This is me checking in with an update on my longterm plans for the thread/my second "SMiLE Thesis."
1. My Plans to Get All the SMiLE Out of My System
In the near-ish future I want to reread LLVS, Priore's 2005 book, the new David Leaf book as well as the 2011 booklet and relevant sections of the Byron Preiss book. Then, unless anyone can fill me in on anything substantial I'm missing, I can say I've read all the major sources covering this topic and my fandom level will be over 9000. I might even try to make a "Gospel Harmony" of the story pieced from these sources, giving priority to the details that show up most frequently or something, but this isn't a top priority for me. I'd also like to maybe assemble a "SMiLE BiBLE" of the best 66-67 contemporary articles/accounts, the best Smile Shop essays, etc along with the best comprehensive secondary sources and/or my "Harmonized narrative" to make an unofficial reference book for people in the future. This would be that "
Deaf Genius/Dumb Angel" thing I mentioned in a previous post. We'll see how far I get.
In addition to the
Dumb Angel, Sandalphon &
Dumb Angel, Metatron mix outlines I've mentioned earlier, last night I got another cool idea idea for at least part of a new sequence. Has anybody every done a version of SMiLE where Fire ends Side 1 and Side 2 begins with Workshop? That just struck me as such an awesome idea but I'm not sure what other new sequence ideas I like enough to justify a third simultaneous crack at it. Maybe this could be the "everything is H&V" framework I've always wanted to try but never got inspiration for, and we could call it "
Smile/Frown" in the tradition of opposites like H&V itself or
Adult/Child. We'll see...
2. Fourth Axis of Fan Classification
It occurred to me upon further reflection that there is one other axis of "SMiLE theory" I overlooked. I mentioned Grand Plan/Disjointed Burnout, BWPS/"Original Vision," and "Oral Tradition"/"Hard Evidence." I think also, you might group us into the "regular banded album" camp who sees a 66-67 SMiLE as more similar to
Pet Sounds and
Sgt Pepper, with straightforward, separate tracks versus the "experimental song cycle" camp who gives more credence to quotes like "talking between cuts and verses" and thinks it would've been more similar to
Smiley Smile &
We're Only In It For The Money. (Less definitive breaks between tracks, audio collages, spoken word humor bits, "mistakes" or jarring cuts left it, things like that.) I personally think SMiLE started off more as the former but gradually became more of the latter, hence its final form being
Smiley. I think come October or even September that's what Brian's ambition wanted to do, but he just couldn't get there for all the reasons we already know. I think, where
Pet Sounds abandoned the spoken word "filler" of previous albums, SMiLE was an attempt to integrate it into the good stuff, make it an inseparable part of the message rather than something you skip like in
Today!.
Ive been lurking in the forbidden zone lately to see how the SMiLE conversation has developed over there and one talking point I've been seeing more of is this need to knock SMiLE down a peg by telling people that
Pet Sounds was actually far more advanced in its arrangements and chord progressions. Im not a trained musician so I can't comment on that, but I recall it being a thesis of the "
Smiley Smile IS
Smile" essay that was floating around 10-15 odd years ago as well, that the sessions were gradually getting simpler anyway rather than a clean, dramatic break. I say if this is true, and I have no reason to doubt it or care (doesn't change my high opinion of the music) perhaps Brian realized
Pet Sounds was the peak of Wall of Sound and the next step in innovation was the modular editing and possible Zappa-esque "sound collage" idea. So the "wow, he went to the next level" factor here isn't "he used more instruments" so much as "he took all these disparate pieces of totally different songs, audio verite recordings, spoken word snippets and tied them together in a way that lifts them all above the sum of their parts." I think that was the goal, that's what was supposed to make SMiLE groundbreaking even if the individual pieces arent any more complex than "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations." Honestly, that the arrangements are supposedly sparser yet few people noticed without being told implies Brian was after-all still developing as a producer, learning how to get more out of less. (That's far more impressive than, say BW88, where he throws a cacophony's worth of instrumental layers at each track just to prove he can.)
One of my favorite comments I saw there was to the effect of "
Pet Sounds is the same idea told 13 different ways, it all fits together implicitly. SMiLE isn't a step up from that so much as a right turn. It's more far reaching in subject matter and so picturesque in execution you can practically smell the lamp oil in CE and feel the train thundering by. Its priority isn't in its deeply layered sound but rather how each instrument is carefully chosen to evoke a sound and its resultant visual association." (I'm highly paraphrasing but then they went on to quote the same bits of studio chatter I often do, where Brian wanted an instrument to sound like something else: jewelry, a fire engine siren, vocals imitating a banjo twang in CE, actual veggie crunching in VT, or a baby crying for example. I've also always felt Wonderful Version 1's backing track sounds just like a music box & at least some versions of Bicycle Rider sound like spokes of a bike wheel turning, but I don't know if I've ever mentioned that before.) Where
Pet Sounds songs' arrangements are mostly interchangeable in their "sound texture" (part of what makes them all work together so perfectly), SMiLE was pushing boundaries by even attempting to put VT, GV, CIFOTM and Workshop together on the same LP, these wildly different tracks with their own unique sonic identity.
This coincides with Koestler's
The Art of Creation and its influence on Brian's creative process. Specifically, the theory of pictorial thinking as a more accessible thought process as well as the use "bisociation:" how Brian might've been matching subconscious scenes in his mind with conscious instrumentation choices. SMiLE's strength was supposed to be its ability to take you to so many different places and do it seamlessly, just with some short fragments of music as well as non-literal puns and references. The humor and impressionist style was meant to open the listener's subconscious mind, while the modular pieces (accentuated by VDP's non-linear lyrics and Frank Holmes' jigsaw puzzle style of illustration) walked us towards enlightenment, one small step at a time. Of course, this defense of SMiLE's would-be grandiosity is undercut by the fact that Brian couldn't ultimately finish it, but I'm saying I think that was his magnificent intent, that's what was supposed to be impressive about it, if the chords aren't as unexpected. (And even if the endeavor failed, like Gatsby, the beautiful dream and its naive pursuit against impossible odds is worth admiration in its own right.)
3. How Much of the '66-'67 Material was BWPS-Era Brian Exposed To?
Interesting to see the phrase "in the pink" in the story, as that was later used in BWPS's "Blue Hawaii" lyrics.
I've often wondered if Darian and the others showed Brian any of the ancillary SMiLE material during the planning stages for the '03 shows. Was he re-exposed to this, Psychedelic Sounds, old interviews/articles or the same book sources I've been reading? Did they comb through what was in the vaults or just stick to Darian's collection of boots and the GV boxset?
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