New album info (as it rolls out...)

[The Heartical Don]

To what extent does Brian produce his records these days anyway? I hear pretty mixed reports on this, but I've generally gotten the impression that he's more of an honorary producer at this point than anything else. Before Love You there's a clear line running through Brian's work, you can hear him evolving towards 15 Big Ones and Love You on some of his Sunflower era songs and on Funky Pretty. After Love You it's hard to discern any definite thread in his songs in terms of production, and it always sounds to me like other people started taking over for him. He just doesn't really seem to have a 'voice' as a producer anymore like he used to.

Agree. From M.I.U. onwards (bad production, as is KTSA), he's not really in charge IMHO. L.A. Album is so smoothed over (Boettcher, Johnston), then there is the 1986 album with Stewart Levine, and so on and so forth. Love You is totally Brian in some adventurous minimalist 'punk' mood... and there it stops.

Steve Levine, 1985

Cheers for that. And the poster just above you may be well right. 'This Song Wants To Sleep With You Tonight' (that I really adore) sounds like a genuine BW thing too.

[Melt Away]

I knew Joe Thomas would ruin this record. I'm probably speaking a little too soon but it's not looking good..

C'mon man that is one ridiculous statement, I've feared many an album only to be very f*ckin' surprised. Case in point BW Presents SMiLE.

Likening this NEW material to a reconstructed version of a failed album is ridiculous! The only thing you could compare it to is Imagination, since Thomas virtually ruined that record with his glossy adult contemporary bullsh*t. JT is credited on 5 songs, 2 of which are "Your Imagination" and "Lay Down Burdon", well known songs within BW/BB fans(well known not favorite). Anyway, I guess I'm not completely against Thomas being involved in some songwriting but I can't stand his production! Oh yeah, those other 3 songs he co-wrote? They're horrible.

[LostArt]

This long-time Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fan likes both Your Imagination and Lay Down Burden.

[Runaways]

Not sure why though

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

This long-time Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fan likes both Your Imagination and Lay Down Burden.

[Melt Away]

This long-time Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fan likes both Your Imagination and Lay Down Burden.

Yeah, I was just saying they're probably not anyone's favorites but two good tunes indeed.

[Wirestone]

To what extent does Brian produce his records these days anyway? I hear pretty mixed reports on this, but I've generally gotten the impression that he's more of an honorary producer at this point than anything else. Before Love You there's a clear line running through Brian's work, you can hear him evolving towards 15 Big Ones and Love You on some of his Sunflower era songs and on Funky Pretty. After Love You it's hard to discern any definite thread in his songs in terms of production, and it always sounds to me like other people started taking over for him. He just doesn't really seem to have a 'voice' as a producer anymore like he used to.

Agree. From M.I.U. onwards (bad production, as is KTSA), he's not really in charge IMHO. L.A. Album is so smoothed over (Boettcher, Johnston), then there is the 1986 album with Stewart Levine, and so on and so forth. Love You is totally Brian in some adventurous minimalist 'punk' mood... and there it stops.

None of those albums you mention have a "produced by Brian Wilson" credit. So no, they don't sound like it.

Brian's role in the production of his modern albums varies by the record. I've written about this at length. But suffice to say that he still contributes. He does use a lot of collaborators, but we must never forget that Chuck Britz was essentially an uncredited co-producer on most of the 60s classics. Brian has said that in interviews. And that the Wrecking Crew helped arrange songs they played on. And that Carl had to finish both 15BO and LY after Brian lost interest in them mid-production. The present is simpler than we think and the past is more complex.

[Runaways]

Generally I don't care when other people produce Brian's songs, the only time is when it's distracting like imagination. 

[Wilson Love]

This long-time Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fan likes both Your Imagination and Lay Down Burden.

I have to second that! Great songs, and the production does them justice. Not pure Brian production sound, but very good.
And that, is why people like them.

[Wirestone]

This long-time Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fan likes both Your Imagination and Lay Down Burden.

I have to second that! Great songs, and the production does them justice. Not pure Brian production sound, but very good.
And that, is why people like them.

There are also BW touches on both, and not just the vocal arrangements. He plays keys on each of them, for one thing. On the first, the drum fills have always sounded like a BW part to me, and there's a distinctive baritone sax mixed low in the tag to the second.

[EgoHanger1966]

I think Your Imagination is every bit of a masterpiece as Love and Mercy is  (this only applies if you consider L&M a masterpiece...)

