Thanks, Angela...man, those lyrics are (literally) all over the map...clearly SOS was a tune that Brian had worked on before, maybe as a feel, and might have had 2-3 different sets of lyrics from Ray Kennedy and Tandyn Almer from when they were banging it out while "slightly altered" at Danny Hutton's house...at this point it looks like VDP gets into the act and the smorgasbord of lyrics will take another spin around the buffet table...but the rudiments of a stellar song are all there, which is exactly why VDP popped over to Warners with the tape when the first version of Holland was tossed back,
and Jack Reiley grudgingly came back to LA to help salvage the album project he'd convinced Carl to so lavishly invest in, finally bringing some kind of narrative coherence to the lyrics.

Another great legendary origin story for a great tune that, if the gods were truly beneficent, would have its own CD showing how it worked its way through the serpentine process of creation, all the false starts, all the variations along the way, until finally culminating with the final version, and, as coda and in keeping with the soulful vocalizing by Brian on the songwriting demo, the epic version of the tune sung by the great Ray Charles.

All of that would be endlessly fascinating, but I'm just glad to have that clear take of the SOS backing track so kindly provided by Alan Boyd lo these many years ago, which is just a fab example of Carl channeling Brian and adding his rock chops to the rolling sea-wave rhythm that embodies the uniquely eccentric soul of his older brother.

As with his remix of "The Little Girl I Once Knew," Dae Lims is a little airier here than what one's ears have become accustomed to from years of listening to the mono versions, but there is a great deal to recommend this--the clarity of the lead vocals is truly astounding, and the echo chamber effect on Mike's "Gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations..." is simply out of this world.

I think the "good good good good vibrations" line might still be better panned across the spectrum (its first entry sounds a bit less powerful than what we've heard all these years--it seems punchier in its subsequent iterations)--but that's just a quibble. Overall, it's definitely the best modern mix, and it's great to see the ongoing enthusiasm in the YouTube comments.

More, please!

Thanks, Ian, you are an international treasure! It's fascinating to have this period brought into focus from the touring side of things.

And thanks, Steve, for those memories--I thought the entire essay was top-notch, with that very positive review of TWGMTR (which I think was/is well-deserved).

So glad to see this thread resurrected, it contains commentary from some very special personages who were particularly qualified to weigh in on this subject.

Regarding spiritual elements in the BBs songs, let's note that there are other "flavors" of spirituality that dovetail with its religious manifestations, including anguish, lamentation, acceptance of loss, and redemption. Much of Dennis' work fits into these tonalities, and it gets more pronounced in the POB material, where he even touches upon a more mystical appreciation of the spiritualitv of love in "Tug of Love," which was thankfully restored to us when the double-CD collection was released (along, of course, with "Holy Man").

And there's a reason why Dennis appropriated the lyrics of Bob Burchman for "It's About Time," with their themes of redemption and spiritual growth.

The essence of love takes a mystical/sexual dimension in something like Carl's "Feel Flows," and the group found a framework for their TM leanings in "All This Is That."

The astrology lyrics that Mike supplied for "Funky Pretty" are a bit too glib to be truly "spiritual," but the elusive "Pisces lady" is called that explicitly, and its a primary aspect of the singer's attraction and love for her--which is all part of a pattern of "romantic spirituality" that permeates a string of BB love songs.

No question but C&N's material needs to get seen by VDP...I think it will buoy him up regarding his level of achievement with the SMiLE lyrics. It's clear that this type of presentation has been quite rare up to this point...

That said, there are certain ones that IMO are more likely to produce some interesting responses from him than others, so a selective approach is probably advisable.

I'm thinking the "Folks Sing A Song" sections, Play Myth Rock, and the two "A Song Dissolved in the Dawn" chapters as the initial offering, with the more speculative material that's just been posted to follow if VDP proves as amenable to it all as I think/hope/wish/pray he will be.

Some of the more recent areas do lead into the question of how SMiLE was shaping up before things went haywire, and if VDP is sufficiently impressed with what he reads, that might open up an area of discussion that he has still kept close to the vest over all these years. It might possibly lead to some insights/recollections we have never heard before...

