Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue" Finally Reissued After Fifteen Year Disappearance

After being out of print for nearly fifteen years, the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson's lone solo album Pacific Ocean Blue will finally be re-released and reissued as a two-disc set. The set will celebrate the album's thirtieth anniversary (even though it came out in 1977) as the copyright disputes that made it unavailable for more than a decade have been resolved by means of a Caribou/Epic/Legacy co-release. The scarcity of the record has made it both a cult-favorite and a high-priced collector's item over the years. In addition to Pacific Ocean Blue, which feature the Beach Boys' Mike Love and brother Carl Wilson on a few tracks, the set will also include previously unreleased bonus songs "which are still being sorted through by label archivists." The album captures Wilson on the precipice of his drugs-and-alcohol-fueled decline, which eventually led to Wilson's drowning death in 1983.

Following Pacific, Wilson promised to release a superior sophomore album called Bamboo. While the album was never completed due to financial woes and Beach Boys obligation, for the first time ever legally (thanks, bootleggers), songs from Bamboo will make their way onto the second disc of the set. While the exact second-disc contents are unknown, they will hopefully contain some of the sessions Dennis and his brother Brian Wilson collaborated on in 1980-81. The set, barring any last minute copyright issues, will hit stores on May 13th as either a two-disc set or a standalone vinyl.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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