Yeah, it's over produced, but L&M has those synth sounds all over it and most people don't crap on it for that. You have to think, the majority of Imagination as an album is SO good that most people think it's still at least an OK album despite the horrible, horrible production values.

[Runaways]

the production on both of those songs isn't great.  the first like 15 seconds of "your imagination" are so cringe inducing, and for me, the chorus is pretty mediocre, and that awful trumpet thing at the end, ugh it's just bad.  I don't blame love and mercy though, that was the sound of the times, and it's soo good live so whatever.  Love and mercy is way superior to me.

[Runaways]

anyone notice this tweet from the band OneRepublic?

OneRepublic ‏ @OneRepublic
Just left the studio- workin away...gotta hang with the Beach Boys for a bit and hear their new stuff- gonna be amazing!!!

[The Shift]

I think Your Imagination is every bit of a masterpiece as Love and Mercy is  (this only applies if you consider L&M a masterpiece...)

Yeah, it's over produced, but L&M has those synth sounds all over it and most people don't crap on it for that. You have to think, the majority of Imagination as an album is SO good that most people think it's still at least an OK album despite the horrible, horrible production values.

L&M's strength as a song in its own right has ensured its survival, despite it's period production values, IMHO.

As for Your Imagination, I've posted before on this board and others about how I heard this on the radio just before the album's release without knowing it was BW and can still recall thinking "whoa, if only the Beach Boys could knock one out like that!" I was delighted and astonished to hear the DJ tell me after the track finished that it was in fact BDW.  Still regard that as possibly the best Beach Boys track that wasn't from the last 20 years.

[endofposts]

"Your Imagination" still gets played on the Musak at drugstores.  I suppose that's a sign it's stood the test of time.

[Dunderhead]

To what extent does Brian produce his records these days anyway? I hear pretty mixed reports on this, but I've generally gotten the impression that he's more of an honorary producer at this point than anything else. Before Love You there's a clear line running through Brian's work, you can hear him evolving towards 15 Big Ones and Love You on some of his Sunflower era songs and on Funky Pretty. After Love You it's hard to discern any definite thread in his songs in terms of production, and it always sounds to me like other people started taking over for him. He just doesn't really seem to have a 'voice' as a producer anymore like he used to.

Agree. From M.I.U. onwards (bad production, as is KTSA), he's not really in charge IMHO. L.A. Album is so smoothed over (Boettcher, Johnston), then there is the 1986 album with Stewart Levine, and so on and so forth. Love You is totally Brian in some adventurous minimalist 'punk' mood... and there it stops.

None of those albums you mention have a "produced by Brian Wilson" credit. So no, they don't sound like it.

Brian's role in the production of his modern albums varies by the record. I've written about this at length. But suffice to say that he still contributes. He does use a lot of collaborators, but we must never forget that Chuck Britz was essentially an uncredited co-producer on most of the 60s classics. Brian has said that in interviews. And that the Wrecking Crew helped arrange songs they played on. And that Carl had to finish both 15BO and LY after Brian lost interest in them mid-production. The present is simpler than we think and the past is more complex.

This is fair, to an extent. I wouldn't argue that some of the band's engineers had an important role as co-producers, whether it be Chuck Britz or Steve Desper, but I think Brian usually had a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish. It's hard to articulate this particular point so I apologize, but Brian had a meta-understanding of himself as a producer, and that's what I think is missing since Love You. He knew what he was doing, knew how his overall sound was supposed to develop, where he was going and where he had been. He relied on a lot of talented people to help him, but he had something in his head which he was compelled to express. That impulse, that necessity is what defines his best work. I enjoy plenty of the songs both from his official solo albums and from the bootlegged sessions during the 80s/90s, but all that material feels divorced from the continuous artistic evolution that forms a line from Surfer Girl to Love You. There's an arc, a thread which unites Brian's songs, you can follow it, see where it starts and where it leads.
After Love You that clear development stops, like Brian lost a clear understanding of himself as a producer, like he stopped caring about how new material fit into the total scheme of his artistic work. You can't really characterize BWRG or TLOS in the same way you can Pet Sounds or Love You. I don't doubt that he was the primary producer on those albums, but I do doubt that he exercised that authority in a meaningful way, that he had a real vision that reflected a natural and organic development of his interests in recording technology and sound engineering. He seems happy to have his records simply sound like "Brian Wilson" recordings, and to delegate they're creation and that sound to people whom he trusts or depends on. It's no longer coming from within his imagination or artistic spirit, but from sources outside of himself. He allows those sources to determine how he feels, what he wants, what his vision is, and isn't motivated to complete and total control over his output.

