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Author Topic: Smiley Smile was a joke.  (Read 14924 times)
Beach Bum
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« Reply #25 on: September 10, 2008, 02:44:06 AM »

How you mean? Because I don't like the album? I can't stand it.

Gonna ban me for that? From what I have read, I like TLOS much more than you. Should you be banned for that? I don't think so, but maybe you don't want Brian Wilson fans with a different opinion than yours on here. Such a shame. This is a Beach Boys/Brian Wilson board. -- not a heartical "don" board.  The BB's are my favorite band. Brian is my musical idol. If you think that means I don't deserve to tip a glass with you, then do what you will with me.

I have been disrespectful of nobody, and Brian himself has spoken badly against that album.

In the end I guess, is this a private clubhouse, or is it a place for true fans? Guess I will soon find out.
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Beach Bum
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« Reply #26 on: September 10, 2008, 03:04:27 AM »

Maybe this will make better sense to you. I already had all of the Smile boots before I bought Smiley Smile. Strange timeline perhaps, but that was how it happened. How could anyone not be disappointed and majorly P-O'd after that?

Nah, nobody will ever be able to convince me that was a great album. I don't think that I have ever been let down more in my entire life. Brian gave up that year. Sure, he made appearances and ocassionally blew our minds, but the dream was over.
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The Heartical Don
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« Reply #27 on: September 10, 2008, 03:07:28 AM »

Maybe this will make better sense to you. I already had all of the Smile boots before I bought Smiley Smile. Strange timeline perhaps, but that was how it happened. How could anyone not be disappointed and majorly P-O'd after that?

Nah, nobody will ever be able to convince me that was a great album. I don't think that I have ever been let down more in my entire life. Brian gave up that year. Sure, he made appearances and ocassionally blew our minds, but the dream was over.

Dear Beach Bum -

I was joking! Heaven forbid that this would turn into a 'Don'-board... my respect for other posters is way too high for that! Let's shake hands and have a virtual Bud now...
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Beach Bum
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« Reply #28 on: September 10, 2008, 03:09:17 AM »

.....which makes what he has accomplished in the last 8 years, all that more amazing.

I measure my life in greatest hits. One might be my marriage or the birth of a child. The rebirth of Brian Wilson is something I consider one of my lifes greatest hits.

Wouldn't have missed it for the world.
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Beach Bum
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« Reply #29 on: September 10, 2008, 03:13:08 AM »

Quote
Dear Beach Bum -

I was joking! Heaven forbid that this would turn into a 'Don'-board... my respect for other posters is way too high for that! Let's shake hands and have a virtual Bud now...

Done, sir! Sorry for not getting the joke. It is late (an excuse). I probably can't listen to Smiley without a bias. I just went thru too many years dreaming of the imaginary legend of "Smile."

Sorry for taking things so serious. Hey....how about That Lucky Old Sun? Wink
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lance
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« Reply #30 on: September 10, 2008, 03:47:15 AM »

Quote
Dear Beach Bum -

I was joking! Heaven forbid that this would turn into a 'Don'-board... my respect for other posters is way too high for that! Let's shake hands and have a virtual Bud now...


Sorry for taking things so serious. Hey....how about That Lucky Old Sun? Wink
TLOS--not a joke. Or at least not intentionally.

 SS--a joke. But only funny to the perpetrator--Brian Wilson. And not a very light-hearted joke.

 But immensely interesting--and in a way, beautiful-- for many of us(not you, obviously.)
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Boiled Egg
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« Reply #31 on: September 10, 2008, 04:21:42 AM »

DADA LOBS CAT INTO FLOCK OF PIGEONS

enjoying this (although preferring the debate to the 'i like it' v 'i don't like it' nonsense).

smiley smile is a mystery, to be sure.  two things strike me.

(1) there's a radio phoner on a boot somewhere in which brian is promoting ss.  far from sounding incoherent or at all doinked, he sounds monumentally bored.  (he's also more cogent and verbose than he is today, even, which suggests that the real headf***ing he administered himself came later.)

