SMiLE Sessions box set!

[grooveblaster]

So now the initial shock of that has worn off....... DELIVER MY BOX, AMAZON 

Three dreaded words "Not Yet Shipped"

[Freddie French-Pounce]

How about an all-in-one

Hey, nice pic, but aren't you missing the 2 disc version with a unique CD2?

Whats on it thats unique though. Surely all the cabinessence sessions stuff is on here?

I'm just teasing, that looks great. I think the main thing you get is a digital copy of H&V p 1&2, which you have in the single format. Assuming it's the same (I heard that the Vega-Tables 45 is *different* than the album version)!!!

Yeah, the Vega-Tables single has the Backing vocals from the demo included (After the favourite Vega-Table line)

[Ron]

The box just arrived!!

My girlfriend intercepted and then hid the package. Oh how she laughed as I tore the living room upside down!

Cannot describe just how excited I feel right now.

Now that would have been better than any unboxing video.  PLEASE tell me she filmed this, HAHAHAHA. 

[buddhahat]

How about an all-in-one

Hey, nice pic, but aren't you missing the 2 disc version with a unique CD2?

Whats on it thats unique though. Surely all the cabinessence sessions stuff is on here?

I'm just teasing, that looks great. I think the main thing you get is a digital copy of H&V p 1&2, which you have in the single format. Assuming it's the same (I heard that the Vega-Tables 45 is *different* than the album version)!!!

Yeah, the Vega-Tables single has the Backing vocals from the demo included (After the favourite Vega-Table line)

Are you serious? Oh the irony - I have the box but can't play 45s! Will this version of Veg be available as an MP3?

[Freddie French-Pounce]

How about an all-in-one

Hey, nice pic, but aren't you missing the 2 disc version with a unique CD2?

Whats on it thats unique though. Surely all the cabinessence sessions stuff is on here?

I'm just teasing, that looks great. I think the main thing you get is a digital copy of H&V p 1&2, which you have in the single format. Assuming it's the same (I heard that the Vega-Tables 45 is *different* than the album version)!!!

Yeah, the Vega-Tables single has the Backing vocals from the demo included (After the favourite Vega-Table line)

Are you serious? Oh the irony - I have the box but can't play 45s! Will this version of Veg be available as an MP3?

Only if the Prime Minister allows me to conjure it...

[monicker]

Just like thye advance singles (H&V/GV and MOJO) there are inner groove messages

Side 1: Dumb Angel
Side 2: For Carl And Dennis
Side 3: Look, Listen, Vibrate
Side 4: For Chuck and Larry

This just totally made me cry.

[junkbondtrader]

Purple Monsters are actually golden.

[37!ws]

Don't you mean purple monkey dishwasher?

[desmondo]

Perhaps Many people don't understand all this SMiLE stuff

[Micha]

I'VE GOT IT!!!



Because of getting it through a store, it cost a bit more than expected though... a big bit, actually... or a small lot... But I've got it! And it's BEAUTIFUL!!! (That is, except for the backside of the box, but then, bah!)

I guess I won't take part in discussing musical content and just enjoy.

[Winston Wrong]

Ok, just got home to find that Amazon.co.uk have delivered a hardback book that I was waiting for, however, nobody was in to take the delivery so the parcel was just dumped by the front door of the house!

Luckily it was still there and it had not rained! I'm now getting worried that the same will happen to my Sessions box - it had better be in absolutely mint condition when it arrives next week.

Does anyone know if Best Buy will be selling this in-store in the UK and if so, how much will it be? I may cancel the Amazon order and buy it instore so I can see the condition of the box. I know HMV will have it in-store but will no doubt add a £50 mark up.

Thanks

[Winston Wrong]

Ok, just got home to find that Amazon.co.uk have delivered a hardback book that I was waiting for, however, nobody was in to take the delivery so the parcel was just dumped by the front door of the house!

Luckily it was still there and it had not rained! I'm now getting worried that the same will happen to my Sessions box - it had better be in absolutely mint condition when it arrives next week.

Does anyone know if Best Buy will be selling this in-store in the UK and if so, how much will it be? I may cancel the Amazon order and buy it instore so I can see the condition of the box. I know HMV will have it in-store but will no doubt add a £50 mark up.

Thanks

PS a PM would be nice, although I should have the box and 2cd set soon , the suspense is killing me!

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I am not due to get my box set until November 2nd or 3rd, but I can say that there is something wonderful about reading all these reactions. I mean, it IS frustrating that I can't hear it myself but it is exciting and nice to read these reactions. Keep em coming!

[Ebb and Flow]

I'm expecting the box set as a Christmas gift, but seeing all of these unboxing pics just makes me want to cry with joy and have it in my hands NOW!  I want to smell all of that new vinyl.

I've got the 2-Disc and standalone Vinyl preordered but the anticipation is just too much.  I'd love to hear the bonus tracks on D1 in particular.  Please Please Me (woah yeah)?

[chris.metcalfe]

Smile release causes FIRE!!!

So I finally got home after seeing a lovely guy who broke all the (UK) rules and let me have a 2CD box from the back office. About 2pm, quite hungry so I stick a bagel under the grill, dash in to the stereo room and rip off the cellophane (carefully), sitting down to enjoy the first couple of tracks..... aw, you guessed. Who needs bagels?

Apart from the sound and all the other stuff mentioned, I love the way the end of the full mono version goes straight into the H&V stereo and sequences - a stunning segue in itself. Surfs Up 67 - the way Brian sings 'A glass was raised, the fired rose' part is to die for. The chord near the end is him shifting up a key several bars early. Actually the original 66 solo version sounds better than ever.

