The Smiley Smile Message Board

Man. Really of one Brian's underrated masterpieces. 

I don't have a deep appreciation for it in a strictly musical sense.  It's good, but I don't see it as a masterpiece.

With that said, though, the best thing about the song has always been to me that he gives you directions to his house.  That alone makes it a "Brianism".  It's one of those things you can list that makes Brian such a special person.  The conversation goes like this:

"Yeah, Brian was amazing.  He did so many crazy things... nobody else was quite like this guy.  Here, lemme give you a few examples:

1. He wrote a song called "A Day in the Life of a Tree", about being a Tree.
2. He called everybody out to the airport in the middle of the night one time, to take pictures of them for a photo shoot.  All the pictures show a bunch of sleepy people standing at the airport looking slightly annoyed.
3. He once answered a question about whether or not he still had sex, by saying "Twice a day; every day"

...

..


486. He wrote a song once called "Busy Doin' Nothing" where the hook is him explaining all the turns you have to make to get to his house"

It's a great song with appeal beyond "just" listening;a personal favourite that moves my otherwise cold hearted public persona - is that a tenny little tear welling in the corner of my left eye whenever Brian sharpens up his pencil and writes a letter to his friend? No, I've just been cutting onions @ the same time...

 :-D

I agree the song is strangely moving. Absolutely love Brian's singing on Friends, it sounds both relaxed and very expressive.

It's a satisfying song for me. Smooth, breezy, happy...one of my favorites.

I find the song sort of zen like.  Writing a song about the moments in his life.    Brian focusing on the  now and coupling that with the most gorgeous of  melodies and tasteful production.  after all, they WERE into transcendental meditation at the time ................. ;).     I feel this aspect of friends has been overlooked

For me, It's a perfect song.

One of my favorites! Brian writing directions to his house in a song, like when he wanted to write song about getting dressed quickly. GENIUS!!

I like this song cause it reminds me a lot of me. Pretending like I have a lot of important things to take care of while really I'm just sitting around getting loaded acting like the things I have to take care of matter more than they actually do.

THESE THINGS WERE SO SCRAMBLED IT WAS SUCH A HOT STICKY DAY AND I FORGOT THIS NUMBER I WAS SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER.


Then I smoked more hash.

 I LOVE this song.  When I listen to it for some reason I zero in on the bass .  What a bass line ! ! !
 It's a very smooth, intelligent groove.

I want a song about Johnny Carson getting dressed quickly while he gives directions to his house to an ambulance because his wife is giving birth to a brand new baby boy. But he's a little upset because she hasn't baked him a pie in awhile...

 :lol :lol :lol

Busy Doin' Nothin' is one of the best productions on the Friends album.

Made my day  :lol

An unexpected highlight on Friends, disarming in the honesty of the lyrics and how they reflect Brian's life and thought processes at the time.  Beautifully arranged, really a jazz tune more than a pop song, and the vocal is flawless.  It reminds me of Good Morning Good Morning by Lennon - that song also was a song about his everyday life and his being busy doin nothing but you can feel  Lennon's discontent and implied indictment of what he considered a boring and restrictive married life.  Brian is much less ambiguous, simply detailing events in his day with perhaps some unease at not being able to reach his friend on the phone.  One of his top 20 songs IMO!

Born out of jazz and a samba beat, but played most often on nylon string guitar =  Bossa Nova.

I love this song dearly.  When I'm listening to this album, I can convince myself it is the Beach Boys' best.  But then I put on Pet Sounds or Sunflower and it's the best.  Them boys made some great records.

When Brian sings "wrote a letter to my friennnnnnd", he sings with such longing in his voice, that it totally takes the song to the next level for me. Love love love this tune.

The lyrics during the Friends era were incredible - if just for their simplistic nature.

"I talked your folks out of making you cut off your hair"
"And someday I'll put my son on my knee"
"She cures people with her hands"

Even Dennis/Kalinich's contributions have a straightforward nature: "Be still and know you are"

It's what makes Friends charming beyond belief. It puts you right in these situations and makes you forget where you are....the perfect 'mellow out' album. I hope that one day a boxset of Friends becomes available for purchase. This needs to be a thing:

(http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z353/SupremeKingDan/TheFriendsSessions_zpsab5985c1.jpg)
courtesy of Judd *and Bubbly Waves

capitol records pls

Definitely my favorite song on this album.

*cough* and bubbly waves

And Bubbly Waves - forgot you worked on those too. Wonderful mockups, should be blueprints for any future Capitol boxset releases.

 :o

I want so much for this to exist.

Saw this posted on Ed Roachs FB page (well via little bird) yesterday. Cool version with Paul Mertens - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwjOYdi3GS0&list=UUOIxgXc8KLJzw9BOGA6FWyA

^^ apparently that band covers the entire Friends LP and a bunch of 20/20 stuff live! They're amazing and might be the best vocal group doing BB tunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSE_9k_W68Y (Friends)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4JlFKtVY_Y# (I Went To Sleep)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mb6d4LFuoQ# (Kiss Me Baby)

 :o

Actually, I have nice thing to say about the song - I like the lyrics. Giving directions to house in Bel Air was really creative for the time, jolly good. but most of all, I care about the flexibility, the way words sound it's very catchy & fit the rhythm. There was a thread talking about how Brian is the worst lyricist or some such. I beg to differ.

Ha! 1st time I take lyrics over the melody.<< is this what you call 20/20 hindsight?

