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680601 Posts in 27601 Topics by 4068 Members - Latest Member: Dae Lims March 29, 2024, 05:48:00 AM
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26  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary on: August 08, 2021, 02:36:26 PM

Is anyone having "dress like the 2000's day"? Hell no, because it looks the same more or less now as it did then.

You can watch any of the endless "Law And Order" repeats from American TV from 15 years ago and it looks pretty much like it does now in 2021, minus the changes in computers and cel phones. The fashion is the same, the language is the same, the music hasn't changed much. Even the hair styles haven't changed!

Yet, if in 2000 you were to watch a TV program from 1985, the differences in all those areas would be immediate from the first 30 seconds of the show.

That tells me there is little to no true innovation in those areas and the notion of creative arts as a cross-cultural influence is and has been lessened to the point of being insignificant.

What would a stereotypical snapshot of 2007 look like? A younger person playing a video game or tapping on a smartphone? Wearing what clothes? With what kind of hair style? Listening to what? Doing what else besides clutching a smartphone constantly?

I don't know. But it doesn't seem that much different of a generalization 15 years ago from today as it looks in the present moment. And that is sad. I think too much has stagnated, despite being given more technology to connect with others and innovate as anyone ever had previous to the current day.

I'm sorry to keep picking on you, but *man*, you could *not* be more wrong. Fashion is drastically different now than it was in 2005. Even just in business wear, the lapels, ties, jacket and skirt cuts, and waist positions are all hugely different. Have you looked at some photos of what girls and women were wearing in 2004? It's practically a different planet compared to today, at least where I live. High waists, "athleisure", different cuts of dresses, rompers...it's literally as different as the '60s were from the '80s. My students in 2021 dress drastically different from the students I had in 2015, let alone 2005 (when I was a student myself)!

And the absolute same thing is true of pop music. Hip-hop in 2005 didn't sound anything like hip-hop in 2017. The entire rhythmic and sonic signature changed.

And yes, there absolutely are teenage girls doing 2000s nostalgia stuff today (low waists, fake lower back tats, navel chains, big earrings, chunky highlights) for fun.

You're doing that thing again, just like you were doing upthread about the current state of jazz, where you're generalizing based on what I would charitably call limited knowledge of the present. I don't particularly like the dominant popular culture of 2021 but its insane to claim it's remotely similar to 2005.
27  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Is 'Sounds of Summer' out of print on: August 07, 2021, 11:53:17 AM
Seems to be available now:

https://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Summer-Very-Beach-Capitol/dp/B019GR4O0E/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Sounds+Of+Summer&qid=1628253319&sr=8-3

It says 14 left in stock, which is not an untypical message to see, and surely they will replenish their supply. This is a fairly common occurrence...something sells out temporarily, then they get resupplied.

EDIT: granted, some copies available to buy are "used", but there are also "new" copies currently available. This situation probably wanes and waxes, but surely has to do with the current season (summer) and the fact that it's on the charts (meaning, it's selling). Demand is likely enhanced by the return of the 24x7 Sirius XM Beach Boys channel.

Those are third-party sellers. It does, in fact, appear that the Sounds of Summer compilation is currently not in print on CD in the US. I don't know if that means it's been permanently discontinued (I doubt it though). For a while Amazon.ca was listing Sounds of Summer as a "manufactured on demand" CD-R title, as opposed to a factory-pressed CD.

The LP version is still in the catalogue.

It is interesting that "Amazon's Choice" for the Beach Boys has shifted over to the 2012 "Greatest Hits" album with "That's Why God Made the Radio" as the leadoff track.

I tend to assume that its continued chart action has a lot to do with streaming services associating single-song streams with that specific compilation.
28  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary on: July 30, 2021, 01:26:22 PM
I feel like this thread got way off on a tangent and it was partly/mainly my fault, getting into the weeds of the value of academic study of popular music, and we haven't really been discussing Joshilyn's premise.

I think the issue I have with the idea is twofold:

1> It was presented as a "return" to certain kinds of song form or orchestration but actually it's always seemed to me that those elements were vestigial survivals in Brian's art rather than something he "added in" as he matured: just listen to how the strings are arranged on "The Surfer Moon," it's pure Lawrence Welk, and that's where Brian's arranging started from (although I know he had help on those pieces). When Brian became more "authentic" about expressing his individuality in orchestrations, that lineage is much less apparent, except when he's doing style pastiche like the bossa arrangement of "Busy Doin' Nothin'". And indeed, although pieces like "Summer Means New Love" and "In the Back of My Mind" use more or less conventional section arrangements (albeit interesting ones), the strings after 1965 are used much more idiosyncratically, less as a "section." Even Pet Sounds reserves string section arrangements for isolated episodes that sound influenced by Max Steiner more than they do anything from jazz/pop per se, even though there are lots of string parts throughout. This increases with Smile and Brian doesn't really get back into using strings as a "section" until things like "Our Sweet Love."

Similar things could probably be said about the use of horns.

2> The vestigial survival of what we might call the "Welkian" arranging elements in Brian's early orchestrations are very specific and personal to his background, and I don't think Jan Berry's background or Spector's background or Jack Nitzsche's background were comparable. Spector and Berry were both mainly concerned with "functional" orchestration, i.e. with generating sonic effects on the radio. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like the Latin elements Spector liked to use.) Brian learned how to do that from both of them, but his use of orchestration for style purposes (rather than functional purposes) was based on his own personal context, i.e. his dad.

