You're talking about a composer who, throughout his entire career, has been known to stockpile and revisit previously sketched ideas or songs. It's moot, obviously, because the album did come out and we can't know what would have happened if it hadn't, but considering the man has probably never done a single album without previously worked ideas, why would you think those particular ideas wouldn't have happened and been finished at another time in the future? Because Smile happens, Little Pad isn't thought of? That just doesn't really make sense to me. Would Wild Honey' have happened? Would Friends have happened? That Smile songs may have been a part of Smile rather than part of Smiley Smile seems pretty irrelevant to me: the guy was going to keep making songs, as he did, so why assume they wouldn't have been the ones that they were?

What makes you think those songs wouldn't have been released? After all, we didn't have a Smile, but we got Heroes & Villains, Wonderful, etc. Chances are, those tunes would have been out on a different album.

I'm listening (for the first time) to Harper Simon's new album, Division Street. I'm just a couple tracks in so far, but it is more a full-band, pop-rock sound than his folkier debut album from a few years ago.

Again, some heavy hitters supporting the effort: Benmont Tench, Pete Thomas, Jon Brion, Inara George, Mikael Jorgenson, to name a few.

Finishing up an uptempo country kind of tune I had started a couple weeks ago. I think it'll be called something like "Let's Get in Trouble." I'll try to get a quick version of it recorded and posted within the next day or two--just acoustic and a voice or something. I don't love it, except I really think it's a strong pre-chorus and refrain (if I do say so myself).

I listened to Misty Rivers: I think it's nice. In fact I think it's worth fighting against that chronic case of laziness and maybe giving it a bit more of an effort, because it's really solid. The refrain / "misty rivers" part is especially pretty and a great contrast to the uptempo verses. I'd like to hear some additional arrangement to the verses to take it forward, too, but hey--you're doing this yourself and I fully understand the limitations of that situation.

Get over the self-consciousness: you've got more than enough ability and you'll only improve as you keep at it. And anyway, who gives a f*** what any idiot* on this board (or anywhere else) thinks?

*Myself included

I'd want a vacuum where Beach Boys fans, rather than air, were absent. Or the blindness, so I wouldn't be tempted to read what people had to say the band had done wrong, or how Brian had been misled away from his true muse (which suspiciously aligns with the complainer's favorite Brian-period or style).

While I'm not a big fan of Wall Street in particular and I try not to be an ass-kisser of all things BeachBoysian, I'd say Mr. Parks is the equal of any Broadway composer.  Or at least any from the past 50 years or so (myself not being a big fan of most of what I still call "modern" musicals, despite some of them being older than I am).

Damn straight!  I'm not really knowledgeable of Broadway enough to site comparison's, but the one composer that keeps popping up in my mind is Gershwin. I keep thinking that Van Dyke Parks may just be a modern day Gershwin.

And that's where we might have to part ways... I wouldn't put him quite into that category, as I consider Gershwin to be in the country's top 10 or so composers ever (along with people like Charles Ives, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Bob Dylan, and Brian Wilson, to name a few immediately apparent ones). Honestly I think he's a better arranger than composer, though in an interesting way where his personality comes through in the arrangements--not always what you want from the arranger, depending on the composer or performer situation. But he is really good and certainly not inferior to many people I hear out there.

The new album from The Milk Carton Kids, a very Simon & Garfunkely (Garfunkely is a good, good word!) acoustic duo. I saw a pretty mediocre review at allmusic with the primary charge seemingly lack of originality. Well, that may be true, but the songs are strong regardless of whether they fit firmly into their traditions. I really enjoy it. Beautiful stuff.

It's on spotify.

http://open.spotify.com/track/1aAIFALAyNw5dzXERYW7bf

Speaking of where I am from, I'm from the biggest country in the universe - as they say - called Russia (actually, I already wrote about it when you named Stravinsky as your favorite classical composer). I know that many people from other countries don't like Russians, their politics & all that stuff, but trust me, there are many good people/residents who live all over its territory.

That's right, I had forgotten.

