The Beach Boys - "Add Some Music" and "Reverberation"

The Beach Boys never recovered after the SMiLE debacle. Album sales plunged and the band quickly became irreverent as the 1960s progressed. As such, the band's record label was less inclined to take a chance with their albums. The band left its longtime label Capitol for Reprise in late 1969.

In early 1970, the group assembled an album titled Add Some Music and submitted it to Reprise, which rejected it -- not an auspicious beginning on a new label.

Add Some Music
SIDE A
1. Susie Cincinnati
2. Good Time
3. Our Sweet Love
4. Tears in the Morning
5. When Girls Get Together
6. Slip on Through

SIDE B
1. Add Some Music to Your Day
2. Take a Load Off Your Feet
3. This Whole World
4. I Just Got My Pay
5. At My Window
6. Fallin' in Love

This album has a heavy Al Jardine influence -- he wrote or co-wrote five of the 12 songs -- which I think is unusual in the band's history.

Overall, I think it's pretty good. Had "Susie Cincinnati" gotten a lot of label promotion I could see it being a moderate hit on AM radio in 1970. But it was relegated to the B-side of "Add Some Music to Your Day" -- and I don't quite understand why the label thought that was going to be the band's big comeback single.

Anyway, other than the schmaltzy "Tears in the Morning," I think all the tracks are good or better.

The Beach Boys sued Capitol Records for back royalties in April 1970, but still owed one album to the label. In mid-1970, The Beach Boys assembled an album that had the working titles Reverberation and The Fading Rock Group Revival that would fulfill the band's contract.

Memories are apparently fuzzy as to whether Capitol rejected the album outright, or whether the band had second thoughts. Either way, the album was never released, although some songs eventually showed up on Sunflower, and Capitol released a live album instead. The band's contract with the record company expired in June.

The track list included not only the songs below but also "When Girls Get Together." But since we already use that track on the previous album, I've omitted it here (it would have been track five on Side A). To replace it, I moved "San Miguel" (originally set for track 2 on Side B) to replace it.

Reverberation
SIDE A
1. Cottonfields
2. Loop de Loop
3. All I Wanna Do
4. Got to Know the Woman
5. San Miguel

SIDE B
1. Break Away
2. Celebrate the News
3. Deirdre
4. The Lord's Prayer
5. Forever

While Add Some Music was dominated by Al Jardine, Reverberation is strongly influenced by Dennis Wilson, who wrote or co-wrote five songs.

But although there are a number of good songs, it's hard to think how this would have competed with other releases. The charts during the summer of 1970 were dominated by The Beatles' Let It Be, the Woodstock soundtrack, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young's Deja Vu, The Who's Live at Leeds, Chicago II, Blood Sweat and Tears 3, The Jackson 5's ABC and Creedence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory. In this market, would anyone be clamoring for an aging surf rock band's take on an old Leadbelly tune? Well, Europe loved it with the song topping the charts in several countries, but in the U.S. it peaked at No. 103.

This album cover I got off a Beach Boys fan site. The person who created it (unknown to me) took the cover from a compilation album called Good Vibrations and altered it.