Beach Boys - 1969 - I Can Hear Music FLAC

Friends/Do It Again/Bluebirds Over The Mountain/I Can Hear Music


The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine. They emerged at the vanguard of the "California Sound", initially performing original surf songs that gained international popularity for their distinct vocal harmonies and lyrics reflecting a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance. Rooted in jazz-based vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and doo-wop, Brian led the band in devising novel approaches to music production, arranging his compositions for studio orchestras, and experimenting with several genres ranging from pop ballads to psychedelic and baroque styles. 

The group began as a garage band managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, with Brian's creative ambitions and sophisticated songwriting abilities dominating the group's musical direction. After 1964, their albums took a different stylistic path that featured more personal lyrics, multi-layered sounds, and recording experiments. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and "Good Vibrations" single vaulted the group to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following Smile's dissolution, Brian gradually ceded production and songwriting duties to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. The group's public image subsequently faltered, and they struggled to reclaim their commercial momentum in America. The continued success of their greatest hits albums during the mid 1970s precipitated the band's transition into an oldies act, a move that was denigrated by critics and many fans. Since the 1980s, much-publicized legal wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits and use of the band's name transpired.

Dennis drowned in 1983 and Carl died of lung cancer in 1998. After Carl's death, many live configurations of the band fronted by Mike Love and Bruce Johnston continued to tour into the 2000s while other members pursued solo projects. For the band's 50th anniversary, all the current surviving members briefly reunited for a new studio album and world tour. Even though Wilson and Jardine do not perform with Love and Johnston's band, they remain a part of the Beach Boys' corporation, Brother Records Inc.

The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely influential bands of all time, while AllMusic stated that their "unerring ability... made them America's first, best rock band." The group had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling bands of all time and are listed at No. 12 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". They received their only Grammy Award for The Smile Sessions (2011). The core quintet of the three Wilsons, Love and Jardine were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

  "Friends" is a song written by Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine for the American rock band The Beach Boys. It was released on their 1968 album Friends. It was also released as a single, with "Little Bird" as the B-side. The single peaked at #47 in the U.S. and #25 in the U.K. The song was recorded in March 1968.
"Do It Again" is a song by American rock band The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, who also share lead vocals. Produced by Wilson as a self-conscious callback to the band's earlier surf-based material, the song was released as a single on July 8, 1968, and subsequently placed on the band's 1969 album, 20/20. The single's B-side, "Wake the World", is taken from Friends, released the month before.

"Bluebirds over the Mountain" is a song written and recorded in 1958 by Ersel Hickey. "Bluebirds over the Mountain" was covered by The Beach Boys and released as a single on December 2, 1968 with the B-side "Never Learn Not to Love". The song features Mike Love on lead vocals and it also features Ed Carter on guitar.

 The single peaked at #61 on the Billboard pop chart in the United States, #53 in Canada's RPM chart, #33 in the United Kingdom and #9 in the Netherlands. The "B-Side" of this single, "Never Learn Not to Love", was written by infamous cult leader and murder instigator Charles Manson. Dennis Wilson was friends with Manson for a brief period of time prior to the "Tate-LaBianca Murders" as they would later be referred to.


"I Can Hear Music" is a song written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector for American girl group the Ronettes in 1966. Three years later, American rock band the Beach Boys released a cover version as a single from their album 20/20 (1969), peaking at number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. With Brian Wilson increasingly losing interest in producing for the Beach Boys, his younger brother Carl took over the role of producer and lead Beach Boy. "I Can Hear Music" is considered by many to be Carl Wilson's first taste at being the "leader" of the group. Released as a single, the song peaked at #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (and #20 on the Cash Box and Record World charts) in the US. Internationally, it reached #5 in Sweden, #6 in the Netherlands and Malaysia, #7 in Poland, #10 in the UK, #13 in Germany and in Australia's Go Set chart, and #15 in Ireland. The Beach Boys' version is noted for its a cappella section of harmonies and counterpoint.