Brian Wilson's Smile
09-26-04, 04:44 PM
#4
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Brian Wilson presents SMiLE
This comes out Tuesday and, despite my resolution to curb my CD spending, I'm going to get it ($11.99 at Circuit City this week, BTW). Previews are available at the album's site, but I'd rather get my first impression from listening to the CD itself. I've been a Brian Wilson-era Beach Boys fan for only about 6 years or so, so I don't have the 37 year wait that others have. It will be pretty hard to live up to all of the hype. We'll see...
Oh, and a heads-up for collectors, courtesy of Wilson's official site:
SMiLE Special Limited Edition Coming to UK
On October 4th, Atlantic Records UK will release a special limited edition CD version of SMILE. The package will be available exclusively through Amazon.co.uk
The CD will be packaged in a special slipcase with 1 in 4 versions signed by Brian himself. All CDs will be sealed so fans won't know if they have a signed copy until they're opened!
The CD and slipcase will be housed in a white box with a 3D shadowbox in the lid. This shadowbox will contain moveable figures and is a recreation of the artwork from the center pages of the booklet in the album.
On October 4th, Atlantic Records UK will release a special limited edition CD version of SMILE. The package will be available exclusively through Amazon.co.uk
The CD will be packaged in a special slipcase with 1 in 4 versions signed by Brian himself. All CDs will be sealed so fans won't know if they have a signed copy until they're opened!
The CD and slipcase will be housed in a white box with a 3D shadowbox in the lid. This shadowbox will contain moveable figures and is a recreation of the artwork from the center pages of the booklet in the album.
09-26-04, 07:16 PM
#5
DVD Talk Special Edition
Wow! Thanks for the heads up on the limited edition. I am so all over this, I just ordered from amazon.co.uk & don't even know how much it's going to cost me when coverted to dollars. I really wanted to hold off & hear it live for the first time on 10/25 anyway, so waiting for this to be released & ship should help.
09-26-04, 10:55 PM
#6
DVD Talk Hero
I'd love the LE, but isn't it around $80?
Is it really a box with all of the little toys included?
I'll be seeing his live show in a few weeks.
Is it really a box with all of the little toys included?
I'll be seeing his live show in a few weeks.
09-27-04, 01:14 PM
#8
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally posted by Buford T Pusser
I'd love the LE, but isn't it around $80?
Is it really a box with all of the little toys included?
I'll be seeing his live show in a few weeks.
I'd love the LE, but isn't it around $80?
Is it really a box with all of the little toys included?
I'll be seeing his live show in a few weeks.
Have fun at the concert. Unfortunately, he's not stopping in Columbus.
09-27-04, 01:44 PM
#9
DVD Talk Gold Edition
Can't wait to grab this one tomorrow. I got a CD boot of the '67 SMiLE sessions back in February, and it blew me away!
I've purposefully been avoiding any snippets from SMiLE 2004. I can't wait to hear all the new transitions and see how it all hangs together.
I might have to pick up the vinyl for this one as well, side 4 has instrumental backing tracks for Cabinessence (best banjo EVER!) and a few others...
I've purposefully been avoiding any snippets from SMiLE 2004. I can't wait to hear all the new transitions and see how it all hangs together.
I might have to pick up the vinyl for this one as well, side 4 has instrumental backing tracks for Cabinessence (best banjo EVER!) and a few others...
09-27-04, 01:49 PM
#10
DVD Talk Hero
Originally posted by DJLinus
Using today's exchange rate, it's $95.81! Heh heh, I think I'll pass on that edition. Here's a picture of it:
Have fun at the concert. Unfortunately, he's not stopping in Columbus.
Using today's exchange rate, it's $95.81! Heh heh, I think I'll pass on that edition. Here's a picture of it:
Have fun at the concert. Unfortunately, he's not stopping in Columbus.
But he'll be only a few hours away. I know of some Columbus people that are venturing up and we're looking into a dinner meet before the show. Get on it!
