The Smiley Smile Message Board

http://www.stereophile.com/content/2012-records-die-page-5

Hey - he mentions my SMiLE mix! Sweet.

you made that? Thank you for making my smile experience far much better in the pre-TSS days. your mix was by far more interesting than purple chick. Any chance you will have another go at it given the new material/improved quality available? I am a fan!

Same here! It did stuff that no mix before attempted!

My girlfriend would shoot me if I stated mixing SMiLE again! I spent several years on that one, obsessively tweaking it and replacing parts with better-quality versions. It's a worm hole I'm better off not crawling back into. Glad you guys like it, though. I am pretty proud of it.

Thank you! I downloaded the whole webpage, because I got mucho interested in the other music reviewed there too.

BWPS was modular except for Good Vibrations and his band played those tracks as well as the "wrecking crew" ::) but whatever.

True. I wondered about that remark also - but well, IMHO the word 'modular' has been used wrongly so often that I wonder about there being much consensus about its meaning anyway.

I mean: I saw several times that people confused 'modular' with 'modal'. And many more times I had the impression that a news hack just repeated it after having seen it elsewhere without having the slightest idea what he was talking about.

I thought BWPS wasn't modular, because the band recorded the tracks straight through start to finish. My understanding is that the term modular referred to tracking each section, a verse, chorus, tag, etc. of a single track separately, then editing them together to form songs. And I think the fact that BWPS wasn't recorded that way contributes to its different tone compared to the original (note - no value judgement intended, I love both! Just reflecting on how they were recorded).

Only Good Vibrations wasn't (no idea why).  The rest was indeed recorded in sections.

You have a good point there.  In the true definition, it would refer to the separate pieces that could be swapped around at will but I don't think the Stereophile writer was using the word in that context.  If he was it still doesn't make sense.  'He knew how the sections would be arranged this time' isn't much of a critique, especially considering TSS version was assembled almost identically.

Allow me to reveal who originated the concept of Smile being modular:

Me.  ;D

Back in the last century I did a piece in Beach Boys Stomp about said album and noted the modular aspect thereof. You may thank me now.

Aye but do YOU know what it means????    ;D

He doesn't either. He was showing off. He just as well might have applied the word: ulular. Or ephemeral. Or xenophiliac. Or quasi-revisionist. Or...

So now we know who to blame for the "modular" red herring.  ;)  SMiLe was sectional or ulular as it will henceforth be known.

 :lol

S' funny you mention Ulular – just watching The Wrath of Khan and she's running the comms desk.

 :-D

He he. I didn't know that Ulular is a character in the movies... I derived it from 'ululation', IIRC a sort of plaintive, weeping style of chanting, I saw it first in a description of reggae singer Burning Spear's wonderful Social Living album.

Wordplay not your strong suit, I see. Or Star Trek.

"Designed with standardized units or dimensions, as for easy assembly and repair or flexible arrangement and use" - remember the comment by an insider that what was part of "H&V" one day might be part of "Veggies" the next ?

Star Trek, no. Never was interested. Word play? Just watch these pages in the future.

*makes mental note to write more Doe variations*

HG Wells used in in The War Of the Worlds in 1898.

 :o didn't know that. Well, it's not a common word, is it? Was it thought up by Wells then?

So, where's that suicide emoticon again?

Not quite - the dictionary definition of ululation is "the act of wailing or hooting". Not at all, actually.  ;D

Joanna Newsom:

And as for my inflammatory writ
Well, I write it an I was not inflamed one bit
Advice from the master derailed that disaster
He said "Hand that pen over to me, poetaster!"
While across the great plains, keen and lovely and awful
Ululate the last Great American Novels
An unlawful lot, left to stutter and freeze, floodlit
But at least they didn't run, to their undying credit

So your mix is called AlternateBWPS? I will have to look for it. I have the Moksmile and some others but not that one.

Ah well, thanks for clarifying. I often derive meaning from context, and that doesn't always work out. But I, as opposed to quite a few others, actually enjoy being corrected. If it happens in a polite manner, that is; I am not into SM.

Just sayin'.