The Smiley Smile Message Board

I've just listened to Song Cycle the whole way through for the first REAL time, and I've gotta say, it would have rivaled SMiLE and Sgt. Pepper if it had been purchased the way it should've been.

SMiLE has the "Americana" theme, but Song Cycle Jacks it up a notch, and I honestly think that the fade into the strange Intro/Ending of "The All Golden" may be one of the best in history, not just that era.

SMiLE and Song Cycle are both BRUTALLY under purchased (well, not TSS, haha) and I think that SC should have been AT LEAST #5 on the charts.

Honestly, read some reviews! How did the "ALBUM OF THE YEAR *****" not make it on the charts!?!?!? AGH HISTORY IS A BI*CH!

Honestly I feel like Song Cycle noodles around too much.

I like what I've heard on Song Cycle, but that damn excessive reverb prevents me from truly enjoying it. If they could do a dry remaster, I'm sure I'd have it on a lot more.

Here's hoping there IS a dry source tape in the vaults somewhere... (anybody know? AGD? Anybody?)

Had Song Cycle been released by a 'band' it would've been a hit....had there been more than one primary singer, it would have faired far better....instead, it was released and sung by a mostly unknown artist named Van Dyke Parks. Just my opinion.

Every song on that album has its own atmosphere - its own set of strange instruments and compositions. It's one of my favorites.

Exactly, to the average listener Song Cycle is sensory overload. It's just too much to take in, so most tune out. Some of us know his merits as a writer and arranger and even the strange comfort of hearing his voice but for most people Song Cycle would probably not make a splash. Don't believe the marketing campaign for Song Cycle that it would top Sgt Pepper or whatever, it would never appeal to the common listener like The Beatles' very accessible songs. Van Dyke Parks sounds esoteric compared to The Beatles. Smile as a whole is also much more accessible than Song Cycle.

Ultimately Song Cycle just goes over too many heads. Hit records usually have immediate and sometimes lasting appeal. Like Brian hearing Strawberry Fields Forever. One time, as it was playing, that's all the man needed. Not 50 listenes or several thousands as we have. Smile is like that, don't you remember hearing the Bicycle Rider theme for the first time?!

Song Cycle is just a mess. Period. It's just too much.

  I agree, Brian kept Van dyke's ideas somewhat easy to listen to on SMiLE.

VDP could complexify BW's ideas.
BW could simplify VDP's.

There is a distinct difference between "atonal" and noodling. This has a lot noodling to my ears. Being an affectionado of atonal compsers like Berg, Schnitke, Webern, and Schoenberg (as well as a composer of atonal music myself) I like to assume I am not "most people".   ;D

I find it interesting but I like his other albums better especially "Jump","discover america" and "Tokyo rose"  (jump is amazing in my opinion)

I think, honestly, that you have to be a studio trained musician to appreciate this album.

It is SO advanced for the time, that i'm surprised anyone released it (of course, same goes for pepper and.... haha)

Van Dyke should've stuck to the pop formula of that period and did blues guitar riffs for 10 mins

If VDP sung more about things I could personally relate to - girls, good times, positive feelings, cars, the beach, surfing... then I'd be more inclined towards his music. It's just too out there for me. You need something people know - what do people know? boy & girl.

Warner Brothers had trouble GIVING the damned thing away...

I think it just takes people who are willing to listen closely to appreciate it. There are so many elements to this album that I can see why many don't like it. I like it so much because it's a breath of fresh air in a world full of musical garbage. Boy/girl songs, as nice as they are, have been done to death. Van Dyke Parks has the talent to create pop-masterpieces (Do What You Wanta, Come To The Sunshine), but declines on this album - he realizes new ground must be tread because pop has had it's day...it has been overdone to death...but most people just aren't in tune to Van Dyke's thinking.

I know. That's the saddest thing I think I've ever heard of in popular music.

Essentially, Song Cycle is a great piece of American classical music. It rivals Copland and Ives in scope and technical innovation, and is a huge piece of technical innovation in the studio too. But think of it as a pop record and the songs lack structure. But it's not a pop album. It's a symphonic work.

Had Song Cycle been done as a stage show, it would be respected as great American theater.

I think it also had something to do with VDP's voice being an aquired taste that the general public didn't.

