The Smiley Smile Message Board

I think this is why we all stick around so long. It transcends ordinary stuff. You don't put on a latter day Paul McCartney record for emotional healing - or do you? But I can put on Reimagines Gershwin and have many of my wounds gently healed throughout its duration.

Ghost jumped off a bridge the other day. Unfortunately for you guys, he survived. As he plummeted to the water below all he could think of was Love You. Brian's music is therapy - for himself and all of us. The message is: Our Love Is Here To Stay. Take your time don't worry how you feel because you know we've got forever. High in the sky, we'll live forever we'll NEVER DIE.

Let's get a good list going with all of Brian's most therapeutic music. The stuff that you turn to when you NEED it. The songs that change your perspective, lift your spirits, turn your hate into love, your depression into sweet melancholy. Also, stories and reflections. Let's go mo'fos.

Lay off the bridge-jumping, ghosty. You could be missing out on the rest of the crazy surprises life has left to offer. (In Willy Wonka voice: The box set, yessss, the box set...but that's just the BEGINNING...)

Take care. Always.

I agree that Brian's music heals somewhat, but if you really jumped off a bridge, you need some serious professional help.

Pet Sounds every time, Ghost.  Sad music to make me happy (or is it happy music that makes me sad?).

Occasionally This Is That (C&TP); occasionally Can't Wait Too Long.

I fell off a bridge once, while looking for conkers, and landed in a muddy stream. Folk crossed to the other side of the road when they saw me coming as I walked home.

But never jumped off.  Hopefully that's an end to it and you're back to the music (and the prolific posts!  :D).

Stay sane, stay healthy, stay alive.  Stick around.

Guys, I wasn't posting a DONATE SYMPATHY TO ME request. I appreciate it sincerely if you are similarly sincere but there are others here who will think or say I'm crying wolf, trying to pull the rug from under my own feelings and experiences in life. Or they consider it inappropriate for one to mention "to strangers" online rather than kept private. What if I have no one else to share anything with? In this life you have to pretend to be tough so that others don't call you a p*ssy or unenlightened for feeling badly.

Anyway, I've got 'S Wonderful on right now. Definitely has a bit of a gay Brian/Gene vibe going on but I still dig it. I make fun of Eugene but if he wrote those songs on BW88 with Brian then I give the man major respect. Some of those songs [music & lyrics essential-inseparable to each other] cut through all my bullsh*t and tickle my emotional center like nothing else. Dr Eugene Landy is more of a guru than just a regular doctor. He's an enlightened orangutan in some respects.

Damn, Brian's voice is amazing on I've Got A Crush On You. Seduced me! Brian sings to the eternal goddess of energy, the surfer girl, the girl on the beach, the little one, in the blossom world, through her eyes, she takes him there, kissalittlebit fightalittlebit, she knows him too well, wouldn't it be nice if we were older then we wouldn't have to wait so long [to die].

I'd say some of his music can definitely be used as therapy. Pet Sounds is one of the albums that helped me through the most miserable period of my life.

Sloop John B is the most emotionally relevant song for me usually. The other week I heard it very appropriately outside at 8am where I did not want to be at all. It was heaven & hell hearing their voices sing "I feel so broke up, I WANNA GO HOME". Just that part, it slays me. Well this is the worst trip, I've ever been on. That's how my life usually feels. I don't really know if some damage has been done from something in particular but sometimes when I'm sober the whole world I am and am in feels like a nightmare of inescapable dense matter.

Pet Sounds and Today! helped get through many a hard time in my life.

Let us not forget that the notion of Brian's music as a healing therapeutic thing goes way back to 1967 and before in seed. Carl's quote about the Texas rehab that treats bad acid trip patients with Smiley Smile. Also Brian's quotes about Pet Sounds being a love offering type of thing, to love the listener, give us love. Brian channeled divine love - You Still Believe In Me, God Only Knows... these are divine songs.

Don't confuse sympathy with pity, ghost. I sympathize--I certainly have traveled through some black, black periods myself--and my hope is that you genuinely aren't too down. Or if you are, that you can get whatever you need not to stay that way.

Just putting in a good word for you, that's all. I would hate to see you become a real ghost, OK?

Your posts are different and often delightful (there's a touch of Rob Breszny to many of them), and I for one appreciate having a voice like yours here. Glad to have you here.

