gfxgfx
 
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
logo
 
gfx gfx
gfx
680601 Posts in 27601 Topics by 4068 Members - Latest Member: Dae Lims March 29, 2024, 12:23:44 PM
*
gfx*HomeHelpSearchCalendarLoginRegistergfx
  Show Posts
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 [8] 9 10 11 12 13 14
176  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Boring life or boring music? on: February 27, 2012, 01:03:03 AM
A very good point. You also forgot to mention Brian - nervous breakdowns and drugs led directly to Pet Sounds and Smile. Even when at some of his subsequent bleakest periods (1972, say) he produced great works (Mt Vernon, Funky Pretty). When he subsequently got better in the 80's and, post Landy, into a content, comfortable homelife in the 90's, his music was nowhere near as interesting. Now this could of course be put down to talent receeding as a person gets older, which happens to many musicans, but I don't think there's any doubt the Brian's earlier manic lifestyle worked in favour of his creativity for a time.

(To counter any critism before it is written, I'm not saying i'm not incredibly happy Brian has finally found some level of peace in his life, I'm just making an observation)

Although I see your point, I'm not sure I agree.  It has always seemed to me like Brian's talent was something elemental, a force more or less detached from the details of his life - all it took for Brian was dedication and energy, which he had in spades pre-Smile, and then which slowly tapered off as his problems got worse.  And I think Brian's solo career demonstrates this pretty well; you can pretty well tell when Brian is and isn't interested, and when he's engaged he can still do incredible things - the Gershwin album comes to mind - and when he's not engaged, he'll let Joe Thomas do the backing tracks or phone in a lead vocal. Brian was not an eccentric whose mental illness led him to do spectacularly original things, although that is one way of looking at his career, I think of him more as a massively talented musician who, had he been healthy, could have given us incredible works non stop his entire life, growing musically right to the end, more in the vein of classical composers than rock stars.  As it was, his career was cut tragically short before he could even finish his most important work to date.  Nothing to celebrate there, except the fact that he overcame it, and that I'm going to see him with THE BEACH BOYS in CONCERT in just a few short months in 2012, which is unbelievable!!!!!!!!
177  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Dennis and Carl on new album? on: February 26, 2012, 10:21:08 AM
My personal opinion is that the best tribute to Dennis and Carl would be to use their songs, but not their voices or production talent.  Pick one Dennis song and one Carl song that was never finished, perhaps "I've Got a Friend" for Dennis; I don't know Carl's catalogue very well - and then record from scratch a cover of the song with the living beach boys singing.  They could even take a song that never had words written and write new words, as long as they rerecorded the backing track from scratch.  That way the fans get a new Dennis/Carl song which they never could have heard in completed form otherwise, the record doesn't suffer from continuity issues, and Dennis and Carl get a fitting tribute to their incredible talents and a voice on the Beach Boys last album, not literally, but in the songwriting, which is where it really counts anyway. 
178  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: So Sad About BB's Career After \ on: February 06, 2012, 10:20:27 PM
SOME OF YOU ARE SO IN DENIAL :[

no, some of us just love Carl and Dennis's music as much as we love Brian's, and don't conflate artistic success with commercial success.  It's not called denial, it's called taste.  My taste = different than your taste.  ain't rocket science.   
179  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Van Dyke Parks pulls a Mike Love over painting.... on: February 01, 2012, 02:09:21 PM
Without reading the specifics or any legal document which was filed, my first reaction is Van Dyke seems to be right on this, especially if nothing was agreed prior to the display and sale of this art. A person cannot use copyrighted material which someone else owns to make a profit, no matter how much of a fan they might be. [this is simple not true.  Fair use law includes many for-profit uses.]  Someone here could make a "Smile" T-shirt using the official logo or image for themselves and a few friends and it would be fine: As soon as you print a few hundred using a copyrighted logo and publicly offer them for sale and profit without a contract or agreement to pay royalties or whatever, it becomes a legal issue.  [That is because that particularly kind of commercial use does not fall under fair use doctrine.  The artist in question, however, does]