I hope that all makes sense, I think this is an interesting topic and I haven't read some of the things like Gary Usher's writings on Brian's work in the 80s, so I'd be more than happy to entertain every perspective on this issue, but this has been my general take on things. Also which songs on Love You did Carl produce? I was aware he mixed 15 Big Ones and Love You, but I was under the impression that Brian had done a great deal of the work himself including the instrumental work. Where did Carl pick things up on that project, did he also do the production on Adult/Child? I never would have thought that from listening to the recordings.

[Wirestone]

Fishmonk: There's a lot to be written on the subject, and I've gone over it at length earlier on the board. I disagree with you about the meta view and the through line. I understand the point, but it's impossible to disentangle it from what happened to Brian mentally in the second Landy period, from the circumstances of his life, and from what happens to older artists in general.

(Also, "He allows those sources to determine how he feels, what he wants, what his vision is," seems extreme. It's impossible to know something like that. It's probably true some of the time, but it's probably false some of the time too.)

This is my thesis: Brian's production and hand in same has always been directly linked to the resources he has available -- when the BBs were making their own records, they sounded stripped down. When he hired Spector's people, they sounded like Spector records. When he recorded on his own, it sounded like Love You. And this general approach continues to the day -- he has a band assembled explicitly to re-create his biggest hits (and rarities) from the mid-60s. Using that band means his present-day records sound a lot like the mid-60s.

There are a handful of other issues. No question, Brian leads less on the production side than in his halcyon days. He is not a hugely ambitious producer on his own (I mean, the records over the last 15 years or so that he has the clearest claim to producing solo are "Everything I Need" -- the original, unreleased mix -- "Christmas Day," "Walking Down the Path of Life," "This Spirit of Rock and Roll" and the TLOS demos -- all of which are pleasant, but hardly outrageous). But I also see that as directly linked to his illness and the byzantine complexities of his life and the record business. Would fans appreciate all his recent records sounding really stripped down? Maybe. Would anyone else? Hard to say.

Secondly, I think Brian really exited the production race after Smile's collapse. He had good ideas that he executed well after that point, but always as individual tracks rather than albums. Realistically, 15BO and LY are much more about Carl and the band cleaning up Brian's ramshackle studio recordings and demos respectively. Yes, that sound can be an aesthetic, but I don't know how consciously BW made that decision. (Testimony from the time suggests that he was basically forced to record 15BO and raced through it without trying.) So when I talk about Brian leading less, I don't think he's really led (in the Pet Sounds sense) for some four decades.

A broader problem: Who of Brian's generation is still "advancing" sonically? What other artists of that age are still actively trying new things? There are a handful -- Paul Simon comes to mind -- but most of them, including folks like McCartney and Dylan, use the forms and sounds that they are comfortable with to make their new music. Most of McCartney's stuff (experimental projects aside) sounds like the late 60s or early 70s. Most of Dylan's sounds like records from the 40s and 50s. As mature musicians, they're not as interested in experimentation for the sake of experimentation. And they're not really having hits anymore, so they're not chasing some hot new sound.

So while we may be disappointed that Brian transitioned from being a record-making mastermind to a singer-songwriter who produces his albums with lots of help, the same thing has happened to a lot of people. And the flashes of that former mastermind can still be glimpsed often enough to add excitement to even mundane projects.

[Runaways]

i hope we get at least one song where you can tell brian was pushing himself creatively.  Like "midnight's another day" on TLOS.  that song sticks out, and it isn't surprising when brian says he pushed himself to write a good song for that one

[Andrew G. Doe]

Also which songs on Love You did Carl produce? I was aware he mixed 15 Big Ones and Love You, but I was under the impression that Brian had done a great deal of the work himself including the instrumental work. Where did Carl pick things up on that project, did he also do the production on Adult/Child? I never would have thought that from listening to the recordings.

Carl basically took Brian's original productions and - "Good Time" & "Ding Dang" excepted - polished them up some (in some cases, a lot) via a remix and a few overdubs. Brian's original mixes are out there and they're curiously flat and lifeless.

