The Smiley Smile Message Board

Not sure if anyone else saw it, but the new episode of Mad Men had I Just Wasn't Made For These Times playing (small SPOILER ALERT) during Roger's LSD trip. I don't know know about everyone else, but I've totally been waiting for a BB's song since the show started ;D

Beautiful scene, which captured the nature of LSD consciousness very well.

Thanks!

Can't wait to see it (since I don't get AMC I just wait for the seasons to come out in DVD). I too have been waiting for The Beach Boys to be played on Mad Men; they picked a great song!

That's really cool, I gotta catch up on Mad Men

I just came here to post the same thing.  Great episode!

I wouldn't mind seeing Elizabeth Moss's uptight Peggy character letting her wild side out. And I can just see Don Draper growing a Mike Brady "afro" sometime in the next couple of seasons.

Did you see this episode? Peggy has quite a "wild side" scene of her own. Anyway, it was exciting to hear one of my favorite Beach Boys songs get played on my favorite TV show.

I was surprised: Add this to that weird Dennis Hopper video a few years ago for surprise appearances of Pet Sounds album tracks on mainstream TV.  :) They always sound great in these cases.

I tried to remember if there were an earlier episode with a Beach Boys song - specifically that one where Don goes to California on one of his trips to see the "real" Mrs. Don Draper just as she was getting sick, and they go to a California bar where a song is playing on the jukebox. I guess I was thinking Beach Boys in my memory but I believe it was Jan And Dean. Anyway...

It's great that Pet Sounds got an airing last night in a pretty neat but idealized scene of a terrific show, and is getting a lot of buzz on the web this morning, but was Pet Sounds really *that kind* of an acid album in summer 1966 or did it pick up that kind of cache by the year 2012? Just curious. I'm just speculating that Ravi Shankar or Ornette Coleman or even a beat poetry album of bongos, acoustic bass, and spoken-word exclamations would have stood as much of a chance of being on those doctors' reel-to-reel as Pet Sounds in summer '66...or even the classical that came blaring out of Roger's booze bottle. But it made for a pretty compelling scene last night, which is all that matters.

And like other Mad Men songs, I'll bet if you check the iTunes sales lists this week, you'll see IJWMFTT selling more than usual.

Hope this adds more buzz for the BBs this year.

Here are my thoughts...although the song was used in the episode, the characters weren't necessarily listening to it...dig:

The psychiatrist told 'em that it's important to take LSD with a positive attitude, an open mind, and optimism. IJWMFTT isn't exactly the theme song of optimism and positivity! Plus, given that most of the characters in the room were considerably older than the Pet Sounds target audience (Jane was probably the youngest by far), it's doubtful that the lady would have a Pet Sounds reel among her collection.

I think the song was just used as soundtrack music - rather than something the characters actually heard (the reel was probably something else) - to underscore Roger's own realizations.

Forgot about that! It was a Jan And Dean song (I think sidewalk surfing). I was really happy that they put that in the show.

PS: it's nice to see fellow Mad Men fans on this board!

I enjoyed reading this and considering it, nice thoughts! I also remember hearing several songs overlap during the scene, along with conversations and whatnot. I'll have to watch it again and see if I can see what you're suggesting, how another song was really played on that reel and Pet Sounds was more of a commentary.

It definitely stood out that Pet Sounds would probably not have been played by that demographic, but then again the cases of busting the old stereotypes of who listened to what are what makes it interesting!

And it was interesting for me to see Roger's realizations while on LSD, all of those subconscious thoughts coming to the fore, all of the searching for the deeper meaning and enlightenment, led him to exactly the same person he has been since episode number one! His trip showed us not too much more than the fact that the Roger we've seen in the office and in various scenarios was the same Roger he found when he was getting deep into himself to find the truth. he may have been the only one - his wife couldn't be honest with him the next day about what she told him, the people in the room were acting all trippy and crawling on the floor or doing the physical-synergy thing with their limbs, and Roger just grabbed a bottle of booze and poured a drink, which is what he always does anyway! Then he looked at advertising in a magazine, looked to Don for advice even though the doctor had become Don as a guide, then he saw Cooper's face on the bill, and Bert Cooper was always the bankroll/money of the partnership. And in the mirror he saw himself, more or less.

So Roger saw his reality as his inner truth, not much difference between his search for the truth and his regular life. At least that's how I saw it. Is he that one-dimensional or was he truly one of the few in that show who was honest with who he really was? And in that way I guess Brian's song was a fitting soundtrack.

I should get into this show because i love 1960s americana.

I'd rather hear it on game of thrones

I think that is what the writers are saying about acid, and the 60's culture in general that flowered into the Me Decade. I think acid is only an inner amplifier, that brings elements, feelings and thoughts from the subconscious into the conscious. It helps someone become more of what they already are, but have been afraid to express. Anyone who has gone "insane on acid" would have gone insane some other way. Anyone who "found God" on acid would have found it some other way.
So, acid is just a really nice shortcut, that makes a person aware of the profundity of the moment and life itself. But it just leads you to where you were already going.

I was about to post that!!!