One other thing to remember: Frank Holmes did the official Smile artwork. His work is associated with the Smile project and his interpretation of the lyrics is the "official" version to go with the box set release. I'm wondering if perhaps there was a legal agreement or contract with Frank Holmes saying that his art is the exclusive artwork which is connected to those lyrics and the songs.  [This is, from a legal perspective, sort of absurd.  You can not have an exclusive right to artistically interpret, be inspired by, or build on another work of art.  Now, if this artist was using his artwork to try and sell bootleg copies of Smile, that would be different.]

I'm probably missing the big issue here but after reading the article I was just thinking out loud...and thinking VDP shouldn't be criticized for this if the facts are what they are.

These paintings very, very clearly fall under fair use, for the following reasons:

1. The purpose and character of the work is clearly transformative rather than derivative.   Park's words are put in an entirely new medium and context with clear artist purposes.  This is the first of the four major criteria for deciding fair use cases under US law. 

2.  The nature of the copied work (in this case Smile) as a culturally important and easily available to the public work of art.  If Van Dyke's work had not yet been published, then the artist could be accused of "stealing his thunder" so to speak, but that is clearly not the case here.  This is the second major criteria for deciding fair use under US law, although probably the least important.

3. Although the artist is quoting van dyke parks directly, those quotes are only small portions of the original work.  The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole is another of the four major fair use criteria. 

4.  Finally, although the artist is making money with his artwork, he is not interfering with Van Dyke Park's ability to make money with Park's artwork, and his paintings in no substantive way devalue Park's original work, which is the last criteria for deciding fair use. 

Thus, under US law at least this artist's work is clearly 100% legal, and Van Dyke Park's scare tactics (using the threat of lawsuits and court fees against a poor and relatively inexperienced artist without the financial means to easily defend himself) is very low indeed.
180  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: What \ on: January 22, 2012, 06:39:15 PM
I'm far, far from the most knowledgeable member of this board, but my recollection is that the talk of a stereo wild honey was not actually reflective of any planned release.  What Mark and Alan were talking about was how they found the 67 version of Surf's Up, and they were saying was that they had been generally going through the entire catalogue to figure out what they had to work with, in terms of future releases and particularly future stereo remixes, and the reason Wild Honey in specific was mentioned was because they found Smile stuff on those tapes, not because Wild Honey in particular was planned for anything.
181  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: SMiLE: my theory on what would have happened in '67 on: December 27, 2011, 06:00:54 PM
I dunno, I think that the Smile box set undersells what the album would have been (out of necessity of course).  So much of the music sounds like it could be finished because it sounds so great, but the tracks that were actually finished are so much richer than the unfinished ones, as much as many of us love them. Imagine a Surf's Up where the same kind of care taken with the first two minute's backing track was taken with the rest.  I strongly believe that the seemingly "lesser" tracks, like Do You Like Worms, Child is the Father of the Man, and The Elements would have been finished to the same level of complexity and detail as Cabinessence or Good Vibrations (or even Vegetables, with it's six part counterpoint harmonies on the fade).  Of course, that would have taken time, which is in my opinion the biggest reason it didn't happen. 

And while its hard to say how Smile would have done commercially, I think that artistically it would be seen as a towering, towering, earth shattering record.  In early 1967, before A Day in the Life or Strawberry Fields, Surf's Up would have absolutely blown minds. 

182  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Do It Again 2011 - Snippet Unofficially Remastered on: December 17, 2011, 12:50:48 PM
Back in the 60's they used double-tracking, reverb & other tricks to mask weak vocals. The technology has changed but the intent hasn't. Sometimes things need to be sweetened to achieve a desired effect. A lot of people think that's a bad thing, that it's dishonest or it's cheating, but it's all just tools of the studio to me.

