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Author Topic: SMiLE release thoughts from a returnee and some questions for the scholars  (Read 57132 times)
LostArt
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« Reply #300 on: March 22, 2011, 03:56:49 AM »

Everyone, check out this image: http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php?p=6358897&postcount=35

The poster claims that these are real. Enjoy!

Mike Love would have had something to say about not being given a credit on Good Vibrations.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2011, 03:58:28 AM by LostArt » Logged
Roger Ryan
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« Reply #301 on: March 22, 2011, 05:58:15 AM »

There's no question that "recess" is a play-on-words evoking both a crevice and free-time for children at school. "Chalk and numbers" is there to make sure you don't miss the second meaning.

Perhaps this has been suggested before, but reading the opening line "She belongs there left with her liberty" again, I was struck that perhaps "she" is America. Certainly, Parks is writing about a boy-girl relationship, but maybe he's using that as a metaphor for the loss of innocence in the U.S. The ideal of America, or perhaps freedom itself, is what the boy bumps into. But that freedom becomes mishandled. The "non-believer" represents those who wish to put limits on freedom, political freedom or freedom of expression. But like the idea in "Surf's Up" that the children will triumph over the collapsing traditions of their parents, America will return with her liberty intact if it can rediscover its innocence.

Interesting observation but it doesn't quite ring true with several of the album's thematic concerns. In the words of Van Dyke Parks: "There was an obsession to reject anything that smacked of patriotism." This is certainly the case in several songs that work to undermine traditional American assumptions of manifest destiny. Do You Like Worms? calls attention to the displacement and ultimate destruction of Native American society, while Cabin Essence uncovers (and I use that word on purpose) the repressed history of Asian workers who helped bring white Easterners to the West (or the frontier) to make the fortune that said Asians were themselves kept from having. The lyrics typically challenge the conception of an "American ideal" rather than support it. I think Wonderful does fit in here -- we've been treated to Plymouth Rock, with DYLW? which puts us squarely in the location and time period of the height of New England Puritanism. Indeed, she belongs there, in the Puritan dream of the city upon a hill, treated to liberty, but also repressed sexuality. Again, Parks and Wilson challenge this by having the girl encounter someone who is sexually open. Instead of rejecting her religious beliefs, she simply revises them to account for her new found sexuality.

I think you may be using Parks' quote out of context. My understanding is that he was distressed that all things American were being ridiculed and dismissed as phony patriotism (especially in the way the British rock music invasion had culturally overshadowed American musicians). His lyrical concern for SMiLE was an attempt to present what he perceived as the truth about America, both good and bad. Writing about this was something he thought was so uncool that it would become cool.

I didn't want to politicize my fanciful analysis of "Wonderful", but the "non-believers" could very well be something like the House On Un-American Activities Committee, destroying lives through misguided patriotism. I agree with you that Parks' lyrics are not blindly patriotic, but I believe he was attempting to address a core value that the country was founded on and the ways it had deviated from that value. It's not surprising that only a few years later Parks released an album entitled DISCOVER AMERICA with songs about "G-Man Hoover", FDR and Bing Crosby!
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Chocolate Shake Man
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« Reply #302 on: March 22, 2011, 04:21:50 PM »

Quote
I think you may be using Parks' quote out of context. My understanding is that he was distressed that all things American were being ridiculed and dismissed as phony patriotism (especially in the way the British rock music invasion had culturally overshadowed American musicians). His lyrical concern for SMiLE was an attempt to present what he perceived as the truth about America, both good and bad. Writing about this was something he thought was so uncool that it would become cool.

Yes, I would agree with this. Certainly Parks believes it is crucial for Americans to write as Americans. His songs, after all, are riddled with American references and are highly indebted to Poe (he elsewhere described Cabin Essence as Gothic).

Quote
I didn't want to politicize my fanciful analysis of "Wonderful", but the "non-believers" could very well be something like the House On Un-American Activities Committee, destroying lives through misguided patriotism. I agree with you that Parks' lyrics are not blindly patriotic, but I believe he was attempting to address a core value that the country was founded on and the ways it had deviated from that value.

Here's where we might part ways a bit. I think that bringing in the House of Un-American Activities is somewhat of a stretch - there's not much in the song or elsewhere in the album that alludes to this sort of thing. Parks appears to interested in reaching further back in American history to, really, the origins of American mythology.

I think the lyrics of Do You Like Worms unsettles this notion of "core American values" suggesting instead that America was founded on an act of aggression and repression. This, incidentally, runs though a lot of Parks's lyrics. In Song Cycle he has a song where he brings up both Jim Crow laws and the taking of Mexican land in the same song!

To be honest, I think it is impossible to not politicize Parks's lyrics since they demand that kind of reading.

Quote
It's not surprising that only a few years later Parks released an album entitled DISCOVER AMERICA with songs about "G-Man Hoover", FDR and Bing Crosby!

Well, yes, but even in that album, Parks is challenging what we mean when we call ourselves "American". After all, the definition of American, from the point of view of the United States, typically excludes places like Trinidad & Tobago, which play a big role in that album. When Parks says "Discover America" he is calling attention to the imperial practices that are at the very core of "discovery" (Columbus's "discovery" for example, was part of an imperial and consequently exploitative mission) as well as the voices that are typically excluded in the name "America". And it is precisely these excluded voices that he calls our attention to in Smile as well.
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hypehat
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« Reply #303 on: March 22, 2011, 05:06:09 PM »

*Koff* Parks didn't write any of the songs on Discover America. They are calypso tunes originating from Trinidadian musicians (and Lowell George).....
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All roads lead to Kokomo. Exhaustive research in time travel has conclusively proven that there is no alternate universe WITHOUT Kokomo. It would've happened regardless.
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Chocolate Shake Man
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« Reply #304 on: March 22, 2011, 05:08:07 PM »

*Koff* Parks didn't write any of the songs on Discover America. They are calypso tunes originating from Trinidadian musicians (and Lowell George).....

Yes. But that doesn't challenge my point about what the album is doing or what Parks is doing by calling the album containing those songs and the music, "Discover America".
« Last Edit: March 22, 2011, 05:09:04 PM by rockandroll » Logged
hypehat
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« Reply #305 on: March 22, 2011, 05:17:00 PM »

That is true!  Grin
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All roads lead to Kokomo. Exhaustive research in time travel has conclusively proven that there is no alternate universe WITHOUT Kokomo. It would've happened regardless.
What is this "life" thing you speak of ?

Quote from: Al Jardine
Syncopate it? In front of all these people?!
Roger Ryan
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« Reply #306 on: March 23, 2011, 06:09:32 AM »

I really think we're generally in agreement here and just getting hung up on semantics. "Core American values" is not a very appealing, or appropriate, term when referencing the SMiLE lyrics (or Parks lyrics in general), but I couldn't think of another way to state it. I'll only suggest that I believe Parks is attempting to comment on the America of 1966 by way of reaching back into history. "Surf's Up", for example, seems to be more "present tense" despite it's historical allusions.
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