as "mainly a collection of solo efforts". The album's centerpiece was "Here Comes the Night", an 11-minute disco reworking of an original R&B song that the band had released on their 1967 album Wild Honey. Dennis was opposed to the recording, and Brian did not participate. Another older song, "Good Timin'", had dated from the band's aborted 1974 sessions at Caribou Ranch. Brian's rendition of "Shortenin' Bread" featured Dennis on lead. Among the newer songs, Carl contributed three – "Angel Come Home", "Full Sail", and "Goin' South" – that he wrote with songwriter Geoffrey Cushing-Murray, whom he had met through touring member Billy Hinsche. Dennis' two songs – "Baby Blue" and "Love Surrounds Me" – were lifted from his in-progress Bambu album. Biographer Jon Stebbins states that the songs were included at the insistence of Dennis' bandmates, and quotes music journalist Domenic Priore, who surmised, "They obviously didn't have enough good material for their debut album on their new label, so they nicked some of the better [songs from Bambu]". Love's "Sumahama" is lyrically inspired by his fiancé at the time, a woman named Sumako, and is "about a young girl who wants to go with her mother to a place called 'Sumahama' in search of her father." Although some of the lyrics are in Japanese, Sumako was of Korean descent. Al Jardine's "Lady Lynda" is a tribute to his then-wife that is based musically on Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring". Among the outtakes, "Santa Ana Winds" appeared on their next album, Keepin' the Summer Alive (1980), "Brian's Back" was released on the 1998 compilation Endless Harmony, and "California Feelin'" was released on the 2013 compilation Made in California. "Rock Plymouth Rock/Roll" , a song from the band's unfinished Smile album, was also considered for inclusion as the opening track of L.A.. Still-unreleased tracks from the L.A. sessions include "Looking Down the Coast/Monterey", "I'm Begging You Please", "Basketball Rock", "Bowling", "There’s a Feeling Through the Air", and renditions of "Calendar Girl" and "Drip Drop". Packaging In the liner notes, it is explained that the L.A. (Light Album) title refers to the "awareness of, and the presence of, God here in this world as an ongoing loving reality". The initials also allude to Los Angeles, the band's native home. Carlin writes that the title "evoked both Los Angeles and the city's long-standing position as a capital of vaguely New Age