WOOO

God, I need a delete post button. I don't want to get involved in this.

Naw, the lyrics on the coda should've been:

A children's aria
The aria of Arabia
Have you eared their cornfield play
The children mute the trumpeter
Na na nation
Excitation

 

Everyone in the BB camp should toss AGD a bone. Once he's on your side he's a bulldog.

I hate the bonus track nonsense. Just give us the songs.

Why? Has Brian ever mentioned the psycodelic sounds since??

Right. We make up all these crazy hypotheticals with nary a shred of real evidence and assume Brian would know exactly what we're talking about. It's very possible that in a flight of fancy he may have considered throwing a skit on the album. Someone (others, I'm sure, will remember exactly who that was) said Brian wanted to record a bar fight, and from the way it was explained it seems he was considering throwing that fight or recreation of it onto H&V.  Others report that Brian would be doing weird sound experiments with friends and say stuff like "this should be on the album", but no one knew if he was serious or not.

So what's the mystery? I don't think Brian ever had a definitive track list, and he's never going to say "yes, 'Gorge Fell' would've gone onto the second part of 'Surf's Up'". You really think he would? He didn't know. Maybe he thought it for a second and forgot about it.

The vibe I get was that Brian was recording all kinds of stuff and assumed it'd come together as an album, just like "GV" did as a song. When that didn't happen as quickly as he thought it would, he seemingly panicked under the pressure of a release date. He tried to cobble together a single to give himself time, but couldn't do that to his satisfaction. And so the project collapsed.

Again, what's the mystery? Exactly how much some objections from the BBs added to his panic?

Honestly (and this is a bit of an aside), I think Smile mysteries are played out. If you read all of the interviews and listen the music, pretty much everything there is to know is already out there. At this point, the only mysteries left are perhaps figuring out EXACTLY what Brian thought on a specific day about how the songs should be sequenced. Which, of course, we'll never know, and I don't think it's that important. I don't think Brian ever had an exact sequence down and it appears the Smile back covers were printed more out of exasperation by the record label than anything else.

Isn't there anyone who can tell me what Psychedelic Sounds was all about??

Uh, isn't Brian just goofing around? I don't get what's so mysterious about it. He loves music and records weird stuff when he's stoned. Maybe some of the ideas filtered in later during Smile sessions.

Y'all love that "na na na" bit that much?

Brian: Gee, Stamos. You're a great drummer. But the greatest in the world?

What? Why are you guys looking at me like that?


Al: Do you smell that fart, Carl? Huh?

I'm not mad, lol. Sure, if the fans had there way, "Good Vibrations" would have the "hum-dee-dum" part and an extended version of the bit Brian used to fade out the song with an edit at the end so we could transition to the chorus again fading out forever. And it wouldn't have been a hit. The shortness of the sections in Brian's hits are make them so relistenable. Long after I'm tired of the Beatles hits, I'm still loving Brian's music. I once timed it out, and the average length of a section of music in "Fun, Fun, Fun" was like 15 seconds or something, and there are tons of variations.

That was Brian's genius. That's why he was next level.

Mike would give us fuller answers, too. He's not shy.

So, was Carl was in fact responsible for the longer fades or what? Is "Marcella" Brian's song or not? We also need to make those distinctions, then. Because I'm tired of trying to discuss Brian's '70s music and people are like "it's not Brian, tho". Did Brian write the tag to "Marcella" or not?

It just became more prominent.

Exactly! Imagine "Fun, Fun, Fun" without any prominent Brian parts, and it's just the piano, a spacey minimalist bass part, and sparse drums. Would that have been a hit?

I also want to clarify that I love all of these songs. As a BBs fan, I love hearing the tags go on longer. I'm just speculating on reasons why the songs weren't big commercial successes.

 AHHH, if only your examples of negativity were done by Brian, you'd be on much more solid ground

These were Brian's songs, man. If in reality he let Carl or Dennis or WHOEVER run the fade forever, it's still on Brian IMO. If Brian wanted the fade of "Funky Pretty" shorter, do you think anyone would've stopped him? "NO BRIAN, FP MUST BE OVER 4 MINUTEZ IN LENGTH PLZ K!"

Besides, if none of this was done by Brian, I want a full account of the sessions and group discussions for these songs. Tell me what really happened with the fade on "Funky Pretty", since you seem to be in the know.