Agreed.  A friend of mine who likes the Beach Boys but isn't a big fan or anything was over once, and Hushabye was playing, and she said something along the lines of "it's beautiful, but they don't really sound like humans."  Brian Wilson's golden age records used reverb and double-tracking to make their voices sound absolutely perfect, almost unreal.  Now that the tones of their voices have changed, those techniques aren't really effective anymore, the double tracking especially just sounds odd on modern-day Brian, so they're using different studio tricks.  Reality was never the point when it comes to the Beach Boys. 
183  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: THE BEACH BOYS ANNOUNCE 50TH ANNIVERSARY REUNION, NEW ALBUM AND TOUR on: December 16, 2011, 09:21:05 AM
This is unbelievably exciting!!!! I really hope Christian Love and Matt Jardine are involved vocally, but no matter who's involved, this is awesome!!
184  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian Wilson I Feel so Fine on: December 10, 2011, 11:03:06 PM
I think its the not very believable Brian vocal that does it for me.

agreed!  check this version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y26yxO-fQbk
185  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Carl & Passions/Pet Sounds LP on: December 04, 2011, 06:18:51 PM
I paid 15 pounds sterling for mine, so I'd say that's a good price if in good condition. The best sounding Pet Sounds, in my opinion. And the best sounding CATP, if that matters to you  Wink

Carl and the Passions is one of the albums that suffered most in the transfer to cd in my opinion.  The front side really leaps out of the speakers on the vinyl, the drums on Here She Comes especially, and Dennis songs also feel a lot more dynamic.  The CD sounds really dead to my ears, by comparison.  And this is coming from someone who often prefers the sound of CDs to vinyl (that being what I grew up with, I think being the main factor). 
186  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Geronimo Leaps and Bounds For Glory Over The Dust Bowl? on: November 22, 2011, 01:11:44 AM
Probably written by Mike Love, it came to him in a TM trance. He pitched it to Brian back in the 60s but it never took. Maybe that's why he's so bitter about the whole smile thing.

You know, having just watched from the scene posted here to the end (and I haven't seen the whole thing in a while, so I'm basically talking about half a movie), this movie was a lot better and lot more balanced than I expected.  Mike didn't really come off all that great, he lost his temper from time to time, they portrayed him sort of taking the TM thing too far.  And while Brian was definitely played as very mentally ill, Brian was mentally ill, and watching him go on stage at the end and seemlessly become mid-to-late-70s Brian on stage was a reminder that there must have been some very, very difficult moments between him and the rest of the band, much as this movie seemed to depict them.  Also, Murry was well acted. 

So I guess I was a bit impressed.  I mean, far from perfect and all sorts of things that were compressed or left out or misrepresented, but a lot of that just goes with the making a movie out of life territory, and based on the way people talk about it I expected so much worse.
187  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: The very worst Beach Boys related 'song' ever released on: November 13, 2011, 08:59:44 PM
I like Problem Child, too. what's wrong with me?

So far as I'm concerned, Problem Child is one of what I like to call the "phone book songs."  They're songs that prove the adage, "Carl Wilson could sing a page out of the phone book and it would sound amazing." Although I might rather here Carl sing the phone book, it really doesn't matter how dreadful the song is, I listen anyway, just to hear that voice.  There are a good number of songs that fall into that category for me in the 80s. It's Gettin Late is my favorite of said category. 

As for the topic at hand: Summer of Love really is horrifying.  The fact that it was a single, and has a horrific video to boot, really adds to the train-wreck quality of the thing.  And it somehow manages to be almost as creepy as "Hey Little Tomboy," with none of the melodic engagement (then again, the very catchiness of Hey Little Tomboy amplifies its disturbing-ness quiet a bit...)
188  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Do You Like Holidays on: November 11, 2011, 02:34:26 PM
After reading Holy Bee's post over in the Do You Like Worms thread, I found that I couldn't stop thinking about his theory.  It's not that it's likely (it's not), it's weirdly compelling though, and I started to think: I wonder what a finished Holiday's with Do You Like Worms lyrics might have sounded like?  Soon, I found myself singing Worms lyrics to Brian's snippet of Holiday's melody in the shower.  And then, I decided to finish it myself!