There's no point in saying that there's lots of stuff I haven't heard before because I've not heard every single boot. Suffice to say that in mking it all listenable Mark Linett is clearly a genius.

[bgas]

deepdiscountCD says the box has shipped and it should arrive Wednesday by the end of the day. 

I can hardly wait to get this up on the shelf where I can admire it forever and ever

[trismegistus]

So the main thing I've gathered is that there aren't download codes for the LPs and singles? Damn, my record player can't get here soon enough, I might have to see if anyone's ripped the singles before then...

[monicker]

Is it premature to ask who is going to be doing a needle drop of Side 4 and the two 45s and sharing them and when? (My box was pre-ordered from Amazon and i am in the good ol' US of A)

[BiNNS]

I'm expecting the box set as a Christmas gift, but seeing all of these unboxing pics just makes me want to cry with joy and have it in my hands NOW!

Same here. I'm so pumped to be getting the 2cd version first thing Tuesday morning. My girlfriend made me a SMiLE button and one of Brian with his fire hat on for me to wear on the big day. Last year for Xmas i received BW tickets now this year i'm getting the SMiLE box. Woo!

[Emdeeh]

Smile for sale in the Saturn mega store Cologne, Germany:

THAT is a beautiful sight to behold!

[rogerlancelot]

I don't think I can Possibly wait until Monday.

[drbeachboy]

Pure Majesty is what SMiLE is.

[GuyO]

I bought the 2CD set today (Box is probably on it's way over the Atlantic). On CD 1 there is an unlisted track 28: the famous  sure to sell a million radio promo.

[smile-holland]

ATTENTION !!

Just made a new childboard in the "Album, Book and Video Reviews And Discussions" section. Busy moving all TSS topics to that board

Go here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/board,36.0.html

And by the way, it's no problem to post SMiLE topices on the main board either... but the desmondo series kinda cluttered the first page... 

[desmondo]

Great 5 star review from The Times

Brian Wilson’s long-lost opus is a lyrical vision of heaven, and hints at the crisis its delayed release contributed to

A friend tells me that people he knows are planning to subject their 11-year-old son to psychiatric treatment to cure him of what they see as deviant tendencies. This boy wants to read and draw, rather than watch television and play video games. He stares out of the window in quiet reflection on long car journeys, rather than demanding ice creams and hitting his sister. He has developed a taste for music his parents think is strange. He is obsessed with three albums from the 1960s: Scott 4 by Scott Walker, Forever Changes by Love, and the Beach Boys’ Smile.

These are, in fact, the three best albums ever made. One of them, Smile, from 1967, is only receiving its official release now. And before those parents send their boy off for electric shock therapy to make him accept the Government and listen to Coldplay, someone should tell them the story of Smile. It shows what happens when you crush the spirits of the artistically blessed.

Brian Wilson was 24 when he started work on Smile in Los Angeles in 1966. After making Pet Sounds with top session musicians while the other Beach Boys were on tour, he wanted to go one farther, to make spiritual music within the confines of pop. He called on the lyricist Van Dyke Parks to sit with him in a sandbox that he built around a piano in his Beverly Hills home and write “a teenage symphony to God”.

Things fell apart. Resistance from band members and the record company, escalating drug use and pressure to match the creative vision of the Beatles weakened Wilson’s already fragile mental state. The album was shelved, with various songs appearing here and there over the years but not as Wilson intended. “The music that was deepest in my soul stayed there,” he said. “It just about choked me to death.”

It’s wonderful that Smile is finally getting released, in three formats no less: if you really need 25 versions of Good Vibrations alone you can go for the £120, five-disc box set, or there’s the standard version for the casual listener, but the two-CD mini-box set is the best bet. It comes with a poster of Smile’s iconic cover art, a booklet of lyrics and photographs, and plenty of outtakes that give a sense of the atmosphere in the studio. Listening to it alongside Brian Wilson’s nice but anodyne collection of Disney tunes (In the Key of Disney), you appreciate the price he paid for its creation. It begins with Our Prayer, a one-minute a capella harmony piece that may be the closest anyone in pop has got to matching the stark beauty of Gregorian chants. From here Wilson gives us a 50-second section of the old girls-and-surf sound of the Beach Boys on Gee. That’s enough: he’s referencing a section in American history that he helped to create and is moving on.

Wilson’s beautiful music, structured more like a classical suite than a pop album, is perfectly matched by the lyrics of Parks, which, though imbued with a Californian freshness, have an ambiguity in keeping with their times. Mike Love, the Beach Boys’ less than visionary singer, reputedly challenged Parks to explain what “over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield”, from Cabin Essence, meant. When Parks said he didn’t know, Love held this up as victory over the forces of poetry, failing to open up to lyricism as evocative as a Van Gogh painting.

Ultimately, Smile was too ambitious to be realised in its time. One song, Surf’s Up, was intended as a summation of the entire history of Western civilisation, not to mention reality and life itself. Nobody can do that. They might lose their mind trying, though.

The abortion of the album marked the end of innocence. The Beach Boys’ drummer Dennis Wilson got caught up with Charles Manson, the band would release almost as many lawsuits as albums in the following decades, and Wilson’s mental health deteriorated. To hear this incredible album as it was intended, crystal-clear and dynamic after endless editing of the various takes, is to hear a vindication of Wilson’s vision. Anyone concerned about their introspective son or daughter’s taste in music should keep in mind the title of one song of hymnal majesty on Smile: Child is Father of the Man.