I think we need a bump in this thread to update folks about Jake's work in A BOOK OF BRIAN, which is proceeding along with a series of impressive entries that add context and psychological depth to the history he is revisiting and refining. I hope folks have been keeping up with it in the six weeks since the last thread entry here; if not, let me encourage you to spend some time at Jake's Substack page:

https://bookofbrian.substack.com

The story will soon move into the second half of 1964, and things will get even more frenetic--I'm expecting some very interesting perspectives to emerge as we get to Brian's marriage to Marilyn and the breakdown on the flight to Houston. Keep it up, Jake: there are definitely folks out there who appreciate your efforts!

So based on that, and all of that too is what Sheryl Crow has used on her own music I'm sure, again the question is how is AI as a new tech any different? We're already hearing a majority of pop music that has been altered and sterilized by existing technology to make it sound different than when it was recorded. Some including me would say the same radical shift in the creation of music happened when audio engineers learned how to edit tape seamlessly. It created a product that was not a pure or true reproduction of a musical performance, and also led to some of the greatest popular music ever recorded.

And don't get me wrong, of course I share similar concerns about the AI technology and where or how far it could go, but ultimately it's a tool just like digital recording, sequencing, editing, and quantizing is a tool that has fundamentally altered the process of making and recording music, and shows no signs of disappearing.

I really liked her line "the thing that creates art is the human experience, not a computer's experience" but then I, too, immediately thought about how literally everything in modern music is done with the aid of computers...And most egregiously the use of fiddling with someone's vocal to make them "pitch perfect". So are we actually hearing a 100% real voice anymore? Most likely not, when it comes to any top 40 hit. We are hearing someone's voice being filtered through a computer with pitch correction. It is 95% their voice, but it's not a 100% real vocal anymore - and it's because of a computer.

Also, in the context of AI, when I first heard the AI 'Thank Him' or the coda on the AI 'Holy Man' it felt like when I first heard 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' in stereo for the first time. And I'm not exaggerating that - it was that same endorphin rush when I hear a gem from the real Beach Boys for the very first time. And this is likely because I know that 'Thank Him' and 'Holy Man' are real songs and Dae Lims is just cleaning them up (by replicating vocals) and adding some Beach Boys-like harmonies. But the fact that a computer helped make that and my brain enjoyed it, that experience cannot be discounted. So as much as I want to agree with Sheryl (because I think at heart her quote above is very true), I also can't ignore that my brain felt a meaningful connection with a fake Brian Wilson vocal.

What a crazy time to be alive.

Let me second that last thought, Rab! But the key thing here, I think, is that human emotion that Dae Lims is trying to honor and replicate...because for 90+% of us here, there is something in the BBs music that has a talismanic power over those of us who "get it." And it's a kind of conditioned aural response that is, as Adam Marsland discusses in his third installment about PET SOUNDS, linked to our disparate (but highly related) connections with (and yearning for) the spiritual power that can be manifested in music.

When we hear Dae Lims capture a large dollop of that sound in so many myriad reconstructions and re-imaginings of the BBs music, a large portion of us are conditioned to respond to that viscerally; it reaches us despite any intellectual resistance that might apply (and does clearly exist in others). There is a certain style of singing that is uniquely the BBs; other artists have approached it, and we sometimes get a kind of muted variant of such a response from that work. But when Dae Lims hits a certain vein of that singing style, it's closer to the uncut "sonic heroin" that floods into our ears and into our hearts than the human imitators with their watered-down hommages. I've had the same response as you, Rab, and while I can't totally dismiss Jude's skepticism, all I know is that Dae Lims has managed to tap into something special that produces that same emotional response.

And given that the band is never going to be able to do anything again--no new tracks, no reworkings of stillborn or abandoned efforts--and even in light of the fact that there is plenty of real music from the band to listen to, the fact is that the ongoing desire or quest for such a feeling is not "absurd"... it's part of a need for something life-fulfilling, something soothing, particularly in "a crazy time to be alive" when the band is not capable of providing that to us. And if AI can be wielded by someone in order to make that happen, then it's a (Paul Revere & the Raiders reference here!) "good thing."

And I think most folks can tell the difference--I don't get that feeling from everything Dae Lims does, but I get much, much less of it from anyone else attempting to use AI technology to create music. Thus I think we should accede to Jude's basic point, but also agree with GF that as a tool specifically applied to music, AI has potential to become a valuable artistic application in the right hands. And it will be practitioners with the approach exhibited by Dae Lims who represent the best hope for it to be applied with respect and a sense of responsibility so that there will be a clear line of demarcation between "artistic enhancement" and "absurdity."

