LOS ANGELES – Jan Berry and Dean Torrence rode a wave of popularity in the early ’60s that earned the So-Cal duo more than a dozen Top 40 hits, including the #1 smash “Surf City.” The group’s good fortune came to a tragic halt in 1966 when Berry suffered debilitating injuries in a car accident near Dead Man’s Curve, a treacherous road that, ironically, was the subject of one of the group’s earlier hits. As he battled tirelessly to recover, Berry spent the next three years recording songs for a new Jan & Dean album to be titled Carnival Of Sound. Despite the quality of the music, the album was never released and became one of rock ’n’ roll’s lost treasures, until now.
Rhino Handmade offers two versions of CARNIVAL OF SOUND. The first is a single CD whose 29 songs include mono and stereo mixes of the album along with bonus tracks from the 1966-68 sessions. The other is a deluxe edition that combines the aforementioned CD with a vinyl version of the album in mono presented in a gorgeous hardbound gatefold jacket. Both are currently available for preorder exclusively at
http://www.rhino.com for a suggested list price of $19.98 (standard) and $49.98 (deluxe).
To present a clear and vivid picture of what Berry was up to during this transitional phase, the collection’s producer Andrew Sandoval spent three years carefully reviewing and compiling every tape Berry submitted to Warner Bros. for use on CARNIVAL OF SOUND. “Although Jan cut multiple LP-length acetates of his work at the time, he left behind no definitive track list or sequence for the songs to be included on the album,” he explains in the liner notes. “I created the sequence you hear … by grouping his post-accident tracks together and closing with his pre-accident masters. The two parts of this story have such different flavors that they seem to flow best in this manner.”
CARNIVAL OF SOUND opens with “Girl, You’re Blowing My Mind,” an upbeat poppy track that kicks off with a guitar that sounds like a jet engine. It then moves into songs that expand Jan & Dean’s signature sound, including the sitar-infused “Mulholland,” the wild imagery of “Laurel And Hardy,” the poignant ballad “I Know My Mind,” and the Indian instrumentation of the title track.
To round out the album, a selection of oldies was brought in from sessions Berry cut prior to his accident. Maurice Williams & The Zodiac’s “Stay” was given a quick, 1:35 run-through. The Five Satins’ “In The Still Of The Night” displayed Berry’s new friendship with The Monkees’ Davy Jones, who gave the song some true bubblegum sincerity with a spoken interlude. Berry added horns and woodwinds to his ’66 tracking session for Rusty and Doug Kershaw’s 1961 swamp pop hit “Louisiana Man.” Among the collection’s bonus tracks are “Don’t Drop It” and a demo for “Laurel And Hardy,” plus two versions of “Girl, You’re Blowing My Mind,” Berry’s final mix and another with an alternate backing track.
The CD contains Berry’s original mono mixes along with new stereo mixes that Sandoval says are meant to be more illustrative of Jan’s work, rather than a definitive statement. “On careful inspection, Jan’s mono mixes can’t be beat, but the new stereo versions afford the listener a bigger window into his production prowess,” Sandoval says. “Listen out for such anomalies as the longer coda on ‘Mulholland,’ or the vocal verse that later became a guitar solo on ‘Girl, You’re Blowing My Mind.’”
More than four decades after Berry found solace in these sounds, they arrive for everyone to share as the Carnival finally comes to town.