09-27-04, 06:26 PM
#11
DVD Talk Hero
FYI:
Brian Wilson and his band is the musical guest on the Tonight this Wednesday
the 29th.
I was lucky enough to attend a special taping of the Smile show last night
in Burbank. Words can't express the feelings of hearing and watching this
music performed with such depth and accuracy. Spend the $ and go see them
when they pass through your town. You won't be sorry.
Brian (formerly of the Wondermints)
Brian Wilson and his band is the musical guest on the Tonight this Wednesday
the 29th.
I was lucky enough to attend a special taping of the Smile show last night
in Burbank. Words can't express the feelings of hearing and watching this
music performed with such depth and accuracy. Spend the $ and go see them
when they pass through your town. You won't be sorry.
Brian (formerly of the Wondermints)
09-27-04, 08:17 PM
#12
DVD Talk Special Edition
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I'm listening to this for the third time today: it really exceeded every one of my expectations. I wasn't expecting it to be so uplifting, especially since Pet Sounds and the bootlegs always have struck me as rather dark. Thankfully, the production isn't as glossy as I expected it to be.
09-28-04, 11:19 PM
#15
DVD Talk Special Edition
deadlax, not sure but if you've got the Beach Boys Good Vibrations box set, but there's a bonus 'Sessions' disc. There's a pretty lenghty GV session track from either '66 or '67 that has most of these lyrics rather than the familiar ones. So that would suggest that they've been around for a while. Maybe changed to avoid crediting Mike Love with anything? Or maybe as originally intended for SMiLE?
09-29-04, 04:17 PM
#17
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Originally posted by P.E.
They are the lyrics as originally written by Tony Asher (same guy who wrote the lyrics for Pet Sounds).
They are the lyrics as originally written by Tony Asher (same guy who wrote the lyrics for Pet Sounds).
Although "Good Vibrations" was the first track of what was to have appeared on Smile, it wasn't planned that way. Brian had actually started recording this track at the end of the Pet Sounds sessions in February 1966. He wasn't happy with the initial results, and shelved it until May for retooling. First order of business was to pen better lyrics, as Brian wasn't satisfied with Tony Asher's originals. He actually asked Parks to contribute lyrics, but Van Dyke refused, and eventually Mike Love contributed most of the words.
From a really intresting article about Smile from 2002 that you can find here:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/watw/02-09/smile.shtml
09-29-04, 09:15 PM
#18
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I picked this CD up today just out of curiousity. Do I like the beach boys? Sure..who doesnt. Im not a HUGE fan. I have their best of but thats about it.
So, after all this hype I decided to pick it up and see what all the noise was about..and well, thats what I got, noise.
This is hands down one of the worst cds I have ever bought. Im sorry..I was tempted to go back an beg for my money again. It all sounds the same..the lyrics..o lord..those are even worse.
Its bad..just bad..
sorry to "thread crap"..not my intention. Just my opinion..
I found myself skipping song after song looking for something listenable....
So, after all this hype I decided to pick it up and see what all the noise was about..and well, thats what I got, noise.
This is hands down one of the worst cds I have ever bought. Im sorry..I was tempted to go back an beg for my money again. It all sounds the same..the lyrics..o lord..those are even worse.
Its bad..just bad..
sorry to "thread crap"..not my intention. Just my opinion..
I found myself skipping song after song looking for something listenable....
09-29-04, 11:18 PM
#19
DVD Talk Hero
Rolling Stone and picky critic ROBERT CHRISTGAU gave it five stars.
Never mind Pet Sounds. Good record, but a totem. That leaves three great Beach Boys albums. First comes a fun-fun-fun best-of: With the canonical Endless Summer deleted, settle for 2003's longer, less pristine Sounds of Summer. The other two are quickies that fit neatly on one must-own CD: Buy Smiley Smile/Wild Honey while EMI lets you.