I present you with: Do You Like Holidays!

http://orkinpod.bandcamp.com/track/do-you-like-holidays

Note: there have been a few surprisingly rude responses to a few fan edits and mixes and experiments on this board recently, and so I'd just like to clarify: I did this for fun.  Not because I think that I have some secret key to what Smile would have sounded like, or because I'm just as talented as Brian Wilson and Gosh Darnit my Holidays is the only one!  In fact, my version of Holidays only took about an hour, and it features me singing vocal arrangements I made up as I went, and it basically all around sucks compared to the original.  But I think it is fun to listen to, and fun to think about what a finished Holidays might have sounded like, so I did it anyway.  If you have positive comments, great, if you have constructive feedback, fine, but please don't tell me that "not to be rude but this friggin sucks."  It's just for fun.
189  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian on Jimmy Kimmel show on: November 09, 2011, 04:23:00 PM
I Know This Is Off Topic But Youtube Doesnt Have 2 Songs I Wanna Hear :/..
Beach Boys - Belles Of Paris
Brian Wilson - Lay Down Burden...
Can Anyone Upload Those 2 On There 4 Me Plz? Smiley

I'm not quite sure what's going through your head as you post this strange request, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and do my best to be helpful.

Belles of Paris was on the MIU album, it is available for purchase on itunes for 99 cents, although its probably worth having the whole record, which can be found in a twofer with LA Light Album (which is essential in my opinion) both on itunes and in a surprising number of the world's remaining record stores.   

Lay Down Burden was on the Imagination album, and is also available for purchase in itunes, but is also an album absolutely worth owning. 

However, if you just want to hear any released beach boys song legally without purchasing it, I recommend the Beach Boys own Myspace page.  http://www.myspace.com/thebeachboys
Scroll down to album, click "see all 69," and listen away. 

I haven't the slightest idea why the Beach Boys posted their entire catalog free on myspace, but they did, so you're in luck!
190  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: What Might Carl Have Added to the TSS Project Had He Still Been Around? on: November 07, 2011, 03:05:11 PM
Is it likely that Carl may have remembered some pieces or connections that have slipped Brian's memory?

Based on Carl's work finishing Our Prayer, Cabinessence, and especially Surf's Up, his incredible production and arranging skills, his presence at many Smile sessions, the irreplaceable kinship he felt with Brian based on their being family, and the fact that his voice only seemed to get better with age, I strongly feel that Carl Wilson was 100% as capable of finishing Smile as Brian, whether in 1968, 1971, or today.  Of course, the level of work required and the fact that it just wasn't Carl's music to begin with, I think is what kept him from actually doing it.  But given his success with Surf's Up, and I think that Carl could asolutely created a finished version of Do You Like Worms which we would likely now view just as authoritatively as we do his Cabinessence and Surf's Up, that he could easily have put together an elements suite drawing on Cool Cool Water and the Fire Music, and that generally speaking he had what it took to finish the album...minus the desire to finish the album or the sense that it was his place to do so much work on Brian's child. 

That said, given how close Worms was to finished, and the fact that the lyrics and melody survived, I think it is an absolute tragedy that Carl didn't finish and release the song in 1979 for the LA Light album as planned. 
191  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Smile Back Cover Photo on: November 06, 2011, 06:14:36 PM
I think that contract issue is a real shame.  I think had Bruce been on the cover of Summer Days and especially on the iconic cover of Pet Sounds, he would never be thought of as a "second class" member the way he sometimes seems to be.
192  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: SMiLE Sessions box set! on: October 26, 2011, 09:26:52 PM
And since my good friend runners has brought up "Surf's Up 1967" we might as well get to it. What do you all think that "Surf's Up 1967" was intended for? Wild Honey? Or the infamous ten-track SMiLE that was gonna come out after Smiley Smile. I guess since it was on the "County Air" reel or whatever that maybe that makes it a Wild Honey candidate, which would raise the level of the album even higher than it is right now, which is pretty high. As I said earlier, I think Smiley Smile with "Surf's Up" on it becomes a total classic, because I think "Surf's Up" was the ultimate release the album needed, just like Sgt. Pepper's needed "A Day in the Life". And imagine "Surf's Up" ending Wild Honey rather than "Mama Says". That would be pretty nuts. It would also make "How She Boogalooed It" sound even worse. I just wonder if it was just an off the cuff thing, but I imagine it wasn't, because he did like five takes apparently. My, how things would be different if it were on Wild Honey. Maybe it wouldn't repair their image totally, but I think it woulda been quite a big deal.
 