As for liking or not liking people from other countries, I think that's an unfortunate result of a country's nationalism, its media, its leadership, its armies...people are people and their cultural differences are the most interesting thing in the world, and those from Point A are not better than Point B, and so on. I'm a bit of a sucker for Russian culture, in fact. I don't know why, but I was attracted to some music and especially its literature. Dostoevsky is my favorite novelist ever, with three of my favorite works of all time (Crime & Punishment, the Brothers Karamazov, and Notes from Underground), and I also really like Gogol, Tolstoy, Nabokov, among others.

Regarding making music, I'll continue doing it as long as I have ideas, but I never intend to give it any serious attention (as a career, for example). That relieves any pressure and lets me just enjoy it.

While I'm not a big fan of Wall Street in particular and I try not to be an ass-kisser of all things BeachBoysian, I'd say Mr. Parks is the equal of any Broadway composer.  Or at least any from the past 50 years or so (myself not being a big fan of most of what I still call "modern" musicals, despite some of them being older than I am).

I have to ask, where are you from?

Regarding Minnesota, it is a varied place, with great and scenic river valleys along especially the Mississippi, very good farmland in the southern third or so, one true metropolitan area (the "Twin Cities," Minneapolis-St. Paul), a great port city, Duluth, on Lake Superior, and plains and forests in the north. Scandinavians settled here apparently in part because it was so similar to parts of their homeland (though much bigger, obviously), though I'd imagine the cheap and available land and available work logging and mining at the time had something to do with it... The climates are very extreme, similar to western Russia and Eastern Europe from what I understand. Winters can be very cold (-40F at the coldest, but very often below 0) with a lot of snow, and summers can be very hot (100+ F). This feels funny to talk about on this message board!

As for the songwriting, I don't have a method. Sometimes I force myself to do something one way or another as an exercise, but otherwise there is no formula for me. I may sit at piano and just play, I may pick up a guitar and play, I may think of a melody or a lyric. Every starting place is a good starting place.

Reading that post, I wasn't sure what to think ... but I enjoyed that. Plus putting yourself out of your typical comfort zone compositionally can really lead to interesting things, so every experiment is a worthy one. Well done.

Very glad to hear it. Looking forward to whatever you work up.

I'm still in my recent phase of really, really fast ideas that I love, but then a brick wall in any attempts to finish them up.

As always, thanks for the nice things you've said. Hopefully I'll have more coming before long: I have several songs in process now and am thinking about getting someone to do some drumming for me on several of them.

I do have some Danish roots. Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and German, in fact, though I was born in Minnesota. But the surname is from the Danish component.

As for my signature...I don't recall. I think "genius" was thrown in as a play on the Murry Wilson "I'm a genius, too" line, and demon-fighting was probably the product of some spat on this board.

Oh--and no need to apologize for liking older versions to more recent ones! The guys playing on those recordings were (are) great, I just wanted to do some different things in later years and had no resources except myself.

You are wrong, that honour belongs to Laura Mvula's Sing To The Moon. Even though I'm just listening to it for the first time now. But sh*t, son, is it good.

Haven't heard it (or even of it), but will check it out.

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's "Ripley Pine."

Plugging that again. My favorite album of 2013 so far, no question.

I also like Kacey Musgraves.

I was fucking around through old CDs and came across several of mine: songs I'd recorded back around 1999-2001 somehow intended as albums (though only burned and handed out that way to a dozen or fewer friends). Eight songs into a 10-song concept album--a concept album, for f***'s sake!--all I can say is that I envy those of you still in your early 20s. I recall being so seriously passionate about those songs, about recording, about the people I had in mind when I wrote and sang and played. It's good to be 23, 24, 25.

Today I came across a review of Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's "Ripley Pine." It's an awful band name but turned out to be a really good project led by singer-songwriter Aly Spaltro. The music is interesting, with long multipart songs, and sometimes really intense, even visceral vocal delivery. My first thoughts were that it was a cross between Heartless Bastards and Fiona Apple. Pitchfork used Okkervil River, Jeff Buckley, and Jack White as comparisons, though I'm not sure whether I'd agree with those.