One quick postscript: I agree 100% about what Jude said about Mike and the band's vocals in the "golden era" time frame. And that is exactly the part of what makes it so hard to replicate this band. If we can separate Mike's (perceived) personality from his singing skills--and we should--then we can separate the sincere, sensitive user of AI from the more invidious aspects of it as it manifests itself elsewhere. Let's go for the "glass half full" approach in these instances whenever possible--remembering that, despite the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the past eighty years, we've not yet managed to blow up the world... 

[already]

It needs to be said: this is getting tiresome from both sides. There is no resolving such different perspectives. No one is going to "win" here.

I seriously doubt that more than 5% of those who listen to AI-generated tunes become so enamored of them that they prefer them to the originals. That argument is such a pathetic strawman that I'm shocked it came from someone who is ordinarily one of the most intelligent posters here.

If a few folk go over the edge in that way, it's because some portion of the population will do so with anything. (Hell, a lot higher percentage of the US population has gone over the edge with respect to far more pressing issues, and possibly we should be focusing on that danger as opposed to the "specter of AI" ruining our lives.)

I absolutely love what Dae Lims has been doing. Do I think it replaces or supplants the original recordings? Of course not. I'm a fan of Dae Lims in the sense that GF alluded to--admiring the work of a man with significant talent, sensitivity and expertise who is paying his form of tribute to a band that he loves just as much as any of us. That tribute should be seen as a sincere effort to replicate a sound that no other group of individuals can recreate for us--it is not coming to us from some cabal of "pod people" gestating in someone's basement, but from someone who's carefully studied the band for some time, and who's making a sincere effort to respect the underlying aesthetics at work.

Do I think that he's achieving 100% success? Of course not--but, then again, neither did the band. Do I prefer some of Dae Lims work to some portion of the band's actual output? I can't say for sure at this point, because I've had half a century to make up my mind about the relative quality of the band's music. But I seriously doubt that Dae Lims has any illusions about his work somehow supplanting the band's recorded legacy. Enough with the spookifying already! Do I like Dae Lim's "Our Happy Home" more than, say, "Cuckoo Clock"? Absolutely--even as a "fake," it's better sung, and it's an intriguing and quite beguiling reimagining of "Our Sweet Love," a much more sophisticated track than what the band (and Brian) were capable in their very earlv years. So shoot me already! 

We can either agree to disagree and move on, or we can keep bickering about something that already is totally out of our control. Regardless of what anyone thinks about this issue from any possible perspective, the momentum of AI is relentless and will have more effects on the future than what is occurring here in this little cocoon of ours.

Let's just not get as intractable as the misanthrope over at the Nearest Faraway Place, who probably would (if he could) send a ragtag mob of hooligan purists over to Dae Lims' studio to put a halt to all this. That won't stop it, either, and it would just deprive us of the one person who does this with a palpable sense of artistry.

Just remember: no one has to listen to it if they don't want to! 

Thanks, Bill--a great deal of inventive, imaginative points of connection there. Many will dispute and nitpick, but there are many, many kernels that ring true and lead to a broader understanding of just what the impetus for Dumb Angel/SMiLE was and why it was so "morphable." We're all better off for your efforts to track the strands of that epic, tragic, lyric experiment that was lost and found where it still remained and was brought to us in a plausible facsimile of what would have been--your work will give others clues to continue with such explorations, and make versions of the "lost" SMiLE that will access a more complete set of possibilities for doing so...

I'm with you, El Molé. Just so long as no one tries to pass this stuff off as "undiscovered material from the vaults," it's all cool and people can listen without "fear of shaming." There is much to marvel at in the work of Dae Lims and others, and it seems particularly appropriate for this technology to be employed on the BB's music, when so many have lamented the limitations of said technology in the sixties, when it might have aided Brian to a significant enough extent that he might have made his way through the SMiLE project after all.

I think most of the folks employing this on BB tracks are head over heels in love with the unique vocal blend of the band, and want to extend some semblance of its peak manifestation into areas of the group's catalogue where its use will give us a chance to have new goosebumps as we "rediscover" things that might have been. As long as that context is explicitly in place and is rigorously adhered to by the creators, my view is that the sky is the limit.

Just wanted to quickly note: the text color issue is not problematic on my computer. I hope others will take a look and provide you with more data points on this...

