I find it very hard to hear the lyrics of the middle eight of "Funky Pretty" as anything other than toe-curlingly embarrassing, one of my least favourite lyrical moments in the entire catalogue.  Cracking tune, mind.

BTW, on this topic, how much of the lyrics of Good Vibrations did Mike write? Sometimes he's said that he wrote all of it...  I'm thinking he means that Brian came up with the title and he wrote the rest.  But on Brian Wilson Presents Smile, the Tony Asher version has some of the same lyrics.  For example, the first verse starts 'I like the colorful clothes she wears,' but then the rest of the verse is different from the BB's version.  Do you think that Tony (or Brian) wrote the first line, and then Mike changed the rest of the verse? 

For what it's worth, I think that Mike's lyrics are much better than Asher's on GV, but I wonder how much of the lyrics he wrote.

Tony's first line was different, but was erased from the master tape - that's why it's absent from the bootlegs and official release of it, and that's why the BWPS version incorporates Mike's first line.

Interesting!  So I'm guessing that no-one remembers what the first line was? 

It's "I just met a surgeon from Spain".  Sadly the original "limerick" conception of the song was quickly abandoned.

Audiobook read by the author!  I honestly can't wait for the ontor pertawst cut-ups.

So who is this mysterious attorney who suddenly appeared after these odd, much less literate, anti-Brian posts that seemed to appear randomly.  It's so curious.

The clear this up, I've been a long lurker on the site.  I hated that it was impossible to have level-headed discussion about anything or anyone, particularly Mike (thanks largely to the same two culprits every time).  And I hated that so many threads devolved into posters attacking each other.  It's just not pleasant to read, and it wasn't something I felt like participating in.  But I still lurked, because this site does have a ton of intelligent posters, and I've learned a ton reading this site about a band I love.

Anyway, my wife (who is a big Beach Boys fan and also lurks) and I got so tired of one particular poster's shtick, with his constant "MyKe luHv" and emoticon filled "woot" posts, that we would often joke that it would be hilarious if those posts were parodied under the name "The LEGENDARY LSD."  So I posted a few times, emulating his EXACT style, and using "cuHsin brYhan."  Anyway, I thought it was funny, but after a few posts I stepped away, returning to lurking.  I wouldn't have even posted in the first place, but my wife made it the consequence of a bet over a game of SCRABBLE.  I took the bet, because I NEVER lose at SCRABBLE.  Well, until that game.  

But then Rocky Pamplin emerged and started spewing lies while claiming he was entitled to "poetic license."  BTW Rocky, try telling the judge in a defamation case that your false statements were "merely poetic license" and see how that works.  When Rocky started writing about immunity and a smoking-gun tape with perjury, I felt it would be useful if I stepped back in and provided the legal knowledge I possessed.  Hence the changed username and new posts.

As for what the legal discussion had to do with this thread, well, the alleged "shenanigans" and Rocky's claims about a smoking-gun tape were brought up in the original post of this very thread.  And a discussion as to whether or not Rocky could have immunity for such a tape seemed pertinent to the discussion that was occurring.

I think, on balance, you might have been better off creating a completely new account, since a posting history of comedy trolling isn't necessarily the best advertisement for one's credibility.  But more importantly, I bloody love Scrabble and will gladly challenge you to a contest if it helps to resolve any outstanding business in Beach Boys land.

You may know more about the world of IP addresses but two different people being accused of being one poster with two posting names is ridiculous. 

If you honestly think that then I'm glad you're not my lawyer.

Cracking track, "Salmon Falls".  Wonderful arrangement.

I always rated Mayer's Indo-Jazz fusion phase.

I hope i got that right.. Because if you ever heard the song you knew the band had heard smile.. Was it 3 dog night ??.. I dont remember im sorry..

The band was called Blue Suede, and from what I remember reading (correct me if I'm wrong please!), apparently they had listened to SMiLE boots prior to recording. The most notable reference to SMiLE being the indian-chant vocals at the beginning and break of the track, obviously inspired by Do You Like Worms.

Hold on, though.  The Blue Swede (sic) version (1974) borrowed the "ooga-chaka" chant from the earlier cover of "Hooked On A Feeling" (1971) by pop paedophile Jonathan King.  It's not really clear whether he stole it from Smile or not; I suspect he didn't, but Jonathan King's head is not something I've ever really wanted to get inside.