[Dunderhead]

Fishmonk: There's a lot to be written on the subject, and I've gone over it at length earlier on the board. But I generally think that Brian's production and hand in same has always been very connected to the resources he has on hand at any given time -- when the BBs were making their own records, they sounded stripped down. When he hired Spector's people, they sounded like Spector records. When he recorded on his own, it sounded like Love You. And this general approach continues to the day -- he has a band assembled explicitly to re-create his biggest hits (and rarities) from the mid-60s. Using that band is going to create records that sound like what the band was hired to do.

Now, there are a handful of other issues here. I do think it's undeniable that Brian has led less in the production side of things than in his halcyon days. He is not a hugely ambitious producer on his own (I mean, the records over the last 15 years or so that he has the clearest claim to producing solo are "Everything I Need" -- the original, unreleased mix -- "Christmas Day," "Walking Down the Path of Life" and the TLOS demos -- all of which are pleasant, but hardly outrageous). But I also see that as very hard to separate from his illness and the byzantine complexities of his life. Would fans appreciate all his recent records sounding really stripped down? Maybe. But would anyone else? Hard to say.

Secondly, I think Brian really exited the production race after Smile's collapse. He had good ideas that he executed well after that point, but always as individual tracks rather than albums. Realistically, 15BO and LY are much more about Carl and the band cleaning up Brian's ramshackle studio recordings and demos respectively. Yes, that sound can be an aesthetic, but I don't know how consciously BW made that decision, if that makes sense. (Testimony from the time suggests that he was basically forced to record 15BO and raced through it without really trying.) So when I talk about Brian leading less, I suppose I actually mean that I don't think he's really led creatively for some four decades.

But a broader problem is that who of Brian's generation is still "advancing" sonically? What other artists of that age are still actively trying new things? There are a handful -- Paul Simon comes to mind -- but most of them, including folks like McCartney and Dylan, use the forms and sounds that they are comfortable with to make their new music. Most of McCartney's stuff (side projects aside) sounds like the late 60s or early 70s. Most of Dylan's sounds like records from the 40s and 50s. As mature musicians, they're simply not as interested in experimentation for the sake of experimentation. And they're not really having hits anymore, so they're not chasing some hot new sound.

In that sense, while there's an element of disappointment that Brian transitioned from being a record-making mastermind to a singer-songwriter who produces his albums with lots of help, the same thing has happened to a lot of people.

Excellent points Wirestone. If I may respond to some of it,
Firstly I think Brian's records started sounding like Spector records primarily because that's how he wanted them to sound. He hired Spector people because he wanted a Spector sound, it was no accident. He attended Spector sessions and made a deliberate attempt to understand what techniques were being used. Furthermore he was very conscious of what he was doing to develop that sound. In Goodbye Surfing, Hello God there's a part where he draws a chart showing where he was in relation to Spector and what direction he was going in. My point is, he had a broader meta-understanding of production, a philosophical or theoretical approach to the art of recording. There are times in interviews when he tries to get into this or discuss what makes a record well produced. It's an artform that isn't well understood to this day, what constitutes the actual production of a record, what are the goals of the producer, what makes a production successful? Great writers and artists have this type of understanding of their own technique, they follow their instincts but guide their impulses with self critical analysis of their own style and approach. I think this is something Brian did, something that he possessed.

That's what always made the the development between Smiley Smile and Friends so interesting to me. It's easy to discount this period, after all it represented the near total collapse of the band's popularity and commercial viability, and is usually seen as a haphazard grasping at musical straws by Brian. I can't help hearing something very intelligent going on during those 9 or so months however. A controlled process of self instruction and reorientation. He deconstructed his sound and started over from the ground level, instilling his music with a new economy and restraint along the way. I think it's a very impressive and disciplined evolution, at least that's how I've always interpreted things. To say that Brian was in a "production race" seems like nothing more than a myth to me, with whom was he racing? George Martin? I think he was more in a competition for acclaim and sales with The Beatles than he was for pure advancement and innovation in production. If he believed he was explicitly in a race with another dedicated producer during the Smile-era it would have undoubtedly been Phil Spector, even though Spector fell off the radar after River Deep, Mountain High (likely the primary inspiration for Heroes & Villains). I really think that aspect has been grossly overstated and Brian's production from Smiley Smile up until things like Old Man River shows a definite explication and advancement of production technique and aesthetic, although I will grant you it was not uninhibited and was constrained, to an extent, by growing pressures; the birth of his first daughter, the commercial turmoil the band experienced, and the more assertive voices of the other Beach Boys, things which all led to a purposeful suppression of his creative instincts and ostensible abandonment of his own artistic aspirations.