As GF noted, the narrowing down of discourse about SMiLE as an ongoing source of "what if" investigations is one of the more vexing results of BWPS, and you astutely mention in one of your introductory posts that the parts of SMiLE that were most prominent in our minds during the "piece-by-piece" emergence also seem to have become casualties in SMiLE's overall mummification. Folks used to be able to advocate for the SMiLE music by citing "Surf's Up" or "Cabinessence" (or the alternate "Heroes & Villains" that emerged with the '93 box set) but now it seems that the whole thing has become a "tamed edifice" that has entered a realm of "high art" and approached the way one approaches classical music. That's one reason why I think Dae Lims' reconstruction of a "what if" SMiLE from late '66-early '67 is valuable and energizing for future approaches to SMiLE, particularly at the point in time when Brian is no longer with us. (I don't get the impression that Brian has ever been interested in re-opening the can of worms that Darian Sahanaja was able to help him tame with BWPS.)

I'll be curious to see if your material takes us in such a direction; but even if that turns out to be not so much the case, I think this is the right time for "new/old" writing about SMiLE to emerge, and I look forward to reading it.

No young Brian on old Brian songs. Please.

The old BW songs gain their power from him being, well, old.

To his credit, Dae Lims gets this and has been very careful in his approach. Desert Drive is a full latter day BB version. The Like in I Love You have been given a full band treatment, but it’s not even a BW melody. His L&M toured the history of BW vocal approaches. That’s all amazing and excellent.

But putting a young BW on MAD, for example, or the Paley tracks — it just doesn’t work or make aesthetic sense. The young BW wouldn’t have written or produced those songs.

Agreed, with maybe one exception--I think many folks would like to hear a song like "I'll Bet He's Nice" with a Sunflower-Surf's Up era vocal blend and younger-ish lead vocals. I'm not sure if that would absolutely necessitate a significant reworking of the backing track as well, but it would be interesting to hear regardless...

Here's one attempt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VXi3AXzGrc

Thanks, Joel. I appreciated the effort that was made on this, but didn't think that the melody choice on the "please don't tell me if it's true" line quite worked for this, and the tag was lacking what Dae Lims would have provided to give it the memorable finish that many folks were hearing in their heads when they encountered it on Love You. The tag on the original is actually the strongest part of the song, so it really needs to do the same for a "time-travel" verson (IMO, but I think many will agree).

No young Brian on old Brian songs. Please.

The old BW songs gain their power from him being, well, old.

To his credit, Dae Lims gets this and has been very careful in his approach. Desert Drive is a full latter day BB version. The Like in I Love You have been given a full band treatment, but it’s not even a BW melody. His L&M toured the history of BW vocal approaches. That’s all amazing and excellent.

But putting a young BW on MAD, for example, or the Paley tracks — it just doesn’t work or make aesthetic sense. The young BW wouldn’t have written or produced those songs.

Agreed, with maybe one exception--I think many folks would like to hear a song like "I'll Bet He's Nice" with a Sunflower-Surf's Up era vocal blend and younger-ish lead vocals. I'm not sure if that would absolutely necessitate a significant reworking of the backing track as well, but it would be interesting to hear regardless...

Keep at it, Jake--you've got a distinct perspective from the mainstream, and an approach that so far is doing a fine job of synthesizing other source materials. I'm looking forward to seeing how you handle all the twists and turns that are coming as you move from the "fad hit" phase to Brian's emergence as a peerless producer...and then into the maelstrom, the abyss, the group's regroup, the band hitting the wall of its past, etc., etc.

Great work, Ian--this is one of the "high water" years for sure! 

I love those quotes about the "50 songs"--how many of those songs have actually turned up in the intervening years??

Sorry to have missed Howie when he stopped by--he's covering all kinds of interesting ground in his playlist work, and don't be surprised if he has a project idea or two that builds on all that very sophisticated and eclectic perspective on the band's music.

Hoping he'll be on some of the still-burgeoning Internet media outlets again soon to share ideas and update folks a bit more on what's bubbing under behind the scenes.

SOS '72 was priced a bit high, and that probably didn't help sales, but it is a fine package and did justice to a fraught, frenetic, at times fractured period of the band's career, one where everyone's creativity was on display--as evidenced by the two anchoring LPs. Listening to Devin Lawrence's piano reconstructions of "Mess of Help" and "Funky Pretty" will make it clear that Brian still had it even as he moved into areas that collided with rock genres not previously associated with the band. We could use a companion to Brian's solo piano collection were he's pounding away on the tracks from this period through to Shortenin' Bread--call it "Brian Bangs The Keys"...would be great fun and could be another surrogate for that "rock'n'roll album"...

