The Smiley Smile Message Board

Dennis is criminally underrated. People forget about his songs and only think about Pet Sounds, Smile, Surfer Girl, as well as all the "fat Brian songs."  When Brian got fat and did mostly nothing Dennis became a true savant. Be Still, for example. Beautiful. Who could forget about THAT!?!? You don't even notice it when listening to the oh so Brian-centric Friends. There's something going on here.

Whether this is a troll thread or not, I genuinely like Be Still. It's perfect as it is, and while not quite as good as Little Bird, it definitely one of the better songs off Friends.

You really think so? Friends is perhaps my favorite Beach Boys album and, while I love all the songs that create the lush, mellow majesty that the album is, "Be Still" is the song that most seems like filler to me. It's as if the least amount of thought went into creating that particular one.

I think they should have let Dennis make Friends his own way, and leave off all the Brian tracks. 

Yes, I really do. I think the simplistic production of the song with just an organ and Dennis singing works well. It's an enjoyable listen, and a nice, short break from all the other songs.

High five!

*sigh*

When I saw the thread title I thought, that's refreshingly positive coming from Gabo. But on reading the post, no, he's clearly being sarcastic. A shame.

Sincerely, Be Still has always been on eof my favourite songs on "Friends", I initially liked it a lot more than Little Bird and I was always irritated by David Leaf's slightly dismissive sleevenote  (from memory, "While 'Be Still' wasn't one of his best..."). "Be Still" is a classic example of a beautiful simple song whose strength is its simplicity and purity, you'd only risk messing it up if you tried to add more sections to it to make it more conventional. Blissfulness.

Completely agreed.

Some people here might be thinking that I only like this song so much because it's by Dennis. Completely wrong. If it was written by say, Bruce, I'd still enjoy it just as much.

(Says the person who enjoys The Nearest Faraway Place  ;D)

I agree with this as well.

I listened Friends first time when I didn't know anything about Dennis or who had wrote what songs. Be Still was one of my faavorite cuts from my first listen and is still.

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Yeah that's a good suggestion Gabo but then it wouldn't be Friends would it? Even Little Bird, if I'm not mistaken, has a lot of Brian in it. Didn't Kallinich or somebody say something about it being Brian's gift to him and Dennis?

But, agreed, Be Still is lovely and a perfect component of a near perfect album.

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I'm saddly not a big fan of that song. I even gave it a try listening to it several times, but it comes across as too sappy and simplistic. I don't mind the basic production but I don't connect with the theme and lyrics.

I used to feel that way but I appreciate it more these days as another example of Brian's Fire songs (or at least, that's how I hear it). In this sense, TM's presence makes Friends even more of a Smile mk II (or mk III if you count Smiley Smile).

You could even argue that Diamond Head + TM is the closest Brian got to realising The Elements, although it may not have been a conscious decision on his part!

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I like "Be Still" a lot but I prefer Dennis' later material. I always thought "Be Still" would've been a perfect opening song for Friends - "Now is the time life begins", with "Meant For You" as the closing track. After "Transcendental Meditation", there's peace in my mind.  :)

Not wild about much else on Friends but "Be Still" is a gem.

Brian was the true genius of the group. Dennis was not a genius. Clever, yes, but no genius.
Be still is an okay song and Little Bird is my favorite Dennis song but without Brian's touch it would have been diminished.
Friends is one of my top four Beach Boys albums.

Don't forget that Child is the Father of the Man was recycled as the bridge to Little Bird.

I could go on about how Be Still is actually absolutely lovely and about how Gabo has no taste whatsoever.... Instead, I'm just going to copy and paste a comment I made on another thread yesterday:

This board used to be fun but now it just seems to be full of arseholes trying to start arguments and wind up other members. They just suck all the fun out of these debates. Whether they're deliberately being wankers or just mistakenly believe they're being amusing I really don't know, but man they are making things on here increasingly BORING!

Be Still doesn't impress me all that much, although it fits fine as a short, understated track on Friends.  Little Bird, on the other hand, I think is just wonderful.

I think the sudden burst of reverb on 'life begins' is so cool.

This thread seems to have backfired on Mr Gabo  :lol

Yes absolutely. It starts with a little prayer-like intro too!

On the topic of Brian helping Dennis, I've always found the liner notes of the rereleased 20/20 curious. Brian writes:

"I have a genius for makin’ a complex piece of music seem easy. I wanted the instrumental track of 'I Can Hear Music' to be smooth and subliminal. I used acoustic guitars."

I thought Carl produced that song?

How involved was Brian with his brothers' productions early on?

