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?
Bye, now. Have good sex.
Kaylee ,'Jaynestown'
Buffista Music II: Wrath of Chaka Khan
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
Polter-Cow - Oct 06, 2004 7:59:19 am PDT #5234 of 10003
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
DavidS - Oct 06, 2004 8:25:19 am PDT #5235 of 10003
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
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.
billytea - Oct 06, 2004 8:30:08 am PDT #5236 of 10003
You were a wrong baby who grew up wrong. The wrong kind of wrong. It's better you hear it from a friend.
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.
DavidS - Oct 06, 2004 8:32:23 am PDT #5237 of 10003
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
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.
joe boucher - Oct 06, 2004 8:34:22 am PDT #5238 of 10003
I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve. - John Prine
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
billytea - Oct 06, 2004 8:34:42 am PDT #5239 of 10003
You were a wrong baby who grew up wrong. The wrong kind of wrong. It's better you hear it from a friend.
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.
DavidS - Oct 06, 2004 8:36:08 am PDT #5240 of 10003
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
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.
Fred Pete - Oct 06, 2004 8:36:20 am PDT #5241 of 10003
Ann, that's a ferret.
But the affluent optimism that preceded and then secretly pervaded the decade's apocalyptic alienation
Not to mention (or maybe I'm saying the same thing) the explosion in what could be called mainstream.
Sue - Oct 06, 2004 8:36:30 am PDT #5242 of 10003
hip deep in pie
A friend of mine almost gave me Smile for my birthday. As a joke.
I told him, "It would have been funny for a second, then I would have wanted my real present."
billytea - Oct 06, 2004 8:44:10 am PDT #5243 of 10003
You were a wrong baby who grew up wrong. The wrong kind of wrong. It's better you hear it from a friend.
A friend of mine almost gave me Smile for my birthday. As a joke.
My brother once gave me a greatest hits of the 50s cassette on exactly the same logic. Though for his 30th I gave my youngest brother the greatest hits of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, so I'm in no position to throw stones.
Oh, wait, he loved it. t loosens up throwing arm