By Howie Edelson
Summer’s not yet done!!! There’s plenty of good times left to squeeze out of the season with even more perfect Beach Boys music to join you for the ride. Building on our expanded Endless Summer anniversary “Beach Boys Summer Fun” playlist – we’re doing a deeper dive to compliment the backend of summer with a new set, spotlighting the group’s “endless” summer favorites. Although so many of these tracks will be familiar to most of you – some of the versions probably won’t. Get ready for scaled-back and uber-mellow 1967 studio takes of “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Surfer Girl,” and “California Girls,” an A Capella mix of “Do It Again,” live takes of “Summer In Paradise,” “Don’t Worry Baby,” and “I Can Hear Music” – along with a goosebump-inducing 1968 soundcheck run-through of “Good Vibrations.”
We also dip into the band’s solo catalogues – with a clutch of tunes featuring one or more of The Beach Boys co-writing and/or guesting on the track. But the real highlight of the collection is bringing the rarer cuts from this massive catalogue to the forefront – featuring such hidden gems as “Aren’t You Glad” from 1967’s Wild Honey, the Sunflower-era, long-unreleased “Soulful Old Man Sunshine,” “Roller Skating Child” from 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You, a classic Carl Wilson tour-de-force “Full Sail” from The Beach Boys’ final album of the ‘70s – 1979’s L.A. (Light Album), and, truly, so much more.
There’s also plenty of fun with such rockers as Mike Love going for broke on the band’s 1972 showstopping cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” a genius cover of The Coasters’ “One Kiss Led To Another” – and the 1967 Wild Honey rocker “How She Boogalooed It.” You simply can’t go wrong with a playlist that spans this many years, so many genres, with so much music it just might push the summer well into the fall.
Remember to “Keep An Eye On Summer” with beautiful sounds -- THE BEACH BOYS!!!