My guess is that he recorded this for the same reason he recorded the piano demo during Smile, because he knew the song was good and he wanted to make sure it existed on tape; not because he had immediate plans to release it, but because he knew deep down that he'd created something important, and he wanted to make sure that it survived.  And of course, he was never happy with the vocal on the 66 version, was he? Or do we think that was just his way of distancing himself from the song?   

Also, although I haven't heard the wild honey surfs up yet (only one more week, I can do this), its hard for me to imagine surfs up ending wild honey.  Wild honey is one of my favorite albums, but I just can't wrap my head around including surf's up on it.  What would one even make of an album like that?  Perchance once I get this boxset I'll burn myself a CD and find out :-)
193  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: BB Historical Sites Thread. (Please Exclude Current PRIVATE Address's) on: October 12, 2011, 10:17:10 PM
Here's a cool video of the Turtles bouncing around outside of Pandora's Box (I assume the same one as Brian and Marilyn fame?) which I stumbled onto the other day and thought was semi-relevant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv85y08aA2w around 0:35.
194  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Between Holland & 15 Big Ones....Why & What was the main reason? on: October 08, 2011, 05:20:51 PM
I've always been sort of curious as to what happened with Blondie, Ricky, and Riley (and tell me THAT isn't a good name for a band!). I've heard that Jack was keen on keeping the Wilsons as the principal songwriters, was the success of Endless Summer enough for Mike, Al, and Bruce to force him out and assert themselves as equal members of the group? Especially since he seemed working with the group pretty closely during Holland and before, it's weird that they experienced such a turnaround.

Riley decided for personal reasons to stay in Holland after the Holland record.  Since he was no longer present to defend himself, I think it then became fairly easy for those who liked him less to persuade those who liked him more. not to mention the difficult of managing a band from 6,000 miles away. 
195  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: The on: October 06, 2011, 03:00:59 AM
There was a thread a while back where the actually found where the reels were supposed to have been, but they were gone |...] Is it possible they are still there, but were just put back in the wrong place?

Yeah, I remember having seen this thread or at least similar info here or on another board/site.

The only thing that seems odd to me is that nobody seems to be in the power to investigate properly, not even Mr. Boyd or Linett.  Huh

The problem, so far as I see it, isn't that no one has the power to investigate properly.  It's that the reels aren't in any of the places their supposed to be.  So at that point, its like, to make an analogy, trying to find a book in the library.  If it's not shelved where its call number is, good luck ever finding it. It might be there in the stacks somewhere, and someone might even run across it some day, but you're not going to find it yourself. Now imagine that you don't even know what library it's in. That you don't even know if the tapes survived the 60s to begin with!  There's just no way to find something like that once its been misplaced from the finding aid that refers to the collection. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of the empire state building. 

On the bright side, I think there's a shot it may turn up in the next twenty years, as more and more libraries and archives are digitized, because digitizing a tape library requires actually going through every single item in it, and undergoing such a process might turn up things that have been mis-shelved or otherwise misplaced.  Effectively, a new finding aid has been created for the collection, and so access is restored.
196  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: The on: October 05, 2011, 09:11:23 PM

It would make perfect sense to think that the lead was recorded in some fashion in '66, either by Brian as a demo or by Carl as a shot at actually recording it.  Much like "Worms," somebody must have taken a stab at it at some point.  Why record literally everything else but the lead?