(2) he gave up.  he gave up the songwriting ('whistle in' must have taken all of ten seconds), gave up the arranging, gave up the studio, gave up the struggles with the sequencing and the other bbs and the record company, switched off the lights and turned his ambition in on the way out.  burned out?  probably, after all that effort and nervous energy.  joking?  tricky.  it's not all that funny, if it is a joke.  (mind you, he probably wasn't in a funny-ha-ha mood at the time.)

my twopennyworth: part f***-you-all, part this-is-all-i-can-be-bothered-with.
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« Reply #32 on: September 10, 2008, 06:11:50 AM »

Maybe this will make better sense to you. I already had all of the Smile boots before I bought Smiley Smile. Strange timeline perhaps, but that was how it happened. How could anyone not be disappointed and majorly P-O'd after that?

Nah, nobody will ever be able to convince me that was a great album. I don't think that I have ever been let down more in my entire life. Brian gave up that year. Sure, he made appearances and ocassionally blew our minds, but the dream was over.


Gee, Smiley really burned you bad, huh? A personal insult from your old friend Brian Wilson...

Its a weird album, I agree, but its also a crazy, eccentric little gem. There's nothing like it in the rest of the BB canon (its better than Love You, I think, which is the other weird album) and not much else like it in the whole of pop. For me its a conceptual whole, and everything that Smile wanted to but wasn't, or couldn't be. 

I don't think its a joke, it is, as suggested above, just the result of a pretty burned out guy. I wonder if the fact that BW didn't take the production of it too seriously mean that he could afford to relax a little and allow himself surreality and avant-gardism that his natural, white bread conservatism wouldn't have allowed him otherwise. Its still an occasionally very beautiful album.

I like it alot, though the 1990 remaster makes it sound painfully flat. The 2001 remaster is better, as is the booted stereo version.



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Sheriff John Stone
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« Reply #33 on: September 10, 2008, 06:24:49 AM »

If Smiley Smile was a joke, which I don't think it was in any way, then Brian should've put his name on it - Produced By Brian Wilson.

Also, when people do something, anything, out of the ordinary in life, they like to talk about it. If Brian was "giving the finger" to Capitol Record, he would've talked to someone, anyone, about it. Word would've gotten back to the record company and the album would've been rejected.
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Fun Is In
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« Reply #34 on: September 10, 2008, 06:58:01 AM »

I heard SS before I knew a thing about SMiLE or Brian's mental illness.
Though it's plenty weird, I really enjoyed it....and still do, except for the jarring parts of Wonderful and Wind Chimes.

It's the product of a man whose mind was at war with itself.
A man in the throse of schizoaffective disorder, no longer able to control his mind or produce standard quantities of objective reason at times.
He probably had periods of great lucidity and control in which he could get things done, but his world view was forever altered and his abiltiy to plan and carry out projects seriously diminished.

I don't understand why some seem not to take his mental illness into account in analysing the creation and release of this album.  Perhaps I just have a different perspective since I've seen friends and others on the descent into madness that comes with these diseases. Maybe until you've seen someone literally lose their mind, it's just not "real" or comprehensible.

I'm not saying it was the only thing going on in BW World back then, just that it was very likely much more important than how it's being underplayed above.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2008, 07:58:42 AM by DoveNest » Logged
Chris Moise
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« Reply #35 on: September 10, 2008, 07:13:18 AM »

I know there's been a lot of debate over what the motivations behind Smiley Smile were, but here's what I think. The album itself was a joke. Tired of the pressures of fame and greed (unsupportive band and record company), Brian took recordings that cost thousands upon thousands of dollars to make, cast them aside, got himself and his "square" bandmates stoned completely out of their minds, and then recorded the results and presented it to the record company as one big joke.

