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- Latest Member: Dae Lims
| March 28, 2024, 05:41:45 PM |
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8902
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: All-new Brian Interview
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on: December 28, 2005, 10:36:00 AM
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Not everyone over 50 doesn't listen to modern music you know.
Just Brian, according to damn near every other interview he's given the past 10 years or so. Oh, and the bulk of people on BB message boards. Every time anyone brings up a new artist (or -- GOD FORBID! -- hip hop), dozens of "nobody makes good music anymore" posts pop up. It's all nostalgia...boring.
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8903
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Non Smiley Smile Stuff / General Music Discussion / Re: Belle & Sebastian
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:47:30 PM
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If you dug "Cover's Blown" and anything off of DCW, wait till you hear the next one, The Life Pursuit. It's a GREAT album, fully 2/3 of it really, really good. If it isn't one of the best three or four albums of 2006, I'll...well, I'll...I don't know what. Something. But it's really good.
"The Blues are Still Blue" is a great, Bowie/Reed-style thing. White soul, I keep calling it. Really cool.
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8904
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1960's Beach Boys Albums / Re: 20/20
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:40:01 PM
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I like some Boettcher (a Minnesotan, after all). And a little Webb. But the electric piano sounds...soft rock...adult contemporary...
WAIT A MINUTE. You're the man who praises Sister Ray?
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8905
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1980's Beach Boys Albums / Re: The Beach Boys
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:38:35 PM
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It's powered by Satan. Especially Passing Friend.
I like to think Satan would power music that has more balls. Or at least some balls. Or some soul, good, evil or otherwise. Just something a little less...pasteurized?
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8906
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Smiley Smile Stuff / Brian Wilson Solo Albums / Re: Orange Crate Art (BW/VDP solo)
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:37:31 PM
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Tough crowd! This is the album that all Brian's other albums (sans BWPS) collectively want to be. Top knotch arranging from Van. Singing isn't Brian's best, but his first real showing since his '88 LP. I love this album. VDP & BW do it again. This release has a lot of heart. If I feel down this picks me right up. Synths used to effect not as a crutch. Well, well done. I'll take another of this over IJWMFTT or GIOMH... ANYDAY!!
Wrong. Synths used to save cash, I'd guess, and that's it. And it sounds that way. Cheap, easy, and atrocious synths.
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8907
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1960's Beach Boys Albums / Re: 20/20
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:36:03 PM
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In my top 5 faves. I do agree if there were more room- toss on Celebrate The News & Breakaway. Nearest far Away Place is beautiful... magic. I'm gonna put that on right now! It's Kenny-fucking-G, man!
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8909
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1980's Beach Boys Albums / Re: Keepin' The Summer Alive
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:34:20 PM
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I want to appreciate it... I want to appreciate it... I want to appreciate it... I want to appreciate it... I really do. I've given it countless chances.
A quote worthy of many a later Beach Boys album...including the one about which this thread was intended. But Love You? Never!
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8910
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1970's Beach Boys Albums / Re: Sunflower
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:31:36 PM
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Luther, I wouldn't change a word of Got To Know The Woman... positively Denny!
A perfect encapsulation of a personality doesn't make a good song, necessarily. I agree with the last two words of your above sentence. The first part, though...I couldn't disagree more.
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8911
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1970's Beach Boys Albums / Re: The Beach Boys Love You
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on: December 27, 2005, 08:29:54 PM
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Today on Maury Povich: Beach Boys Love You album... What went wrong? Track by track.
'fraid you're dead fucking wrong on almost every single track. It's a great album, rough but gorgeous, its construction just as impressive as most of Brian's "heyday" in the '60s. The production throws most people, and (if you're into just that) maybe rightfully so. But I love that album. I really, really do. It was my favorite thing to listen to for about a year after I first heard it.
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8913
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1980's Beach Boys Albums / Re: Keepin' The Summer Alive
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on: December 27, 2005, 02:47:55 PM
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You won't make it past Sunshine...
I didn't. I got to it, and noticed in the liner notes that the basic track was recorded on my birthday. I will from now on lie about my birthday. What an atrocious album. Yet I'm skipping to the 85 album, just to make sure I don't forget the rancid taste it too will leave in my mouth. And hopefully it will be a couple more years before I make this mistake again.
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8915
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Non Smiley Smile Stuff / General Music Discussion / Re: Zappa - again!
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on: December 27, 2005, 02:39:03 PM
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I was under the mistaken impression that Steve Vai, whom I worshipped at the time as a guitar student in college, was ont he disc). Guess you enjoyed "Stevie's Spanking" when you discovered it, then. Or was that the end of the worship? 'fraid that did it for me! To be honest, I still do respect his playing tremendously, and amazed every time I hear or see him (such as in the Dub Room Special Zappa DVD). It's just that I'm not inspired to look or listen as often as I used to be!