It does strike me as odd that someone as famous and recognisable as Brian Wilson could do something as eye-catching and conspicuous as PUNCHING A CLOWN in public, in broad daylight and with an actual parade going on (and hence innumerable potential witnesses), and that this would be the first that anyone would have heard of the story.

I'm reading something like "Wilson - We're Not Nuts.." and then something else.

Maybe "we're not nuts or nothing"?  Or I sort of hope it's "we're not nuts for nutmeg".

...most people certainly admit there is a subset of art fans--and we can call them hipsters or whatever else--who inevitably take a kind of contrarian position, picking obscure or early or late or otherwise unpopular items, seemingly based on some almost ideological position that rare taste is superior to common taste.

Oh, the captain, you disappoint me.  From your moniker, I'm assuming that you share at least one other of my tastes in music, and I've frankly lost count of the number of times I've had to read articles / listen to blowhards insisting that nobody actually likes Trout Mask Replica or would ever dare listen to it for fun, or that to claim appreciation of it is to be contrarian for contrarianism's sake.  And that experience has given me very limited patience with this particular train of argument.  Gimme that old time religion, gimme that old time religion, don't gimme no affliction, that old time religion is good enough for me.

It's clearly "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times".  Even if you aren't convinced from the title, the relative spacing of the chord symbols on the sheet music is a fair match too.

Add some..... the traveling jukebox as its often referred to began after Endless Summer went huge. The guy that puts out the Endless Summer quarterly provided evidence that it was DENNIS pushing for a return to almost all of the old stuff in their live shows. Not to mention the traveling jukebox went on for years and years and if you think Dennis and Carl were not on board with it you are mistaken. They played what the crowds came to hear.

You've overstated this.  The originator of the "play more oldies" idea (not "almost all of the old stuff" as you paint it) was James William Guercio.  Yes, Dennis Wilson was the conduit for that idea, the messenger (if you will) in communicating it to the rest of the band, and by no account was he an unwilling messenger: he may well have been completely behind the idea of including more oldies.  But show me one history of the Beach Boys that credits the mid-'70s Dennis with enough authority and standing within the band to drive them in a direction they didn't want to go in.  I'll wait while you find one.

And to say that Carl was "on board" with the travelling jukebox years is to ignore the fact that he went solo in the early '80s, at least in part due to dissatisfaction with the direction of the band.  So things aren't nearly as simple as you claim.

[So we've actually been having group meetings between Carl, myself and Al with the psychiatrist Howard Bloomfield, who's a good friend of mine and a board member of the Love Foundation, and we've done a lot of healing kind of things, airing grievances and working things out. It's been very therapeutic for all of us individually and collectively. I think we've gotten to understand each other and see the other's point of view and experience and it's made the group better and stronger.]

So we've actually been having group meetings between Carl, myself and Al with the psychiatrist Howard Bloomfield, who's a good friend of mine and a board member of the Love Foundation, and we've done a lot of healing kind of things, airing grievances and working things out. It's been very therapeutic for all of us individually and collectively. I think we've gotten to understand each other and see the other's point of view and experience and it's made the group better and stronger.

Does anyone know if Howard Bloomfield, mentioned in this quote, is the same as Harold H. Bloomfield, the psychiatrist author of books such as TM: Discovering Inner Energy and Overcoming Stress?  It seems pretty likely, given the TM / Love Foundation link.  If so, well, our guys really can't catch a break when it comes to choosing their friends and associates...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_H._Bloomfield

Please: this needs to stop now.

This board is an amazing resource.  Not just because of the knowledgeable, well-connected people who post on it, but because of the wealth of information and research contained within its archives.  I haven't been on here for very many years, and so whenever I do find time to have a poke around in threads that predate my joining, or whenever (as in this discussion) someone like Guitarfool links to an earlier thread with properly interesting material and first-hand testimony regarding how events panned out, I marvel at the great value this site can offer to fans and scholars alike.

And then I think of a future version of me, stumbling upon this site a few years down the line, and reaching this thread.  This unreadable thread.  This thread, which could have been interesting, starting as it did with a fascinating Mike interview that gives a real window into his worldview, and then expanding to take in related matters such as the 2005 lawsuit, a topic which no doubt informs a lot of the bad blood that remains even today in the Beach Boys universe.  There's a lot to be said about these topics, and valid points to be made on all sides.

