The Smiley Smile Message Board

Discuss, review and rate Brian Wilson - Imagination, released September 5, 2000.

(http://www.smileysmile.net/images/albums/imaginationdvd.jpg)

Excellent promo film, but the performances leave me cold. 3.

Best moments are seeing Brian perform with Timothy B. Schmidt, Christopher Cross, and Bruce Johnston.  Also some nice candid moments with Melinda and family. 

Like the album,  but worse. Ick.

Excellent if you're conducting a seminar on severe stage fright with a sidebar on how not to post-synch vocals convincingly.  ;D

Pure infomercial. 

Any footage of Brian is worth buying, and this is no exception. The performances stink, but the footage of Brian at the board while the musicians cut "Cry" makes up for any shortcomings.

agree with bubba here....the Cry section of the video is great! Joe thomas at the piano, it truly sounds sad. the dvd is totally info mercial, but you never hear anyone discuss it, i never heard anyone post anything about it before i bought it

Hate to piss on anyone's parade, but I'm led to believe by an excellent source that all the studio scenes were 'staged', with Brian being coached by, er, "someone" (no, not her) as to what to say. Food for thought.

I agree with AGD. And it isn't limited to this disc, either. I'm sick of "studio" or other footage of BW seeming rehearsed. It took away much enjoyment from the Beautiful Dreamer DVD, too.

I wish I still had this particular radio broadcast.....

When IMAGINATION came out, one of the arts and entertainment  shows on CBC Radio 1, did a feature and a review of the album.  (I wish I could remember who did the feature) The presenter gave the album a rare (for IMAGINATION) rave review but also unwittingly spilled a few secrets that maybe the Brian camp would have preferred to have stayed hidden. For example,  Brian had nothing to do with the tracking sessions at all, that was Joe Thomas' work.  Another example, the only time Brian was in the studio during IMAGINATION sessions was when he would do his vocals (intertestingly enough, they would done during the afternoon and only the afternoon). There was some other good stuff in there, but those two really stood out in my mind. I do remember posting a more complete version of this (including a complete transcription of his IMAGINATION review) on the Pet Sounds Mailing List, but since the PSML archives only go back to 2003, I doubt that my (much longer post) could be found.  :'(

Anyway, I just posted this to basically say that a Canadian music journalist unwittiingly confirmed what AGD just posted.

I guess you can see that Brian hadn't that much to do with the Backing Tracks in his arrangement of "Lay Down Burden" for live-performances. While every other song(haven't heard "Youre Imagination" live) seems to sound very much like the studio version, this one is completely different

Well, that just confirms what we all knew but were afraid to admit to ourselves. Heck, Brian has said several times that he’s just doing what they tell him and he has no say in recording or selecting tracks because he is helpless and brain damaged. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe the people around him do all the work and he is rolled in on a stretcher, sings a couple of lines, and then goes back to the couch to lie down. Maybe Darian sequenced Smile and Brian just went along with it. Maybe he just flopped into a comfy chair and zoned out while the band rehearsed, checking himself into a hospital in order to flee from the torture of recording and performing. Maybe he is like a reverse MICHIGAN J. FROG, singing and coming to life when the light in on him but then slumping over and only croaking once the curtain comes down. Maybe that’s why the Christmas album sounds like “Christmas with the Wondermints”. Maybe part of the deal when working “with” Brian is to give him 50% credit and production credit and then accept a monetary settlement. The illusion of genius must remain in order to move product. He’s tried to tell us this in interviews when his guard was down, but we blame it on his depression. But maybe he’s telling it like it is. That’s why he needs somebody like Landy or Melinda calling the shots: because he can’t call the shots. He can’t do anything. He’s a mountain of flesh and bone with nothing left inside to offer. He exists and that is all he’s interested in doing. Andy Paley wrote and produced the Paley tracks. Joe Thomas produced Imagination. The Wondermints and Jeff recorded and produced Smile without any help from Brian. It’s all a carefully orchestrated hoax, like making us believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny of the Sasquatch. When David Leaf’s camera rolled, they prop Brian up in the producers chair and have him look busy. Once the recording light it off, he goes back to the couch. And he’s been doing it this way for 40 years. They send someone to Brian, he spits out a riff or song fragment and then they take the specimen back to the lab (studio) and create something out of it. Brian’s not back. He never was back and he’ll never be back and that is what we have to accept. The snarling maniac who scared the hell out of millions of overweight housewives on “The View” back in December is the real deal…

No, wait. I’m wrong. I take that all back. I just like to see both sides of the coin, that’s all.  He's back and he's doing great.

What you've said just there are my, and probably quite a few other people's, worst fears about Brian's 'renaissance'.  Things that we wonder about but really don't wish to believe.  Hopefully they're not true or, at least, things are a lot more complicated.  The only thing I can say is if it is true - it's grotesque and horrible.  I really would prefer Brian to disappear from public view if he was happier that way than be subjected to such a degrading and manipulative charade, however 'good' things appear on the surface. 

Of course I don´t KNOW if that´s the case or not. But I have heard enough stories by people who where at soundchecks before the concerts, and all of them said that Brian was in control, for example telling the band how to play a new song. And there wasn´t any need for a fake, since there were no cameras rolling.

That doesn´t mean that Brian is totally in control, like he was in the 60s. He just gets a lot of support. And he needs that support. Why? Because he is terrible lazy.

I think he underplays what he does. A few people around him are abusive but when I talked to him in 1999 he seemed like a pretty reguar guy. In other words he wasn't being "Brian Wilson".

3/5.. Could have been so much better..!

The concert scenes sound won-won-wonderful, but not much of a picture to go with them. And again, the talking heads appear, to tell us all what a genius Brian was, and still is.