The Smiley Smile Message Board

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/beach-boys-smile-sessions/

A halcyon time on these boards! :hat

Was at the record store last weekend and the 180 gram vinyl of the smile sessions was right at the register next to metallicas collectors edition vinyl ride the lightning

Oh ya.  Oh ya.  But, OH-SO oddly enough as it turned out,  BWPS came first...12 years ago.  W/O it?  This post would not exist.  And W/O certain belly aching and pining for the fjords [the early 60s] the album would have been finished and released in 1967 and THIS post/topic would not exist at all.

BUT... ... ... ... ...  ::)

Thankfully in spite of the spiteful...we have it.

Man, it's hard to believe it's been 5 years.

I like The Smile Sessions. Brian presents Smile singing with great band but they're not substitute for the BBs imo. I like those vintage vocals.

I found BWPS to be almost totally unlistenable.  I took it for what it was, a Hail Mary attempt to save a foundering solo career.  In that respect, it worked fairly well.  It didn't touch Smile either instrumentally or vocally....

I heard BWPS first, and I thought that a lot of it had to have been newly created-- this stuff was just too wacky to have been put on tape in the 60s, I thought. I never listened to any boots, so when the Smile box arrived in the mail, I was floored. "Really?! They recorded this amazing music and didn't release it?!"

Loved that box, although I don't listen to Smile much anymore. But that first night, alone with my box set and the candles and Reddi-Whip, was a magical experience  :3d

Still love my deluxe box set. It's been a while since I last opened it mind... :afro

Definitely. The Smile Sessions, MIC, the 2012 tour, and TWGMTR. It was a beautiful time to be a Beach Boys fan.  :)

Despite the fact that it was never gonna touch the original... you gotta admit that it was as good as a newly-recorded-in-2004 version possibility could have been. One can argue whether it should have been done it all, etc (I think it was a weight off Brian's back, so more power to him for doing it), but I was then, and remain now, in awe of how closely they came to replicating the original backing tracks... not to mention the vocals being a big step up for Brian at the time.

Some may dislike some of the vocal additions (I'm not crazy about the "hot as hell" lyric), but other than that, I honestly cannot conceive that anyone could say that a version recorded in 2004 could possibly have sounded better. It was quite impressive.

I don't think anything beats original 60s BB group vocals (and leads of course too).

But that moment when "Wonderful" links into "Look" on the 2004 album, *that alone* is worth the whole project happening.

I don't think the 2004 album is perfect. But c'mon, even the sometimes cranky Robert Christgau gave the 2004 album a freaking A+! Here's his capsule review:

SMiLE [Nonesuch, 2004]

There are many things I don't miss about the '60s, including long hair, LSD, revolutionary rhetoric, and folkies playing drums. But the affluent optimism that preceded and then secretly pervaded the decade's apocalyptic alienation is a lost treasure of a time when capitalism had so much slack in it that there was no pressing need to stop your mind from wandering. Brian Wilson grokked surfing because it embodied that optimism, and though I considered the legend of Smile hot air back then, this re-creation proves he had plenty more to make of it. The five titles played for minimalist whimsy on Smiley Smile mean even more orchestrated, and the newly released fragments are as strong as the whole songs they tie together. Smile's post-adolescent utopia isn't disfigured by Brian's thickened, soured 62-year-old voice. It's ennobled--the material limitations of its sunny artifice and pretentious tomfoolery acknowledged and joyfully engaged. This can only be tonic for Americans long since browbeaten into lowering their expectations by the rich men who are stealing their money. A+

I personally love BWPS. I think the two versions are important... different, but equal. I pretty much listen to both BWPS and the Smile Sessions equally. Comparing the two is so much fun :)  I absolutely prefer the BB vocals on the Smile Sessions, but there's just a polish and connectedness in BWPS that the Smile Sessions doesn't quite have, for obvious reasons I think. It feels more like a whole piece than the Smile Sessions, in my opinion. And I just feel so, so happy for Brian every time I reach the conclusion of BWPS. So happy!

I will always have a soft spot for BWPS, but it's bittersweet. It came out when my wife and I were expecting our first child...we used to listen to it into the car on our way to her prenatal doctor visits. We miscarried on 19 Oct 2004, so she wasn't with me when I went to my first BW show a few days later.

Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. It's really amazing how a piece of music can bookmark a particular feeling, even going back a long way. Sad to hear you've got that association with BWPS  :'(

The odd part is, and I'm not trying to get all mystical here....my daughter Jaymie had a weird reaction when she heard it for the first time. She said it sounded familiar, and she was humming the melody for the songs on her very first listen. Then again, she taught herself to play the piano on her own, so it's probably just ingrained.

Wow. That just gave me shivers! Brings to mind Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance. But even if it's just ingrained in her as a natural musician, that's really cool :)

Yeah...and equally as cool, she prefers 60-90s music over everything else. Favorite bands are Journey, ELO, and the BB.

Wish I was around at that time on here to witness so...  :hat

There is hope for the future :)

A "Hail Mary attempt to save a foundering solo career. "

His solo career was doing pretty well before BWPS was it not? On the road at least, which is where BWPS began.  I think there was an upward trajectory from the early tours through to Pet Sounds tour and then BWPS.