But instead of that, what we have on this thread is page upon page of spurious, obfuscatory nonsense from one poster, who will apparently never give in no matter how long the discussion grinds on, while good posters like HeyJude, Emily and AndrewHickey patiently, and with impressively mild tempers given the clear futility of their mission, point out all of the non-sequiturs, evasions and distraction techniques.  Now, a bit of this every now and then might be forgiveable as one of the pains of online message board interaction: not all posters are going to be on the same page or conduct discourse in the same way.  But this is now diluting the signal-to-noise ratio in this and other threads to such an extent that a future version of me, finding this thread (or its contemporaries) and hoping to locate insight in its contents, will probably just give up and go and look at something else instead.  I mean, Christ, the only reason I'm here on page 33 right now is that I've been following the thread since the beginning.  If I'd known when it started that it was going to devolve into a discussion of whether anyone can identify a style guide which justifies usage of asterisks to provide emphasis in formal English, then I don't think I would have bothered.

Please, everyone, if you care about this board being a useful resource to future (hell, even current) members, then arguing with someone who acts like they know everything about everything and yet expects everyone else to fall in line with their own idiosyncratic definition of what constitutes a "primary source", who only accepts testimony from members of the Beach Boys as evidence (unless (a) it goes against their personal theories, or (b) the member in question happens to filter it through their lawyers), and who defaults to discussing the Beach Boys as a business / legal construct rather than a source of magical, life-affirming music, is not going to get us anywhere.  I love you all, but please stop.

And filledeplage: either you are deliberately throwing in endless distractions, digressions and obfuscations in order to divert chat away from topics you don't like, in which case please stop, or else this is just your natural pattern of communication, in which case please be aware that this is the effect that you're having anyway, and so please stop.

Thanks all.  Or, as some might say, "just" "sayin'".

The charts as they stand:

SMiLE Sessions box set!                                                582382
Thread for various insignificant questions…                     399003

I think at this point we may need belatedly to concede that those questions must actually have been significant after all.

Not a problem, really.  It was more fun than the things that I was meant to be doing today.

Demanding, aren't you?

Personally, I think it's a silly idea, but if it makes you happy:

Sadly, Derek is no longer with us, so I asked the other guy, and he said "no".

I think the only possible response to that is "well, he would, wouldn't he ?".

(NB For what it's worth, I'm inclined, on the balance of probabilities, to believe Mike on this one, with the caveat that the timeline doesn't really make a lot of sense whoever you assume Taylor's source was.  But I'm uncomfortable with the idea of treating Mike as an unimpeachable witness while every other piece of witness evidence in the Smile saga gets stuck under the microscope in search of agendas, biases or factual errors.)

That's exactly what happened. That's how in the span of a week, it was reported that the album was being readied for rush promotion, 12 tracks ready. Then Mike tells Derek Taylor in the UK something different, and it's now "scrapped".

While its a logical assumption Mike broke the news, surely Derek Taylor would have confirmed with the mothership before dropping a bomb like that, no matter who told him x.

The idea that Brian was not consulted on, or even aware of, the "SCRAPPED" announcement is not a new one though.  It was certainly floated in Carlin's book.

The Long Run was The Eagles SIP

"Heartache Tonight" was, in many ways, the Eagles' "Goin' To The Beach".

I've often suspected that Al had a large role in the unique sound that the band had in the early 70s -- that combination of folky instruments like banjo and pedal steel, with Moogs, which I find absolutely wonderful and which no-one else seems to have done.

Certainly not disagreeing with your overall thesis, but fans of rootsy instruments jutting up against Moog synthesiser really aren't going to go far wrong with The Notorious Byrd Brothers (produced by Gary Usher).

It's hard not to look forward to chapter eight.

I would allow Al Jardine to beat me up.  It would be amazing.

[From the Facebook Q&A on 3.26.15]

Aside: On the topic of whether or not Brian cares for accusatory history-based lyrics...

From the Facebook Q&A on 3.26.15
Q: what do you think of carl's song the trader?
Brian: I loved that song, he had a great vocal and great lyrics