Following the release of Friends however I do not believe that Brian was able to contain himself, despite his best attempts to escape his musical career. I think partially he felt a sense of bitterness towards the rest of the band, which caused him to indulge certain tendencies in his music more willingly as part of a general self destructive pattern, as if he was trying to render himself unfit for continued contribution. More importantly I think he began to adopt his peculiar manner as a self defense mechanism. During the Smile era he was vocally concerned with how he would appear to his audience, and his work up to Friends had a vulnerable side which he made an attempt to conceal through an ironic sort of impish humor. His work in 1969/1970 has always told an interesting story to me. Games Two Can Play, Good Time, H.E.L.P. Is On The Way, Loop De Loop, Take A Load Off Your Feet. Where did these new songwriting impulses come from? I think aesthetically these show a clear link Friends-era material, Old Man River, and Tonight You Belong To Me, though it's hard to parse out Brian's work during this time as these songs are not often recognized as an important singular development of Brian's music especially because, from what I understand, something like Loop De Loop hasn't been released in a form reflecting Brian's original work on it. I would characterize these songs as a sort of missing link between Friends and Love You. They're very revealing lyrically, showing a new sense of ironic insincerity, and overall signify a clear evolution of Brian's "voice", but they have unfortunately been whitewashed and sort of shunned in the band's catalog.

Cows In The Pasture is another album that would definitely aid this type of examination, I can't help but imagine it as sounding something like the music discussed above translated into the country idiom, which might explain why it hasn't surfaced. Though that is simply speculation on my part. Another case study is This Whole World, which is generally considered a classic. I understand the track as released on Sunflower was produced by both Brian and Carl, and though I can't remember the specific information regarding it, I do recall hearing Brian first produced the track and that Carl produced the vocals, and that like 15 Big Ones it was mixed in a way inconsistent with Brian's original approach. Though I won't claim to know the full story, I'm simply going on things I've read around these parts. The American Spring version of the song is really interesting in this respect, I've always imagined it as a more purely Brian take on the song, but then again it's an unresolved mystery as to who contributed what on the Spring album. Different sources have said different things, Desper minimized Brian's input while Marilyn indicated it was more significant than that. Regardless the Spring album feels like one more in line with Brian's evolving sound, whether it be Sweet Mountain, Good Time, or Had To Phone Ya. It would be useful to know more about what was done on that project, but I still view it as pointing the way forward in any case.

It's unfortunate that so many of his songs from this period haven't been really bootlegged, or have been erased or lost, or maybe even never actually recorded because it's harder to trace what he was really up to. Funky Pretty and Mount Vernon are pretty clear demonstrations though, and this is where Brian starts becoming more entrenched I think, working on songs he probably knew the other band members wouldn't support and embracing instincts he knew wouldn't be approved. But again, you can see him working his way forwards and subsuming new ideas into his M.O., likely from the Switched On Bach LP. What happened after Holland is uncertain, I still don't really understand what led to the band trying to put Brian back in charge, which is something they seemed to attempt even before 15 Big Ones during the Caribou sessions. Why at a time when it was obvious that Brian wasn't willing to create music that would advance the band commercially was it that he was given even more control? I can see the promise of another Brian produced album had a certain marketable allure, but how was the band possibly able to negotiate that amongst themselves? Especially after the Caribou sessions. Certainly they must have known what would happen, why did Carl, Dennis or even Brian go along with it? It's impossible to figure out, but in any case the coloring of 15 Big Ones as a rushed album seems unfair. Others on this board have indicated that Brian's original work on that album was much better than Carl's final mix made it out to be, and Brian's fatigue is somewhat understandable as it seems at least 30 songs were worked on, and the nature of the album didn't appear to be concrete enough to bring things to a prompt close. Until we hear the original mix, and learn more about what the intention was and why specifically things fell apart, I don't think anyone can say with any definite certainty what happened, though I will maintain until then that it's a significant data point on Brian's curve. Both 15 Big Ones and Love You seem to me something much more than unusuable demos polished off by Carl. They're the unmistakable product or Brian's creative evolution up until that point, from Friends, Old Man River, Walk On By, and Tonight You Belong To Me, to Brian's 1969/1970/1971 songs, to Sweet Mountain and Funky Pretty and Mount Vernon. Love You is the obvious next step, the logical continuation of everything he was doing over the last six or seven years.