That sounds like you are trying to make excuses for your hero's bizzare behavior.  That the great Brian Wilson couldn't produce something as odd as Smiley Smile unless it was a joke..
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The Heartical Don
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« Reply #36 on: September 10, 2008, 07:25:10 AM »

It's a most enjoyable thread so far. Thanks to all, myself included.

An interesting observation: 'what is avant-garde'? I'd say something out of the ordinary and beyond that which can be reasonably expected, not familiar nor soothing, perhaps unsettling; but beauty can very well be a constituent part.

Now there's Smiley Smile for you.

But where a lot of 'avant-garde' eventually loses its charm, becomes overfamiliar, gets included in the mainstream (e.g. printed on a shopping bag or used in a L'Oréal ad campaign) and thus all bled dry, Smiley Smile is pretty invincible. I mean: were I to play it to friends who never heard it, they would be flabbergasted even in 2008 A.D. and would not be able to date it within any statistically significant boundaries.

I like it with gut feelings. And I like it all the more for all the above rationalizations too.

I love it.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2008, 07:26:31 AM by The Heartical Don » Logged

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Dr. Tim
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« Reply #37 on: September 10, 2008, 08:52:17 AM »

Liike Don, I heard Smiley Smile not long after it came out.  Knowing nothing about it and having read no press concerning it, I just assumed they meant to make what they made and dug it on that basis.  Its weirdness and surprises (Little Pad intro, Wind Chimes harmonium blast)  were, I thought then, all part of the plan.  Some of the German "krautrock" that followed a couple of years later had a lot of those elements in it.

Indeed it is a little less mysterious to hear it now, knowing what we know of its genesis, and hearing the hand-made-ness of it, the deliberately strange tape splices, the musical clams, the living-room soundscape.
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« Reply #38 on: September 10, 2008, 08:55:39 AM »

Smiley Smile was an artistic peak for the beach boys. Don't allow humor to mislead you into calling the whole thing a joke.
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shadownoze
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« Reply #39 on: September 10, 2008, 09:03:29 AM »

Random thoughts on Smiley:
1. I like it a lot.
2. There may have indeed been an element of 'giving Capitol the finger' in putting together the album so quickly. Remember the album Marvin Gaye did because he was contractually obligated in a divorce settlement to give all royalties from this album to his ex-wife? He produced a tossed-off piece of nothing and even called it "Here, My Dear."
3. The simplicity of the album may also have something to do with being owner of the studio for the first time. Listen to 'Abbey Road' and then to McCartney's first solo record. Seems a big step backwards, but Paul was obviously having fun with being able to overdub himself on his own time and own terms.
4. Though quirky, there are some amazing things on Smiley Smile. Example: human voices have never ever sounded like some of the vocals on 'Wind Chimes'. I still prefer the SS version to the Smile version for that reason.
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Chris Brown
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« Reply #40 on: September 10, 2008, 10:38:26 AM »

Smiley Smile was an artistic peak for the beach boys. Don't allow humor to mislead you into calling the whole thing a joke.

Exactly.  I think viewing it as a joke is a bit of a cop out, honestly.  Brian may have been losing his mind, but he was still a man who did what he wanted musically. 

I've always viewed Smiley as a very deliberate artistic statement from an increasingly disturbed mind.  The album has a sort of chaotic focus to it, as opposed to a sloppy (lets just get it done) approach.  The fact that it was recorded so quickly is a bit of a red herring, in my opinion.

I think shadownoze made a good point in the post above mine about Brian owning his own studio for the first time and the effects that can have.  Even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't have brought in the Wrecking Crew to do some new tracks.  He worked with what he had there.  He was obsessed with his Baldwin organ (thus why it appears on almost every track), tack pianos and hash.  Like he said in the "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" doc, 20 seconds of music feels like 2 hours when you're stoned.  He and the boys were really stoned, thus you get the little exercises like "Whistle In".  Couldn't have taken more than 5 minutes to come up with, but there's still something oddly special about it. 

