Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

[Old Rake]

Yeah -- that was a hell of a night. So many questions answered, so many new questions raised, such a moving performance.

I can't even write about this one. Too much emotion wrapped up in it, I'm too close to the album in general. The bitching, moaning and criticism still stings, and it started the *very next day* after that moving performance. Its like -- when you hear something that moves you *that much* and creates such a potent, visceral reaction to you that hits you at a deep, deep level like that, way down deep in the soul, having that experience devalued or picked apart like its just another ho-hum, bla-de-da everyday ordinary thing is *painful*. I liken it to the visceral reaction Ian has when someone comes on and says something like "Neil Young sucks." You think of the beautiful moments in your life wrapped up in the music, the deep thoughts and wonder you've had listening and spending quality time with it, and all the time you've spent enjoying it, and you feel something very akin to potent RAAAGGGGEEEE. Or at least I do. Which is why I can barely write about the album critically.

And which is why I don't really have a Smile website anymore. I just can't stand having something I love that much dissected like so much offal under my watch.

Let me just say one thing: the pirate rap is my favorite part of the entire album. That should be an indication of where my head is at Smile-wise.

[Mitchell]

The night I first heard the SMiLE concert bootleg, I was visiting home and I was going to bus overnight back to the city in which I was working. I had to work in the morning. My plan was to sleep on the bus. I listened to the CD (my friend burned it for me) through my stereo and loved the whole thing. Then I listened to the CD through a portable CD player while on the bus and what happened next was awful. I couldn't sleep.  Not because I was excited, but because the bicycle rider theme was playing incessantly, over and over in my head. I kind of sympathized with Brian scrapping SMiLE if that's what he was going through for a few months. So I tried to sleep on the bus and eventually did fall alseep at 6 in the morning or something while at the bus station waiting for a stopover.

That's my story.

[OLD GREGG]

Yeah -- that was a hell of a night. So many questions answered, so many new questions raised, such a moving performance.

I can't even write about this one. Too much emotion wrapped up in it, I'm too close to the album in general. The bitching, moaning and criticism still stings, and it started the *very next day* after that moving performance. Its like -- when you hear something that moves you *that much* and creates such a potent, visceral reaction to you that hits you at a deep, deep level like that, way down deep in the soul, having that experience devalued or picked apart like its just another ho-hum, bla-de-da everyday ordinary thing is *painful*. I liken it to the visceral reaction Ian has when someone comes on and says something like "Neil Young sucks." You think of the beautiful moments in your life wrapped up in the music, the deep thoughts and wonder you've had listening and spending quality time with it, and all the time you've spent enjoying it, and you feel something very akin to potent RAAAGGGGEEEE. Or at least I do. Which is why I can barely write about the album critically.

And which is why I don't really have a Smile website anymore. I just can't stand having something I love that much dissected like so much offal under my watch.

Let me just say one thing: the pirate rap is my favorite part of the entire album. That should be an indication of where my head is at Smile-wise.

Damn bloody right, right on Jon.. there were people hanging around just to moan and complain about something that was obviously HUGE to the majority of us, even if you didnt care for it at least have the decency to wait a week at least for people to enjoy the moment that no-one thought would come.

SMiLE is still probably my favourite all time music, even though I feel the live performance is the version to listen to.

[I. Spaceman]

WHAT DID YOU SAY?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[Luther]

Damn bloody right, right on Jon.. there were people hanging around just to moan and complain about something that was obviously HUGE to the majority of us, even if you didnt care for it at least have the decency to wait a week at least for people to enjoy the moment that no-one thought would come.

SMiLE is still probably my favourite all time music, even though I feel the live performance is the version to listen to.

Along this sentiment, I have to say that I was grinning like an absolute idiot after first hearing the piece performed live (Glasgow, MArch 3 or 4 '04...I forget exactly). It was one of the best moments of my life, made better because Brian had been horrendous in the first set, but came back to perform a beautiful, touching show of Smile. And I had the same reaction when I heard the actual, released disc for the first time (by which time I'd seen it live again and heard the leaked studio stuff plenty of times). It touched me in a way very, very little music does, has or (most likely) will.

[OLD GREGG]

I was at the Glasgow show too. Twas great.

[Luther]

The Smile part, anyway. That first set was awful. I was so excited to hear Time To Get Alone...until Brian sang. Horrible.

[OLD GREGG]

I dont know I thought it was alright, there were a fair few mistakes in the first half but over all I was impressed, the Good Timin opening was great. And Smile was mind blowing of course.

[sidewinder572]

What more can be said. 5/5 for sure. My all time favorite album. I know a lot of you say the live version is the definative way to hear SMiLE. It's great, don't get me wrong. To me however, SMiLE is, was, and always will be a work of studio magic. There's more to the studio version and the vinyl is the way to hear it

[Matinee Idyll]

Bloody hell, I always respond to something from the first page... so it's completely out of context.

