Brad's Take:
This is the only official live Beach Boys album released that features all 5 original members; Brian, Mike, Carl, Dennis, and Al. Beach Boys Concert features a few hits, like "Little Deuce Coupe" and "In My Room" and it also includes a lot of previously unrecorded cover songs that they'd typically throw into their live sets, such as "Little Old Lady From Pasadena" (originally by Jan & Dean) and even "Monster Mash" (originally by Bobby "Boris" Picket.)
I like The Beach Boys just as much as anybody, but this "live" album disappoints me. I have two big problems with this album. First, the screaming of the fanatic crowd is annoying and obviously overdubbed. The screaming goes throughout the entire album at various different volume levels. They cranked up the screaming on the hooks of most of the songs. It sounds like it's just some stock sound clips of screaming girls, and they just layered it over the live recordings. My main issue with this record though is that not all of the songs are actually live recordings...
Before listening to this, I burned a CD with the whole All Summer Long album, and I squeezed Beach Boys Concert onto the same disc. I had a bit of a drive to make so I wanted to listen to these two albums so I could review them when I got back home. All Summer Long features the hit "I Get Around" and since it was released around that same time, it was also on the live album that came out a month later. When I heard "I Get Around" on Beach Boys Concert, I thought to myself that it sounded an awful lot like the original studio recording I heard on All Summer Long. So after I got home, I did a quick little Wikipedia search, and BAM! I was right.... Apparently Brian Wilson and the producers of Beach Boys Concert didn't like the live version of "I Get Around" (if they even played it at the concert) so they took the flawless studio recording from All Summer Long, took various tracks off of it, added in the annoying 60s Wilhelm-esque screaming, and then threw it on the "live" album. They did the same thing with "Fun, Fun, Fun" as well.
I know this isn't necessarily unheard of when it comes to live albums, but that's one reason why I dislike them, usually. When you're aware of things that were altered in the studio, it kind of takes away from the feeling of being at the concert, and then you realize that they're really just ruining perfectly good studio recordings by adding screams and taking tracks off of the original songs.
If it wasn't for the doctored recordings and the overuse of cover songs, I'd agree that this is a classic album. But really, I'd call this just a classic gimmick, unfortunately.
Dad's Take:
Of all the classic Beach Boys albums that were left off our list, I'm more than a little surprised this was included. Yeah, it was their first number one album, but there's nothing ground-breaking here.
As Brad pointed out, there's plenty of studio sweetening on this record. They used the studio version of "I Get Around" (closely compare the ends of this version with the on "All Summer Long" and you'll hear a little something that gives it away). They also recorded a new version of "Fun, Fun, Fun" in the studio (not the hit version, as Brad claimed) and threw it on here with the canned screams. That was very common for "live" albums of the time (and now), but it's still a bit off-putting.
Thing is, I've heard the original recordings of the two Sacramento that, along with some other live material from 1963, were assembled into this record, and those original recordings are pretty good. They could have done a real live album and it would have been good. Still, they did what had to be done at the time. With Brian Wilson's more sophisticated arrangements and the constant touring, this live album bought time that was needed for the next album.
One positive is that eight of the 13 songs don't appear on any other record, making this less of a greatest hits package than many live albums are. The one thing that maybe did break new ground on this album was the packaging. Originally released a single album in a gatefold cover, the album featured four pages of photos from the concerts. As far as I know, this had never been done before.
So this might not be a truly great album, but it's not a bad album either. The performances are fun, and some are great. It captures a time when the band still toured as an intact unit, before stage-shy Brian Wilson retired from touring to concentrate on the studio productions that would lead to the Beach Boys' best work. Still, I could easily argue for a half dozen or so other Beach Boys records that deserve to be on our list more than this one does and were left off.
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