Do you think the early material ('62-'65) is better than Smile?

[Dancing Bear]

The MMT PROJECT was a misstep. The Hello Goodbye single topped the charts in UK and US, as did the MMT US album and UK double EP.

[Mr. Cohen]

Yep, the MMT album worked as a sort of grab bag of Beatles singles, with its own original songs and single.  Had the BBs had that many hit singles lying around at that time, they would've done alright, too.

[Fire Wind]

Someone 'took me to task 'cause they thought I suggested earlier that we were stupid back then.  I actually was asking a question which could have been prefaced with What??? We were stupid?  Or Why?  Did you think we were stupid?  Or whatever.  The point was that we WEREN'T stupid...then...or now.

Was this your post? 

This 'point' about Smile's lyrics and their supposed accessibility is EVER so weak.  What?  We were too stupid in 1967?  But by the time 20/20 came out we were ready for Cabinessence?  Or was it the 'Our Prayer' lyric which was too much for Beach Boys fans and the general public to absorb?

There were question marks.  You were clear.  I understood you.

In my reply, I asked 'who's we?'  Did you mean the Beach Boys fans in their entirety?  Pop fans generally?  That's all I meant, though I probably wasn't clear.

I just raise an eyebrow when one is speaking for many.  You, personally, and the people you knew, might have been cool with the Smile lyrics.  Others might not have been and may have fallen off the Beach Boys bandwagon.  When pop music sells to this many people, as did the Beach Boys and the Beatles, there's gonna be varying levels of commitment and expectations.  Being hugely popular means you're selling to all kinds of people, including those who actively seek out music and those who just think are few songs are pretty cool.  And when it comes to selling to kids/early teens, some are gonna be into it simply because their friends are, just the fad factor.  If the Beach Boys had found a new, more mature audience with Smile in the rock world, as we all hope they would have done, that's great.  But I don't see it as the case that all the early fans necessarily would have gone with them.

I dunno about the word, 'stupid', either, to describe people for whom Smile lyrics would not have attracted.  How about simply...uninterested.  Just not into music enough to give much thought to it.  There's a huge mass of people out there who'll have little to do with stuff like that.

[Lee Marshall]

Fire Wind...Naw...The "we" was inspired by what Brian had said that "we" weren't ready for Smile...So he stuffed it back in the closet under the old whatsits and instead annointed us with Smiley Smile.

Mr. C...I get that.  Still...Smiley Smile did have Good Vibrations on it..plus Heroes and Villains which had done quite well in the UK [and Canada] and marginally well in the U.S.  If SS had contained reasonable material, in addition, they might have come out of it with maybe one nostril still above water.  But to keep the public waiting THAT long for a follow-up to Pet Sounds...an for it to turn out to be SS...well...Way too little...way too late.

D Bear...Yes MMT was a misstep...Just a little one really though.  A greatest hits packet with a few decent bonus songs to round it out in time for Christmas.  AND...the Fabs had released something which fared reasonably well earlier in the summer.  You know...that Pepper thingy.  The Sand-Pail Sailors though?  Diddley.  Their "misstep" took 'em ass-over-tea-kettle right down to the cold concrete basement level.

As the New Music Express Poll winners for 1966/67  [I think I incorrectly said Melody Maker Poll winners earlier in the thread] the Beach Boys had ligitimately unseated the Fabs as top dogs in their own back yard.  The chance of that continuing was severely diminished by the turn of events...or lack of same.  As the Beach Boys stalled and faltered...the Beatles moved back in front...and the rest of the music world pretty much stepped over our heroes and just kept rolling along.

[Shady]

Reading what was being released around the same time as Smile it really makes you see that Brian was 10 steps ahead of everyone.

Brian shelved the album, every musician got a pass. He was getting ready to kick some ass.

[guitarfool2002]

That is an important point, especially in 1965-66. Brian was steps ahead, and the particular "scene" and various things surrounding that scene in and around LA at this time were also several steps ahead of what would soon explode due to media attention and marketing.

It's actually one of the elements of watching "Inside Pop" which stands out, at least for me. This was mostly filmed in fall and late 1966, broadcast in April 1967. You still see more "traditional" imagery relative to 1966, yet there is in almost every clip an undercurrent of something about to bust wide open. And the fact that CBS was right there in the heart of it, especially things like the Pandora's Box marches (aka the Sunset Strip Riots) was just one of the things that was building and swirling around LA at this time.