My favorite song on that album. Maybe my favorite post Pet Sounds 60s beach boy song. I agree its a fascinating look at Brian's "scrambled" thought process at the time, as well as his sincerity about it. It's not trying to be a "pocket symphony" like a lot of the songs of the previous two years, but it is.

I think Friends and Wild Honey are somewhat flawed albums, but the highlights from each are great. I think if you combined them somehow, and had the Boys finished Cant Wait Too Long, you'd have a really perfect follow up to Pet Sounds, but done in the more laid back "back to basics" style that was popular in '68. If anyone follows me on this  :p

Hmm… I don't count it a scrambled thinking, just how a rich laid-back innocent young guy might behave if he had time on his hands and nothin on his plate… like "I'd Love Just Once to See You".

It's why I keep buying Lotto tickets ;D

The way Brian holds the note in the bv's ...awesome
Marilyn is great on it too.

Steve Hoffman has this to say about the song:

"Geez, that song drives me nuts. Typical writer's block nonsense, IMO..

I talked to Brian Wilson over lunch at Jerry's Deli once about that song (he brought it up). He said it was "typical writer's block" nonsense as well!

We talked about Jack Kerouac and about how he couldn't write any more when he stopped doing neat stuff and became famous. Brian could relate.

Don't tell Brian you think this song is one of his greatest achievements, I think he would be appalled.

I like the music and stuff though. It's very catchy.

Sometimes, as Sigie Freud said, a Banana is just a Banana...

Brian needed a song for the album and he was having a very hard time trying to write anything. So, he wrote about what he did that day: Got up, peed, ate some Cocoa Puffs, etc.

It worked but the "higher meaning" is just a Banana.

Funny, it's one of the few songs from that album besides the title track that I play on a regular basis.

I personally think the lyrics work better as a straight poem. Very "beat". Imagine if Lawrence Ferlinghetti was reciting.."

 ;D

But that's what's so cool about it! It's not trying to make some grand sweeping statement on life or just another song about some girl. Its unique and honest. Perhaps an understated expression of loneliness and apathy. It may not be his most ambitious song, but it definitely works in its own way. Certainly better than something like Revolution 9 that's trying WAY too hard to be edgy and deep.

It's kinda like Love You. Not trying to be this amazing piece of art or super commercial blockbuster. Just Brian making the music he wanted to. 

Absolutely agree. It's Brian's own voice, with no real outside assistance. Its beauty is in its simplicity, its innocence, the unwitting understatement. If this is the "idiot savant" that Lorren Daro discussed in his thread recently, then give me more. It might not be "high art" but in its own way it transcends that to be all the more precious. An exquisity!

Plenty of artists are dismissive of some of their best work. They CANNOT be objective. It has nothing to do at times
with the quality of the piece. Kurt Cobain hated Smells like teen Spirit. Tchaikovsky was dismissive of The Nutcracker Suite.
Degas was hardly ever satisfied with anything and I won't even start with how critical Lennon was with some of his best work so I don't care that Brian Wilson felt so ho hum about Busy Doin' Nothing.  The majority rules that it's a very fine song.  :p

I think Busy Doin' Nothin' is a classic. The music is very intelligent and moving and a rare Bossa Nova excursion for Brian and the lyrics are a work of innocent genius. There's no songs like it, it's one of a kind.

To me BDN is really classic Brian Wilson thinking; he takes something that might be mundane and boring or inconsequential to most people and turns it into something beautiful and interesting. Part of his genius is looking at the world in a very unique way and exclusive way. I Went to Sleep and At My Window also come to mind pretty quickly .

Um... I think "AMW" is largely Alan's work, based (loosely) on "Raspberries, Strawberries".

Sort of - if you followed those directions to his house, you'd never get there. Trust me...no bumpy road - it was Bel-Air.  Even if he meant the BH home, it didn't fit that description other than a few left turns (both places), depending on where you were coming from.  He didn't need thousands of people at his house.  He's not an idiot.

Someone once told me there's a bit in the middle missing.

Like, part of the song? That would be the second song on the album like that (see: Meant for You).

BDN is one of my favorite songs. If Brian is indeed dismissive of it because it was 'tossed off' , it just backs up my opinion that his allegedly 'tossed off' songs are the indicators of his true genius even more than Pet Sounds and Smile were. They were brilliant, and had lots of hard work put into it. Brian gets up, smokes a joint or five, and writes a song in between commercial breaks while watching Bewitched, and writes a better song than most of his contemporaries. To me, the latter is more impressive. It's one of the reasons why I'm glad Brian is writing more lyrics than at any point save 1976-1977. 

No, my bad - part of the directions.

Ahhh...

A song like this could never be made today, post Google Earth

Just for a bit of idle trivia, the Scottish surrealist poet Ivor Cutler once printed directions to his home on one of his old album jackets. I believe a few people went around and he made them tea, IIRC.

Not really a bad song on Friends save one.  Too jarring and out of place.  No need to mention which one.  It's obvious.

I always loved Busy Doin' Nothin'  ... from the first listen right up 'til now.  Great album.  At THAT time...after Pet Sounds...it was my runaway favourite.  I wore out 2 vinyl copies and one on cd.  How?  Easy.  I was busy...doin' nothin'...and doin' 'it' really, REALLY well. :hat 

That's Brian's way of saying "Gotcha!"

"It's good, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good..."