I've brought this up before, but I wanted to make a topic about it just to get more people's views. One of the biggest flaws I find in Brian's early '70s music is the fades. As we all know, Brian was the master of the fade in the '60s. He made the fade an event, rather than just another way to end a song. You'd want to play the song again just to hear the ending.

On Sunflower, Brian still used his classic approach to fades. "Add Some Music" has a unique tag that disappears pretty quickly, and "This Whole World" has a brilliant finish to it. I even have to give a shout-out to "At My Window".

Surf's Up is where we start to see a change. He's more indulgent with the fades, but the brilliance of those segments almost begs for it. How do you cut "Til I Die" sooner? "A Day In The Life of a Tree" could've faded out earlier, but then he brings out Van Dyke Parks followed by Al. It almost seems justifiable. "Surf's Up" has the special aura of being a Smile track, but I'm convinced that song should've been fading out as Al finished the verse. Y'all might crucify me, but the song is 20 seconds too long IMO.

After that, Brian loses control of the fades. The fades or tags on C&TP and Holland are atrociously long by his standards. On "Mess Of Help" we're hearing the same section we'd already heard earlier from 2:50 to 3:31. It's a completely opposed to Brian's earlier practices. Don't even get me started on "Funky Pretty".  That song is almost a minute too long. "Marcella" is closer to the Surf's Up tracks in that the genius in which  the way he gradually builds up the tag almost merits the length of it.

It's interesting that with Love You, the fades are closer to Brian's classic approach, though still he doesn't get to the point quite as quickly. "Airplane" is more reminiscent of the early '70s songs in that regard.

IMO, Brian's reluctance to sing (until 15 Big Ones) on songs, the longer fades, and Brian's increasing reliance on his piano in his productions (which would've been fine if he played like Randy Newman more often, but he just played the chords about as basically as possible) had a lot to do with the group's commercial struggles.

Just warning everyone, I'm Bruce Johnston's unrepentant Chester. Say what you want about the other BBs, but you drag the Brucester through the mud and I will destroy you.

AGD and others - relax, man. That's all I have to say about that.

Hey, Daro, what I'm really interested is what the LSD experience was like back then. I know growing up in the '90s, I had tons of information on esoteric topics thanks to the internet. I was logging in by about '96, and that really opened worlds of new thought to me.

Growing up in the '50s, I'd imagine access to unconventional information was much harder to come by. Knowing where to look for and how to find all the heady ideas circulating back then almost required knowing the right people. Growing in Hawthorne like Brian did, it would've been tough to plug in. Who would've planted the seeds of greater ideas in one's head in a town like that?

So when you did meet the right people, read the right books, and perhaps dabbled in the psychedelic experience, it must've been mind-blowing on a level I can't imagine. I know my first psychedelic experience was very shocking, even though I was thoroughly versed on what to expect. For someone like Brian, it must've been like - well - seeing idea.

I'm curious about what sorts of philosophical ideas relating to music and life were being passed around then in the "hip" circles. People must've felt they were right at the stage when one grand epoch transitions into another one. It was, undoubtedly, monumental. I sense Brian combing all sorts of eras in his music in a very intelligent way, sort of like this expansive vision of everything that was America at that time.

I guess I don't know where I'm ultimately heading with this one, but I thought maybe it could spark an interesting discussion.

Phil Spector, Norbit, Shortenin' Bread, Steak, Pleasure Island, Birthday Cake and now, Cheese Pizza.

You don't read his Q&A on his board. He likes apple pie more than cake (!).

Perhaps what we really learned today was a little something about our self-entitlement. There's a White Stripes song that covers this topic very well, "Take, Take, Take": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FgQzgUfr_c

Yeah, a few Love You shows could be epic. I wouldn't expect a tour, but they owe use by their refusal to put one Love You song in the regular set list. Seriously, how would the "The Night Was So Young" mess up the show?

In all seriousness, I know I asked Brian about his favorite non-BBs '80s and '90s songs because I thought he might answer, and I find knowing the favorite artists of the artists I like gives me insight into what they're tuning in to. It was a light question but I thought he might answer. If I thought he'd tell exactly how the Wild Honey sessions went I'd have asked, but that's not the vibe I got from his interviews I've seen.

They call me http://www.mikelovemusic.com.