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| January 27, 2023, 09:15:47 AM |
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Complete BB Grammy video here.
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on: February 13, 2012, 09:52:52 PM
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How do you like this ?  They look great in this picture. Brian looks genuinely happy. The performance initially left me disappointed, but seeing it a second time, I thought is was about as good as one could expect. What I really look forward to is the new recordings. The "Do It Again" remake had the old magic, and I feel like they can still create that in the studio, and I hope whatever "new" songs of Brian's they do will have that magic as well. If that happens, it will be a successful 50th celebration for me.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Let Him Run Wild
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on: January 28, 2012, 08:57:33 PM
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I have a very special life-long bond with this particular song. When I was only 7 years old, my brother brought home the single "California Girls/Let Him Run Wild", and I always played both sides of 45s because from infancy I was a huge lover of all things musical.
I was absolutely stunned by "Let Him Run Wild", and played it over and over again. I thought it was one of the most amazing pieces of music I'd ever heard. And now, almost 50 years later, I still feel that it is one of the most amazing pop records of its time, and perhaps of all time.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: TSS vs 91 Box
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on: January 11, 2012, 10:07:48 PM
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And I want to thank all the folks who replied kindly to Jimmy.
I didn't know exactly how to approach the question, but I'm glad there were others who did.
The idea here should be to help newcomers enjoy this music as many of us have enjoyed it for many years. Just my opinion.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: What Else Did The Beatles \
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on: January 10, 2012, 06:08:35 PM
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I don't think the Beatles or Brian needed to "borrow" from one another in those days. I Brian's admiration for the Beatles, and the Beatles' admiration for the Beach Boys and Brian's artistic vision, were a case of gifted artists spurring each other on to greater creativity and originality. Yeah, but outside The Beach Boys, The Beatles were quite open to pilfering from other sources. John did it more than any of them, I think. He stole lyrics on more than one occasion. The beginning of the electric version of Revolution was taken wholesale from the beginning of Pee Wee Crayton's Do Unto Others, etc. To me, his pilfering made him an even more sophisticated artist, as far as I'm concerned. Artist like Lennon, Van Gogh, etc. understand that art is really as much about borrowing as it is about creating - or, that creating and borrowing are not necessarily different things. Really can't disagree with you. Brian was a borrower from earlier sources as well, and did so with a sophistication perhaps more profound than that of his Liverpudian peers.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Most 'Psychedelic' Song on SMiLE?
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on: January 10, 2012, 06:00:27 PM
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I can't believe some of the junk I'm reading here. I would expect people with an interest in SMiLE era Beach Boys to at least be able to generally identify the different types of psychedelic music that were happening in the U.S. and England around the mid-to-late 60s, to understand the blues underpinnings of the San Francisco scene, the more jazz/pop/folk influenced L.A. sounds, and the music-hall-meets-mad-hatter-meets-medieval-meets-sci-fi mix happening in London with established bands like the Beatles and new (at the time) bands such as Pink Floyd.
Instead, I'm reading groundless conjectures about "drones" and stuff. Come on folks, get some decent info and do some decent listening.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: What Else Did The Beatles \
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on: January 10, 2012, 05:50:02 PM
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I don't think the Beatles or Brian needed to "borrow" from one another in those days. I Brian's admiration for the Beatles, and the Beatles' admiration for the Beach Boys and Brian's artistic vision, were a case of gifted artists spurring each other on to greater creativity and originality.
If anything was ever "borrowed", I would say that Brian and his bandmates in 2003 did some borrowing from side two of Abbey Road to come up with the seamless segues that create the "movements" of BWPS. But that's not a bad thing at all. It's a very cool thing.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Most 'Psychedelic' Song on SMiLE?
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on: January 08, 2012, 06:54:00 PM
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SMiLE in its final form (as in BWPS) is pretty much a psychedelic experience throughout, especially in the way it is seamlessly structured in three long pieces that move through many different moods and musical textures.