Smiley Smile is probably my second favorite Beach Boys album, behind Pet Sounds.  As much as I love the Smile material, I almost like some of its songs better as they were presented on Smiley: dark, quirky unpretentious and beautiful.
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The Heartical Don
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« Reply #41 on: September 10, 2008, 11:01:39 AM »

shadownoze wrote:

2. There may have indeed been an element of 'giving Capitol the finger' in putting together the album so quickly. Remember the album Marvin Gaye did because he was contractually obligated in a divorce settlement to give all royalties from this album to his ex-wife? He produced a tossed-off piece of nothing and even called it "Here, My Dear."


Allow me to disagree firmly here. I have 'Here My Dear', and would like to give my opinion:

1. Its genesis is indeed quite murky, shady.
2. Its cover is atrocious, and probably cost the Gaye/Gordy estates many, many potential buyers.
3. The music is great, but like with Mayfield's 'Superfly', you have to make an effort. Good starting point: listen ten times to 'I Met A Little Girl', and think of Gaye's doo-wop roots, together with Harvey Fuqua, in the Moonglows. Then: enjoy the rest, track by track. Learn to love it.

I will take Here, My Dear over Midnight Love anytime. Now there's an one-hit stinker if there ever was one.

Sorry to ramble a bit OT here, but as a discerning gentlemen, I thought it my duty to defend the Aristotelian and Platonic Good.
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« Reply #42 on: September 10, 2008, 05:20:14 PM »

Here's something that makes me a bit undecided on the "joke vs. really gave it an honest try" argument: according to history (or legend, as it may be), Brian had a difficult time getting the Boys on board with the SMiLE material (especially Mike, who wanted to keep the old hit formula).  So, what made them so cooperative on Smiley?  I mean, they do seem to be enjoying themselves on that one; what changed their minds?
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Sheriff John Stone
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« Reply #43 on: September 10, 2008, 05:31:01 PM »

Here's something that makes me a bit undecided on the "joke vs. really gave it an honest try" argument: according to history (or legend, as it may be), Brian had a difficult time getting the Boys on board with the SMiLE material (especially Mike, who wanted to keep the old hit formula).  So, what made them so cooperative on Smiley?  I mean, they do seem to be enjoying themselves on that one; what changed their minds?

Maybe history or legend is wrong.
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Chris Brown
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« Reply #44 on: September 10, 2008, 05:43:37 PM »

Here's something that makes me a bit undecided on the "joke vs. really gave it an honest try" argument: according to history (or legend, as it may be), Brian had a difficult time getting the Boys on board with the SMiLE material (especially Mike, who wanted to keep the old hit formula).  So, what made them so cooperative on Smiley?  I mean, they do seem to be enjoying themselves on that one; what changed their minds?

If I had to guess, I'd say the hash and the change of location to Brian's home studio.  They didn't feel like "outsiders" anymore, as they probably often did during Smile.  Brian's entourage was mostly gone, and it was just like the old days...a bunch of guys just sitting around making some music. 
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« Reply #45 on: September 10, 2008, 07:50:13 PM »

Smiley Smile is an interesting album, and probably the best album the band did during the 1960s in my opinion. It's like the evil twin of Smile. A calming yet incredibly perverted and eerie listen. Only the Beach Boys under Brian's leadership could have come up with an album this confounding, and I'm a HUGE Love You fan (second most confounding).

And for Beach Bum - listen to the session tapes for the album before you say the others "won out". Brian is CLEARLY in control of the proceedings.

In closing, Smiley Smile is like Love You. Y'get it or y'don't. That's what separates the true fans from those in the private clubhouse. Smiley
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The Heartical Don
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« Reply #46 on: September 11, 2008, 03:39:18 AM »

Here's something that makes me a bit undecided on the "joke vs. really gave it an honest try" argument: according to history (or legend, as it may be), Brian had a difficult time getting the Boys on board with the SMiLE material (especially Mike, who wanted to keep the old hit formula).  So, what made them so cooperative on Smiley?  I mean, they do seem to be enjoying themselves on that one; what changed their minds?

Tantalizing question.

Perhaps the group was under the impression that the Smiley material never was meant to be officially released and thus benevolently gave in to a whim of Brian's, in the hope that after this minor and rather quick ordeal Brian would return to the old home turf. Sort of a trade-off, if you will. Could be that the other band members thought: hey, if we make this effort, we'll forever be freed from the shackles of that still-born monster. Mike might have thought: 'we'll make a sh*t album - so the outside world will finally realize that Brian is not the genius that he's cracked up to be.'
« Last Edit: September 11, 2008, 09:23:33 AM by The Heartical Don » Logged

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Dancing Bear
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« Reply #47 on: September 11, 2008, 07:49:58 AM »

Here's something that makes me a bit undecided on the "joke vs. really gave it an honest try" argument: according to history (or legend, as it may be), Brian had a difficult time getting the Boys on board with the SMiLE material (especially Mike, who wanted to keep the old hit formula).  So, what made them so cooperative on Smiley?  I mean, they do seem to be enjoying themselves on that one; what changed their minds?

If I had to guess, I'd say the hash and the change of location to Brian's home studio.  They didn't feel like "outsiders" anymore, as they probably often did during Smile.  Brian's entourage was mostly gone, and it was just like the old days...a bunch of guys just sitting around making some music. 

What I heard of Smiley Smile sessions didn't have much Beach Boys fooling around or chatting. So, I think it takes some creativity to figure if the other five were relaxed / pissed off / cooperative / relieved / hateful / loving every minute of it.

About the 'good old days'.... Brian was probably overdubbing almost everything by himself and the band showed up to add the vocals. It was nothing like 62/64. Just like bringin' back the wrecking crew for some 15 Good Ones sessions didn't exactly turn back the clock.
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Beach Bum
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« Reply #48 on: September 11, 2008, 11:28:00 AM »

Quote
In closing, Smiley Smile is like Love You. Y'get it or y'don't. That's what separates the true fans from those in the private clubhouse

Is that right? Is that on some stone tablet somewhere? Just because you like it does not make it the yardstick by which to measure fans by. You
probably like Cap'n Crunch cereal too. Me, I hate it. Razz

PS....there is nothing to "get"....except it is an embarrassment at a time when Brian Wilson and the Boys were considered cutting edge pop. I am
glad that you like it....I don't. Neither opinion forms the basis of either "true" or "private clubhouse" fans.

Peace!
« Last Edit: September 11, 2008, 11:30:41 AM by Beach Bum » Logged

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Chris Brown
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« Reply #49 on: September 11, 2008, 03:15:32 PM »

Here's something that makes me a bit undecided on the "joke vs. really gave it an honest try" argument: according to history (or legend, as it may be), Brian had a difficult time getting the Boys on board with the SMiLE material (especially Mike, who wanted to keep the old hit formula).  So, what made them so cooperative on Smiley?  I mean, they do seem to be enjoying themselves on that one; what changed their minds?

If I had to guess, I'd say the hash and the change of location to Brian's home studio.  They didn't feel like "outsiders" anymore, as they probably often did during Smile.  Brian's entourage was mostly gone, and it was just like the old days...a bunch of guys just sitting around making some music. 

What I heard of Smiley Smile sessions didn't have much Beach Boys fooling around or chatting. So, I think it takes some creativity to figure if the other five were relaxed / pissed off / cooperative / relieved / hateful / loving every minute of it.

About the 'good old days'.... Brian was probably overdubbing almost everything by himself and the band showed up to add the vocals. It was nothing like 62/64. Just like bringin' back the wrecking crew for some 15 Good Ones sessions didn't exactly turn back the clock.

Sorry, I should have clarified...by "good old days", I didn't mean 62-64.  I was referring to Brian's high school days, with everyone singing at family gatherings and such.  No pressure, just a bunch of guys singing. 
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