Thank you for this -- I'd much rather talk about the idea than the merits of academics.

I think you've hit upon a good point, that in and of itself might be worth exploring, and one could look narrowly at just Brian, or more broadly: A dynamic tension, perhaps, between the stock influences you mentioned, and the genuinely original-leaning impulses of the arranger/producer.  Indeed, the "less apparent lineage" is the one that is interesting to me, and sort of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about developing a vocabulary; you know, where did some of that stuff come from?  And what brought it out?  Clearly, as you say, Brian never really was without that Welkian/Murry Wilsonian impulse, and in some ways never did fully move past it.  But when he transcended that, where was that coming from?

Part of my working answer to that at the moment is that the studio musicians brought it out of him, and that is really a big part of the full premise behind the direction I would take something like a full study.  In fact, I see my project's protagonist as the studio musicians, and Brian as a sort of featured auxiliary character.  Come to think of it, your point about Nitzsche and Berry is useful because I think I need those people in the narrative to provide a certain amount of context.  Nitzsche took arranging classes, and Jan Berry came by his arranging skills in a fairly formal way, even if he was semi-self taught.  My inclusion of those two and their ilk in this conversation links them with Brian in a specific way, viz. I think that when they were arranging their music, they considered themselves to be doing a certain kind of music, writing a chart that was not Jazz, was not Classical, but distinctly "pop" whatever that meant to them at the time.  But Brian was effectively musically illiterate, so he didn't write charts (as such).  I wonder if some of his innovations were borne out of the translation effort from his singing parts at musicians to their perception of it and their attempts to get what he wanted.  So what started as a Welkian thing in Brian's mind ends up getting morphed into something a little more murky, lineage-wise, after essential playing musical telephone games.  But yeah, I do wonder where something so unique as, say, the duet between the pizzicato contrabass and the Fender bass on the verses of Here Today comes from.  Totally unique.

Ultimately, that was a bit of a ramble.  But again I appreciate your engagement, maggie.

Indeed, Joshilyn, I think "game of musical telephone" is a good way to characterize how Brian grouped the instruments available to him in search of certain feels. So he would take combinations and part-writing that Jan and Spector had used for functional purposes (e.g. the dual bass thing) and abstract them from their functional purpose, to see what sounds he could make.

My sense though is that his approach to orchestration was so influential, both because it was so artistically successful but mostly just by virtue of being the producer of the most successful and hit-producing rock & roll band in America, that it's hard to separate Brian as a reflection of his moment from Brian as essentially the creator of a new style. And, as I've suggested, the style came about in an ad-hoc fashion by abstracting pieces of the "Welkian" vocabulary and the functional vocabulary of Jan & Spector, among others.

It's like Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker undoubtedly had a rich basket of influences. But a lot of what followed Charlie Parker involved taking what Parker did and abstracting it from that original context. I kind of think this is what we're dealing with in the "de-jazzing" of pop is other producers taking what Brian abstracted from his Murry context (and from Jan and Spector) and abstracting it even further.

Is it really true that Brian "didn't write charts (as such)", or am I misunderstanding what you mean? I gather that a lot of the parts did come out of improvisations, and that many were simply dictated ("head arrangements"), but I had been under the impression that he did hand out a fair amount of parts on staff paper in his own idiosyncratic hand.
29  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary on: July 30, 2021, 07:48:04 AM
I feel like this thread got way off on a tangent and it was partly/mainly my fault, getting into the weeds of the value of academic study of popular music, and we haven't really been discussing Joshilyn's premise.

I think the issue I have with the idea is twofold:

1> It was presented as a "return" to certain kinds of song form or orchestration but actually it's always seemed to me that those elements were vestigial survivals in Brian's art rather than something he "added in" as he matured: just listen to how the strings are arranged on "The Surfer Moon," it's pure Lawrence Welk, and that's where Brian's arranging started from (although I know he had help on those pieces). When Brian became more "authentic" about expressing his individuality in orchestrations, that lineage is much less apparent, except when he's doing style pastiche like the bossa arrangement of "Busy Doin' Nothin'". And indeed, although pieces like "Summer Means New Love" and "In the Back of My Mind" use more or less conventional section arrangements (albeit interesting ones), the strings after 1965 are used much more idiosyncratically, less as a "section." Even Pet Sounds reserves string section arrangements for isolated episodes that sound influenced by Max Steiner more than they do anything from jazz/pop per se, even though there are lots of string parts throughout. This increases with Smile and Brian doesn't really get back into using strings as a "section" until things like "Our Sweet Love."

Similar things could probably be said about the use of horns.

2> The vestigial survival of what we might call the "Welkian" arranging elements in Brian's early orchestrations are very specific and personal to his background, and I don't think Jan Berry's background or Spector's background or Jack Nitzsche's background were comparable. Spector and Berry were both mainly concerned with "functional" orchestration, i.e. with generating sonic effects on the radio. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like the Latin elements Spector liked to use.) Brian learned how to do that from both of them, but his use of orchestration for style purposes (rather than functional purposes) was based on his own personal context, i.e. his dad.
30  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian’s involvement in solo albums on: July 30, 2021, 05:48:35 AM
TWGMTR (the song) is a situation where I suspect Brian contributed the title and not much else. And yet, that title is the song. He clearly deserves a credit, given that the entire piece is built around it.

Yet, to take alternate examples from the same dang records, the song "Shelter" on TWGMTR (the album) seems to be almost all written by Brian. The chorus could be Joe, but the rest of its weird little sections sound very much like something BW would cook up.

I believe it has been acknowledged that Brian's credit on "That's Why God..." is a courtesy credit for coming up with the title, and for the verses being derived from "Keep an Eye on Summer."


More like "Your Summer Dream", actually.


You're absolutely right, the verse starts the same as "Your Summer Dream". It's the chorus that's similar to "Keep an Eye on Summer."
31  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian’s involvement in solo albums on: July 29, 2021, 01:06:34 PM
TWGMTR (the song) is a situation where I suspect Brian contributed the title and not much else. And yet, that title is the song. He clearly deserves a credit, given that the entire piece is built around it.

Yet, to take alternate examples from the same dang records, the song "Shelter" on TWGMTR (the album) seems to be almost all written by Brian. The chorus could be Joe, but the rest of its weird little sections sound very much like something BW would cook up.

I believe it has been acknowledged that Brian's credit on "That's Why God..." is a courtesy credit for coming up with the title, and for the verses being derived from "Keep an Eye on Summer."

It's funny that you ascribe the chorus of "Shelter" to Joe Thomas, considering that it is clearly very closely based on "Thinkin' 'Bout You Baby"/"Darlin'". I believe "Shelter" is indeed one of the songs that Joe Thomas himself ascribed largely to Brian.

I gather that the opening verse lyrics and melody of "Summer's Gone" are 100% Brian and then Jon Bon Jovi came up with the rest of the song including all subsequent melodic variations.

Joe Thomas has a signature ascending/descending chord figure -- "Whatever Happened" comes to mind -- that I think typifies his "brainstorming" process and helps identify the songs he initiated.
32  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary on: July 28, 2021, 06:50:52 PM

I'm just giving my opinions, coming from a background of being a jazz musician and currently teaching jazz music. I am talking about the state of things as I see them and as other jazz musicians I've discussed this with have seen it too. It doesn't mean that's the state of things overall spoken as a definitive fact, but it's a pretty common opinion that jazz overall has stagnated in terms of commercial viability, popularity, and even the general public having a basic knowledge of any jazz artists from the past 40 years except perhaps for the Marsalis brothers due to their visibility on TV. Unless you're really into the jazz scene, it's just not in the public eye, and has become - sadly - a niche genre where the older back-catalog classic albums outsell anything new on a regular basis. The most exposure a lot of listeners under the age of 25 have gotten with jazz, if they're not musicians, has come in lecture halls or music appreciation courses. They're not hearing jazz and connecting to it in too many cases.

I never said nor suggested that my personal feelings or historical awareness were any greater or lesser than yours, so I'm not sure where that statement is coming from. I'm just calling it as I see it, and it's my opinion. However, it is true that legacy albums like Kind Of Blue or A Love Supreme continue to outsell and remain more visible than the bulk of modern jazz, and a majority of the charts played at the average jazz gig are songs written over 45 years ago or songs and standards from the Real Book, because that's what people know and that's what people want to hear. In my opinion I don't know of many modern jazz songs that have taken their place next to those standards, and I doubt a lot of them will because many of the compositions are too complex and lack a melodic component that listeners can attach themselves to and groove with. Too many composers seem to go for mathematical, polyrhythmic grooves and angular versus linear (and memorable) melodies, if it's not outright discordant harmony underneath everything.

I think as jazz became more intellectual, and things like dancing to jazz were frowned upon if not outright mocked (see the Ken Burns documentary for examples), the genre itself lost the general public. Then it turned into a situation where it felt like various academics and experts were trying to tell people why they should like jazz and why they're wrong not to versus celebrating the music and trying to reconnect the music to the popular culture, as if that would be a bad thing to return to the 30's and 40's when the kids would keep track of all the big bands and the musicians like kids today may follow the Kardashians or the latest K-Pop boy bands.

I think striving for sophistication and a higher intellectual plane in music is a great pursuit, but not if it basically takes the enjoyment of the music out of the sphere of the general public you're trying to connect with, and it requires a lecture from a professor to explain why someone should like the music they're just not feeling.



We're veering way off topic, but there has been a rush of new jazz musicians in just the last couple of years -- Kamasi Washington and Jon Batiste in the US, and Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, and Moses Boyd in the UK -- who have been racking up major concert tours, big streaming numbers, awards, and a huge amount of press coverage, the kind not seen for jazz musicians since Wynton. AND, unlike Wynton, their audience is almost 100% young people. Bands like Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming sure as hell aren't rehashing Kind of Blue or Bitches Brew.

Whether they are any good or not, and whether or not they deserve the attention (I am agnostic on these questions), they're a big deal, and they clearly attest to the music's continuing vitality. I teach 18-22s and many of them are excited about this music just as they are by Lil Uzi Vert or what have you.

I would think that someone who makes a living teaching jazz would be aware that jazz is kind of having a huge youth moment right now??? Clearly the academy hasn't been cramping the music's style because the Shabaka projects are about as un-academic as jazz gets these days.

I'm sorry that I reacted testily to your post, it was just the whole "I am a jazz musician, I teach jazz" preamble that made it sound like you were trying to pull rank on me and/or Joshilyn. Honestly, "all the jazz musicians I know agree with me" gives the same impression.
33  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary on: July 28, 2021, 01:01:49 PM
All true, which is exactly why I'm trying to narrow the focus down to something worth commenting on.  Doing scholarship on popular music is hard, also, because there's so little of it to build on.

I can relate to what you're saying. I don't do academic scholarship anymore, but I was very much in that world for around 10 years, and I did actually plan to write something on Brian but I couldn't crack the nut. I ended up writing about jazz instead.

While there is a fair amount of scholarship on boomer pop/rock, IMO there is still no good academic treatment (musicological or otherwise) of Brian Wilson specifically and why he's interesting. It's just a lot of cliches and "received wisdom."

The problem, as ever, is the knowledge gap: there just aren't enough musicologists with the social history awareness, and not enough social historians with the musicological awareness.

Just to preface, this is coming from someone who studied jazz, wrote about jazz, played jazz, and teaches jazz: The death knell of jazz seems to have been when the music was overly intellectualized and it became more common to read about or be lectured about how great it is versus hearing actual examples of how great it is in the present day. I think, sadly, certain circles intellectualized the sheer visceral fun out of the genre. I'm hard pressed to find one example of truly new jazz music made in the past 40 years that has struck a deep chord with me. When that does happen, it's usually a performer playing either a version of an old standard from 80 years ago, or playing in the style of a previous innovator. Modern jazz composers have by and large forgotten the emotion of jazz, and how it connected with the general public at one time to become the pop music genre of its day.

That's why I'm kept calm in the long-term outlook of music appreciation whenever I see new, young performers singing God Only Knows, or younger listeners getting excited about Beatles music and wearing the associated T-shirts and other wear. They're actively living the music, and not going to a lecture hall to be told how great it is. And that's the line which I supposed has to be walked like walking on eggshells, so the music of Brian and his peers doesn't become so intellectualized that it gets out of reach to the general public as sadly happened with modern jazz.

With all due respect -- and to a degree I share some of your evident despair with where jazz has ended up -- you're talking about a personal feeling, not the actual state of things. Saying "there is a lot of academic study of jazz" and "I don't like contemporary jazz" (or even "contemporary jazz sucks") is not actually making any kind of causal connection between one and the other, even if you are right that jazz has lost its vitality. And as to that point: I happen to love a lot of contemporary jazz, I happen to perceive its originality, and I don't see why my personal feeling about it or my historical awareness of it are less legitimate than yours.

Pursuant to what Joshilyn said just before this post, I think there is actually a lot of very good scholarship of pop music that hasn't managed to destroy the vitality of the art. For example, I think there's a lot of more than decent scholarship of hip-hop, both from a musicological and from a social history point of view. And the kids still like it, so I don't think "intellectualization" has hurt (or has the potential to hurt) anything.

I absolutely support Joshilyn's project of trying to do an academic study of Brian's music, I just don't agree with the premise of this specific thread.
34  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary on: July 28, 2021, 12:18:12 PM
All true, which is exactly why I'm trying to narrow the focus down to something worth commenting on.  Doing scholarship on popular music is hard, also, because there's so little of it to build on.

I can relate to what you're saying. I don't do academic scholarship anymore, but I was very much in that world for around 10 years, and I did actually plan to write something on Brian but I couldn't crack the nut. I ended up writing about jazz instead.

While there is a fair amount of scholarship on boomer pop/rock, IMO there is still no good academic treatment (musicological or otherwise) of Brian Wilson specifically and why he's interesting. It's just a lot of cliches and "received wisdom."

The problem, as ever, is the knowledge gap: there just aren't enough musicologists with the social history awareness, and not enough social historians with the musicological awareness.
35  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary on: July 28, 2021, 10:30:05 AM
As many of you may know, one of my primary goals has been to "academize" the work of the Beach Boys; to package it in a way that shows off its intrinsic worth as part of the glories of Western Art.  A perspective that I'm now trying to suss out is the idea that Brian, alongside his faithful studio musicians, was a part of a movement within the Hollywood popular music scene that was developing what I am calling, at the moment, an authentic pop vocabulary.

Here's what I mean by that --  the kind of arrangements and, in particular, orchestrations that Brian and a handful of his peers were doing were a natural extension of the popular music that came before.  These were traditions that emerged directly from a taproot of popular classical music, big band, swing, and rock 'n' roll.

In contrast, after this movement died out (for various reasons) my contention is that, rather than join a developing continuum of innovation, when pop/rock arrangers and producers dipped into instrumentation outside the now standard rock set-up, these arrangers are simply grafting a foreign vocabulary onto their own limited pop-rock vocabulary -- it's not authentic; it's a chimera.

Now, I would appreciate two forms of feedback:

1.  Does this position make sense?
2.  If you buy it, can you help me come up with a handful of arrangers/producers who were part of this movement with Brian?  I think that, for instance, you could put Jack Nitzsche in there, Jan Berry, Billy Strange...etc.  

Thanks!  I'm hoping to write a paper on this.

I really appreciate the work you do, but I don't accept your premise at all.

It is true that pop music has gradually shed the specific type of chromaticism and orchestration Brian and others derived from "light" classical music, swing, etc.

But it was gradual -- and Brian's work (and the Beatles, etc. etc. etc.) was a part of that process. Something like "Do It Again" bears more of a relationship to modern studio pop music than it does to Irving Berlin.

Pop music became less and less chromatic and less orchestrated over a long period of time and, even though Brian's own music is/was highly chromatic and highly orchestrated for pop music in the "rock" era, it was still part of that evolution.

The move from the high chromaticism of 1940s pop to something like Adele is a gradual process and it's a bit like a "ship of Theseus" trying to figure out where the line is that it lost its connection to jazz/classical music. There is no moment you can point to that is the turning point, and even if there *was* a moment, I don't think Brian Wilson is it.
36  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian’s involvement in solo albums on: July 28, 2021, 10:22:11 AM
Secondly I recall Brian being asked about some of the lyrics (maybe "Midnight's Another Day") and Brian's answer is 'I don't know, Scott wrote that'.

Well it's true, though. Scott wrote almost all of the lyrics for the album. Everything except "Oxygen" and "Good Kind of Love." Brian says almost the exact same thing in his "autobiography" about "Your Imagination" ("I didn't write that line, Joe did").

It would be interesting if Brian genuinely doesn't consider that he wrote "Midnight's Another Day." I mean, in a certain sense he *didn't* write it. He wrote a quite different song that Scott adapted into "Midnight's." But to my knowledge that track is not typical of their process on the rest of the album.

37  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian’s involvement in solo albums on: July 28, 2021, 10:18:23 AM
If we're talking about the little chanting piece Brian created based on TLOS, it is on the album.

It's just a hidden snippet after "Southern California." About 20 seconds or so. I've timestamped it here: https://youtu.be/E3taL_EbgTg?t=250

Yeah, I'm as perplexed by what they're talking about as you are. Maybe they're referring to some other fragment that isn't on the CD?
38  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian’s involvement in solo albums on: July 26, 2021, 12:46:19 PM
In reading about the reevaluation of some of Brian’s solo albums, it brought up a question I’ve always wanted to ask here. What is Brian’s actual degree of involvement in the songwriting and production of his solo albums? I find it hard to fully enjoy a lot of these albums, because it seems so many others were involved with them, that there wasn’t a lot of pure Brian input. I also know he has to deal with mental illness, and wonder how much this affects his abilities to oversee projects.

I remember when the Wild Honey and Friends box sets came out, everyone was excited to hear how much Brian had produced these albums. I wish we had something similar with the solo albums to shed some light.

Thanks for any answers.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about Brian's capabilities or lack thereof, and generally I find them unconvincing. Yes, many of the 21st-century Brian projects are collaborative, but I think there's ample evidence of who did what. Tl;Dr: essentially Brian generates the melodies and vocal arrangements, and the rest is collaborative to varying degrees.

Some basics that I've put together over the years:

Imagination/That's Why God/No Pier Pressure: apparently these all drew from a common well of songs where generally Joe Thomas would be running through progressions and if Brian heard something he liked, he would improvise a melody on top. Joe would then wrangle this material into songs. Then for the first two projects Brian would focus on the vocal arrangements while Joe would arrange the band. For No Pier Pressure, Joe left the project fairly early on and Brian worked with Paul von Mertens and the guests on the arrangements.

Gershwin/Disney: Paul von Mertens would work up the basic band arrangements which Brian would modify to greater or lesser degrees as he saw fit. Paul would then handle the orchestrations while Brian arranged the vocals

Christmas: I think Brian was really in the driver's seat for this one. The two new songs were repurposed from existing, relatively recent Brian compositions.

Smile: Darian Sahanaja essentially put this together, albeit in close consultation with Brian

I Just Wasn't Made...: Reportedly no production/arrangement involvement from Brian

That Lucky Old Sun: Brian generated all the basic tunes in what was apparently a tremendous late rush of creativity, some of the lyrics, and the basic band arrangements, which Scott Bennett then had the job of reshaping -- to make everything fit together, changing tempos and dynamics, adding instruments, reconfiguring songs and then writing the bulk of the lyrics to fit the theme.

I'm sure I've made some mistakes here but that's what I gather off the top of my head. I haven't mentioned the 1988 album or Gettin In Over My Head because those projects are a bit more mysterious.

Your impressions seem about right. I think most of what you say is probably correct. I did think that Scott drove the songwriting a bit more than Brian on TLOS.

I think Brian had the concept / initial inspiration for the theme, but I somehow think Scotty did most of the writing. Not to suggest Brian didn't contribute enormously. Just my impression.

Thinking back, that "All Day - Lucky Old Sun Theme" can't remember what it ended up being called - dropped from the album, but performed live a few times - that's gotta be pure Brian.

The thing is, so much of the working material for TLOS has leaked, the songwriting credits are right there, there are multiple witnesses. There's the friend of Brian's, Ray Lawlor IIRC, that he would call in the middle of the night and play songs for, apparently in a state of extreme excitement.

 There are songs credited to Brian with no Scott involvement (Oxygen, Good Kind of Love, Message Man, O Mi Amor). Before he committed his hideous crime, Scott was very transparent about what his role was, and what he said then lines up with reality. For example, he took "Message Man" and shaped it into "Midnight's Another Day". You can hear the process by comparing the two songs. The music came from Brian, the structure came largely from Scott, the band arrangements were collaborative with a bit more band (Scott, Darian, and Paul), the vocal arrangements are all Brian.

Scott wrote most of the lyrics and helped shape the fragments into songs. He was not in the driver's seat, he was not a mere amanuensis, it was a collaboration.

The conspiracy theories around TLOS stemmed almost entirely from three meagre but concrete facts:

1) Scott sang the incomplete demo for "Southern California"
2) Scott sang part of "California Role"
3) Scott apparently said he did "a whole lot more" than write the lyrics

#3 is explained above, #2 was clearly a stylistic choice (or maybe that song did originate with Scott), and #1 was clearly because they had JUST slapped the song together on the eve of rehearsals and knew it would be the climax of the whole set/project, but they didn't have time to have Brian put together a satisfactory demo vocal. The song wasn't even finished being written yet!

In my very humble and non-expert opinion, the idea that Brian had a late spurt of motivation and creativity to do TLOS is much more believable than the idea that everyone involved in the project is lying. As early as the Christmas album, and partly (I'm sure) due to the rapturous reception of the Smile revival, Brian was really hyped to be in the studio again. Hence the almost continuous flurry of musical activity on his part stretching from the Christmas LP to NPP. And, of course, the motivation and creativity noticeably petered out toward the end of that period.

There is this idea among the conspiracists that the idea of Brian's mastery of songwriting and production is the main selling point of these records, which is why everyone is lying about his lack of involvement. But the thing is, beyond a small number of clued-in fans, the greater music-buying public cares about these things about as much as they care about who writes Madonna's songs. And very few people in Brian's organization stand to gain from minimizing their own involvement in the making of the music (particularly Scott Bennett, whose personal reputation and career are -- justifiably -- destroyed). And no one is claiming a greater role in the music-making for Brian than the evidence bears out, even Brian (from whom the information about the songwriting process with Thomas comes).
39  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian’s involvement in solo albums on: July 25, 2021, 04:55:01 PM
In reading about the reevaluation of some of Brian’s solo albums, it brought up a question I’ve always wanted to ask here. What is Brian’s actual degree of involvement in the songwriting and production of his solo albums? I find it hard to fully enjoy a lot of these albums, because it seems so many others were involved with them, that there wasn’t a lot of pure Brian input. I also know he has to deal with mental illness, and wonder how much this affects his abilities to oversee projects.

I remember when the Wild Honey and Friends box sets came out, everyone was excited to hear how much Brian had produced these albums. I wish we had something similar with the solo albums to shed some light.

Thanks for any answers.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about Brian's capabilities or lack thereof, and generally I find them unconvincing. Yes, many of the 21st-century Brian projects are collaborative, but I think there's ample evidence of who did what. Tl;Dr: essentially Brian generates the melodies and vocal arrangements, and the rest is collaborative to varying degrees.

Some basics that I've put together over the years:

Imagination/That's Why God/No Pier Pressure: apparently these all drew from a common well of songs where generally Joe Thomas would be running through progressions and if Brian heard something he liked, he would improvise a melody on top. Joe would then wrangle this material into songs. Then for the first two projects Brian would focus on the vocal arrangements while Joe would arrange the band. For No Pier Pressure, Joe left the project fairly early on and Brian worked with Paul von Mertens and the guests on the arrangements.

Gershwin/Disney: Paul von Mertens would work up the basic band arrangements which Brian would modify to greater or lesser degrees as he saw fit. Paul would then handle the orchestrations while Brian arranged the vocals

Christmas: I think Brian was really in the driver's seat for this one. The two new songs were repurposed from existing, relatively recent Brian compositions.

Smile: Darian Sahanaja essentially put this together, albeit in close consultation with Brian

I Just Wasn't Made...: Reportedly no production/arrangement involvement from Brian

That Lucky Old Sun: Brian generated all the basic tunes in what was apparently a tremendous late rush of creativity, some of the lyrics, and the basic band arrangements, which Scott Bennett then had the job of reshaping -- to make everything fit together, changing tempos and dynamics, adding instruments, reconfiguring songs and then writing the bulk of the lyrics to fit the theme.

I'm sure I've made some mistakes here but that's what I gather off the top of my head. I haven't mentioned the 1988 album or Gettin In Over My Head because those projects are a bit more mysterious.
40  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Smile Revelations on Feel Flows? on: June 22, 2021, 06:55:30 AM
'hile I prefer to take Smiley Smile on its own terms, Fall Breaks is also, to my mind, the track most strongly connected to Smile (apart from H&V/GV) - the tag to Wind Chimes is also firmly in that category (moreso than the actual SS track in some ways!). Little Bird, Let the Wind Blow, and CCW, and some of the Friends-era instrumentals and outtakes also fit that group (totally respect the Way Too Long argument, though that never floated my boat quite as much as it should). A Desper engineered early-70s Smile could have been incredible. I'd love to hear any fantasy remix recreations incorporating the 'roll-your-own' treats dispensed on Feel Flows!


I'm having a lot of trouble understanding what you're suggesting here. "Fall Breaks" is clearly "connected to Smile" in the sense that it's based on "Fire," "Little Bird" has a bit of "Child" in it, "Can't Wait Too Long" has bits of "Wind Chimes," and "Cool Cool Water" has various Smile pieces in it as well.

But to my knowledge "Let the Wind Blow" and the Friends stuff (e.g. "Diamond Head") have absolutely nothing to do with Smile at all. Brian didn't even compose most of "Diamond Head", I thought?
41  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Bruce's claim that \ on: June 11, 2021, 01:46:21 PM
Bruce is an odd character in a Beach Boys story full of odd characters.  AFAIK, he's never had anything resembling an ownership stake in the group.  Carl was paying him on a per-show basis in the early days.  And who knows, maybe Mike still pays him that way.   He started singing on, I think, California Girls, and is of course loud and clear on Pet Sounds and Smile.  Was he paid for that?  He certainly wasn't part of the recording deal with Capitol.   Or was he just a guest like a Dean Torrence or a Billy Hinsche or a Marilyn  singing on the record on an informal basis?  Did he care?   Beginning with Wild Honey, I think, Bruce started playing on BB tracks. Again, he wasn't legally part of the recording act, so was he paid like any other session musician?


I could be completely mistaken, but I believe Bruce plays bass on some Summer Days tracks (as did Al and Carl). I'm a little foggy on how involved he was in Smiley Smile.

Big talk to a guy who was better at being a beach boy knock off before becoming a beach boy. Then hardly contributing songs. Him and Al have got to be some of the luckiest musicians of all time.

Bruce apparently played the central role in arranging the vocals for the Surf's Up album. He was pretty significant on Sunflower as well. There's probably a fair amount of Bruce in the arranging on 20/20 as well, although those sessions seem to be a bit more mysterious. But essentially, during that period, when Brian was less "available," Bruce became the main vocal arranger. He actually bore a pretty heavy burden arranging their records when the band as a whole were at a low ebb commercially, but still a high point creatively.

I think it goes without saying that Surf's Up is more successfully arranged and produced, vocally and instrumentally, than Carl & the Passions, and Bruce deserves a ton of the credit for that. Even if you leave aside "Day in the Life of a Tree" and "'Til I Die" and credit those to Brian, and give Carl the vast majority of the credit for "Feel Flows", there's still a lot of fine music-making that Bruce made happen, including putting the title track together (alongside Carl). I think it's significant that we still don't know what a true SMiLE version of "Surf's Up" would have sounded like and when Brian revived it, he based his arrangement on the Carl-Bruce reconstruction.

I also don't believe this assessment is fair to Al, who arguably had the most demanding vocal role in the live band for many years, and played a lot of instrumental parts too in the studio (often holding down the bass chair when Brian had largely abandoned that instrument). Certainly during the Blondie/Ricky era, Al was working about as hard as Carl in the live show, if not in the studio.

So while it's probably true that Bruce has been pretty much coasting and counting his money for 40 years, and Al to a lesser degree, on no account do I consider either of them to be among "the luckiest musicians of all time." It's true that Al can't really write (most of his "originals" seem to be recycled Kingston Trio tunes) but I don't think his writing could have really added much to a band that also had Brian, Dennis, Carl, and Mike, not to mention pretty decent taste in covers.

Bruce is a hard guy to like for several reasons -- his politics and musical wimpiness chief among them -- but he's a talented guy. And I find it baffling that anyone would have an unkind word to say about Al.
42  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: All I Wanna do - Lead vocals: Love with Johnston? on: May 30, 2021, 06:51:41 PM
"A gentle thought comes in my mind" is all Mike. Not a Mike you usually hear, but it's Mike.

Bruce's "all I wanna do" refrain could be construed as a co-lead vocal in a way, but it is just one component of the backing vocal round. Brian and Mike sing the chorus lead in harmony. Everyone but Dennis is on it.

WHOA. I had no idea that part was Mike. The only other falsetto of his I can think of is his parody of Brian on "Cassius Love vs. Sonny Wilson."
43  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Smile box / LP out of print? on: February 08, 2021, 08:43:53 AM
Its kinda funny to think that for quite a few years this was the one studio album (I know it's a really a comp but you know what I mean) you could almost definitely expect to find brand new while browsing your average brick and mortar shop.

To be fair, the single CD version (identical to disc 1 of the 2-disc version) is still available.
44  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Why did Dennis gradually end up mostly writing ballads? on: December 21, 2020, 08:41:54 AM
I might be in a minority but all my favourite Dennis songs are of the uptempo/soulful flavour. I like a few of the ballads a lot but I feel he really under-nurtured his ability to write great uptempo, commercial songs, especially from about '70 onwards. Did this have something to do with the fact that songs like Slip on Through and Sound of Free went out as singles and bombed? Did the trauma of the Manson experience + change in lifestyle upon meeting Barbara just naturally result in less jaunty songs about picking up girls in his car? Or maybe he just didn't enjoy writing the rockers as much - I'm reminded of Paul McCartney talking about how it's much harder to write a good upbeat tune cos there's less to work with.

Anyway, interested to hear peoples thoughts as this does perplex me somewhat.

Not sure I agree with the premise -- about half of POB is midtempo or uptempo. It has five tracks that could definitively be called ballads, plus "Time" which is kind of a mixed case.


The Bambu stuff is pretty mixed in terms of tempo too.

A better question might be why most listeners seem to value Dennis's ballads over his other material. But I don't think Dennis's post-Sunflower material is any more downtempo on average than his '60s material.
45  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Is Brian still actively recording? on: December 16, 2020, 01:12:06 PM
There has been the odd social media post during the last few years showing him singing in the studio or something like that and I’m not sure that the outcome of all those sessions has been revealed. It does seem that he has been less active more recently though in fact I’m not sure how long ago the last post of this kind was.