As far as one song, I would say that "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" is the most, could we say, "classsic psychedelia" piece in the song cycle. It's like an aural hallucination.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Strawberry Fields Forever Made Brian Realize The Beatles Won :/
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on: December 29, 2011, 10:58:30 PM
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None of this matters anymore. And it hasn't mattered since 2004. The story has a happy ending. And that's all that matters now.
happy? no vocals 4 "child is the father of the man","look","love to say da da" & "holiday" :/ far from happy. That's certainly not the way I look at it. I consider BWPS to be the finished, definitive SMiLE with completed songs and vocals (I know they're not 1967 BB vocals, but that doesn't matter near as much to me as it does to some of you). I look at this from the perspective of a songwriter. Brian and VDP were the songwriters, and they were creating a song cycle, basically. They were able, in 2004, to finish the work they started and see it presented in a triumphant world tour, then be released to rave reviews and respectable sales as an album. I really don't see the problem here, unless one thinks that it's not enough to create a great work of music and see it performed and recorded. For me, that is wonderful, and the release of the SMiLE Sessions is the cherry on top of the icing of the cake.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: SMiLE: my theory on what would have happened in '67
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on: December 29, 2011, 10:40:38 PM
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I think probably the stuff we point to as showing some sort of mental/emotional problems were just the way Brian was with his type of genius.
I don't know about needing to cool out after SMiLE, in actuality he didn't cool out at all, he was working full tilt for the next year.
I think we have overlooked the elephant in the room which was between Brian and VDP, the actual collaborators. I think the "conflicts" with VDP were the problems. Not really conflict but just a plain disagreement of the creative and behavioral. Brian wanted to be snooty, he did it because he could, as he did it he began to feel more and more like it just was not him, and VDP felt it was not brainy enough and Brian's sort of juvenile behavior didn't endear him either and they drifted apart and Brian dropped SMiLE because he just did not feel it.
I've never read or heard of anything that would support that as a reason VDP left the project. What I've read and heard seems to indicate that VDP was frustrated with the general atmosphere that permeated the project once the Beach Boys returned from touring. What are you basing this on, Cam?
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Smile Sessions vs. Smiley Smile
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on: December 29, 2011, 10:35:58 PM
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The middle section of "Wonderful" on Smiley is disturbing because of the chatter. It has a sick, high school locker-room tone to it that is not at all appropriate for the song into which it intrudes. That's one of the hardest things for me to take about Smiley Smile. And yet, even that did not keep me from recognizing the greatness of the song when I first heard it.
I believe that is the entire point of the interlude. It presents the "locker-room tone" that symbolizes the band itself. The high voice takes the part of the voices inside Brain's head. Both intruding right into the middle of a song that perhaps best exemplifies Brian's fragile SMiLE art-world. That Smiley trashing of Wonderful is Brian's own commentary on the end of the SMiLE project, whether subconscious or not. You may well be right on that. Brian was doing a lot of truly brutal self-parody at that point, such as the scathing critique of "Heroes and Villains" that he put into the mouth of Mike Love during the Leid In Hawaii sessions. But that makes the whole matter even more disturbing for me, to be honest.
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: What is their strongest post-Pet Sounds album? (1967-1977)
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on: December 28, 2011, 10:03:33 AM
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It's interesting to note that with all the crap 20/20 gets, it peaked at #3 in UK, on of the few top 5 albums for the group in UK (PS #2, party #3). So they must have done something right with 20/20.
Oh yes, they did several things right. Let me list them for ya: Do It Again I Can Hear Music Be With Me The Nearest Faraway Place I Went To Sleep Time To Get Alone Never Learn Not To Love and especially... Our Prayer Cabinessence With all those things done right, I can easily forgive a few mistakes...
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Smiley Smile Stuff / General On Topic Discussions / Re: Brian Wilson - \
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on: December 27, 2011, 09:27:32 PM
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I think "celebration" is a good term. As has been stated, the Beach Boys have never actually broken up; they've only changed personnel. Whether or not you consider the Mike and Bruce Show legit or not really doesn't matter. It is, for all intents and purposes, an unbroken continuation of the Beach Boys as a functioning musical unit. In addition, even as Brian has done his solo career he has remained a partner in the Beach Boys business empire.
So yeah, it's a celebration.
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