Not bad, not bad at all, Waves! It's of course more of a curiosity than anything else, but given all the lore about SoS, it's a welcome footnote to hear something semi-credible for what we know to be a lost first take. Dennis' voice really does seem quite suitable to the song, not to take anything away from Blondie.

Imagining what it could sound like with the sophisticated and artistic techniques employed by Dae Lims does send a little shiver through the spine, though, doesn't it? 

Well said by so many as we come to grips with some very unexpected (heart)breaking news. We all wish and hope and pray that Brian has many loved ones and close friends at hand right now, as he comes to grips with what is possibly his most difficult loss.

Melinda was a true heroine who gave him the love & mercy and the total support that he needed to pick up the pieces after his hellish years with Landy and his "surf nazis," making it possible for him to forge a triumphant solo career.

Fans of Brian will always be indebted to her; perhaps David Leaf will envision a fitting institutional tribute for her at UCLA. Her life and legacy deserves a public place of honor. RIP Mrs. Wilson...

Superb stuff, even more than usual, Adam--we are getting a deeply considered, exhaustively researched, and wonderfully constructed history of the band as you move closer and closer to the apex of the golden age. No question but that you're rising to the occasion and adding significant new insight as you go along, including this forceful revaluation of "The Little Girl I Once Knew," providing its musical/historical context and (1000% rightfully) championing it as the pinnacle of the "innocent phase" of Brian's engagement with the evolving sixties sounds around him. From here on, he moves into a world totally his own, and I hope you'll find a way to show how that's the case when moving into the discussion of PET SOUNDS.

And that point about "The Little Girl Once Knew" being a conscious statement by Brian and Darian etal during the early live touring efforts is spot on. Having been at several of those shows, and having loved the track for more than two decades after discovering it (languishing on a Pickwick compilation LP), I was thrilled beyond measure when they opened with it and sent into a special realm of rapture when they totally nailed it. Thanks for doing it justice!

["Dae Lims has become the same feeling of excitement I had as a boy going to a record store to find great new songs. Going to this channel I'm hoping for songs, like all of his so far, that creates exactly that same feeling now."]

One of the YouTube posters on "The Like in I Love You" expresses perfectly the emotions that I think so many of us are feeling when we hear Dae Lims channel the magic that ran through this band in so many ways, over so many years, despite all of the "shackles that were binding them down." The innocence and idealism of the band was unique during its original glorious run, and continued to evolve as Dennis and Carl took over much of the oversight for the band after Brian's emotional issues took hold after the Friends LP tanked. Dae Lims has a knack at capturing that feeling in his remarkable affinity for vocal and instrumental textures that is simply uncanny, and it seems to be getting more and more masterful as he proceeds with making versions of songs that so many of us had hoped might have come into existence save for those "shackles."

Here's the quote: "Dae Lims has become the same feeling of excitement I had as a boy going to a record store to find great new songs.  Going to this channel I'm hoping for songs, like all of his so far, that creates exactly that same feeling now."

He's permitting us to set aside all of the anguish and disappointment and frustration that has unavoidably filtered into our reckoning with the band's career, and exist in a wondrous liminal state where it's 1965 again, no matter what actual "year" he is targeting for these ideal reconstructions. We've been morphed into a world where the band can do no wrong, where it's able to play to its strengths at all times. They are not all 100% perfect, of course, but they are so good that one often just can't believe what they're hearing. AI as a force in the world is undeniably problematic, but not in the hands of someone with so much respect and love for the original band as Dae Lims clearly possesses--along with the technical chops to make recordings that channel directly into the very human "feel" of the group.

It is beyond exhilarating, and I frankly never expected that any of us would experience anything remotely like it. Like so many of you, I can't hardly wait for more--MORE...MORE!! 

From the "vaults." Dae Lims unearthed 1960s version of She's Got Rhythm, in mono and with crackles straight from the 45!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUgaztzcizk

First one I've not been overly thrilled about. The quality is great - it's just that Brian's vocal sounds too polished. The track kinda sounds like it would fit perfectly on an early 2000's arthritis prescription medicine commercial. Reminds me of AGD's comment (I forget it he said it or if he heard it from somewhere else) about Soulful Old Man Sunshine sounding like it was made for a shampoo/conditioner commercial haha.

