Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

[Alex]

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Radiohead, Kid A
Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Beck's albums through Sea Change
Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin

I never have and never plan on talking about any of these albums.

Why not?  All of those except for Kid A (I prefer The Bends) are really great albums. Both Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel are BW fans.

[Lonely Summer]

I'm more interested in Ray Davies - Other People's Lives, Bob Dylan - Modern Times, and Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways.

[Alex]

I'm more interested in Ray Davies - Other People's Lives, Bob Dylan - Modern Times, and Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways.

Ahh, rootsy and gritty-type stuff.

[Mahalo]

BWPS rules. I just wanted to remind everyone that we are blessed to have this album. I've played it for non-Beach Boys fans and they thought it was the Beach Boys. (then again, "Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys, we're just his messengers..." Dennis Wilson) I had my friend in stitches the other day when I sang the Pirate verse over the instrumental version of Holidays from 1966.......

The sequencing rules, Van's lyrics rule-they are way better than anything we have heard since Solar System was recorded, and the recording rules. For instance, the mix of the drums and bass on Roll Plymouth Rock are much cleaner than the mud of Do You Like Worms (which I still love). The second movement is more than what 99.99999% of musicians could ever hope to accomplish.

History will be kind to this album. Buy the vinyl. Kick back and enjoy. We need to discuss this album more........

[RONDEMON]

I just finished playing through this album purely on piano and it is truly amazing. Piano players should try it. It certainly gives the album even more depth than just listening to it. The second and last suites are amazing. I love this album and I nearly agree with BW in which this is probably his best work. I still can't get into Fire though...

[Ron]

Ironically, Ms. O'Leary's Cow is the only track he ever was nominated or received a Grammy for.  (I believe he was never nominated for another, anybody know for sure?) 

I kind of like that, though.... basically he got looked over for decades, and the academy couldn't give him record of the year because of Ray Charles' passing... but they did give him an award which embraced likely his most insane work ever.  "Rock Instrumental of the Year".  What makes it even greater is that it's not completely an instrumental, since the band moans and whines like souls caught in an inferno all through the song...  so giving him the grammy as an instrumental even gave a slight tip of the hat to his skill in harmony and using the voice as an instrument.  It's like the collectively said "you know Brian, you've never won a grammy, but to us, even your most tortured music is worthy of a grammy".  The only thing more beautiful than that was seeing the huge sh*t eating grin on Brian's face when he won the baby and was taking pictures backstage. 

[Amy B.]

I think Good Vibrations was nominated for song of the year or record of the year and lost to ...what was it? Some lesser song.

But that's the Grammies for you. The Beatles only won one or two, also.

[Mahalo]

BWPS is too good for a lousy, pathetic, piece of merda Grammy. I HATE absolutley HATE those crap awards...all of them. I hope Brian went home and threw that thing right in the trash where it belongs. BWPS rules, Grammies suck.

[Lonely Summer]

Gee, no name, I kinda get the idea that you don't think highly of the Grammies?   

[Mooger Fooger]

I was online at the old Smile Shop board. It was surreal - for me in more ways than one. I also acquired some psychadelic ingredients from Holland, and put on Orange Crate Art and waited. As the hour of the concert drew near more and more folk logged in. There were some old faces who some had not heard from since the Smile Research Laboratory days. When the time passed as to when the concert would have ended, we all held our collective breaths. Then the first post came through which was basically "oh my god...oh my GOD!!!" The guy (I unfortunately dont recall who) posted as fast as he could, and we were asking about sequence, lyrics, and how did a finished "Child is Father" sound?

The next few days were awesome. The next morning boots of the show were on Ebay. It was the euporia you would expect. Subsequently more and more British based fans posted musings about their concert experiences. An amazing time. I think the CD release has damped the fact that BWPS04 was originally conceived as a concert experience. Due to the overwhelming support post concert, the decision was made to record it in a studio in April of 04. IIRC some band members did NOT want a studio release.

