Brian's music as therapy

[ghost]

I think this is why we all stick around so long. It transcends ordinary stuff. You don't put on a latter day Paul McCartney record for emotional healing - or do you? But I can put on Reimagines Gershwin and have many of my wounds gently healed throughout its duration.

Ghost jumped off a bridge the other day. Unfortunately for you guys, he survived. As he plummeted to the water below all he could think of was Love You. Brian's music is therapy - for himself and all of us. The message is: Our Love Is Here To Stay. Take your time don't worry how you feel because you know we've got forever. High in the sky, we'll live forever we'll NEVER DIE.

Let's get a good list going with all of Brian's most therapeutic music. The stuff that you turn to when you NEED it. The songs that change your perspective, lift your spirits, turn your hate into love, your depression into sweet melancholy. Also, stories and reflections. Let's go mo'fos.

[onkster]

Lay off the bridge-jumping, ghosty. You could be missing out on the rest of the crazy surprises life has left to offer. (In Willy Wonka voice: The box set, yessss, the box set...but that's just the BEGINNING...)

Take care. Always.

[SMiLE Brian]

I agree that Brian's music heals somewhat, but if you really jumped off a bridge, you need some serious professional help.

[The Shift]

Pet Sounds every time, Ghost.  Sad music to make me happy (or is it happy music that makes me sad?).

Occasionally This Is That (C&TP); occasionally Can't Wait Too Long.

I fell off a bridge once, while looking for conkers, and landed in a muddy stream. Folk crossed to the other side of the road when they saw me coming as I walked home.

But never jumped off.  Hopefully that's an end to it and you're back to the music (and the prolific posts!  ).

Stay sane, stay healthy, stay alive.  Stick around.

[ghost]

Guys, I wasn't posting a DONATE SYMPATHY TO ME request. I appreciate it sincerely if you are similarly sincere but there are others here who will think or say I'm crying wolf, trying to pull the rug from under my own feelings and experiences in life. Or they consider it inappropriate for one to mention "to strangers" online rather than kept private. What if I have no one else to share anything with? In this life you have to pretend to be tough so that others don't call you a p*ssy or unenlightened for feeling badly.

Anyway, I've got 'S Wonderful on right now. Definitely has a bit of a gay Brian/Gene vibe going on but I still dig it. I make fun of Eugene but if he wrote those songs on BW88 with Brian then I give the man major respect. Some of those songs [music & lyrics essential-inseparable to each other] cut through all my bullsh*t and tickle my emotional center like nothing else. Dr Eugene Landy is more of a guru than just a regular doctor. He's an enlightened orangutan in some respects.

Damn, Brian's voice is amazing on I've Got A Crush On You. Seduced me! Brian sings to the eternal goddess of energy, the surfer girl, the girl on the beach, the little one, in the blossom world, through her eyes, she takes him there, kissalittlebit fightalittlebit, she knows him too well, wouldn't it be nice if we were older then we wouldn't have to wait so long [to die].

[The Madcap]

I'd say some of his music can definitely be used as therapy. Pet Sounds is one of the albums that helped me through the most miserable period of my life.

[ghost]

I'd say some of his music can definitely be used as therapy. Pet Sounds is one of the albums that helped me through the most miserable period of my life.

Sloop John B is the most emotionally relevant song for me usually. The other week I heard it very appropriately outside at 8am where I did not want to be at all. It was heaven & hell hearing their voices sing "I feel so broke up, I WANNA GO HOME". Just that part, it slays me. Well this is the worst trip, I've ever been on. That's how my life usually feels. I don't really know if some damage has been done from something in particular but sometimes when I'm sober the whole world I am and am in feels like a nightmare of inescapable dense matter.

[SMiLE Brian]

Pet Sounds and Today! helped get through many a hard time in my life.

[ghost]

Let us not forget that the notion of Brian's music as a healing therapeutic thing goes way back to 1967 and before in seed. Carl's quote about the Texas rehab that treats bad acid trip patients with Smiley Smile. Also Brian's quotes about Pet Sounds being a love offering type of thing, to love the listener, give us love. Brian channeled divine love - You Still Believe In Me, God Only Knows... these are divine songs.

[onkster]

Don't confuse sympathy with pity, ghost. I sympathize--I certainly have traveled through some black, black periods myself--and my hope is that you genuinely aren't too down. Or if you are, that you can get whatever you need not to stay that way.

Just putting in a good word for you, that's all. I would hate to see you become a real ghost, OK?

Your posts are different and often delightful (there's a touch of Rob Breszny to many of them), and I for one appreciate having a voice like yours here. Glad to have you here.

[OneEar/OneEye]

Guys, I wasn't posting a DONATE SYMPATHY TO ME request. I appreciate it sincerely if you are similarly sincere but there are others here who will think or say I'm crying wolf, trying to pull the rug from under my own feelings and experiences in life. Or they consider it inappropriate for one to mention "to strangers" online rather than kept private. What if I have no one else to share anything with? In this life you have to pretend to be tough so that others don't call you a p*ssy or unenlightened for feeling badly.

Good words Ghost, and good thread.  I feel like jumping off a bridge (or some such a thing) at the moment, but I won't.   What I will do, later, is listen to PS or Smile/Smiley stuff and possibly get extremely drunk.  I am going to have to leave my job soon, of my own volition and actually in some ways it's a relief, but I have no idea what I am going to do from that point or how.   In a sense, jumping off a bridge is kind of a metaphor for what I am going through and/or about about to go through.
I will need all the BW music I can get and more, so thank you Ghost.  
And my apologies if this post here has brought a touch of "group therapy" to the proceedings, but you struck a chord with me and so there ya go.