One commenter at YouTube felt the falsetto was too shrill, which I suppose is the (near) opposite of polished. To me it sounds like an up-tempo variant of the "Let Him Run Wild" chorus.

Agree that the backing track is a bit too faithful to the original, whereas something more in the interstice between SD/SN production and PS would be in order.

Whereas the MIU version is great because it doesn't sound polished...while Brian is trying to sound like his younger self, he still sounds gruff - has sort of a 'Drip Drop', 'Shortenin Bread' vibe that really makes the corniness of the composition work.

Just my two cents, but as always, smile AD does a fantastic job creating/mixing!

Let's face it, the original is not a great track. It's Brian trying to leverage something from the 15BO production style, but being a bit lazy and paint-by-numbers a la "It's OK" and trying to kinda "cheat" his way to an updated "old style" hit. Dae Lims gets the energy into Brian's lead, which takes that part of the song back into a liminal space more akin to between ASL and TODAY!, but Mike's part actually sounds as though it were lifted verbatim off the MIU version, which is a bit jarring.

But all of this is merely quibbling...this is so catchy and joyous that it reminds us that the band's pre-PS material was the apotheosis of (lost) 60s innocence, and anyone who can channel it as masterfully as Dae Lims should be bowed down to reflexively, repetitively, reverentially.

Now, if he wants to try to rework some selected tracks from PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE for a less blemished vocal sound from Dennis...that could be pretty awesome as well.

Good on you GF for speaking truth to you-know-who, and thanks to Charles for bringing us back from the brink again...

...and just in time for Dennis and Carl's upcoming natal days: December is an extra-special BB month!

Glad to see you back, Billy!

There's nothing wrong with a relatively quiet board--it's clear that when topics that push past the well-traveled topics pop up, we have the same level of engagement as was more commonly the case in past years. As GF noted, fewer clashes and less focus on agendas involving revisionist history might mean fewer overall posts, but the peace of mind that has ensued is a welcome tradeoff.

We've been blessed with a tremendous amount of unreleased material in the past 5-6 years that has given us a much better sense of what was happening with the band in what is arguably its most interesting period: 1967-73. That in itself has resulted in a reduction of speculative posts/discussions that probably accounted for 20-30% of the overall traffic.

We are really in legacy mode at this point, with hopes that some kind of grand synthesis might occur from those who have more active control over things. We can hopefully look forward to a big project from Ed Roach, which will give us new access to "in the moment" events and a set of untold stories that can give us more context into the band's complicated dynamics. We'll see just how useful the latest "official" biography will be when it's widely available, and we can hope that some final kernels of creative fire are still at work with Brian as he retires for the second time from the road.

So it's all OK...and, as Mike sings in the last verse of that song: let's enjoy while it lasts.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads here, and I can't decide what to do.

I have a finished version of On A Holiday, with Mike and Al sharing the lead. On the middle section, the pirate rap, I had van dyke parks beat rapping the part I was so excited about it and couldn't wait to share.

I was encouraged to send it to the man himself, and I was excited to receive a reply. I told him that I wanted to make something special to celebrate my love of BWPS and the original tracks for the 20th anniversary. I made sure to let him know that if he didn't like it, I wouldn't release it as is.

Very respectfully, he responded that he didn't feel the track honored the legacy and that I should do something else with my talent (paraphrasing). He was very kind and I want to stress that I don't feel anything negative towards his response.

However, I can't help but feel that if he isn't a fan of the project... I should just drop it. I don't feel like a compromised version of my vision would be worth following through with. I'm not sure what specifically about my project he didn't like, like just the use of his voice on the track, but I just feel off about the whole thing now.

I know others have mentioned he gave some encouraging words to Dae Lims Smile, so that's cool... oof! 

Thoughts?

Reading this again, I'm wondering if VDP remains just as abashed about his own vocals as he always seems to have been. He's clearly not much of a singer (as he has noted frequently himself), but he has had some good moments (such as on his arrangement of "H&V") but my sense is that he would somehow be appalled to be an actual part of the vocal SMiLE, seeing that as a kind of desecration of what Brian was trying to accomplish in stretching the band's vocals as far as possible.

Given that interpretation, you could take his response with a grain of salt and read between the lines as to why he was not so keen on your choice of using him.

It's a tricky business getting in touch with one's idols, you know--so much randomness is possible in their response, and they have their own issues with things in ways that will probably always remain opaque to us...