High Water

Good clean double album in very good condition.

During the '70s, Pickwick was one of the few labels to repackage the Beach Boys Capitol material from the '60s; the three releases from the company include a singles collection, a non-hits package, and a sampler of the band's 1964 Concert. This two-fer combines the singles and concert records and includes perennials like "Good Vibrations," "God Only Knows," and "Darlin'," as well as more obscure singles like "She Knows Me Too Well," "Girl Don't Tell Me," and "Heroes and Villains" (this last track was originally part of the aborted Smile sessions and later released on Smiley Smile and a few anthologies). The singles collection (originally titled Good Vibrations) also taps earlier surf-era cuts like "409" and "Dance, Dance, Dance." The live material pales in comparison to the studio sides, but does include innocuous marginalia like covers of "Monster Mash," "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow," along with hits like "In My Room," "I Get Around," and "Little Deuce Coupe" (any possible concert highlights are obscured by the deafening din of the mostly teenaged female crowd). Bought as a cheap album, this collection (the singles primarily) offers a fairly well-balanced, albeit slim, introduction to the band's '60s work; while later and affordable packages like Endless Summer and Spirit of America cover most of the same ground, they don't include "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains."