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From The Smile Shop
Welcome to the Smile Shop Memorial, featuring essays, history, and articles about the Beach Boys' "lost" 1967 album Smile, as well as documents related to the larger world of the Beach Boys.
In 1999, Jon Hunt and John Lane created The SMiLE Shop web site, which has rightfully been described as the greatest Beach Boys fan site that ever existed.
After Brian Wilson released "Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE" in 2004, the SMiLE Shop web site came and went, sometimes due to remodeling, sometimes for other reasons. Sadly, June of 2007, the site was taken down forever. The domain name registration was allowed to lapse. The Shop was closed for good.
June 2005, during one of those times the Shop was closed, Smiley Smile Dot Net was created, providing a home for the wayward Shoppers. As it evolved into a home for a wide variety of Beach Boys fans, March 2006 Smiley Smile developed a warehouse for documentation and information called The Smiley Smile Library. A year later the Library was converted into its current wiki format.
In the summer of 2007 (and isn't summertime the best time for a Beach Boys fan?), the Smiley Smile Dot Net Library became the SMiLE Shop Memorial. Neil Young said it was better to burn out than to fade away. I say, why do either? Why should the Shop have such an undignified and ignoble ending? Why not celebrate all that was good about the Shop?
I present these essays and documents for three reasons:
- I believe all roads relating to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys either lead to or from SMiLE.
- I believe the release of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE was nothing short of a miracle. That we all can listen to a finished version of Brian Wilson's masterpiece is a divine gift from God.
- I believe the SMiLE Shop deserves, for as long as we can hold onto it, to be more than just a faded memory. It deserves to be celebrated, not forgotten.
If you enjoy the SMiLE Shop Memorial, I invite you to take a look at our other Beach Boys web sites:
Smiley Smile Dot Net, which features mainly current events in the world of the Beach Boys.
The Smiley Smile Message Board, where you can discuss the Beach Boys, music, or most anything else, with people ranging from fellow fans to Stephen Desper, Mark Linett, Jon Stebbins, Carrie Marks, Alan Boyd, Andrew Doe, Mark London, and Peter Ames Carlin.
06/25/07 UPDATE: Allow me to welcome aboard Paul Quintana Jr., who has signed on to add new items to the Library and correct some existing items. His assistance and advice are greatly appreciated!
10/21/07 UPDATE: I have been able to recover many of the lost Smile Shop articles. (For more information on the demise of the Smile Shop, read here.) If you are the author of any of these articles and you, for whatever reason, do not want them preserved and presented here, please let me know.
11/17/07 UPDATE: We can now be found on Facebook.
What is SMiLE?
SMiLE was to be the Beach Boys album released after Pet Sounds. For a variety of reasons, mainly disharmony within the band, a lawsuit with Capitol Records, and Brian Wilson's growing drug use and mental instability, the album was never completed. Smiley Smile was released instead, and while the completion and release of SMiLE was promised many times over the next few decades, it was never finished and most of the recording sessions remain officially unreleased. Of course, a great deal of the available sessions have surfaced on bootlegs.
What is Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (BWPS)?
In 2003, Brian Wilson, Darian Sahanaja and Van Dyke Parks joined forces and arranged the SMiLE fragments so that it could be performed in concert. Van Dyke composed some new lyrics for songs that had none, and the three musicians composed brief pieces of orchestration to gap bridges between songs and sections. The first concert was performed on February 20, 2004. The album was released on September 28, 2004.
Material on this site is provided for informational purposes only. The names, logos and icons identifying The SMiLE Shop products and services are proprietary trademarks/service marks of Charles S. LePage.