More dumb-ass comments from mikesthegreatest. Gee, I guess you're not a Brian Wilson fan. I mean, how do you come to the Beach Boys and you're not a Brian Wilson fan? It's like saying you love America and then voting for trump. By the way,mikesthegreatest  what?

Failed attempt at rewriting history. It's not like the facts haven't been written, spoken, and published for the past 15 years or so regarding how it all came together.

If you were around at the time and watched/heard Brian and his band play Our Prayer into Heroes And Villains on Conan O'Brien's old NBC show, a few years before "BWPS", you might rethink the foundering career stuff.

Yep. And to evaluate BWPS as a reording or album misses the point. It was first and foremost a Live Event. Being given at night 2 at Royal Festival Hall I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that was one of the best Live Events I have ever witnessed. Off stage was pretty incredible too...everyone was so elated at what they were witnessing, it was really unique.

BWPS as released was a studio recreation of a live event. Very, very different from the Smile Sessions. So judging each on their own appropriate context makes for more fulfilling listening. BWPS also provided a narrative for the 'album' version, which worked pretty nicely. We all have our pet grumbles, but seriously, griping about BWPS  is...it never occurred to me it would ever be a thing. Nice problem to have!

It's just more of the usual attempts to throw dirt on one of the best things fans of Brian and of Smile going back decades got to witness. It was the impossible actually happening in front of us.

I'll say it upfront - I'm biased as hell about Smile. And I wear it proudly on my sleeve. I was glued to the computer screen as others who couldn't make the trip to the UK were the night of the RFH debut reading as Matt B and others started sending back reports from the show. I sat in stunned silence when I finally got a chance to hear a tape of that show. I had tears running down my face as the preview tracks from the BWPS album started appearing in low mp3 quality and the pure power of something like In Blue Hawaii came across the speakers. And I had an incredible experience getting to see the show live in Boston when the tour hit the east coast of the US.

Again, the history rewrites will fail as long as people who were there can speak about how things really were.

:D

Excepting GIOMH, his career was not foundering.

Word up GF, good times. For some reason I keep feeling  compelled to post this link and invite Smiles to walk down memory lane:
http://earcandy_mag.tripod.com/smileliveRFH2-21-04.htm

Self-indulgent but it makes me smile. ..

Love the SMiLE Sessions.

I like the sounds in Dada sessions and Tune-X.
Tune-X is very underestimated in my opinion!

Vale

 :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro :afro
2017 will be 50th anniversary of smile. I´m waiting a realase of smile like the one of Pet Sounds.

While we watch the wonderfuls experiments of Leetwall97 that is discovering the posible sound of 1967.

Of course we can't forget the great mix of soniclovenoize and his long story of he discovering the posible order of smile.

 :bw had to publish all his smile idea for the 1967 album. not the nosense version that he realased for 2004 that influenced smile sessions.

for 2017, Smile in 1967 style (I hope they recover I Ran Vocal sessions, and we discover CHIFOTM Lyrics, and where fits Tune X).

None of Brian's solo albums exactly set the charts on fire. Where he had success was as a live act, doing the old Beach Boys hits.

SMiLE will always remain an exercise in imagination--it captures the glories and the risks of art unfettered by commerce. That's why it bothered Mike so much, even as he gamely sang VDP's lyrics to "Cabinessence." Fifty years later, we have a world struggling not to destroy itself before it can reach its true potential--and SMiLE, like the little children it celebrates, shows us the way by having survived to still remain lost and found in a meadow filled with rain--tears of joy for what the Earth might still become.

Through the generosity of friends, I was able to attend the numerous performances of Brian Wilson Presents Smile on the occasion of its debut in London. I got to hear at least 8 performances then and again in Portland with Bob Hanes in 2005. The experience of hearing it at the debut is an experience I will never forget.

I was also able to work on the 2011 Smile Box, and wrote an essay for the book issued with the set. Domenic Priore also did a great article for the 2cd box and the deluxe box. The Smile music as cut in 67 and modified in 2003 is for me a peak in Brian's creativity. Most professional musicians in bands that I know see Smile as a unique and diverse burst of creativity that is unmatched in pop music annals.

Fantastic review! I missed it at the time, ty so much for reposting! :)

Sorry if I am repeating myself, but sometimes I think Smile is the best music ever.

Oh man, this has me recalling the night of the Debut show in London. I couldn't make it, due to a relationship ending shortly before and I missed my window into getting tickets, so I, like alot of people sat huddled around my PC hitting the page refresh button every 30 seconds. I had Orange Crate Art playing in the background. I remember vividly how at the time several Smileshop members had not visited the board for a while, but on that night they were all onboard waiting for the first reports. I remember looking at my watch wondering what was happening at the venue right now. Then roughly 1 hour after the show should have ended (IIRC) we got the first exhuberant reports. The main questions were what was the song order and how did they link together. Hearing that Good Vibrations closed it was a revelation, as was the Wonderful/Look/Child sequence of the life suite.

I got my chance to see it live in Frankfurt a few weeks later, and then in Antwerp where I had the fortune of meeting Brian.

That was the moment for me.

I also recall when the CD came out in September, and playing it first followed by Sgt Peppers and remarking how it fit there. I will always have a special place for BWPS, and as a finished end product I prefer to listen to it rather than the mixed sessions. It breathes life.