It was curiously around the CD release that the negatives started to happen. Again the fact that 04 is not the 67 version was the battle ground. I'd like to think I'm as hard core as Smile can get. I put out the Smile File through BBA in 1993 which was a chronical of all known session activity in the 66-67 years at the time. When I first heard a boot MP3 of the Feb 24 concert, I couldn't really believe what I was hearing. Can any of you here recall the Smile-taboo on the Bloo board? It was tough enough simply mentioning Heroes and Villains without being told to pipe down. There I was listening to Brian on stage performing this work. I recall when my copy of the studio CD arrived and I played the following PS-BWPS-Sgt Pepper. You know what it felt as if it belonged in the sequence next to its older cousins.

The digital samples, and synths never bothered me. Neither did the non BB (sans Brian) vocals. One thing I noticed playing the finished 04 project was that it flowed. This is something I never had in listening to session material. It is tough to explain, but even though the two are the same music, to me they are two variations of the same theme. I generally do NOT listen to the original sessions and top that off with BWPS04. I usually listen to the 66-67 sessions and then go into sessions for SS followed by SS itself.

On that topic, the 66-67 recordings ARE better to my ears, BUT they do not represent a completed work. I find myself listening to the sessions as sessions to understand the simple/complex arrangements Brian explored. I listen to BWPS04 to listen to a finished flowing piece of work. I consider it art. Of all the CDs I own, it gets replayed the most. I was never one who felt it was the finished 66-67 project. I doubt had the album come out in 67 it would have sequenced the same as its 04 counterpart.

The 04 version is the lifting of demons from Brian. I sensed it in the concerts and I saw it on the footage from London. For that reason alone it secures a sacred place in my collection. I consider myself fortunate that I can let Smile in its 2004 incarnation move me. I can enjoy it for what it is. I find it a great recording. I like the mix, I like the vocals.

I give it 5/5 and I don't apologise for that.

[Lonely Summer]

Well said. Before BWPS, the biggest excitement was the inclusion of Smile material on the 1993 boxset. If I was to put together a Smile boxset, I would start with BWPS live - this would give the uninitiated (if there still are any) the first proper presentation of a completed Smile. Second/third discs would be Smile sessions 66/67, with that morphing into Smiley Smile. 4th disc would be BWPS, studio cd. Of course, that will never happen because of the different record labels involved and the inability to get permission from all the BB's.   

[lance]

Great record--this is the music that converted me. Think about that. Could have been should have been...in the end this is it. It's brilliant and beautiful. It's classic and new.

[PaulHippensteel]

One friend of mine (who was born in the early '50s but likes later artists like Springsteen) thinks BWPS is "great". Another of friend of mine (who was also born in the early '50s) says BWPS "sound like a K-Tel re-recording" (for anyone who doesn't know what that refers to, in the the '70s K-Tel got numerous artists in the studio to do cheap but slick remakes of their hits).

I was born in 1960, so I can't claim to be a first generation BB fan. As embarassing as it sounds, my first exposure to the BB was the Carpenters' cover of "Fun Fun Fun". In 1973 I heard my first BB LP, "Best Of The Beach Boys". Shortly thereafter I got a single of GV. When WB reissued Smiley Smile in the '70s I rushed to get it, but I was disappointed that, except fot H&V, the rest of the album didn't live up to the innovation of GV.

My opinion of BWPS falls somewhere between the ratings of my two friends. Personally I would rate BWPS a 4. I know I'm showing my age (and prejudices) here but I'm not a big fan of the sound quality/production of contemporary recordings. For me the harsh, tiny, compressed sound of digital recording doesn't come even close to richness and depth of original '60s analog recrdings made on vacuum tube equipment. To my ears the one-dimensional sound of digital recording can sometimes make "real" instruments sound like synths and drum machines. Darian could have found a studio with vintage equipment but obviously he chose not to. (Bob Irwin at the Sundazed reissue label gets around the problem of making CD's sound "analog" by mixing and mastering through vacuum tube equipment.)

And I agree with some of the other posters here about the non-BB backing vocals. Why is there a female vocalist on the album? Is she Darian's girlfriend? She seems totally out of place. I don't think Marilyn Rovell would have been on the original SMILE. And this female vocalist sings on "I Wanna Be Around", a song which BW didn't write and doesn't really fit on the album. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think "I Wanna Be Around" was intended for the orignal SMILE.