If you're referring to the two-fer CD liner notes, don't ever rely on them to settle an argument. BW's comments are ghost-written for the most part, and there are factual errors throughout the BW credited notes as well as many errors in David Leaf's comments. Carl definitely produced I Can Hear Music, and it's probable that BW isn't on the track at all. Maybe C-man can update us on the session info.

"Take that simple path and...love will set you free." Now that's a spiritual moment. Thanks to Gabo for bringing attention to this humble yet moving song/prayer.

This thread is meant to be.

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Submission is a gift.

Go on.

Give it your brother.

That's because Gabo genuinely believes that he's absolutely in the right re Dennis' songwriting and that all us fans are wrongheaded idiots. Alas, as this thread has shown that's very much not the case and it's only those who don't like or understand Dennis' music that are missing out.

exactly  :thumbsup

Seconded!

High fives all around. Should I make a Make It Good thread, now? Another unfairly maligned track?

Go ahead if you wish. It's not one of Dennis's better songs, but it has it's redeemable features.

Make It Good...yes. Good suggestion. An extremely non-Beach Boys style track on a Beach Boys LP. Very left field... really it's avant grade, or as i have written previously...it's not a song...it's a dreamscape. The fact that this completely abstract vision was allowed on So Tough is testament to the Jack Rieley regime. Progress, explore, take chances. I love it.

I actually like it, too. I appreciate when people branch out and experiment, and that's just what Dennis does here.
It's very different and would probably be a bit more digestible if the length was cut down a bit.

It's already the shortest song off CATP  :lol

I agree with you both.  I usually don't listen to the slower songs all the way through unless I'm in the mood for it.  this one is another one like that but I really like the arrangement and "dreamscape" is probably the best way to describe it

The only real stinker Dennis ever wrote IMO.

"Make It Good" is a masterpiece. Dennis never wrote a stinker musically that I've ever heard. Just like most (but not all) Beach Boys material, I don't pay much mind to the lyrics and hear the voices as instruments. The music that Dennis has written that is out there (legit or not) has always seemed inspired to me. He is one of those artists where you either "get it" or not. I would say that "Are You Real?" is my favorite song by Dennis and features some stellar piano work from him.

personally, I think one of his best tunes is 'only with you'.....

the version on the 'POB' reissue is the best, on the same level...

how can you go past Carl's live version that is on MIC boxset?

RickB

Agreed. I guess Gabo doesn't "get it"  :lol

Go for it! Make It Good is a lovely piece. It's original, musically daring, utterly unique and features a beautiful Dragon arrangement. Thanks for completely proving my point, Gabo! :) 

Little Bird is so great, in so many ways.  Be Still is o.k. but Little Bird just has genius dripped all over it.  The Cellos, wow.  It's like something out of Fantasia.  Brian's falsetto 'Nah Nah's" in the background.

Something like that is so easily taken for granted.  We've heard Brian do that dozens of times on dozens of songs, but it's so creative and beautiful, he's using his voice completely as an instrument because the inspiration hit him.  Little touches like that put songs like Little Bird on another level.

The way the rhythm of the vocals changes at the end, who thought that up?  

That period of their music has creative genius like that all over everything though, it's just an example of how Brian and the others had completely moved into their own little world musically.  

  I love "Make It Good." One of the truly underrated progressive tracks. Is it a tone poem?

 "Be Still" would work well on SMILEY SMILE or maybe a concurrent post-Barrett Pink Floyd album.

I can't wait  ;D

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I always thought Be Still was kinda reminiscent of 'Butcher's Tale' on Odessey and Oracle - instrumentally, and production-wise at least.

Be Still is such a simplistic beautiful song, and it flows perfectly into the chords of 'Busy Doin Nothin'

Not too crazy about either Be Still or Make It Good. Neither is among the pantheon of stellar Dennis songs to me, though perhaps this is because they both have that sort of tone poem quality that others have mentioned, and perhaps that is simply not my bag.

Now, Farewell My Friend. That, to me, is the perfect Dennis song. Perfectly constructed, essential. The sentiment, a powerful one, perfectly matching the music. It has a bit of that meditative quality the above two have as well, but what it has that they lack, to me, is a sense of structure, architecture.

It seems like he was teasing you & retro will wait for that to happen till the cows come home. Though MIG definitely deserves its own thread more than way short & ordinary "Be Still".

yea he is and other Dennis fans out there, but like My Brother Woody already said it backfired  :lol

Yeah, I can't wait until the Make It Good thread is up!

"Weakest" song on Friends but it makes perfect sense in the overall album context. I never skip it when I listen to the whole thing. Unlike so many other great albums, Friends truly is more than the sum of its parts.