One worries what's going to happen if they have Sally Draper dropping it in another year or two, since they seem to be hinting she will get into drugs, and is the perfect cliche of '60s adolescence.  Hopefully she won't wind up like Diane Linkletter.

Just saw the clip on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWlKCfSPcU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWlKCfSPcU)

She isn't the perfect cliche of 60's adolescence, I've never seen another child character similar to her on television, set in any era. Particulalry not in any piece of whitewashed garbage such as The Wonder Years. The pill thing was less of a hint for her character than a place of resonance with her mother's addictive personality.

So wait a second, Pet Sounds on a home reel to reel machine in 1966? Did these characters (who would never be listening to The Beach Boys in the first place) get some safety copies given to them by Brian?  :lol

Meh, a lot of people copied records to reel-to-reels. I have a trunk outside full of reel-to-reels that all contain albums.

The only thing that bothered my nerd sensibilities is that the reel-to-reel somehow contained the stereo mix from 1996.

Actually, reel-to-reel tape was just another format choice for buying music in the 60s. You couldn't get everything on reel, but most high-profile albums were issued in that format; it was the audiophile choice at the time.

I'm hoping a collector can answer this: Was there a reel tape version of Pet Sounds released by Capitol in '66? If not in '66, what year? I know I've seen several come and go on auction sites, usually either a "Duophonic" Capitol reel or a mono reel from the UK, but none of the auctions as far as I can recall have listed a specific release date for that copy being sold.

And was the catalog prefix number of the Capitol reels a "Y"? I have seen only one reference to something other than the vinyl issues from 66, and it was prefixed with a Y.

Thanks in advance for the info! I thought this would be a good place to ask since it's being discussed...

Yes, Pet Sounds was released on reel-to-reel by Capitol in 1966. Here's one that was sold at auction last year:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52684612/260883773853.jpg)

Here's the UK edition, also issued in 1966:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52684612/100506139148.jpg)

The U.S. version had the Cat. # ZT-2458 (Duophonic), the U.K. version, TA-T 2458.

Well i'll be damned, i didn't know that. For some reason, which i can't remember right now, i could have sworn that it was first issued on reel to reel tape in the 70s, not upon initial release in '66. Woops. Thanks for the correction.

'teh hell is Mad Men? I'm way too young to be so clueless about this sort of stuff. Oh well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men

Close to the best television show of all time.

I never really wanted to try acid until seeing that scene.

Thanks for the info on the reel tape, I also assumed for some reason that Pet Sounds didn't get released on reel-to-reel by Capitol until after '66. But now we know, and thanks again for the clarification!

To the prior poster...you sure that was the stereo mix??? Sure sounded mono to me....even had the tape rewind sounds at the beginning that aren't present in the stereo version....I could be wrong though.....

I also just thought of something ironic - not sure if it is actually irony or just coincidence - but how about Brian's Pet Sounds collaborator Tony Asher and how his true-life history fits into all of this with Mad Men featuring that song, which he wrote with Brian?

Remember that Tony Asher was working at the ad agency Carson Roberts at nearly the same time as Mad Men has been set in history for the past two seasons, 1965-66, and he took a leave of absence to work on lyrics with Brian.

Consider that Tony as a copy writer was working in the same kind of atmosphere as Mad Men, and had he been at the fictional firm in NYC, he'd have Don Draper as his boss as the creative director and he'd probably be working with Peggy and her team of creative copy writers and designers.

If he would be willing, it would be neat to pepper him with a few questions *unrelated* to Pet Sounds for a change of pace, and unrelated to Brian for a change, and ask him what he thinks of Mad Men, if he even watches it, and how his experiences working at an actual advertising agency in 1965-66 compares with the impression people are getting from watching Mad Men. If I could do it I'd ask him!

Tony Asher - Brian's collaborator and one of the original "Mad Men". Pretty neat. :)

Was the company Asher worked for as high profile as the company in Mad Men?
Only seen a few episodes of that show, until I lost interest in the characters. Pretty well done show, though.

Yes, Carson Roberts was *very* high profile, and was described as the biggest ad agency in Los Angeles. Asher worked there alongside future Monty Python filmmaker Terry Gilliam. They produced some very progressive and very slick ad campaigns. Here is a link to one of their "psychedelic" 1966 TV ads for Life Savers candy, of all things: http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/1966_psychedelic_life_savers_tv_commercial_by_terry_gilliam (http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/1966_psychedelic_life_savers_tv_commercial_by_terry_gilliam)

And here is the obit for one of the founders who died in the 80's: http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-09/news/mn-38_1_roberts-advertising (http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-09/news/mn-38_1_roberts-advertising)

They were a pretty big deal and are still remembered even though the company name "Carson Roberts" hasn't existed for decades.

Think of Mad Men and their fictional firm, then place Tony Asher into the real thing, the only difference being Tony was in LA and Mad Men is NYC. But it's the same ad agency culture playing out every week as Tony lived at that time - which is why asking him a few questions would be a neat thing.

Oh, definitely! Unfortunately he's not in the focus of interest right now. Means we might have to wait some time until somebody related to this board has a reason to interview him.