Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

[OLD GREGG]

I was at the Glasgow show too. Twas great.

[the captain]

The Smile part, anyway. That first set was awful. I was so excited to hear Time To Get Alone...until Brian sang. Horrible.

[OLD GREGG]

I dont know I thought it was alright, there were a fair few mistakes in the first half but over all I was impressed, the Good Timin opening was great. And Smile was mind blowing of course.

[sidewinder572]

What more can be said. 5/5 for sure. My all time favorite album. I know a lot of you say the live version is the definative way to hear SMiLE. It's great, don't get me wrong. To me however, SMiLE is, was, and always will be a work of studio magic. There's more to the studio version and the vinyl is the way to hear it

[Matinee Idyll]

Bloody hell, I always respond to something from the first page... so it's completely out of context.

[Peter Tomatz]

I had to give the record a 2. I just don’t take much pleasure in listening to it despite my love of the finished Smile. The live bootleg would get a 4 with the point taken off for the baffling drumming and the painful fuzz eschewing. I really hope I get a chance to see Brian perform Smile again.

[Evenreven]

Just why did you have to give the album a 2 again?

[Dr. Tim]

Well it's 5 for me.  I knew most of the basic backstory over the years, and I'd heard the GV excerpts, so when the disc began I was recognizing it all  - so far, so good - until Roll Plymouth Rock, which in its finished state was completely strange to me, and I sat mesmerized from that point on.  My wife, a french horn player, was very impressed as well.  When we play it at parties and such everyone wants to know what it is.  How well it all flows is the most gratifying - this is now a unified work.  It wasn't before.  But even so I now went and devoured several of the boots, learning to my shock just how close to finished it all had been back in 66-67.  And yet, as Peter Reum says, maybe the piece will best be remembered not as an album, but as a concert work that can be played in repertory.  The funniest moment is the newly-written salon-waltz Cantina reprise that opens the third movement, it sounds like Ragtime, so out of place it's absolutely perfect, segueing into the trippy IIGS.   And no he's not likely to ever top it again.  But at least we have SMiLE even if there's nothing as ambitious ever to come again.  Well done.  This goes both for the HDCD disc and the vinyl versions.  (The DVD is the repertory performance).

[L Ransford]

My all time favorite album by anybody!

[I. Spaceman]

From a year ago on the old SMiLE Shop board:

The thing is, it's only in the last year that I have realised the amount of sadness and anger myself and others had connected with the old session material. Even the most cursory listen would lead to question after question,second-guesswork and resentment towards the other BB's, Brian himself, VDP etc. etc for allowing SMiLE to not happen. The experience of the last year has provided, for many, the exact opposite: answers,closure,joy,understanding from nonbelievers and loved ones,praise,acclaim etc. So for some of us I think listening to the old stuff brings up bad feelings not unlike the ones Bri himself associated with the material. Also in some ways I feel SMiLE to be not unlike the main character in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: unstuck in time, slipping into a vortex, only to reappear many years later virtually unchanged into a completely different time and context.
It's like poetic justice. My generation that loves the music of the '60's so much have almost cursed our late birth because we crave the firsthand knowledge of these great works. What it must have been like to pick up Pet Sounds,Revolver, Aftermath etc on the day of release!! So it seems to me that the great gift to us for keeping the faith and shining so much light on these supposedly disposable pop cultural artifacts is that the actual greatest work of it's time gets delivered to not it's intended audience, who were already suffering such an embarassment of cultural riches, but to us in these spiritually bereft times,who need it so much more and appreciate it fully.
Just a thought.

[Lorenschwartz]

destroys the smile myth.....Brian Is Only Human afterall. one year after, i give 04Smile a 1. Technological claptrap.

Not the beach boys Smile.

[TV Forces]

destroys the smile myth.....Brian Is Only Human afterall. one year after, i give 04Smile a 1. Technological claptrap.

Not the beach boys Smile.

Not fair.  The original album was hardly "Beach Boys Smile." 
That's a reason why it was killed.

BWPS is glorious and I listen to it at least once a week.
Masterpiece.  I'm sorry you can't enjoy it.

[JRauch]

It´s beyond me how anyone can give this record a 1. Ok, you think that the old versions are better than the new ones. That´s your right. But then, why not give the album a 3 or 4? I mean, the music itself is still absolutely mindblowing, no matter how you record it.

[Reverend Joshua Sloane]

It´s beyond me how anyone can give this record a 1. Ok, you think that the old versions are better than the new ones. That´s your right. But then, why not give the album a 3 or 4? I mean, the music itself is still absolutely mindblowing, no matter how you record it.

Exactly. While I don't like the actual sound of the album, the music itself is better than 30 years worth of music. Perhaps that's fairly risky to say, but SMiLE means a lot more to me than some rock song from 1973 or 1995.