Smiley Smile and Wild Honey get respect now, but in 1967 they peeved hard-core Pet Sounds fans, who were waiting gape-mouthed for Smile, described by those in the know as the American Sgt. Pepper -- proof that our Bea-boys belonged in the same league as their Bea-boys. But Brian went bonkers, Mike Love got busy, and we ended up with only "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" -- stopgap singles that made it onto the belittlingly titled Smiley Smile -- and dribs and drabs thereafter.
Only you know what happened? Brian Wilson survived his saner brothers and rebuilt his career, which the completely rerecorded SMiLE is supposed to crown. Since much of Wilson's 2004 Gettin' In Over My Head could have been sung from a crypt, this seemed like a terrible idea. Instead, it's a triumph.
SMiLE began as a concert concept for Wilson's expert alt- rock road band, which by 2002 had exhausted Pet Sounds. Never completed, SMile existed only as a jumble of alternate versions, song fragments and ill-cataloged tapes. Sifting through these was a collaborator as crucial as lyricist Van Dyke Parks: keyboard player, harmony vocalist and "musical secretary" Darian Sahanaja. With Sahanaja and Parks jogging his memory, Wilson revised and composed until the best pieces formed a forty-seven-minute whole that started shortly before "Heroes and Villains" and climaxed with "Good Vibrations." While no symphony, it cohered and flowed. The sparer, simpler recorded version follows the pattern of the ecstatically reviewed live performances. Anchored by deft quotes and thematic repetitions, SMiLE is beautiful and funny, goofily grand. It's looser and messier than Sgt. Pepper and, one suspects, always would have been. But its sui generis Americanism counterbalances its paucity of classic pop songs. Not in the same league -- just ready to play a World Series.
Although Parks is a well-traveled arranger who must have left some marks on Wilson's music during their hash-fueled 1966-67 brainstorming sessions, his words do the talking. They're poetic in a manner Wilson has no gift for: now idiomatic, now archaic, now obscure, pervaded by images of fleeting youth and a frontier that stretches to Hawaii. Although stoned confusion and mild pastoral pessimism are endemic, the world they evoke is as benign as a day at the beach - yet less simplistic (and deceptive) than the Beach Boys' fantasies of eternal Southern California teendom. In this the lyrics are of a piece with the jokey songlets of Smiley Smile, where five SmiLE titles first surfaced, and the good-natured rock & roll recidivism of Wild Honey. What elevates them into something approaching a utopian vision is Wilson's orchestrations: brief bridge melodies, youthful harmonies more precise and uplifting now than when executed by actually existing callow people and an enthralling profusion of instrumental colors. Trombone, timpani, theremin and tenor sax brush by and disappear; a banjo shows its head; strings vibe around; woodwinds establish unexpected moods and pipe down.
That the pros who surround Wilson are up to all of this is gratifying but not startling. What the auteur himself had in him was more questionable. And that's the central miracle of this gift of music. Wilson's voice has deepened and coarsened irreparably. Although he hits the notes, he can't convey the innocence SMiLE's content seems to demand. But he can convey commitment and belief -- belief that his young bonkers self composed a work that captured possibilities now nearly lost to history. SMiLE proves that those possibilities are still worth pursuing.
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
(Posted Oct 14, 2004)
Never mind Pet Sounds. Good record, but a totem. That leaves three great Beach Boys albums. First comes a fun-fun-fun best-of: With the canonical Endless Summer deleted, settle for 2003's longer, less pristine Sounds of Summer. The other two are quickies that fit neatly on one must-own CD: Buy Smiley Smile/Wild Honey while EMI lets you.
Smiley Smile and Wild Honey get respect now, but in 1967 they peeved hard-core Pet Sounds fans, who were waiting gape-mouthed for Smile, described by those in the know as the American Sgt. Pepper -- proof that our Bea-boys belonged in the same league as their Bea-boys. But Brian went bonkers, Mike Love got busy, and we ended up with only "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" -- stopgap singles that made it onto the belittlingly titled Smiley Smile -- and dribs and drabs thereafter.
