Every so often a Beach Boys song comes on the radio or finds its way into an advertisement. And every time this happens I think of my old friend Robert Mumford, who passed away in the very prime of life in 2007. I lived in a share house with Robert in the early 1980's and the emblematic harmonies of the Beach Boys often resounded from his bedroom. Tales of the band and its founding genius Brian Wilson were a part of many flowery discourses over the years, Robert being a kind of Glen A Baker for Beach Boys trivia. At times I felt like a psychologist, Robert weaving narratives of his own life with those of the band; at other times, a kind of amanuensis, documenting the master's thoughts on this rarefied slice of pop culture.

With this in mind, I went searching Spotify for a double-album Robert gave me back in the day, Ten Years of Harmony. Essentially an eclectic compilation of the band's better material from the lean 1970's, I found that Ten Years had been deleted from the catalogue and had not been collected on Spotify. As a tribute to Robert, I found the original track listing and put together almost all of the original compilation, minus one or two tracks I simply could not find anywhere. And I added the sublime, Our Prayer, as a final gesture to the Beach Boys biggest fan.

If you find me on Spotify, the album is called BobGoMIATributeAlbum

From the attic....

A gang of four waiting to unload a truck near Scotland Island, early 1980's. Robert is on the far left.