Even more out of place to my ears than the female vocalist, is the terrible singer who does the pirate rap (who is it? Darian?). Was that piece even intended for the original SMILE?

Why weren't real harpsichords and tack pianos used? Those instruments could have been easily rented. Was using synths just to save time and money? Still, I'm thankful the production of BWPS doesn't go to contemporary extremes. Fortunately there's no screaming, overdistorted heavy metal guitar (like Carl Wilson played in the '70s & '80s), overly "big" gated drum sounds (like on a Peter Gabriel recording) or "funky" bass guitar. It is nice to hear on the CD a few seconds of unprocessed electric guitar similar to that on the original GV outtakes.

The 20/20 version "Cabinessence" has always been one of my favorite original SMILE recordings. But, as everyone knows, that arrangement was edited together by the other BB's to include parts of "Who Ran The Iron Horse" and "The Grand Coulee Dam". The BWPS is just a note for note remake of the 20/20 version, which means it's probably not the arrangement that would have been on the original SMILE.

And wasn't "Surf's Up" supposed to have been the finale of the original SMILE? On BWPS it's put (rather ineffectively in my opinion) in the middle of the CD.

I'm definitely glad BWPS came out, flaws and all. Better to have it than not have it, unlike some fans who think it never should have come out (which I don't understand). My theory is that the original SMILE sessions took place while Brian was in a particular once in a lifetime mood/frame of mind/phase and it passed before SMILE was finished. When BWPS was recorded he probably couldn't recapture that mood. What am I basing this theory on? Well, in my life I've had certain once-in-a-lifetime moods that have never returned, resulting in projects I haven't finished.

The annoying thing is that Brian & Darian listened to original SMILE tapes, presumably from Brian's or the BB's own archives, when they did their remakes. So there's probably much that hasn't even come out on bootlegs. But will the public ever get to hear those recordings?

[TdHabib]

The woman in the vocal mix is Tyalor Mills...who has been in Brian's band since it's very inception and is still there today.

[PaulHippensteel]

TD:
Thanks for the info!

I listened again to BWPS. I still think Taylor Mills sticks out like a sore thumb on the album. Did she have enough clout with Brian and/or Darian to say "hey, I'm gonna sing on this album whether you like it or not"? Or maybe Brian likes her singing enough that he wanted her on the album, even though having her there would be a departure from the original conception of SMILE. Her prescence adds weight to the theory that BWPS is an updated remake/revision of the original SMILE rather than an exact recreation of the '67 original.

So who sings the pirate rap? I still don't like it.

Paul Hippensteel
Publisher
Action Plus! Magazine

[the captain]

Her prescence adds weight to the theory that BWPS is an updated remake/revision of the original SMILE rather than an exact recreation of the '67 original.

So who sings the pirate rap? I still don't like it.

There is no theory that BWPS is some kind of update as opposed to recreation of he original: there was never a completed '67 original, and so there is nothing to recreate. There could not have been a recreation of it, probably in large part in that Brian Wilson had no true, final idea as to how to complete the album. That is why BWPS has new material fleshing out the otherwise incomplete ideas. (Among those, the speaking part you mention, done by Nick Walusko of Wondermints, another guy who (like Taylor) has been with Brian since he began touring again.) It isn't a remake or revision, exactly, either.

BWPS is a studio version of a live performance of then-newly sequenced, moderately augmented SMILE-session material.

As for Taylor having any clout ... no. Darian had input, but on the whole, you can count on the fact that Wilson's band are hired musicians doing what they are asked and paid to do. On TLOS, Scott Bennett was a co-writer and clearly had input. Brian will trust the musical ideas of his band, but I think you can rule out someone getting their parts through any political muscle.

[PaulHippensteel]

>>Among those, the speaking part you mention, done by Nick Walusko of Wondermints, another guy who (like Taylor) has been with Brian since he began touring again.

So maybe the album would have been more accurately titled "Darian and The Wondermints Present a Tribute to Smile with Guest Vocalist Brian Wilson"?

[the captain]

No. But maybe "The Brian Wilson Team Presents an Album Based On Smile-Based Performances."