I would still like to know what specific work Carl did on Love You, based on the Brian Loves You boot I can't help but be curious. Was it simply the mixing? Did Carl go back in and record additional instrumentation, if so what? This also begs the question of whether or not he produced Adult/Child. I've never gotten that impression, and it seems strange to me that Brian would grow weary of producing Love You only to immediately begin work on a set of songs written at the same time. Is the contention that Love You more represented Carl's vision than Brian's? Or that he simply did some tinkering on it? The latter I would grant but the former I think is a major overstatement. Yes some people helped Brian in his recording, I wouldn't argue that, but I don't always believe that help was positive after 1970, 15 Big Ones being the definite example. It seems more often other people tinkered with Brian's work in order to make it more commercial, which doesn't seem to diminish the inherent artistry of them or override Brian's original vision, suggesting only that one has to do a little digging to see what Brian was really doing. All the impulses are there, you just have to put them together, and maybe one day we'll hear more of the missing links out there.

On Adult/Child you can hear Brian moving towards something new on Deep Purple, It's Over Now, and Life Is For The Living. Here is where Brian was pointing in 1977, this seems to have been his future. After this, I simply can't identify how he got his 80s work. I'm not able to listen to Sweet Insanity or Landylocked in terms of what came before. I can't see logically how he arrived at that point, based on what he was doing in 1977. It doesn't seem to be connected. The same is true for the last decade of his solo albums, they seem to largely ignore what Brian did between 1968 and 1977. It's like they skip over that whole decade and look back at 1965 and 1966 more than anything else. It just doesn't appear to be logical if that makes sense. I can't really tell how he got from point A to point B. That's what I miss in his work, this sense of resolution, of fulfillment. It's a sense of craftsmanship as a producer, of deduction and refinement. I don't care what direction he would have gone in or what his records would have sounded like had he kept producing them, I think we all would be able to sense the type of derivation I'm talking about. That's why Love You just sounds so right to us fans, it's supremely logical in terms of Brian Wilson the producer and artist. The music he's been involved with over the last 20 or 30 years is music without a history without a past without meaning or context. The forthcoming album will only be another album apart from the legacy Brian worked so hard to create. Sure lots of musicians fall into apathy in their later careers, but many of those musicians weren't also producers, and had Brian continued to develop, I think his work would end up meaning a whole lot more. And that's what I desperately wish we could hear on this album, rather than an 'executive producer' credit in the liner notes.

Sorry for the length of this, it just sort of all came out without me trying.

[runnersdialzero]

I don't blame love and mercy though, that was the sound of the times, and it's soo good live so whatever.  Love and mercy is way superior to me.

The album take of "Love And Mercy" may be the worst recording I've ever heard. I just pictures this 80s lady with shitty poodle hair wearing a headset, talking about getting your degree in computer science at DeVry or some sh*t whenever I hear it. I never want to hear it ever again ever.

[The Shift]

Thanks to Fishmonk & Wirestone  –  excellent reading.

[The Heartical Don]

Thanks to Fishmonk & Wirestone  –  excellent reading.

Seconded.

[MarcellaHasDirtyFeet]

I haven't heard Adult/Child, but I see a very clear connection between Love You and BW88. The same kind of funky, thick basslines, simple lyrical themes, and just plain fun melodies. BW88 seems like Love You part II to these ears. They're also both albums I wouldn't want my friends to catch me listening to.

[Outtasight!]

I knew Joe Thomas would ruin this record. I'm probably speaking a little too soon but it's not looking good..

C'mon man that is one ridiculous statement, I've feared many an album only to be very f*ckin' surprised. Case in point BW Presents SMiLE.

Likening this NEW material to a reconstructed version of a failed album is ridiculous! The only thing you could compare it to is Imagination, since Thomas virtually ruined that record with his glossy adult contemporary bullsh*t. JT is credited on 5 songs, 2 of which are "Your Imagination" and "Lay Down Burdon", well known songs within BW/BB fans(well known not favorite). Anyway, I guess I'm not completely against Thomas being involved in some songwriting but I can't stand his production! Oh yeah, those other 3 songs he co-wrote? They're horrible.

I didn't liken this new music to anything. Your statement was that Joe Thomas had ruined the new album. My point was/is that your statement is ridiculous as we've yet to hear it. I'm no great fan of Imagination but I won't pre-judge music that is yet to be heard.