Good words Ghost, and good thread.  I feel like jumping off a bridge (or some such a thing) at the moment, but I won't.   What I will do, later, is listen to PS or Smile/Smiley stuff and possibly get extremely drunk.  I am going to have to leave my job soon, of my own volition and actually in some ways it's a relief, but I have no idea what I am going to do from that point or how.   In a sense, jumping off a bridge is kind of a metaphor for what I am going through and/or about about to go through.
I will need all the BW music I can get and more, so thank you Ghost.  
And my apologies if this post here has brought a touch of "group therapy" to the proceedings, but you struck a chord with me and so there ya go.

I am no longer pleased that I did not drown. Thanks a lot, onkster.

(http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/12/30/ba-brezny_0499605506.jpg)

What I find most therapeutic about Brian's music is the repetition.  I have a feeling this is how he felt, even if he wasn't conscious of it.  The steady repeating rhythms and recycled melodic patterns assuage your mind when it feels fragmented.  Those musical devices anchor you, just like the "boogie woogie" pattern Linda Rhondstadt describes Brian playing while he thinks in the Don Was documentary.

I think this is why Smile is so repetitive, since that was such a bleak time for him personally.  It's certainly the most therapeutic Wilson music for me.  Other songs, like "Caroline No" or "Don't Worry Baby," touch me a lot, but Smile is different.  It's a sedative.  It's not something I relate to like those other songs, but almost a second circadian rhythm that brings me back down to earth so I can go onto other things that previously felt overwhelming.

1. With Me Tonight - Smiley Smile
2. Good Time - Love You
3. In The Back Of My Mind (instrumental) - boot
3. California Girls - Stack-O-Tracks
4. When I Grow Up - Today
5. When I Grow Up (instrumental) - boot
6 We'll Run Away - All Summer Long
7. Still I Dream Of It - I Just Wasn't Made For The Times
8. It's Over Now - Good Vibrations BoxSet
9. Fun, Fun, Fun - Shut Down, Vol II
10. Listen To Me - Buddy Holly Tribute
11. Someone To Watch Over Me - BWRG
12. Wonderful - The Smile Sessions
13. Good Kind Of Love - TLOS
14. Good Vibrations - The Smile Sessions

This is exactly my feeling especially the last of what you wrote. I need a dose of Brian's music to dissociate from potentially psychically damaging events/experiences to get back into a good feeling for what I'm doing in life. I went to court once, the night after drinking a little too much Lester Bangs blood, high out of my mind on cabinessence, listening to Love You on headphones. While coming home, with a $600 fine [riding a bike about 10 miles] I listened to it again on repeat. It was an amazing experience. Really.

on repetition:
don't talk put your head on my shoulder....... cyclical waves lulling you into higher & higher subtleties of awareness and love.

Mona howzabout a nine a clock movie
Wonitwonitwonit be groovy

Cool, Cool Timin'

Love You for me, definitely.  I didn't get the album at all the first time I heard it.  It didn't click with me until I was seriously depressed following a major fight with my then-girlfriend.  Laying alone on the floor of my friend's bedroom high as a kite with Love You spinning on his turntable, it all suddenly made sense.  It's been my therapy album ever since.

Hows about a 8 oclock dinner
Hows about a 9 oclock movie

Arent you arent you glad that you found me

Dont you like wine

Will you will you will you kiss me
When you leave me don't you miss me

Could we get married

Listen to Da Doo Ron Ron
Listen to Be My Baby

I know youll love Phil Spectre

The ballads....Brian`s ballads. Also some of the various vocal pieces where instruments are mixed down or totally out. Very calming and uplifting.

Sweet Mountain by Spring.

The 'Don't Talk (vocal snippet)' from the PS Sessions is incredible....one of my favorite pieces by Brian....no instruments, just his extraordinary voice/arrangement.

This. No-one can touch the level of emotional honesty in the Beach Boys' ballads.

Pet Sounds is always real cathartic.  As is that second side of Today (the li'l Pet Sounds).
Smiley Smile is like some strange little friend that I very much love to revisit. 
Wild Honey and Friends though I've found to be like comfort food.  They ease my mind, heart and soul. 
Most of Surf's Up too, and more recently I have gotten into and really appreciated the pain reliever that is Carl and the Passions - So Tough.   

anyone else feel as deeply connected to: love & mercy, melt away, little children, there's so many, being with the one you love, baby let your hair grow long, etc as me? those are up there in my favorite ever brian wilson songs, my desert island top choices.

rthrth

he-ey love and mercy to you and your friends tonight
meeelt awaaay i wont let me see you suffer whoah not me
liiiittle children are marching around, and look at little carnie with dirt on her cheek, marching along, singing their song
there's so many dreams to dream of why not dream about my true love
 being with the one you love ? ? ?
i wiiish yooou'd liiisten wheen i teell you nooow baby let your hair grow long

magical moments!

