Customer Reviews
A forgotten classic - By: Peter D. Manning, 21 May 2007 
I'd heard a lot about this album but only came by a copy earlier this year for the first time. I'd been expecting dissapointment - after all, the catalogue of great drummer's albums is a pretty slim volume - & 30 years on maybe the moment would have passed. But this one is a revelation - a rarity that delivers.
Dennis had real talent as a writer withstanding comparison way up there with his more revered brother Brian. Not as a pale immitation but as a strong independent voice. The album is obviously the work of a Beach Boy but not a Beach Boys album by any means. Pacific Ocean Blue has a range & depth that is quite unexpected without the pomposity & grandeur of some 70s contemporaries. It manages to side step the sunny Califoria cliches too - more 'Hotel Califorina' than 'California Girls'in sentiment. It's still very much of its time yet it retains its self-respect. It's a mature peice with a heart, & often heart-achingly beautiful, particularly when Dennis's occasionally mournful voice is to the fore.
It is clearly conceived as a connected group of songs with an underpinning sensation of warmth & empathy. It's a whole album first, rather than a set of separate songs - so if one of the tracks crops up on ipod shuffle I just have to hear the rest.
What a shame that it has lain forgotten for so long or that Dennis never built on such a solid foundation. The Beach Boys catalogue seems so relentlessly re-packaged & re-marketed it seems odd that this album has avoided the 'de-luxe re-master with bonus tracks' treatment. It's not over egging it to call this a forgotten classic which is surely long overdue for a decent reissue.
there's very little to say,if you have a soul and a functioning eardrum-buy it - By: Bach's front bottom, 12 Apr 2007 there are a growing number of ppl who think that with this album & (the never officialy released)bamboo Dennis proved himself a genuine rival to brian as the main talent of the beach boys.enough said
Share Dennis with the world. - By: Musicman, 30 Mar 2007 Why don't the record company put this out again, remastered & done up all nice like? The 'big five' scrape the bottom of every barrel they have until you can see through the bottom of it, (Nirvana for instance) but yet this untapped potential source of income continues to be overlooked. It IS a wonderful album, & not just because it's hard to come by. Snobbish 'purists' who own it like to make you think that they know something that you don't because they own it, & you don't. So let's get one over on them - the sort of people who still describe a song as a 'cut', & use the word 'stylus'. Print up ten million copies of this album & share it with the world, because EVERYBODY should hear it.
Why is it so rare? - By: R C Robinson, 27 Jan 2006 I bought this album a year or so ago & I listen to it all the time. My advice is to buy any copy that comes your way - ideally on CD .
It has a balance & musicality which is different &in some ways better than the work of Brian Wilson. All the hype about a missing Beach Boy classic is justified. Some of the voice harmonics on the album are just earth shattering!!!
How come? - By: C. Copp, 06 Oct 2005 Yes! How come there are countless zillions of Beach Boy compilations, reissues, etc easily available, yet nobody left from the Wilson family has bothered to keep this album alive, letting it become deleted from the back catalogue. Shame on them for not putting pressure on the record company who owns the rights to rerelease it, perhaps it is for legal reasons, who knows? Who cares? This album was made backin the days when Dennis was going through his well documented "troubles", it is very personal, not easy listening for the casual listener. It is NOT worth £150 + though! What album is, really? Like the other reviewer said, wait until it is released as part of some huge package to mark the 40th anniversary of some Beach Boy's landmark date or other at a reasonable price, but unlike the other reviewer take the time to listen to it, not all at once, dip into it **after** reading the story behind it's making (plenty of resources on the interweb), it is fascinating! I loved it, but then I am a melancholy old sod too!