By the time the media actually caught on, and they never really did but instead almost whitewashed the whole reporting of these things, it was looking at certain cultural aspects which had already been playing out at least a year prior to the great, mislabeled "Summer Of Love", and again that scene is in part where some elements of Smile were coming from.

One last thought: A teacher I had years ago was talking about how he got started in education in the early 60's after getting his degree and landing the job. He said if you wanted to see the effects of what was happening in the mid 60's, find your school's yearbooks from 1966, then find the yearbook from 1967, and notice just how radically the overall "look" of everything from clothing to hair to basic stuff in general had changed over a year. And from all examples I've seen, he was right. Pretty amazing stuff in retrospect.

And again, what was happening in LA in 65-66 was steps ahead of the pack in some ways. Best example: Listen to Cabinessence as recorded in 1966 and find anything, anything at all, that was comparable in pop music.

[luckyoldsmile]

Is there anything comparable to Cabinessence now, today?

I'd be down with hearing some of that.

[Lee Marshall]

When I was out in Vancouver in 2010 working the Olympics I was invited, during off hours, to be a 'guest ' on a local radio show.  I was to select an hours worth of GREAT songs and then tell the host and audience why I'd chosen them.  The one I chose  as THE song was 'Cabinessence'.  I'll bet it was the first time the majority of those listening had ever heard it.  It IS an amazing piece of music...a sensational arrangement and an etherial performance.  To be able to do SO MUCH with voices is just brilliantly stunning to me.  One of my all time favourite songs...regardless of the artist or era.  A personal 'GEM'.

Damn crows.

[Cam Mott]

Good. Now we know for a fact that the many times that you have claimed on this board that Brian directly referred to Parks's lyrics as "too arty" is flat out false. You also have made it seem as if Brian had a problem with the lyrics. But in these quotations, Brian never mentions the lyrics directly at all. What he does do mostly is suggest that the music was too personal for the public to enjoy. The idea that this suddenly translates into Brian complaining that Parks's lyrics were "too arty" is totally a fiction that you have concocted out of these statements where he says absolutely nothing of the sort. And, quite unbelievably, you've repeated this myth for years on this board. This is the second time, by the way, that your penchant for quoting others can be traced back to no quote at all. In most fields, that's referred to as fabrication.

So you are proposing I posted all of the info so I could fabricate a myth. Interesting. I might have said I was “mistaken” or “presumptive”.  Feel free to post all of my “fabrications” and I’ll be glad to apologize.

You earlier argued for context and to me it all forms a context for 1967 where Brian felt lyrics (and probably music) were too arty and that Van Dyke’s lyrics specifically were an issue for Brian is confirmed by Anderle.

Well, I reiterate that you positioned old-fashioned as a quotation and then attributed the quotation to Brian and then it turned out you were, in fact, making an inference out of a poetic turn of phrase from a press release written by Derek Taylor. Again, my objection was the fabrication and the misattribution. However, I definitely do not agree with your interpretation.  What I think Taylor means (and keep in mind, I've spent a lifetime reading Taylorisms) is what many others have said - that Brian felt that the time had past and that he had lost the production race. That the longer Brian took, the less avant-garde it would be - a belief, that Derek Taylor correctly thought, was unfounded. I suppose if you think you can either be avant-garde or old fashioned then maybe you can take this to mean that Brian thought the music was old fashioned but I doubt that Brian or Derek Taylor would have such an unnuanced way of thinking about music.

Yes, “old fashioned” would be an interpretation, my apologies for any mis-use of quotation marks. And yes, I disagree with your interpretation mainly because Brian then scrapped songs which were old or had old timey themes and lyrics.

Hope everyone had a Merry and a Happy.

[Don Malcolm]

When I was out in Vancouver in 2010 working the Olympics I was invited, during off hours, to be a 'guest ' on a local radio show.  I was to select an hours worth of GREAT songs and then tell the host and audience why I'd chosen them.  The one I chose  as THE song was 'Cabinessence'.  I'll bet it was the first time the majority of those listening had ever heard it.  It IS an amazing piece of music...a sensational arrangement and an etherial performance.  To be able to do SO MUCH with voices is just brilliantly stunning to me.  One of my all time favourite songs...regardless of the artist or era.  A personal 'GEM'.

Damn crows.

Spot on, Add Some! Definitely the pinnacle of Brian's "art song" excursion. It's like we've been allowed to enter some special realm for 3:33, where a unique style of modular compositional logic is flourishing under hothouse conditions. A "world of forbidden beauty," if you will.

Still blows my mind 40+ years after hearing it (the third time was the charm, and the spell has never worn off!).