![\"Present](\"https:\/\/atantalus.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Present-Tense.jpg\")
<\/a>In 1997 I got the reissue of “Present Tense” the 1968 album by Sagittarius. This was a Gary Usher created studio hobby \/ experiment where Curt provided the production chops and most of the musicians (mainly from his mighty but incredibly expensive and commercially unsuccessful “Begin” album by The Millennium).<\/p>\nAs with so many 90’s re-issues, this album had a booklet that contained a certain version of the events surrounding the record. There was a lot of good stuff<\/a> but one passage stuck out…<\/p>\n Curt Boettcher first entered Usher\u2019s consciousness in the spring of 1966.\u00a0 Their meeting had such a dramatic impact upon Usher that he still remembered it in detail 22 years later.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m over at Studio Three West with Brian Wilson.\u00a0 We were with (engineer) Chuck Britz, doing something.\u00a0 I think it was a movie soundtrack.\u00a0 The (tape) machine was stopped.\u00a0 All of a sudden, I heard a sound, and the instant I heard it, I froze just like someone had thrown a bowling ball at me.\u00a0 My ears just perked right up.\u00a0 And Brian looked at me, I looked at Brian, and we both said simultaneously, \u2018What was that?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI walked over to the hallway,\u201d Usher continued.\u00a0 \u201cWe put our ears out the door and listened to what was coming down that way.\u00a0 We went right down the hallway, around a corner, and when we followed the sound, the louder it got.\u00a0 We were walking and walking and walking up to the point where we were running into this room.\u00a0 And here\u2019s this little kid with an earring.\u00a0 That was the first time I met Curt, and it was while he was producing Lee Mallory\u2019s record \u2018That\u2019s the Way it\u2019s Gonna Be.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cBrian said, \u2018What is that?\u2019\u00a0 That record stunned Brian.\u00a0 He\u2019s doing little surfer music, and here comes this kid who is light years ahead of him.\u00a0 I had never seen Brian turn white.\u00a0 It stunned him.\u00a0 All he talked about for a week was that song and that kid.\u00a0 Brian sensed that was where it was at, that\u2019s where it was going.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hmm. What seems to be a fascinating insight into the 1966 LA studio scene suddenly shocks us with blatantly wrong information. 1966? Brian? Little surfer music? Movie Soundtrack?<\/p>\n In spring 1966 Brian was well into finishing Pet Sounds and thinking and tinkering with Good Vibrations… and planning the next epoch defining project<\/a>. (Little surfer music indeed!)<\/p>\n The original Gary Usher quote seems to date from around 1988. This was just a year after the death of Curt Boettcher, so it may have been an attempt by Usher to make people appreciate the work of Boettcher\u00a0more. It may even be a hint of continuing bitterness from Usher over the Beach Boys forcing him out of their songwriting picture in 1964, and perhaps some more recent shenanigans when he collaborated with Brian again during the 1986-88 Landy years.<\/p>\n As with any historical digging it is important to put the sources into context. Is this potentially good source giving us a certain degree of misinformation?<\/p>\n Warping history, even slightly, does no one any favors. The death of Gary Usher in 1990 made this the last word on any Boettcher, Wilson studio meeting and these lines are repeated again and again as a lone A time and a place<\/h2>\n