Did anyone write about this for Lost in the Grooves, David?

No, but it'd definitely be in volume 2.

Or did you veto any Godfather related content? :-)

Heh. I was trying to talk my friend Matthew into doing the Mother Popcorn album.

Ginger, no idea on how to answer your questions. But a genuine "thank you" for the earworm.

I can finally respond a little bit to Hayden's post on Smile.

Been listening to Brian Wilson's Smile all day. It's extraordinary. I get choked up thinking about how close the world came to only hearing this in fragments. For every passage that's stiffer than the original (and we can include the vocals on "Wonderful," "Surf's Up," and "Good Vibrations" in this category, as well as the far-less-than-insane intro to "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" -- although all make up for it in other ways), there's a section of lyrics or music or perfect wordless harmony that just takes my breath away. I think I first grew emotional when suddenly there were new words and sounds in "Barnyard", the fourth song on the album (which was always 3rd on my homemade Smile, before - rather than after - "Do You Like Worms?," which is now retitled "Roll Plymouth Rock"). The fantastic transition from "Wonderful" to "Child Is Father Of The Man" is now filled by "Song For Children," which previously was known as the instrumental "Look". The lyrics on "I'm In Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop" and the transition to "Vega-Tables" make it one of the darkest beautiful things that Brian Wilson or the Beach Boys ever created outside of "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times." The instrumental "Holiday" is now the pirate drama "On A Holiday." "Love To Say Da Da" has become "In Blue Hawaii," an intentionally silly ode to the 50th American state. There's no sign of "He Gives Speeches/She's Going Bald" or "Well, You're Welcome".

It's fascinating to me seeing how all the pieces are woven together now. This version of "Surf's Up" is not as standalone spectacular as the original (which, doesn't stand alone in my mind anyway, since it's coupled with "Til I Die"), but the way it works with the rest is fantastic. The way "Good Vibrations" now has a little callback to "In Blue Hawaii" was perfect. And while the original version is superior, I do love the attack of the strings in this version. The whole thing is now this slightly loopy, crow's-eye-swooping-over-the-cornfield of western migration across North America from Plymouth Rock out across the Pacific to Hawaii.

Listening to the completed original teenage symphony to God leads me to wonder how different American rock music would have developed if Brian Wilson had been able to finish it. Smile is such a deeply weird and wholly gorgeous slice of wholesome psychedelic Americana; it's hard to imagine what would have happened if it had been a piece of mainstream music. It's no mere concept album, like Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper's, but a full-blown rock opera, following the notion that albums and songs can proceed in narratively or musically linked sections but rejecting the folk-song verse-chorus-verse trope that informs so much rock music, and pre-dating the hereto recognized first rock opera, The Who's "A Quick One (While He's Away)," by two years.

It seems more symphonic than operatic to me, despite the vocals. The constant weaving of materials and the motifs which recur and play off each other. And for all the influence the Beach Boys had on pop music, nobody really composes these discrete sections the way Brian does. He achieves tremendous effects by rubbing these different mixes against each other with the sudden shifts in tempo and sonic texture.

Hayden, here's a good roundtable for the High Hat: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Smile"

Hayden, here's a good roundtable for the High Hat: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Smile"

Hee hee. Raymond Carver fan, Hec?

Hee hee. Raymond Carver fan, Hec?

Leetle bit. Mostly though the title conjured up all the multivarious (crap word, sorry) responses to Smile.

It's a four-dimensional cultural object which you can spin on a variety of axes.

It's a four-dimensional cultural object which you can spin on a variety of axes.

They said the same thing about the Liberty Bell, and look what happened when they tried.

They said the same thing about the Liberty Bell, and look what happened when they tried.

I am all for replacing the Liberty Bell with Smile.

Smile is Christgau's Pick Hit from the current Consumer Guide:

BRIAN WILSON
SMiLE
(Nonesuch)

There are many things I don't miss about the '60s, including long hair, LSD, revolutionary rhetoric, and folkies playing drums. But the affluent optimism that preceded and then secretly pervaded the decade's apocalyptic alienation is a lost treasure of a time when capitalism had so much slack in it that there was no pressing need to stop your mind from wandering. Brian Wilson grokked surfing because it embodied that optimism, and though I considered the legend of Smile hot air back then, this re-creation proves he had plenty more to make of it. The five titles played for minimalist whimsy on Smiley Smile mean even more orchestrated, and the newly released fragments are as strong as the whole songs they tie together. Smile's post-adolescent utopia isn't disfigured by Brian's thickened, soured 62-year-old voice. It's ennobled—the material limitations of its sunny artifice and pretentious tomfoolery acknowledged and joyfully engaged. This can only be tonic for Americans long since browbeaten into lowering their expectations by the rich men who are stealing their money. A PLUS

I am all for replacing the Liberty Bell with Smile.

Yeah, but you know the traditionalists will want to put a dirty big crack in it first.

Now I want Philly to run a tourism campaign inviting people to come here and check out the amazing crack.

Smile is Christgau's Pick Hit from the current Consumer Guide:

He also does a full review in Rolling Stone. He's actually never been a huge Beach Boy fan, stating that their post-hit sixties and early seventies work (so beloved by collector types) was overrated. So this is an interesting turn to his opinion.