Grooves
Beach Boys Smile Sessions: The fabled lost Beach Boys “psychedelic doo-wop” album by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. The original recordings for the Smile LP, the planned follow-up to Pet Sounds (a masterpiece that inspired the Beatles’ instrumentation on Sgt. Pepper) was nearly finished when Paul McCartney paid a visit with an acetate to Sgt. Pepper. Brian went into seclusion shortly afterward, and Smile was never released, although some of the songs (and some with different arrangements) appeared on subsequent Beach Boys albums. Recently Brian Wilson started working on a new version of Smile, based on a live presentation in Feb. 2004 at the Royal Festival Hall in London, UK. Read all about Smile…
The Beatles Time Capsule: Includes the making of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album during the Summer of Love, with extraordinary interviews and film footage, including Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, the Diggers, Derek Taylor, all four Beatles, and a variety of sixties artists and orators. It ends with the live satellite video broadcast in 1967 of the Beatles performing “All You Need is Love” — England’s contribution to the first ever broadcast seen and heard around the world. This section also includes our favorite anecdotes, culled from a lifetime of listening to the Fab Four, reading the various Beatle-related books, providing research for a Beatle book author, and collecting the rare CDs and vinyls. Also, our version of what happened when the Beatles didn’t split up — the “Red Album”! We’ve even been to Liverpool.
My Back Pages: Bob Dylan in 1966: The story of Bob Dylan’s European tour in 1966, his first with an electric backup band (the Hawks, a.k.a. The Band). The Live in 1966 CD is a milestone in rock music history, as Dylan played his new rock songs while the folk purists in the audience heckled. These recordings mark the first appearance of The Band’s sound and of Dylan’s new direction.
Grateful Dead : “Come and join the party every day,” sang Jerry Garcia and his band. Over its career spanning three decades, the Dead would extend its repertoire to include many different musical idioms, and would bring its wild carnival and entourage to cities across America and Europe, but throughout it all, the band’s music would remain rooted in what was eventually called the “San Francisco Sound”.
Haight-Ashbury: The hippie community of 1966-69 — the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco — where acid rock was born. Featuring video clips and music excerpts (from the Haight-Ashbury CD-ROM) by the Grateful Dead, and notes on Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, the original Charlatans, and more, with original collages by Alton Kelley.
