A valid start, as befits the Wordo*-in-chief, but however true the photogenicity angle may be, I don't think it warrants the faint praise damning you offer. As nobbut a lad, in 1973, probably, I was an avid devourer of the Beach Boys, then at their peak of performance, songwriting and, OK, image (see the cover of the Beach Boys Live double of that era). I then owned PCB and bitterly rue the day it was stolen from my desk, along with, strangely, "Bongos over Balham" and "Brain salad surgery" by persons unknown, a couple of years later.
I have always wanted it back, but been unable, legally. The odd limescale download has "helped" but I for one will be making that purchase.
Incidentally, I replaced Bongos, but not Brain Salad. Funny, that

* Not an abbreviation, so not subject to editors "rules"?

I thonk that belonged to the Dennis Wilson strand.........

and it deserves to be available, but it isn't a work of genius or a long-lost classic.

I've owned this since it was released on CD in 1991, when by some strange twist of serendipity I happened to spot it and buy it on a whim, I think because I'd just read a fat tome about the Beach Boys.

Despite being reminded of its existence countless times by cred-seeking interview references, I have probably only played it about three times in 17 years, which says it all really.

Ironically, I bought David Crosby's "If Only..." at around the same time, another title that vanished from the radar for yonks, but a much more interesting piece of work than this one.

I've only got a bootleg CD burned from a crackly LP and I can't wait to buy it. It's got that warm fuzzy 70s production that I love, and 'River' is worth the entrance fee alone.

Never heard it and want to have my own opinon whether its any good or not. Just before Xmas I was outbid on a copy on ebay. Save myseld a fortune now. Thanks for the info.

Sure shift units.

.....for Bram Tchaikovsky then. (Another strand, the single song towering above other output one)

...but I have a lot of time for those other, much feted solo albums of the era like the aforementioned 'If I Could Remember My Name' (got the deluxe one of this yesterday, haven't heard it for a while), John Phillips' 'Wolfking Of LA' and Gene Clark's fabulous 'No Other'. Is this album of a similar ilk?

I was sure that I'd seen that Chilli Willi album around on CD over the years; maybe Mooncrest issued it? I thought Sanctuary had too, maybe some of it appeared on that Sanctuary 2-disc anthology of Jo Ann Kelly.

Mooncrest issued "Bongo's over Balham", on LP. Recently re-issued on CD with the inevitable extras (good, by and large)with an even better "original" pre-Ron Nevison production version "Goodnight, Hashville, Hello, Camden Town", with some stonking extras coming outy the year before. But "Kings of Robot Rhythm " I had never believed available until the good fella above found it on "Gemm" mail-order.

JJ...if you like No Other, All things Must Pass and others of the 1970s wonderfully overproduced ilk then you will love Pacific Ocean Blue. Sure there are a couple of clunkers but tracks like River Song, Moonshine, Thoughts of You, Time and Farewell My Friend are very affecting..especially with the cracked voice. Streets ahead of anything the Beach Boys were chucking out at the time.

JJ...if you like No Other, All things Must Pass and others of the 1970s wonderfully overproduced ilk then you will love Pacific Ocean Blue. Sure there are a couple of clunkers but tracks like River Song, Moonshine, Thoughts of You, Time and Farewell My Friend are very affecting..especially with the cracked voice. Streets ahead of anything the Beach Boys were chucking out at the time.

JJ...if you like No Other, All things Must Pass and others of the 1970s wonderfully overproduced ilk then you will love Pacific Ocean Blue. Sure there are a couple of clunkers but tracks like River Song, Moonshine, Thoughts of You, Time and Farewell My Friend are very affecting..especially with the cracked voice. Streets ahead of anything the Beach Boys were chucking out at the time.

JJ...if you like No Other, All things Must Pass and others of the 1970s wonderfully overproduced ilk then you will love Pacific Ocean Blue. Sure there are a couple of clunkers but tracks like River Song, Moonshine, Thoughts of You, Time and Farewell My Friend are very affecting..especially with the cracked voice. Streets ahead of anything the Beach Boys were chucking out at the time.

Errr...sorry about that..over eager mouse

It gets a brief yet fulsome review in today's OMM. "... the album is a raw, introspective and melancholic delight" and receives the full 5 stars. Those aren't normally the adjectives I associate with delight, but I can wallow in a bath of melancholia from time to time.
Cracked is the mormal description of his voice, from Charlie Gordon above and Jim Butler in the Observer who makes it "torturously cracked".
I've never heard it and I'm not going to rush out for it. I'll wait until I see it at a bargain price on Amazon or in the New Year sales.

My i-pod played me this yesterday, driving back from the South, Dennis' song from Holland, and I would happily concur with the tortuously cracked epithet. Beautiful. Given I used to own the vinyl of POB, somehow losing it along the way, and now have only "otherwise aquired" individual tracks as MP3s, I will certainly be investing in this, and soon.
Sod the hype, I loved it in 73, as much as the Beach Boys live double of the same era, still a favourite that I somehow missed off the postings about live albums. There is a picture in a Nik Cohn book of the BB of that era, tainted as they were by drugs and Manson, rendering them as blood brothers of the Dead, an enduring image I hold in my head, if the earlier candy stripe image or the post 80s anodyne era comes knocking, causing failure to remember that, on the right day and in the right setting and the right time zone, they were truly giants of music.
I know that there is a current accepted view that POB is merely celebrated because of the romance of dead rockstars and it's relative unavailibility. Bollox, says I!