[Peter Tomatz]

I had to give the record a 2. I just don’t take much pleasure in listening to it despite my love of the finished Smile. The live bootleg would get a 4 with the point taken off for the baffling drumming and the painful fuzz eschewing. I really hope I get a chance to see Brian perform Smile again.

[Evenreven]

Just why did you have to give the album a 2 again?

[Dr. Tim]

Well it's 5 for me.  I knew most of the basic backstory over the years, and I'd heard the GV excerpts, so when the disc began I was recognizing it all  - so far, so good - until Roll Plymouth Rock, which in its finished state was completely strange to me, and I sat mesmerized from that point on.  My wife, a french horn player, was very impressed as well.  When we play it at parties and such everyone wants to know what it is.  How well it all flows is the most gratifying - this is now a unified work.  It wasn't before.  But even so I now went and devoured several of the boots, learning to my shock just how close to finished it all had been back in 66-67.  And yet, as Peter Reum says, maybe the piece will best be remembered not as an album, but as a concert work that can be played in repertory.  The funniest moment is the newly-written salon-waltz Cantina reprise that opens the third movement, it sounds like Ragtime, so out of place it's absolutely perfect, segueing into the trippy IIGS.   And no he's not likely to ever top it again.  But at least we have SMiLE even if there's nothing as ambitious ever to come again.  Well done.  This goes both for the HDCD disc and the vinyl versions.  (The DVD is the repertory performance).

[L Ransford]

My all time favorite album by anybody!

[I. Spaceman]

From a year ago on the old SMiLE Shop board:

The thing is, it's only in the last year that I have realised the amount of sadness and anger myself and others had connected with the old session material. Even the most cursory listen would lead to question after question,second-guesswork and resentment towards the other BB's, Brian himself, VDP etc. etc for allowing SMiLE to not happen. The experience of the last year has provided, for many, the exact opposite: answers,closure,joy,understanding from nonbelievers and loved ones,praise,acclaim etc. So for some of us I think listening to the old stuff brings up bad feelings not unlike the ones Bri himself associated with the material. Also in some ways I feel SMiLE to be not unlike the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: unstuck in time, slipping into a vortex, only to reappear many years later virtually unchanged into a completely different time and context.
It's like poetic justice. My generation that loves the music of the '60's so much have almost cursed our late birth because we crave the firsthand knowledge of these great works. What it must have been like to pick up Pet Sounds,Revolver, Aftermath etc on the day of release!! So it seems to me that the great gift to us for keeping the faith and shining so much light on these supposedly disposable pop cultural artifacts is that the actual greatest work of it's time gets delivered to not it's intended audience, who were already suffering such an embarassment of cultural riches, but to us in these spiritually bereft times,who need it so much more and appreciate it fully.
Just a thought.

[Lorenschwartz]

destroys the smile myth.....Brian Is Only Human afterall. one year after, i give 04Smile a 1. Technological claptrap.

Not the beach boys Smile.

[TV Forces]

destroys the smile myth.....Brian Is Only Human afterall. one year after, i give 04Smile a 1. Technological claptrap.

Not the beach boys Smile.

Not fair.  The original album was hardly "Beach Boys Smile." 
That's a reason why it was killed.

BWPS is glorious and I listen to it at least once a week.
Masterpiece.  I'm sorry you can't enjoy it.

[JRauch]

It´s beyond me how anyone can give this record a 1. Ok, you think that the old versions are better than the new ones. That´s your right. But then, why not give the album a 3 or 4? I mean, the music itself is still absolutely mindblowing, no matter how you record it.

[Reverend Joshua Sloane]

It´s beyond me how anyone can give this record a 1. Ok, you think that the old versions are better than the new ones. That´s your right. But then, why not give the album a 3 or 4? I mean, the music itself is still absolutely mindblowing, no matter how you record it.

Exactly. While I don't like the actual sound of the album, the music itself is better than 30 years worth of music. Perhaps that's fairly risky to say, but SMiLE means a lot more to me than some rock song from 1973 or 1995.

[Lorenschwartz]

Very Fair...however, does anyone else notice the lack of madness? the way BWPS04, or however this version is monikered... sounds so clean & neat, everything in its proper place, every note fine tuned and only a hint of "weirdness"...my gosh, even Fire sounds,to me, controlled...URGH!!!

I want confusion, a broken man too tough to cry, the columnated ruins!!!!   the rape of the landscape!!
Their performance of heros, surfs up & even vegetables sound too perfect
like a well rehearsed school band, not like a tortured painters last work.
Sounds like a Disney soundtrack thru Americana--Revisionist, not the poor reality...the new version of blue hawaii
into GV, is anti-climax. at least Rio Grande ended with a galvanizing THHUD!!!

BWPS04 is music for 60 year olds who crave sanity and comfort...not the teenage symphony to GOD, and a tapestry
 thru Americas true roots of bondage forced labor and nature.
sorry mr. wilson, i was expecting more eccentricity.

I give it actually a 4, for completion...but my gut has to give Brian and Van Dyke a 1 for art, this time.