I think that is an important point. VDP, for all his strengths, singing is not really one of them. A fact he is laughingly aware of.

here's the thing, Smile and Sgt. Pepper were albums (or almost-albums) by already existing bands who started off singing boy-girl pop songs, wearing matching outfits, et cetera. and then they release (or almost-release) psychedelic masterpieces. music press goes "what the hell?" music public goes "what the hell?"

now, Van Dyke's psychedelic masterpiece is his debut album. music press goes "oh cool". music public goes "who cares?"

I bet I'd have more fun hanging out with Van Dyke for a day than I would with Brian Wilson.

I first became aware of Song Cycle when I read David Leaf's book in the early '90s (pre-WWW).  Leaf had a picture of the Song Cycle album and said something along the lines of "Song Cycle is the sort of album that Smile might have been" (my memory may be faulty -- I don't actually own Leaf's book to check -- but that was the gist of it).

When I bought Song Cycle, I enjoyed it and was impressed, but it really isn't on the level of Smile... for several reasons.

(1) As others have pointed out, VDP isn't much of a singer.  The Beach Boys were at the top of their game vocally in the mid-1960s.  They were one of the most talented vocal groups in the world (at least among the vocal groups making records, anyway).  VDP, as a vocalist, was so far below the level of the Beach Boys that the comparison is absurd.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, my favorite track on Song Cycle is the instrumental "Donovan's Colours."

(2) VDP is a talented composer, but he's no Brian Wilson.  The instrumental tracks on Song Cycle are inventive, but, in my opinion, they lack the out-of-this-world brilliance we hear on Wonderful, Cabin Essence, Surf's Up, Wind Chimes, etc.

(3) Overall, I feel like Song Cycle lacks the "edge" of Smile.  Song Cycle is a bit eccentric, sure, but ultimately it feels like the work of a sane, relatively normal mind.  Smile tracks like 'Fire,' on the other hand, seem like the work of someone who has parted company with sanity.  And, well, sanity is a bit boring.

Much as I admire Van Dyke as a musician, a lyricist and a human being, and much as I'd like to appreciate the Ivesian subtleties of Song Cycle, it just gives me a headache. 

A truly brilliant album.  The arrangements are fantastic.  I would love to hear a 5.1 mix of ths album - it would give the arrangements enough space to breathe.  I think it's a great shame VDP doesn't particularly like the album IIRC.  My favourite song from the album is Palm Desert.  Some of those clashing french horn lines are great.

Agree, an incredible record… and within the last couple of years VDP said in an interview that Song Cycle was being prepared for 5.1 release.  But no news since then… has 5.1 had its day?

You kidding? A day with VDP means sitting in a chair on his porch listening to his verbose stories of the good old days. Give me quality time with Brian any day over that crap. And by quality time I of course mean calling up Danny Hutton and asking him to bring the coke over so we can jam.

Song Cycle is too good for all you fools! Pearls to swine.

Yeah dude I would do that in a heartbeat too but you know it'll never happen. Maybe we could pull a Denny and dose Jeff's drink with some acid then start the burgers flowin'!

Don't forget that SC was released in 1968 and most of you first heard this album in an entire different era. When I saw this album in the shop it was just released. Of course I knew Van Dyke Parks of Heroes And Villains and his collaboration with Brian Wilson and the aborted Smile.

I bought the album, not knowing what to expect, but I was curious. I instantly loved this album and I really believed that Smile could have been something complex like this. I don't think it's that far from what went around in those days. The music was so intense and there was a lot to listen to. Although I was just 17 years at the time, and not English born and bred, I quite loved the lyrics with its double meanings. I never heard an album that had so many sounds to offer. It's still one of my all-time favourite albums and once in a while I play the record and it sounds as exiting as it did then.

Most of you know Van Dyke Parks as a man who did some great things in music. But back then, I read reviews of SC and the critics didn't know what to think of VDP. Either he would become a great failure in music and would be forgotten in no time, or he was really a genius…….We know what history did with Parks and I'm glad he left his footprints in music. I think he's one of the great modern composers the USA has. I once met him and I think he's one of the nicest persons/musicians I ever met. 