Definitely something worth a listen. It's on Spotify if you want to check it out.

Ha! I think we all can relate, though, to some extent or another.

If what the Beach Boys actually accomplished were somehow short of what an ideal Beach Boys would have accomplished in a person's eyes, and John Lennon is the epitome of the shortcoming, then sure, they missed a Lennon figure. For someone else, they miss a Bob Dylan figure. For someone else, they miss a Stevie Wonder figure. For someone else, they miss a...you see where I'm going with this.

The thing that the Beach Boys were, is what the Beach Boys were. It isn't lacking in its "Beach Boyness" because it is what the Beach Boys are and were. Anything that didn't happen that a person wishes happen has more to do with the person wishing than anything else.

Willie Nelson's Phases and Stages.

Also, I haven't had anything from Arby's in years--I decided to spend my bad-habit currency on something I care more about, alcohol, quite some time ago--but I sure used to like those curly fries.

this conversation serves NO PURPOSE

I mean I know it's the sandbox but come one people we don't need to turn it into the catbox

I don't know--I don't see it as being a problem. Nobody's fighting one another, the conversation is civil. Admittedly some positions here would offend some people, but that's true of life everywhere. Anyone who wants to add to the so-far-civil discussion certainly is welcome to do so. What's the problem?

It's my opinion to talk about what a religion inherently is (be it good or bad) is impossible because they are constantly changing based on their context of time, place, and situation. I've read recently--and I am way out of my league on this, by the way, so forgive me--that race is increasingly discounted among scientists as being a legitimate categorization, that there are more differences within any superficial categorization of race than there are between them. (I think the idea was that historical definition of race was mostly based on skin color and presumably nationality / location. Again, out of my league so I can't back any of this up without digging for the articles.) That concept rings true to me about religion. Thus we end up with "Christianity," which, depending on where you live and your particular bent, may seem virtually unrecognizable to someone else going by the same name.

Well, Christianity is inherently, at it's core, the belief that the son of god died for our sins (at least it has been this way for 100s of years). Now, there are a billion ways to worship this man, many different ways to baptize, many different ways to preach - so trying to narrow all these down to one specific label is impossible. But the core belief is easily spotted in any different sect of Christianity.

Regardless, from my perspective, the core belief makes no sense at all...I can't believe people still buy into it. Then again, I was a church goer for 15 some years, attended countless youth rallys, mission trips, outreach programs, etc, and I believed with all my heart....until I actually read the bible from cover to cover.

I was raised in a conservative Christian family, myself.* (See: my name.) But I'd actually take umbrage with your first statement, as there are nominally Christian denominations that do not preach a literal Jesus as having been necessary even as a historical figure, instead focusing on the symbolism of redemption. Some Christian denominations do not believe in hell, which of course does away with the need for a heaven and the forgiveness of sins. These are some relatively modern variants. To go the opposite direction, there was tremendous debate in the first few centuries as to who Jesus was, whether he was a) God, b) the only son of God, c) a son of God, d) a healer and saint, e) you get my point. Basic concepts such as his nature, the death and resurrection, heaven and hell, etc. were debated up until what became the Catholic church achieved a monopoly on the topic.

So basically I agree that we all have some kind of idea as to what constitutes Christianity (or any other religion), but you can almost always find something that contradicts it.

*I probably ought to add that I'm an atheist now (and really since my late teens, so for the past 15-20 years), though one who finds religion really interesting.

It's my opinion to talk about what a religion inherently is (be it good or bad) is impossible because they are constantly changing based on their context of time, place, and situation. I've read recently--and I am way out of my league on this, by the way, so forgive me--that race is increasingly discounted among scientists as being a legitimate categorization, that there are more differences within any superficial categorization of race than there are between them. (I think the idea was that historical definition of race was mostly based on skin color and presumably nationality / location. Again, out of my league so I can't back any of this up without digging for the articles.) That concept rings true to me about religion. Thus we end up with "Christianity," which, depending on where you live and your particular bent, may seem virtually unrecognizable to someone else going by the same name.