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8917
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1980's Beach Boys Albums / Re: Keepin' The Summer Alive
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on: December 27, 2005, 02:32:41 PM
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Just to be sure I'm being fair, I put in this album a couple of minutes ago. I'm on track three.
I'm really not sure I'm going to be able to get through both albums (as it's the twofer). How many times can you recycle the same collections of phrases and melodies? And that goshdarn honking sax at the beginning of "Some of Your Love?" What the ...?!
I need to wash my ears out with Velvet Underground or something...or at least Wild Honey.
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8919
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Non Smiley Smile Stuff / General Music Discussion / Re: Zappa - again!
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on: December 27, 2005, 02:28:56 PM
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Joe's Garage was one of my first Zappa purchases (amusingly because I was under the mistaken impression that Steve Vai, whom I worshipped at the time as a guitar student in college, was ont he disc). I enjoyed it somewhat at first, finding it funny. But I no longer get into what I find to be a synthetic, trebly, thin sound that Zappa had from the late 70s through the mid-to-late '80s.
Oh wait, 98% of the world had that awful sound.
If not for Tom Waits and a couple of things by Lou Reed, I'd try to wipe the '80s out of everyone's collective memory. I really would.
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8920
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Non Smiley Smile Stuff / General Music Discussion / Re: The Velvet Underground and its members
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on: December 27, 2005, 02:25:47 PM
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All four original albums AND the "lost album" are essential, in my opinion. I can't imagine anyone considering him- or herself a well-educated pop fan without having at least absorbed them (if not liked) them. I do. VU bores me and I have the box set. That doesn't bother me at all. My only point is that they are an essential listen. Nobody is required to like anything, so you can dismiss them now...with my blessing. And believe me, my blessing is also essential (although not quite as essential as VU).
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8921
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Non Smiley Smile Stuff / General Music Discussion / Re: Zappa - again!
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on: December 27, 2005, 02:15:21 PM
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Another thing on why Zappa was fascinated with Flo & Eddie (other than their unquestioned singing ability) -- don't forget that he did have a great sense of humor and irony, even if he buried it beneath d1ck and t1t jokes. So when the guys from the band about whom the Mother once were told "We could make you as big as the Turtles!" he had to see that as a great opportunity for humor...
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8922
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Non Smiley Smile Stuff / General Music Discussion / Re: Zappa - again!
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on: December 27, 2005, 02:13:36 PM
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And whoever said Zappa failed to live up to the potential of his first decade: okay, but LATHER. That's a remarkable achievement, even with "Punky's Whips" and "Illinois Enema Bandit" sillying it up. There's some total insanity on that thing, and the sheer SCALE is mammoth. And I'm all about Yellow Shark, too, and Jazz From Hell is up there for me as well!
LATHER is also something posthumous that was based on an earlier project that became "Studio Tan", "Sleep Dirt", and a couple of other things in the mid-70's. No, Lather was unquestionably an intended large-scale release that was to incorporate those albums. Instead--either by Zappa's own decision or his record company's, depending on whom you choose to believe--it was split up and released as those albums instead. In fact, Zappa himself once played the entire thing while a guest on a radio station in the mid-70s. He said something to the effect of, "okay, everyone, you'll never get to hear this again as it is intended, so hit record on your tape players...I'll give you a minute."
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8923
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1980's Beach Boys Albums / Re: Keepin' The Summer Alive
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on: December 27, 2005, 12:38:13 PM
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If you dislike Goin' On- you cannot possibly be a Beach Boy fan.
I can't? Damnit. Maybe someone will give me my money back for all those discs (including this piece of semi-trash) that I bought. And I sure will miss listening to them (although not really this album). Odd, since I'm not a fan. You're almost right in some of your assessment, though, in this being an attempt to regain their form. This, just like that 70s joke, 15BO, is a desperate grasp at has-been musical styles. Sometimes it's pleasant, but people say the same thing about Kenny G. That doesn't make it good. There was no doubt that by this time, the Beach Boys were an absolute oldies act for people trying to hang on to or regain the past. Coming to a state fair near you...
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8924
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Smiley Smile Stuff / 1960's Beach Boys Albums / Re: Pet Sounds
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on: December 27, 2005, 12:28:42 PM
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Some jaw droppingly beautiful tracks (Dont Talk, Let's Got Away, YSBIM, God Only Knows, IJWMFTT) are marred by some rather crap ones (Here Today, I Know Theres an Ego, Sloop John B, Pet Sounds)...
The album has been completely drained of spark and life by the incredibly fine tuned instrument and vocal arrangements, hell, "Today" sounds loose by comparison. There is no flair to the lead vocals, everything sounds rehearsed to buggary.
A brilliant, but terribly flawed album. 4 stars.
I can't imagine disagreeing more strongly with your assessment of the "rather crap ones." You've listed some of what I consider among the best songs on the album., and I think the lead vocals almost always sound great. There wasn't the sort of flair they may have had in a rock album, but it wasn't a rock album (for the most part).
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