You could ask the same thing of Barnyard and Child is the Father of the Man. I think one of the great tragedies of Smile being abandoned is the fact that there is absolutely no record of lyrics or melody for the latter song though I can't imagine that they weren't written.

I used to be of this opinion, but I'm not anymore.  Brian has certainly been known to track a song before the lyrics were written, and I really can't imagine that Van Dyke Parks could have written a lyric for the song and then forgotten it entirely.  Van Dyke seems like a pretty lucid guy, and I think if he had written lyrics for The Child is the Father of the Man, he would have mentioned at some point or another that "oh, we wrote lyrics for that one, don't know what happened to them" or something along those lines.  Frankly, I find it hard to imagine that the man hasn't been asked outright, given the number of people who would want to know.  The real tragedy in my opinion isn't that we lost the lyrics, its that we lost the melody.  Because that much more likely was written, or at least, Brian probably had some idea of how it would go.  And a 1966 Brian Wilson melody is an irreplaceable treasure, worth more than just about anything.  Many people have written good lyrics, lyrics better than anything on Smile.  But very, very few in the history of humanity are the people who can compose a song like Brian Wilson could in 1966.   imho.
197  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: When Brian Wilson met John Lennon on: October 05, 2011, 09:00:10 PM
Frankly, this one sounds a lot more like a Brian put-on story than a Brian memory-loss story.
198  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: In The Key Of Disney on: September 22, 2011, 09:51:43 PM


Can't really argue with that. Hell, I'll thrown in Baby Mine as well.
[/quote]

Baby Mine is just...incredible.  I like many of the songs, there are a few I like less, and a few I like more.  The giant grin that plasters across my face everytime I hear the Hi HOOOOOOOOOOOOO in Hi Ho is just...awesome.  But Baby Mine.  I've been listening to it over and over.  It helps that its such a gorgeous song, but the way Brian sings it and the arrangement is just so beautiful.
199  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: In The Key Of Disney on: September 20, 2011, 09:41:45 AM
I don't think its Jeff's voice persay, I think its the parts he sings, and I have a theory why.  Brian arranges all these backing vocals.  But the one part of the backing vocals he probably didn't fully think out in the 60s when he learned to arrange backing vocals was his own part, which he'd just sing. And so now, mirroring the way he always worked, Brian probably gives everyone their parts and then tells Jeff to "sing a falsetto."  And because Jeff isn't Brian, it comes out good but not spectacular. 

Just a theory. 

Anyway, I love the album.  Kiss the Girl is weirdly spectacular - yet another reminder that Brian should get around to that rock n roll album.  Baby Mine is gorgeous.  Hi/Ho is hilarious.  I have a feeling this album would go over super well with a 7 or 8 year old, which was, I believe, the point.  I can just imagine my 8 year old self making my parents play "kiss the girl" over and over while I jump around the living room. 

That said, at this point I just can't wait to hear this new-found voice and arranging and production flair applied to some new songs.  But its an embarrassment of riches really, to be a Beach Boys fan in 2011 :-)
200  Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian Wilson is dead... (not really) on: September 12, 2011, 08:39:05 PM
Well, he retired a month before - the last strip was published in the event of his passing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts#The_end_of_Peanuts

Just to clarify, comic artists generally run between two and six weeks ahead of schedule in terms of drawing, and often longer ahead on the Sunday strips than the daily strips, so Schultz retired, but it took another month or so for the strip to stop running.  In the end, Schulz died the day before the last strip was scheduled to run: it was not published in the event of his passing, it would have been published anyway (the wikipedia article is a bit misleading.)

 Not that anyone probably cares, but newspaper comics is one of my few non-beach-boys interests. 
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 [8] 9 10 11 12 13 14
gfx
Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines Page created in 1.755 seconds with 21 queries.
Helios Multi design by Bloc
gfx
Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!