I know everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but it hurts when someone says that Song Cycle is crap. It's far from that. It's a little masterpiece from the sixties and yes, brilliant. It has all the ingredients of American popular music and I think the Americans should be proud of this album.

I'm definitely in the pro Song Cycle camp. Yes, its dense, but its kind of like Gravity's Rainbow......a lot of layers to get through, but once you penetrate them its completely enthralling! I actually found a signed copy of Song Cycle, with the inscription "May this remain in the shadow of your Smile" from Van. Pretty weird to say the least!

Anyways, I wanted to recommend the 33 1/3 book on Song Cycle to anyone here who hasn't read it. Very in depth explanations of how they achieved all the weird effects and stuff back then....

I'm not a huge fan of Song Cycle.  I've tried to get into it but it's a turn off, much because of Parks' voice,  but I look forward to Van Dyke opening for the Fleet Foxes on October 4th.

Honestly, His voice is really easy to get over if you listen to it like someone's reading to you, which is kind of what he intends with his lyrics...

The Transition at 3:00 in "The All Golden" Is honestly the most beautiful transition in all of music.

Honestly, I do think VDPs is a genius...just think about how young he was and listen to a song like 'By The People' - there is so much going on there (transitions, tempo changes, the effects), yet it flows tremendously well...
______

I'm really glad to see that there are other people out there that really enjoy this album!

I would also love to see VDPs re-record Orange Crate Art (the album) with Brian's much improved voice.

no way, brian sounds great on orange crate art
he could never get his harmonies to sound as dynamic again
they sound good on the Rhapsody in Blue intro but still...
i like brian's tone a lot on orange crate art

Van Dyke's solo versions of 'Orange Crate Art' and 'Sail Away' are sublime...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_uaeGlh_cw&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAT98ABzkKY&feature=player_embedded

This 'The All Golden' ain't too shabby neither...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-J0JrExgh8&feature=player_embedded

Amen to all of the above - Pynchon and Ives are my reference points too - gorgeous color and timbre, intricate lyrics, unlike anything before or since in pop music - and TUNEFUL! - these songs (actually closer to tone poems) and riffs stay in my head (hayseeds go BACK - to the country...). One of my favorite cuts (though this album is truly modular, hard to know where songs stop and start) is the peculiar quiet and background to Pot Pourri, the album's closer. Haunting, beautiful.

Song Cycle was our favorite record to get high to, back in the day. I found it - right next to Mahler's 3rd - in my local library, circa 1972. Bless libraries.

When we asked Van to autograph a copy at the SMiLE dvd concert backstage, he did so with his profile signature drawing, and shook his head, referring to the album as "a waste of time, waste of time."

Nearly made me cry.

That's Really Sad, it really was great... I think the backing tracks may be some of the worlds finest, and the lyrics are like a novel.

Let's just say his vocals are "Geddy Lee" style- acquired taste. haha

Anyone know for sure why older Van Dyke looks down so much on his debut album? Anything besides typical feelings of embarrassment by one's youthful forays into art? 

More or less what you cite, i would surmise - I think he would have liked to make something that connected more to people, that was less hermetic or potentially solipsistic. He was clearly moved by SMiLe's new found reception and had his head down in hands, weeping, at one point during the concert.

from the web:

Van Dyke Parks: My feeling about Song Cycle? I'm sorry I was such a James Joyce fanatic. I thought there was a future in free-relating prose. Perhaps that was compounded by my love of beat poetry, I dunno. But I have no doubt that the inaccessibility of the lyrics made the record impossible to popularize. In the main, I'd say that Song Cycle is a fine piece of (4 months') work in a debut effort by a 23-year old. It was innovative. And it's still being discussed 30 years later.

E.C.: Speaking of the overall ‘theme’ of Song Cycle, did you consider it a continuation of Smile’s concept of an “American Gothic Trip”? Was that intentional, or was that just your mindset at the time just having come off the Smile project?

Van Dyke Parks: There was no conscious attempt to relate Song Cycle's "concept" to Smile. If anything, I'd say it was an effort to detach myself from the aborted Smile project.

Bitchin' - that's exactly what I said. What VDP needed was to call up Mike Love - who someone here called the most successful rock lyricist of his time - for help with the lyrics.