuts -- a jumble that tacitly underscores just how much the vaults have been mined on previous reissues. Then again, unlike such previous excavations, like 2001's
Hawthorne, CA: Birthplace of a Musical Legacy, this doesn't attempt to make sense of the mess; it just presents it all, so it's ripe for cherry-picking. There are some nice things scattered all the way through -- the chatter is often fun, there are some neat subtle differences, the live stuff generally crackles despite the muted audio -- but there's no question this is for serious fans or perhaps even scholars, whatever kind of fan that can easily spot such minutia. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine