The Smiley Smile Message Board

Orange Crate Art - most splendid !

Thanks! I'll be listening to it for the first time.

Quite forgotten how delightful this album is...  ;D

No need for Spotify as I've got it all on the ol' iPod in addition to obviously the CD.

But I will say that it took me YEARS to get into this album, and now I quite enjoy almost all of it. Even with some pre-autotune vocal assistance, and a gruff-sounding Brian, those are some amazing vocal arrangements and performances. Parks wrote some good tunes on that one. Production is a bit bland on the backing tracks, especially the more "pop" sounding stuff, though very well performed on all accounts.

Still hoping someday a deluxe edition with a decent-sounding version of "What a Wonderful World" might surface one day.

I listened to nothing but OCA for a few weeks earlier this year. Takes me back to happier times.

Oh yes, let's forget about VDP's Twitter for 48 minutes and just listen. :-D

Easily my 2nd fave album of BW music apart from the BB (BW88 being #1). Wish Brian would've participated in more projects like this, i.e. solo/collaborative stuff that doesn't sound like the BB.

I just love this album. Loved it from day one. Probably my most played BW album.

Had a similar experience of not "getting" this album, bar the title track & appreciating the work put into it, for some years, then ka-pow! Love it to death.  Summer in Monterrey's evocative lyrics and sing-along style, Brian's tough drawl on San Francisco et cetera et cetera.

Great to hear the Spotify generation can access it.

Love your deluxo suggestion, an essential inclusion would be a nicely faded-in & out dub of the stripped back OCA from the Was doco.

And for non-Spotify people (like me), this wondrous album is also on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qbQcmK72bo&index=1&list=PLjac4wPZpRjxnzomLQGVEztlbn-Z90yhd

vinyl please!!!!!

I listened to OCA at Tower Records when it came out; kept waiting for those BW88 melodies and production; first reaction was disappointment. Took it with my on a trip cross country that winter, and fell in love with it. Definitely my favorite "solo" album by Brian. There was talk back then about BW and VDP doing some concerts together to support the album, wish they had followed through.

While they never did any shows in support of the album, Van Dyke recorded an excellent live album Moonlighting not long after Orange Crate Art that featured many of the albums songs.  I was lucky enough to have attended the show, and actually had just been listening to the cd today.

Found the opening track on you tube, and, while it's not an OCA song, it gives a good idea of what the album sounds like:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y0E9jK_ZmA

My favourite VDP album, though Yankee Reaper comes close

splendid indeed!

Brian's voice may not be at it's strongest but the arrangements are terrific and the album is outstanding.  One of my all time favourite/top 10 lps involving Brian from any era.  It was SO great to see Brian and Van Dyke finish a project together.  And not too many years later...they'd finish off another little item.   OCA is sunlight.  It's also a key to unlocking doors which kept Brian prowling the sidelines.  It's also the best album out there from anyone not named Wilson who had any meaningful connection the Beach Boys music back in the 60s.

I don't delve into it so I don't know [nor do I really want to know] any of the details...but I get the impression that Brian and Van Dyke are not conversing happily these days.  THAT'S a shame.  Life's too short.  Neither fella is an unreasonable man.  Get your poop together lads. :hat

Orange Crate Art is one of my favorite songs that conquer a romantic image of the United States. Always feels like I'm back in the pioneer days: enjoying the land, cooking, not getting the diphtheria, fending off the natives...

Um, Orange Crate Art has been on Spotify for at least couple years already.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a running theme in the BB Universe.  Well, really the music universe as we see the drama play out on who will / won't be allowed at Deep Purple's RNRHOF induction.  

In all honestly, OCA is one of the BW albums I'm least familiar with.  I'll have to revisit it.  

Got a notification email just the other day. Maybe new to UK.

Yeah, I Spotified it a few years ago.  Absolutely hated it, but revisited it today, because with all the love for it here, I figured I must be missing something.  Couldn't even get through the entire album.  Maybe I'll fall in love with it after a few years.  Which makes me wonder- what makes a good album?  One that hooks you on first listen?  One that, like No Pier Pressure, I come to love after a few weeks?  How good is an album that takes *years* for you to fall in love with?

What am I missing about OCA that has y'all so enthralled?

When I worked in radio, we had a music director who said that, to truly get a feel for an album, it takes at least three full listens in most cases.

Among the albums that didn't grab me on the first listen are:

The Who - Quadrophenia
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime
Iron Maiden - Brave New World
Deep Purple - In Rock

I know consider these to be among my favorites of all-time.  There are albums I've tried to listen to three times, and went back to them years later, but still can't get into (I started a thread about a month ago in the General Music Forum on this topic). 

I can only speak for myself, but typically when an album "takes years" for me to appreciate, it's not as if I've been constantly listening to it all those years. It's usually a case of trying it out, then trying it out a little bit more, then moving on and maybe occasionally revisiting it, and then through some means having a bit of an epiphany.

In cases where I've had an album for years before truly enjoying it, it's typically my fault, not the album's.

If you don't like it, then maybe try VDP's Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove album. It wasn't until I heard Van Dyke do the songs live (at the Royal Festival Hall in 1999) that I really got the album, and only then did the versions with Brian's vocals start working for me. Now it's probably my favourite Van Dyke Parks album (I don't consider it a Brian album, as he was only a vocalist -- if I *did*, I'd put it above all his solo stuff except Smile and *maybe* That Lucky Old Sun).

I guess it's all about individual ears.  Like I don't enjoy Love You...AT ALL.  Never have.  But from the first time I heard OCA I thought that it was far and away THE best thing I'd heard from ANY Beach Boy related release since Holland, POB and Brian's first solo album.  EVERYTHING else just out and out paled by comparison because OCA is chalk full of great instrumentation, arrangements and songs and some the best Brian-related sounds since Surf's Up.  It sounds to me like Van Dyke was paying tribute to Brian...and in getting Brian to contribute...the tribute came to life.  It's more than just "movies" that provided the "MAGIC".

Nice art-work on the cover too.  That it slowly helped lead to the completion of BWPS with further input from Van Dyke is just one of the totally happy outcomes.

Maybe fast Eddie wants to write some more goin' to the Beach and pickin' up junior high girls songs with Brian but ***I'D*** much prefer that Brian do something else with Van Dyke, and with Tony Asher.  'Cause therein lies his all time TOP works....ie Smile and Pet Sounds. :hat

OCA just has such rich melodies, and then those rich BW harmonies throughout the album. It's an album I can keep listening to over and over and it doesn't get old. I've heard Van Dyke sing a few of these songs, but it just doesn't do it for me like Brian singing them.

The songs on OCA are great but I jcan't get past Brian's vocals enough to fully enjoy it. There's a video on youtube of VDP singing the title track himself at a piano, it sounded much more pleasant to my ears than the wall of Brians on the album version.