Only you know what happened? Brian Wilson survived his saner brothers and rebuilt his career, which the completely rerecorded SMiLE is supposed to crown. Since much of Wilson's 2004 Gettin' In Over My Head could have been sung from a crypt, this seemed like a terrible idea. Instead, it's a triumph.
SMiLE began as a concert concept for Wilson's expert alt- rock road band, which by 2002 had exhausted Pet Sounds. Never completed, SMile existed only as a jumble of alternate versions, song fragments and ill-cataloged tapes. Sifting through these was a collaborator as crucial as lyricist Van Dyke Parks: keyboard player, harmony vocalist and "musical secretary" Darian Sahanaja. With Sahanaja and Parks jogging his memory, Wilson revised and composed until the best pieces formed a forty-seven-minute whole that started shortly before "Heroes and Villains" and climaxed with "Good Vibrations." While no symphony, it cohered and flowed. The sparer, simpler recorded version follows the pattern of the ecstatically reviewed live performances. Anchored by deft quotes and thematic repetitions, SMiLE is beautiful and funny, goofily grand. It's looser and messier than Sgt. Pepper and, one suspects, always would have been. But its sui generis Americanism counterbalances its paucity of classic pop songs. Not in the same league -- just ready to play a World Series.
Although Parks is a well-traveled arranger who must have left some marks on Wilson's music during their hash-fueled 1966-67 brainstorming sessions, his words do the talking. They're poetic in a manner Wilson has no gift for: now idiomatic, now archaic, now obscure, pervaded by images of fleeting youth and a frontier that stretches to Hawaii. Although stoned confusion and mild pastoral pessimism are endemic, the world they evoke is as benign as a day at the beach - yet less simplistic (and deceptive) than the Beach Boys' fantasies of eternal Southern California teendom. In this the lyrics are of a piece with the jokey songlets of Smiley Smile, where five SmiLE titles first surfaced, and the good-natured rock & roll recidivism of Wild Honey. What elevates them into something approaching a utopian vision is Wilson's orchestrations: brief bridge melodies, youthful harmonies more precise and uplifting now than when executed by actually existing callow people and an enthralling profusion of instrumental colors. Trombone, timpani, theremin and tenor sax brush by and disappear; a banjo shows its head; strings vibe around; woodwinds establish unexpected moods and pipe down.
That the pros who surround Wilson are up to all of this is gratifying but not startling. What the auteur himself had in him was more questionable. And that's the central miracle of this gift of music. Wilson's voice has deepened and coarsened irreparably. Although he hits the notes, he can't convey the innocence SMiLE's content seems to demand. But he can convey commitment and belief -- belief that his young bonkers self composed a work that captured possibilities now nearly lost to history. SMiLE proves that those possibilities are still worth pursuing.
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
(Posted Oct 14, 2004)
09-29-04, 11:21 PM
#20
DVD Talk Hero
Entertainment Weekly gave it an A
Reviewed by Chris Willman
Once, Todd Rundgren recorded an exact replica of ''Good Vibrations,'' just because he could. Now Brian Wilson's recorded his own note-for-note ''Vibrations'' copy -- a few rewritten lyrics or extended passages notwithstanding -- with a better excuse: He's painstakingly duplicating an entire 1967 Beach Boys album that never quite actually existed. SMiLEgot consigned to the trash heap, and became the holy grail of rock projects, after other band members openly groused about its wigginess. But though it remained legendarily incomplete, several classic numbers (''Heroes and Villains,'' ''Surf's Up'') did see daylight, and lesser scraps have been widely bootlegged. Hearing its original architect re-create this treasure trove of lost-and-found material with ringers (Wilson's touring band almost does the Beach Boys better than the Beach Boys), you may wonder if this is SMiLE-mania -- not the real SMiLE, but an incredible simulation!