I assume that was related to the parts Brian recorded for Kesha, Janelle Monae, and perhaps the Long Promised Road documentary.

I think Brian has pretty much retired from recording his own new stuff and the completion of "Run James Run" was sort of a farewell to that kind of thing.

Apparently there was a definitive "no" to any new BB reunion recording.
46  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Musicianship of each of the Beach Boys? on: November 28, 2020, 02:46:22 PM
Lately, because of Feel Flows, I wonder about Bruce’s mandolin skills. Did Ed Carter or someone else teach him how to play the intro he wanted for Disney Girls and that’s all he knew? Or is something else hiding there?

The mandolin is not difficult to play on a functional level. Bruce obviously knows how to play guitar and since a mandolin is fifths-tuned, all you have to do is take the fingerings for the four lowest strings of a guitar (or bass) and reverse them.
47  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Musicianship of each of the Beach Boys? on: November 27, 2020, 10:11:02 AM
I'll tell you what will make you appreciate Carl's talents: get in a tribute band and try playing the "Sloop John B" figure while holding down a vocal part.

It's not shredding, but most musicians can't do that. Clapton probably couldn't (though maybe he could).

Same goes for the bass line on that track for that matter. I remember "being Brian" with some tribute band and reaching for that high F while holding that bass part down and I swear I teleported to Jupiter in so doing.

That's what I mean when I mentioned Al's acoustic guitar/vocal performance of "SJB" on that radio program in '83. It's been years since I've heard it, and the part he was playing might not have been the exact part that Carl played live, but it was definitely a picked arpeggio part, and he sang it while playing it. Maybe it wasn't the entire song, but not having noticed much guitar-wise from Al previously, I was definitely impressed that he could do that. EDIT: the acoustic guitar arpeggio on "Lookin' At Tomorrow" is Al, and presumably that on the intro to "Santa Ana Winds" is as well. Obviously he added his vocal parts to those after first laying down the guitar parts, so a little bit different scenarios - but still impressive picking!

That's all just the basic folk-revival fingerpicking stuff that was Al's musical foundation (Kingston Trio, etc.) There's not much technical challenge in it. For example, Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez played parts that are at least that intricate on their '60s recordings, and neither of them is considered a very impressive guitarist (though I think they are both underrated in that respect).

I think Al was a pretty damn good bassist, but his guitar playing is simply functional. True of most of the boys on most of their instruments, except for Carl (one of the greatest surf guitarists) and Dennis (no master, but one of the most exciting drummers of his era).

As for Bruce, I don't know that I buy that he was some kind of virtuoso, but his Old Grey Whistle Test solo performance of "Disney Girls" is more impressive than I had given him credit for. He reharmonizes the song in an interesting way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4m5SfdZ_n4
48  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: David Crosby comments on Mike Love...Go David! on: October 23, 2020, 06:38:19 AM
Another guy who can't stand Mike Love, much less has any respect for the guy.

https://guitar.com/news/music-news/david-crosby-beach-boys-mike-love/

Hilarious addendum to this story: Brian Wilson's social media today posted a new meme (dated October 2020) of him lavishing praise on CSN. I'm sure no-one will read that as a tacit endorsement of Croz's comments!
49  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: The Beach Boys trying to sack Bruce around Sunflower on: August 16, 2020, 10:34:57 AM
The way I see it Bruce was not a founding member of that group, he joined 4 years after they formed and what 9 or 10 albums in, and dozens of hit singles later? So he really had no ground to give any sort of authority. I’m sure the others valued his input and music but he did not contribute a lot to the band, not his fault but more the fact they had Brian, Mike, Carl and Dennis doing a lot of the work.

You're not wrong -- actually your figure of "9 or 10 albums in" is exactly right, depending on whether you count Concert.

He can be first heard on the 16th "hit" Beach Boys side, if you define "hit" as a top 40 song. Technically their 12th top 40 single. ("California Girls.")

I think you're right that it was inevitable that a clash was coming as Bruce became more prominent on the albums, starting with 20/20. Particularly on Surf's Up when he was carrying a lot of the arranging weight that Brian had abdicated, and given that there was really no-one else in the band who was able to do that, no-one should be surprised that he got a little big for his britches and that a blow-up took place. Things were a bit more balanced on Sunflower because Brian and Dennis were more involved, although again Bruce was the only really capable arranger in the band aside from Brian at this point.
50  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: What actually happened to Dennis' aborted solo album in '72? on: August 12, 2020, 09:13:26 AM
Cuddle Up, Make It Good and Only With You succeeded the solo album sessions, Lady and Sound of Free preceded them (you could maybe count Sound of Free, but Lady is a Sunflower outtake). The only one of those from the batch is Barbara. An embryonic version of Cuddle Up existed, albeit called Ol' Movie and it wasn't exactly the same piece of music.

Material from those sessions (1971, not '72), mostly unfinished:
- Fourth of July
- Barnyard Blues
- Ol' Movie
- Ecology
- Barbara
- Live Again
- Behold the Night
- It's a New Day
- Hawaii Song
- Before
- I've Got a Friend
- Baby Baby
- Sea Cruise

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't include 4th of July as I assumed the Rieley cowrites weren't considered for the solo album.

I didn't know "Sea Cruise" went back that far.
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