BW88 is imo most definitely a very fine album. Songs like Melt Away, There's So Many, Night Time and Rio Grande have definitely been there for me  8)

In fact, this whole album ranks pretty highly in my personal Beach Boys/ BW ratings.

A comforting, welcoming album.

Brother Ghost, I'm very familiar with the silent void you mentioned some weeks ago.  Exactly and recently.  But all things must pass, and in my case I just had to wait it out.  Oh yeah-- and pick my brain raw and put it back together piece by piece, and pull out some old medication.  The parts still feel like they were reassembled slightly wrong some days.  The strangely angelic and sympathetic girlfriend who came back into my life after 17 years away doesn't hurt either.  Neither do intermittent bouts of sobriety.

In the 90's-- Tie I Die, over and over and over again, and Sweet Insanity more than I'd care to admit

Nowadays-- mostly SMiLE and Pet Sounds-- I don't really listen to much of anything else anymore, except Tori Amos.  Thousands of moldering recordings in my basement...

At one point: lots of Love You, and yes, I agree that BW88 is a freakin' masterpiece

I went through a Lucky Old Sun phase-- Midnight's Another Day like 40 times a day, for months

I forgot about the Big Kahuna:  Bells of MadnessFantasy is Reality

I don't ever recall writing what is attributed to me in your signature, Bill. Did I really say that?

Yeah, you did.  About 3-4 weeks ago maybe?  You've done 789 posts, so don't ask me to find it...
 :ohyeah

EDIT:  Wait a minute:  I think it was in a thread where you were talking about Scriabin and synesthesia.

Pet Sounds was incredibly therapeutic for me during my freshman year of college.  I'd fallen so madly in love with this girl, worse than anything I'd ever felt before, but she didn't feel the same way.  I was miserable every day, and the only thing that got me through it was listening to the Pet Sounds box set every night.  For the first time I just felt like Brian was speaking to me - I could finally relate to the confusing emotions that Brian must have felt, even if the circumstances were completely different.  On another level, it was actually a distraction as well, because I could listen to those tracks and vocals only mixes and forget everything else I was feeling.

^ Though I listen to it constantly, I find Pet Sounds to be more depressing than uplifting. Well, it depends on the situation: I too fell madly in love with a girl, and then it just fell apart on me. I found Pet Sounds, and I could really really relate to it, but it never made me feel uplifted - if anything, it just made me feel worse about not being able to attain the unattainable.

Ya know - I wish I could still feel her head on my shoulder, or I wish she still believed in me, or it would've been nice had it worked out. Fortunately, with time the depression fleeted, and I got over it. Sometimes Pet Sounds can be the most uplifting album ever (when your madly in love, it's like a drug that album), but if your going through a state of depression of loss, it can be a sad, sad album to listen to - but even then it is a great album to have - as Mr. brown said, it's like Brian knows exactly what you're going through.
_____

Friends is an album that is really uplifting; Brian's instrumentals, Wake The World, the title song, Little Bird, Meant For You. It is my second favorite BB album. Very therapeutic and very uplifting.

That WAS the thread, but it was Iron Horse Apples who said it.

I knew it wasn't up to my standards.

Say what you want about the production, but the songwriting on BW 88 is the best of his solo career, followed by That Lucky Old Sun. Landy forcing Brian to write a song a day, and 'accidentally' leaving behind some wine or a half joint for some of those sessions forced some of that old magic out of the man.

Landy to himself: Crap, man, I need Brian to write a kick ass solo album so I can look good... but he sure hasn't seemed inspired lately. "Here, Have a Banana (And Pray for World Peace)"? That ain't gonna sell. It's silly.

Landy takes another drag off his joint as he chills on Brian's balcony, which overlooks the sea. Brian thinks Landy is taking a business call.

Landy: Dude... what if I left him the rest of this joint? He is that guy who wrote Pet Sounds, right? Would he write some cool stuff again if I got him high? Remember when he had that wine and started writing that crazy rocking stuff? I'm going to leave him this joint by forgetting it in the ash tray.

Landy smiles and realizes what a genius he is.

Later that night, Brian writes "There's So Many".

i think i might take a chance
on love again
oh on love again
love a gaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiinn

on BW88 he sings songs capturing the moment of opening to love, releasing the tension of all the hurt and contracted enclosed imposed egoity. for Brian it's all about awakening to the love for spiritual freedom and emotional well being. unfortunately it doesn't work as well for me, apparently. i get it, just don't find it lastingly effective. where is the love when the basic needs aren't met? it shivers and trembles in fear. life is vicious.