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.

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.

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."

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

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.

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

You, my friend, are the Master of Blurbs.

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.

I think "rock opera" really connotes "symphony" the way you're using it here. I'm actually working on a High Hat article on this very thing, and comparing SMiLE to Blueberry Boat (with parts on The Tain, the Liars' last album, and Watt's new album). In it, I argue that "rock operas" can be song or album length and have certain rule-of-thumb characteristics, including a non-blues-based structure (no verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle 8-chorus for these guys, usually), a coherent narrative (which may be difficult to decipher -- clarity isn't the point, story is), repeated motifs (which can be either lyrical or musical), and an ambitious length (i.e. more than 5 minutes). N.B. These characteristics aren't definitive - a song could arguably be a rock opera without exhibiting any of them - but descriptive.

Anyway, it seems that the indierockers are suddenly making good (by which I mean: literary-but-self-mocking lyrics with innovative music) rock operas, but maybe they've been there all along. I suspect that rock operas appeal to more underground musicians now, though, because a) it's become very cheap to indulge yourself in the studio and b) the only people interested in making indie rock these days are highly educated middle-class intellectual-types (as opposed to the halcyon punk & college rock days, when [as I perceive the scene] the musicians were a bit further removed from class).

Maybe you (and the other hangers-out here) could help me with good rock operas from the 60s and 70s. I have "A Quick One" and "In The Court of the Crimson King" on the positive side and Tommy plus the collected works of Yes and ELP on the negative side. I'm having a hard time thinking of more examples of good rock operas. And I always have Rick Wakeman to act as whipping boy for the bad ones.

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.

He gave Wild Honey an A+, too, and I think the Endless Summer hits compilation is on his basic library list. But he does (or did) have mixed feelings about them, as evidenced by his being underwhelmed by Pet Sounds but knocked out by Wild Honey.

That's pretty much how I feel, too. Not necessarily about those two, but in general: somewhat suspicious about the auteurist (if not the auteur's) claims about the Pet Sounds/Smile era, combined with annoyance at the devaluing of the hits period by many of those making the auteurist claims - similar to the dubious claims about Sgt. Pepper's clear superiority to all that yeah yeah yeah stuff.

That's the reductive version of the position, of course. Hayden, to use the local Brian Wilson as Auteur proponent, has never said anything (at least around here) about "Fun, Fun, Fun" being any less great just because BW expanded his palette for subsequent works. And he is on record as having some Sgt. P doubts (don't cross him about Revolver, although I can't imagine why someone wouldn't like Revolver. The Beach Boys stuff I like I really love, but unlike the Beatles or a personal fave like Richard Thompson the BB's music doesn't grab me in a way that makes me plow through mehs to get to Oh Wows!

All of which is a longwinded way of saying that all the raves haven't made me run out to get a copy of Smile (the way my reaction to Eleanor Friedberger's singing made me snap up a copy of Blueberry Boat), but I am looking forward to hearing it. More of a "you're slowly swaying me" conversion than Saul on the way to Damascus.