But screw all that, because the mirth and beauty of the work trump any concerns about reassemblage. As ''finished'' by Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks, SMiLE fulfills its 37-year promise, detailing what'd happen if you threw Stephen Foster's parlor folk, Aaron Copland's orchestral Americana, the Four Freshmen, some kiddie pop, and a sound-effects record into an acid-laced blender. With a new melodic idea occurring every 45 seconds on average, it's a gorgeous trip back to a time when anything seemed possible, rendered only slightly melancholy through a four-decade filter of diminished musical expectations. Purists will suggest SMiLE was better off as myth, but I'll take the version of the story where Schubert not only gets to finish his eighth symphony, but tours and sells T-shirts behind it.
Reviewed by Chris Willman
Once, Todd Rundgren recorded an exact replica of ''Good Vibrations,'' just because he could. Now Brian Wilson's recorded his own note-for-note ''Vibrations'' copy -- a few rewritten lyrics or extended passages notwithstanding -- with a better excuse: He's painstakingly duplicating an entire 1967 Beach Boys album that never quite actually existed. SMiLEgot consigned to the trash heap, and became the holy grail of rock projects, after other band members openly groused about its wigginess. But though it remained legendarily incomplete, several classic numbers (''Heroes and Villains,'' ''Surf's Up'') did see daylight, and lesser scraps have been widely bootlegged. Hearing its original architect re-create this treasure trove of lost-and-found material with ringers (Wilson's touring band almost does the Beach Boys better than the Beach Boys), you may wonder if this is SMiLE-mania -- not the real SMiLE, but an incredible simulation!
But screw all that, because the mirth and beauty of the work trump any concerns about reassemblage. As ''finished'' by Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks, SMiLE fulfills its 37-year promise, detailing what'd happen if you threw Stephen Foster's parlor folk, Aaron Copland's orchestral Americana, the Four Freshmen, some kiddie pop, and a sound-effects record into an acid-laced blender. With a new melodic idea occurring every 45 seconds on average, it's a gorgeous trip back to a time when anything seemed possible, rendered only slightly melancholy through a four-decade filter of diminished musical expectations. Purists will suggest SMiLE was better off as myth, but I'll take the version of the story where Schubert not only gets to finish his eighth symphony, but tours and sells T-shirts behind it.
09-30-04, 06:41 PM
#24
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Originally posted by KevinSmithIsGod
I picked this CD up today just out of curiousity. Do I like the beach boys? Sure..who doesnt. Im not a HUGE fan. I have their best of but thats about it.
So, after all this hype I decided to pick it up and see what all the noise was about..and well, thats what I got, noise.
This is hands down one of the worst cds I have ever bought. Im sorry..I was tempted to go back an beg for my money again. It all sounds the same..the lyrics..o lord..those are even worse.
Its bad..just bad..
sorry to "thread crap"..not my intention. Just my opinion..
I found myself skipping song after song looking for something listenable....
I picked this CD up today just out of curiousity. Do I like the beach boys? Sure..who doesnt. Im not a HUGE fan. I have their best of but thats about it.
So, after all this hype I decided to pick it up and see what all the noise was about..and well, thats what I got, noise.
This is hands down one of the worst cds I have ever bought. Im sorry..I was tempted to go back an beg for my money again. It all sounds the same..the lyrics..o lord..those are even worse.
Its bad..just bad..
sorry to "thread crap"..not my intention. Just my opinion..
I found myself skipping song after song looking for something listenable....
BUT, I try never judge music that is supposed to be good (i.e., recommended by many, good reviews, etc) without giving it 2 or 3 full listens.
Hell, when I was a kid, I hated the Grateful Dead that my brother kept playing. I thought they sounded like ass, and nobody could sing. 2 months later I was singing and dancing along to all of the songs and was hooked.
Just a thought.
10-01-04, 11:11 AM
#25
I'm not a Beach Boys fan (never got into the surfing/beach songs) but this is a brilliant work that compares more to the concept albums of the late 60's than to the surfer pop of the Beach Boys. I think it's more in the vain of mid period Kinks, Sgt Pepper and the Who Sell Out and A Quick one. A lot of songs have multiple parts and there are recurring musical themes. Rock Opera? Not quite but definitely far more interesting and complex than Fun Fun Fun and Little Deuce Coupe.