Beach Boys' Party! (Import, Live, Original Recording Remastered)

by

The Beach Boys

Edit

Beach Boys' Party! is an album of cover songs (featuring acoustic instruments) by American rock and roll band The Beach Boys that was marketed during the lucrative Christmas season. The original album release included a sheet of photographs of the band 'appearing' to be at the party at hand. It was The Beach Boys' tenth album release, and their third in 1965. Although it was recorded in a music studio, it is presented as an impromptu live recording of a party.

In August, after the release of Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!), The Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson was contemplating his next studio album, which would turn out to be Pet Sounds. Capitol Records requested a new album for the holiday season. Since a live album, Beach Boys Concert, had already been released the previous year, the "live party" idea was selected. (Also, the Beach Boys already had had a Christmas album, and it was felt that a "greatest hits" compilation would signal that the Beach Boys' career was coming to an end.) Sporadically during September, the band and their friends rehearsed current and older hits (including revisiting The Rivingtons' "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow"). Although presented as a live recording, the individual songs were recorded carefully, and laughter and background chatter was mixed in during post-production.

The album included versions of The Beatles' "Tell Me Why", "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" and "I Should Have Known Better", The Everly Brothers' "Devoted To You", Phil Spector's "There's No Other (Like My Baby)" and a send-up of their own "I Get Around" and "Little Deuce Coupe". Beach Boys' Party! was meant as a fun album created without a single, because Wilson was readying "The Little Girl I Once Knew" for single release concurrently with the album. Several other songs were also recorded, but not put on the album. This included a rendition of The Beatles song Ticket To Ride, three takes of The Stones (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, a version of Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, Riot In Cell Block #9 (which would later be played live in the early 70s, and then became Student Demonstration Time on their Surf's Up Lp), and several other songs, all of which can be found in the form of bootlegs on the internet.

The new single's inventive use of silence was disliked by radio programmers causing "The Little Girl I Once Knew" to stop at US #20. The last track of Party!, a cover of The Regents' "Barbara Ann", which radio disc jockeys around the country had started playing straight off the "Party" album and getting good listeners response was promptly issued as a single by Capitol when they started hearing from radio programmers, and became a #2 smash in early 1966.

Beach Boys' Party! reached #6 in the US (though it never went gold). Beach Boys' Party! and its surprise hit single became The Beach Boys' biggest successes yet in the UK, both reaching #3 in early 1966 and making them stars in The Beatles' homeland.