The Beach Boys Concert / Live in London

Album Review

This pairing is a sort of natural, capturing the Beach Boys at the end of Brian Wilson's tenure as a regular performing member of the group, and at the peak of their late-'60s period, when they were making great music that was not only not getting heard but wasn't even being written about. The December 1968 performance was one of the best they ever recorded, and it gets better here, with a much closer ambience with scintillating detail in the singing. The inclusion of "Don't Worry Baby" from 1964 and "Heroes and Villains" from a late-1967 concert fills in a couple of major holes from both ends of the group's 1960s history (and why they don't just release Lei'd in Hawaii, the intended album of that complete concert, is anyone's guess). [This compilation disc first appeared in 1991 in an adequate CD edition, but the 2001 reissue is a significant improvement over that earlier version. Released in 24-bit sound, it compensates for the inadequacies of the 1964 live recording, moving the instruments about as far into the foreground as they ever will be and giving the vocals the best airing they'll ever receive.]