It isn't worth getting too riled up that sexagenarian Wilson, who hasn't really stepped up to show all that much enthusiasm for more than little bursts in his entire solo career and doesn't have the voice to live up to whatever enthusiasm he could muster anyway, has a team doing the heavy lifting. The past is just that.

[PaulHippensteel]

>>It isn't worth getting too riled up that sexagenarian Wilson, who hasn't really stepped up to show all that much enthusiasm for more than little bursts in his entire solo career

There are points in the Smile documentary where you can tell Brian really isn't into the whole thing (like when the backing singers are doing "Barnyard" noises).

As for Taylor Mills, Ben Vaughn should rewite his "Mike Love" song to be about her.

[the captain]

I wouldn't call that a documentary. Feature-length commercial is probably a better term.

[Wilsonista]

>>It isn't worth getting too riled up that sexagenarian Wilson, who hasn't really stepped up to show all that much enthusiasm for more than little bursts in his entire solo career

There are points in the Smile documentary where you can tell Brian really isn't into the whole thing (like when the backing singers are doing "Barnyard" noises).

As for Taylor Mills, Ben Vaughn should rewite his "Mike Love" song to be about her.

That is as unfair as it is untrue.

http://www.myspace.com/taylormills1

Even if her style is not to your liking, you can't deny that she has talent. All of Brian's band members are supremely talented in their own right. Or else they would not have been hired to play in his band.

[the captain]

If I can downgrade "supremely" to, say, "extremely," I agree 100%. And frankly, I think there is an unpleasable (yes, that is a made-up word) audience out there for whom the only satisfaction possible would be a completed 1967 Smile with the Beach Boys ... which happens to include the songs they like best and in the running order they prefer. But even the living can't make that happen, much less those participants whose ends were decades past.

Following that idea, the best Darian or Nick or Taylor (who has the unfortunate quality in this line of reasoning of being female, and thus really going uphill) could do would be to be a great imitation of what came before them. Unwinnable situation. That's why I am glad BWPS is out of the way--except here and on other boards where cries of "fake harpsichords!" ring out--and we've had TLOS. At least there it is down to imagined complaints about what the Beach Boys would have done with the material, as opposed to direct comparisons.

[PaulHippensteel]

I'm not saying Taylor Mills doesn't have "talent". But she seems out of place on BWPS.

My reference to Ben Vaughn's "Mike Love" song was a joke. I've actually never heard the song, but I met Ben in '87 and he described the lyrics to me. A friend of mine supposedly has a tape of the Folk City BW tribute where Ben performed that song, but I've never heard it.

>>Taylor (who has the unfortunate quality in this line of reasoning of being female, and thus really going uphill)
I'm about as far from "sexist" as you can get. I admire many female artists, like Petula Clark who wrote many of her own songs, or Patty Loveless to make a more current reference. But I think Taylor doesn't fit on BWPS; I felt that when the CD first came out and I listened to it again yesterday and still feel that way. If Jimmy Page had guested on BWPS and played Led Zeppelin-style guitar he would have seemed out of place as well.

[the captain]

Referencing things you've never heard is a prerequisite for BBs boards, so you'll fit right in.

As for Taylor, I'd guess she doesn't fit in for you because you know the source material. Play it to a blank-slate newbie and I doubt "what's that, a girl singing?" will come up very often. And if it does, they're probably just talking about Foskett. 

[Wilsonista]

I'm not saying Taylor Mills doesn't have "talent". But she seems out of place on BWPS.

My reference to Ben Vaughn's "Mike Love" song was a joke. I've actually never heard the song, but I met Ben in '87 and he described the lyrics to me. A friend of mine supposedly has a tape of the Folk City BW tribute where Ben performed that song, but I've never heard it.

Paul, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on Taylor and SMiLE. I like her litle cameo on I Wanna Be Around (which WAS recorded during the  SMiLE sessions - the onl;y difference between the 66 and 04 versions is that Brian sings the song's lyrics in 04. In 66, Carol Kaye remembers that Brian told her that the medley of IWBA/Workshop was meant to be "rebuilding after the fire". )