The Smiley Smile Message Board

Okay so I'm listening to an...ahem...unofficial recording of Brian's SMiLE concert in Boca Raton FL, and I think it may be a pretty common boot. The show begins with Brian, Jeff and a few other of the male band members singing "We are the pilgrims...we are the pilgrims..." and then Brian says "won;t you toast with me" and Jeff says "yes I'll toast with you" and Brian says "and shall we have a good show"...

Unless I'm missing something...this is one of the most random things I've ever heard...has anyone else heard it and does anyone know what the heck is going on?

On the plus side, fun boot with perhaps the most spirited round of "Row Your Boat" I've ever heard and Brian growling out the "forest fires" line in "Drive-In". And he makes tons of funny animal noises during "Barnyard"

That is weird.  Could it have been Thanksgiving?

They did that a few times in the tour. They did that at my show as well.

Probably Brian just being Brian  ;)

Did it at the UK premiere... or was it the UK summer BWPS shows ? Anyway... nope, not the least idea what they were on about and to judge from some of the expressions onstage, I wasn't alone. I'll ask someone who might know.

I've ... um ... heard the UK premiere, and I'm fairly certain they didn't do it there.

I was wrong - it was the 2nd 2004 tour.

The audience is absolutely silent from the moment this starts until Jeff starts to talk with the audience...which is hilarious. Also my tape is from October 2004...so not near Thanksgiving.

Anyway, a positive note is that from the boots I'm hearing of the BWPS tour...the BWPS tour was the most comfortable, or shall I say least uncomfortable, I've heard Brian from 1999 until now live...with the exception of the first handful of nail-biter premieres.

Did he sing the Old Master Painter lyrics at the Florida show?

The Fall 2004 tour shows began with an "impromptu" campfire sing along portion with just Foskett on acoustic guitar and everyone else gathered around a couple of mics (if I remember correctly). It was staged to appear somewhat spontaneous. The "toasting" song was an attempt to create an impression of a group of friends getting together to have a good time and sing a few songs. I saw this as an alternate way to open the show to distinguish it from the previous tours (the '99 tour had an Alan Boyd film leading directly into the first live song; the 2000 PET SOUNDS tour had the Van Dyke Parks orchestral suite opening the show). The "toasting" song was odd enough to make me think it was Brian's idea to include it.

The campfire stuff was really cool...unplugged kinda set...Brian should bring that back!

Nope, but again, a flat-out hilarious "Row Your Boat"

In London, pretty much everyone had some kind of instrument - Jeff a ukulele, Nicky a guitar, Scott bongos, Darian a mini xylophone and so on, thus - http://www.btinternet.com/~bellagio/RFHjune.html (http://www.btinternet.com/~bellagio/RFHjune.html).

The U.S. Smile tour opened with the same setup: everyone was playing something, it just wasn't full-on electric.

Right - I guess I didn't remember it correctly. What did stay in my memory was the beautiful "unplugged" rendition of "Add Some Music..." that was performed; during the Ann Arbor show, Brian sang this one with his eyes closed, nailing the lead vocal and lyrics.

The little acoustic sets before the 2004 shows and the late 2006 shows were great to hear. I remember a thread on the blueboard  back in 2003 or so which basically went "how could Brian's show get better?", and I posted (this was back when I put one or two posts on a year, tops) that Brian and the band should do an unplugged set. Of course, if it was read, I have no idea, since Brian and Melinda IIRC were not around, but I dunno. Maybe Bluebird passed it on to Brian on the telephone. :)

Now then, let's have a little reality here - she obviously hopped on a plane and delivered the idea personally.  ;D

I'm a bluebird, I'm a bluebird, yeah yeah yeah yeah...   (Gotta love McCartney & Wings!!)