[ghost]

Your posts are different and often delightful (there's a touch of Rob Breszny to many of them)

I am no longer pleased that I did not drown. Thanks a lot, onkster.

[The Demon]

What I find most therapeutic about Brian's music is the repetition.  I have a feeling this is how he felt, even if he wasn't conscious of it.  The steady repeating rhythms and recycled melodic patterns assuage your mind when it feels fragmented.  Those musical devices anchor you, just like the "boogie woogie" pattern Linda Rhondstadt describes Brian playing while he thinks in the Don Was documentary.

I think this is why Smile is so repetitive, since that was such a bleak time for him personally.  It's certainly the most therapeutic Wilson music for me.  Other songs, like "Caroline No" or "Don't Worry Baby," touch me a lot, but Smile is different.  It's a sedative.  It's not something I relate to like those other songs, but almost a second circadian rhythm that brings me back down to earth so I can go onto other things that previously felt overwhelming.

[rab2591]

1. With Me Tonight - Smiley Smile
2. Good Time - Love You
3. In The Back Of My Mind (instrumental) - boot
3. California Girls - Stack-O-Tracks
4. When I Grow Up - Today
5. When I Grow Up (instrumental) - boot
6 We'll Run Away - All Summer Long
7. Still I Dream Of It - I Just Wasn't Made For The Times
8. It's Over Now - Good Vibrations BoxSet
9. Fun, Fun, Fun - Shut Down, Vol II
10. Listen To Me - Buddy Holly Tribute
11. Someone To Watch Over Me - BWRG
12. Wonderful - The Smile Sessions
13. Good Kind Of Love - TLOS
14. Good Vibrations - The Smile Sessions

[ghost]

What I find most therapeutic about Brian's music is the repetition.  I have a feeling this is how he felt, even if he wasn't conscious of it.  The steady repeating rhythms and recycled melodic patterns assuage your mind when it feels fragmented.  Those musical devices anchor you, just like the "boogie woogie" pattern Linda Rhondstadt describes Brian playing while he thinks in the Don Was documentary.

I think this is why Smile is so repetitive, since that was such a bleak time for him personally.  It's certainly the most therapeutic Wilson music for me.  Other songs, like "Caroline No" or "Don't Worry Baby," touch me a lot, but Smile is different.  It's a sedative.  It's not something I relate to like those other songs, but almost a second circadian rhythm that brings me back down to earth so I can go onto other things that previously felt overwhelming.

This is exactly my feeling especially the last of what you wrote. I need a dose of Brian's music to dissociate from potentially psychically damaging events/experiences to get back into a good feeling for what I'm doing in life. I went to court once, the night after drinking a little too much Lester Bangs blood, high out of my mind on cabinessence, listening to Love You on headphones. While coming home, with a $600 fine [riding a bike about 10 miles] I listened to it again on repeat. It was an amazing experience. Really.

on repetition:
don't talk put your head on my shoulder....... cyclical waves lulling you into higher & higher subtleties of awareness and love.

Mona howzabout a nine a clock movie
Wonitwonitwonit be groovy

[puni puni]

Cool, Cool Timin'

[?]

Love You for me, definitely.  I didn't get the album at all the first time I heard it.  It didn't click with me until I was seriously depressed following a major fight with my then-girlfriend.  Laying alone on the floor of my friend's bedroom high as a kite with Love You spinning on his turntable, it all suddenly made sense.  It's been my therapy album ever since.

[puni puni]

Hows about a 8 oclock dinner
Hows about a 9 oclock movie

Arent you arent you glad that you found me

Dont you like wine

Will you will you will you kiss me
When you leave me don't you miss me

Could we get married

Listen to Da Doo Ron Ron
Listen to Be My Baby

I know youll love Phil Spectre

[Peter Reum]

The ballads....Brian`s ballads. Also some of the various vocal pieces where instruments are mixed down or totally out. Very calming and uplifting.

[Bill Tobelman]

Sweet Mountain by Spring.

[rab2591]

The ballads....Brian`s ballads. Also some of the various vocal pieces where instruments are mixed down or totally out. Very calming and uplifting.

The 'Don't Talk (vocal snippet)' from the PS Sessions is incredible....one of my favorite pieces by Brian....no instruments, just his extraordinary voice/arrangement.

[hypehat]

The ballads....Brian`s ballads. Also some of the various vocal pieces where instruments are mixed down or totally out. Very calming and uplifting.

This. No-one can touch the level of emotional honesty in the Beach Boys' ballads.

[OneEar/OneEye]

Pet Sounds is always real cathartic.  As is that second side of Today (the li'l Pet Sounds).
Smiley Smile is like some strange little friend that I very much love to revisit. 
Wild Honey and Friends though I've found to be like comfort food.  They ease my mind, heart and soul. 
Most of Surf's Up too, and more recently I have gotten into and really appreciated the pain reliever that is Carl and the Passions - So Tough.   

[ghost]

anyone else feel as deeply connected to: love & mercy, melt away, little children, there's so many, being with the one you love, baby let your hair grow long, etc as me? those are up there in my favorite ever brian wilson songs, my desert island top choices.

[ghost]

rthrth