The Smiley Smile Message Board

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http://MySpace.com/MurryWilson

That session is morbidly funny, but it's also extremely pathetic.  I find myself felling really sorry for Murry- even if Brian did coach him to say all that stuff. :lol

During my chance encounter with Chuck Britz in 1994 (I bumped into him in the hallway at work!) I asked him about that session, which had just been bootlegged recently at the time, but he hadn't heard it and didn't seem too interested.  He just smiled and said "I had my own way of dealing with Murry."

Where were you working at the time?

C-Man

Hanna-Barbera, an old (now extinct) animation studio that produced cartoons for TV from 1957 until the mid-nineties, when Turner swallowed it (1993) and Warner Brothers swallowed Turner (1995).  My current avatar is an H-B character.

Chuck told me he'd been working there for years (ten?), and then retired about a week after I discovered him. I was always worried that he was trying to get away from me!

Seriously, who hasnt heard of Hanna-Barbera? The 2nd best animation studio in the world. (After Walt Disney Studios :3d)

That Help Me Rhonda session makes me feel like I'm gonna have a nervous breakdown. He was a bitter, patronising, passive-aggressive, jealous control freak. I can't believe no one got to the point where they just told him to shut the "F" up. Just the amount of times he says "loosen up" and "sing from your hearts" makes me want to scream.

Look how angry this post is, and I wasn't even there!

Old preparation H & B...where the great ones went to die...

(http://www.toontracker.com/huck/yogi-002.jpg)

If you listen again, you also hear a desperately unhappy old man who's been pushed aside and is being reminded (gently at first) that he doesn't matter anymore.  His dreams are being collected by his sons, whom he feels in competition with, and they're barely tolerating him.  He probably knows he's intolerable, but can't help himself.  His wife is almost eerily silent.  As the snickers and the resentment become more overt, his pride keeps telling him to leave, but he can't quite bear to. He wants to matter.  All the anger and negativity have consumed him, while his son has somehow become the man he wanted to be.  Whatever his crimes, and they were apparently many, I can't feel anything but sorry for him on that night at Western.

Surfer Joe,
         You can't just casually mention that you RAN INTO CHUCK BRITZ AT WORK and leave it at that! I know you said he retired shortly after you started working there, but we want to know EVERYTHING about that week!  What did he do there, what was he like, what did he look like, EVERYTHING!

Well, Sherriff, it's like this...

I have meant to post my Chuck Britz story for some time, just because it was a thrill for me, but there's sadly little of substance to it.  There is a funny side story.  Whenever I do tell the whole thing, aeijtzsche and guitarfool will have me flogged- and rightfully- for the wasted opportunity.  What's worse, I worked in the building with him for a long time and didn't know it because they hadn't yet put nameplates on the door and I didn't go through the sound department all that often.

Ugh.

But I got to shake his hand and tell him he was great.  And he was a hell of a nice guy.

I'll put up a fresh thread soon so I don't derail this one any further.

Looking forward to it...

Brian (or maybe Al): "I just had a bottle of wine, I'm so dizzy."

And that's what I love about the Internet. Now we live in an age where we can have animated shorts tailor made for hardcore rock geeks  :p.


By the way Surfer Joe...kudos on that very insightful post.

That's Al.

Nothing better than a four part animated series about Murray Wilson...he's a genius too, y'know!

Thanks*