[Lorenschwartz]

Very Fair...however, does anyone else notice the lack of madness? the way BWPS04, or however this version is monikered... sounds so clean & neat, everything in its proper place, every note fine tuned and only a hint of "weirdness"...my gosh, even Fire sounds,to me, controlled...URGH!!!

I want confusion, a broken man too tough to cry, the columnated ruins!!!!   the rape of the landscape!!
Their performance of heros, surfs up & even vegetables sound too perfect
like a well rehearsed school band, not like a tortured painters last work.
Sounds like a Disney soundtrack thru Americana--Revisionist, not the poor reality...the new version of blue hawaii
into GV, is anti-climax. at least Rio Grande ended with a galvanizing THHUD!!!

BWPS04 is music for 60 year olds who crave sanity and comfort...not the teenage symphony to GOD, and a tapestry
 thru Americas true roots of bondage forced labor and nature.
sorry mr. wilson, i was expecting more eccentricity.

I give it actually a 4, for completion...but my gut has to give Brian and Van Dyke a 1 for art, this time.

[Aegir]

Yeah, that's my one problem with it.. it's too normal. Still gets a 5, though.

[Reverend Joshua Sloane]

I think they may have toned down some of the eccentricity and general oddness of the original music to suit the 2000's better. After all it is an item which was put on market to sell, and when it comes down to it, it was money they were after. Whereas Brian learned his final sequencing for Good Vibrations from an LSD trip, Brian and Co learnt the sequencing to BWPS through the aid of handy lap top computers.  Of course it swipes a bit of creativity from it, but Brian at 63yrs isn't the same as the man who made the SMiLE music long ago.

[Lorenschwartz]

i guess we all would like a little bit of Love You Brian back in these sober-sterile 2000's.

Album sales never really mattered to Brian before?

[CosmicDancer]

I give it a 5.  Of course it wasnt going to live up totally to our expectations, but IMO this is still an unbelievabe piece of art and I applaud Brian, Van Dyke, and Darian for finishing it and finally giving us, or the majority of us at least, what we have been waiting so long for!

[Lorenschwartz]

20/20 hindsight

[DUMB ANGEL]

It is a rare thing indeed that something you've been waiting for so long turns out to exceed your highest expectations. This album certainly did for me. The music is absoulutly beautiful. Or let me say Won-Won-Wonderful. I gave SMILE a great big 5.

[Lorenschwartz]

It is a rare thing indeed that something you've been waiting for so long turns out to exceed your highest expectations. This album certainly did for me. The music is absoulutly beautiful. Or let me say Won-Won-Wonderful. I gave SMILE a great big 5.

well,well,well, oh well.

although yr review reads like a paid testimonial...i wont argue.
 Is this the real reaon why you love Smile?

beauty,completion, sequence, normality?

well, I say that if Carl & Dennis Wilson heard this 04Smile, they'd hurl.
Probably proves Mike Loves assesment that VanDyke is an airy fairy limpwrist. Sorry Bri.

i give a 5 for completion, a 1 for Art. Totally emasculates 66-67 Smile in Essence...

[SG7]

The first time I heard anything associated with smile. Was hooked on this material for life. Sure its not 66/67 stuff, the music is sort of kiddier then the orginal stuff but hearing it the day of September 28th, 2004 changed EVERYTHING I thought about him. He in my mind became a genius that day.



5 all the way

[Daniel S.]

Masterpiece.  I'm sorry you can't enjoy it.

I can't enjoy those horrible synthesizers. The sequencing is crap and so are the vocals. Superior or equal to the Beach Boys vocals? A recording of the Beach Boys farting would be more captivating.

See, the thing is, I really don't believe this album in any way, shape or form resembles what Smile was supposed to be. Especially when it concerns splicing the different pieces together. Darian Sahanga was very conservative and fixated on having Smile make sense to the point where he missed it's essence. I wonder what ideas Darian had that Brian said no to, if any?

[Lorenschwartz]

Masterpiece.  I'm sorry you can't enjoy it.

I can't enjoy those horrible synthesizers. The sequencing is crap and so are the vocals. Superior or equal to the Beach Boys vocals? A recording of the Beach Boys farting would be more captivating.

See, the thing is, I really don't believe this album in any way, shape or form resembles what Smile was supposed to be. Especially when it concerns splicing the different pieces together. Darian Sahanga was very conservative and fixated on having Smile make sense to the point where he missed it's essence. I wonder what ideas Darian had that Brian said no to, if any?

Right on, man...
 I DIDNT WONDER AND YEARN 15 YEARS JUST TO HEAR THIS CLAPTRAPPED SYNTHETIC DISNEY CANDY-ASS DRIVEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!TOKYO ROSE SOUNDING SHITE

please, Capitol Records, put out a definative Smile Sessions box set soon, or i will just buy every single last queer Smile-related bootleg and Put it Out Myself!!!!Dammitt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!