Grade: B+
By the time the 1970s had come along – post Altamont and post hope – the Beach Boys were tired of being beach boys and thus became, for a while, just another rather mediocre rawk band. The two albums they released in the first three years of the decade, Carl and the Passions – ‘So Tough’ and Holland, dispensed (largely) with those sumptuous harmonies and the simplicity of teenage anthems to God and gave us unconvincing blue-eyed soul and tinny R&B. Of those two albums, only the lovely ‘Marcella’ (where those harmonies come back) and the commendably ludicrous ‘All This is That’are worth shelling out your hard-earned pennies.
But this extravagantly got-up boxed set consisting of six discs including demos, outtakes, an earlier EP and a total of 105 songs, does gladden the heart a little with a couple of hours of stuff from their previously unreleased concert at the Carnegie Hall in 1972.
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