Smile: my first listen + it's amazing…
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fud-slush — 19 years ago(January 17, 2007 04:04 PM)
I think the first listen is perhaps the most important. I concentrated on it & gave it initial due respect, but after a couple of songs I was getting bored & irritated by its smugness & insincere pathos, & by the end I could have killed. If you got nothing from it then, why, unless you wanted to murder someone, would you want to go back for more?
Please don't lecture me with tired, elementary comments to do with 'new music' or using other people's music for inspiration - you suggested I knew nothing about music, but the post-graduate diploma in composition I obtained a few years back was music-education-aplenty to appreciate that taking 27 years to compose a handful of samey-sounding, unoriginal & downright boring songs is an achievement on a miniscule &, moreover, irrelevant level, & proof positive of just how overrated & crude Brian Wilson's 'talent' is.
Yes, I know Gershwin was inspired by Debussy, & also Ravel (& vice-versa) but Gershwin was an incredibly talented musician who 5b4never had the need to directly 'borrow' from anyone, possessing as he did more than enough of his own compositional ability to ensure that his music sounds like no-one else except Gershwin.
Truly great composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner & Stravinsky get my vote) have always been inspired & educated by the shared core elements of their musical ancestors (e.g. in the typically Western, particularly German, fundemental harmonic progressions that can be heard from Bach right through to Richard Strauss), but it is their own creative genius to excitingly add something completely different - Beethoven's unique brilliance in the development & combination of simple-sounding motifs for example - which enables music to truly progress & develop, & for their own music to rightly be given the superlative 'original'.
Brian Wilson, I'm afraid, is just another in a long line of also-rans (though I think 'also-limped' would be a more appropriate appellation for him) whose sole originality came from his marketing bosses' insistance that his songs should always be listened to with the full knowledge of just what a tragic life (sniff sniff) Wilson has had, & thus try to subliminally eliminate the overbearing sense of musical tedium that his 'masterpieces' so consistently induce. -
funkyfry — 19 years ago(January 29, 2007 11:07 AM)
"I think the first listen is perhaps the most important. I concentrated on it & gave it initial due respect, but after a couple of songs I was getting bored & irritated by its smugness & insincere pathos, & by the end I could have killed. If you got nothing from it then, why, unless you wanted to murder someone, would you want to go back for more?"
Many times I've listened to something and really not enjoyed it, and then after hearing it again a few times I start to realize it's good music. I just don't think you can process the music and lyrics the first time through. The fact that you couldn't even make it through a couple songs tells me you already had a pre-disposition to dislike Brian Wilson.
"Please don't lecture me with tired, elementary comments to do with 'new music' or using other people's music for inspiration - you suggested I knew nothing about music, but the post-graduate diploma in composition I obtained a few years back was music-education-aplenty to appreciate that taking 27 years to compose a handful of samey-sounding, unoriginal & downright boring songs is an achievement on a miniscule &, moreover, irrelevant level, & proof positive of just how overrated & crude Brian Wilson's 'talent' is."
I mean, what do you expect, do you think I'm going to say "oh, this person has a diploma in composition, therefore this must be bad music and I'm wrong"? That would be idiotic. I don't understand the point of your initial post, actually. If you had said something like "I really don't get this, what am I missing?" or if you asked people for what they find valuable, I would understand. But to come in here acting like you know anything about Wilson's album based on one listen and then bust out your "academic credentials" seems weak to me. It's like you think you're going to come down from the ivory tower and educate us. Who cares? If you really are a music teacher, you should be getting paid to give out your opinion. And if you're not a teacher, you should be asking questions and trying to learn instead of coming here to talk about how bad something is that you've heard one time.
If Brian Wilson's talent is "crude" then you'd have to explain how he wrote more classic rock and roll tunes than just about anybody outside of McCartney/Lennon and Leiber/Stoller. Or maybe you just don't like rock music? Because "California Girls", "Good Vibrations", "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", "God Only Knows,", "I Get Around" and about 10 others are among the all-time classic songs of rock. If "Smile" isn't that great then it means that he was not living up to his full potential but you say that it is evidence that he is "overrated". I think it's fair to say you never did like Brian Wilson and you never did really give "Smile" a chance.
"Yes, I know Gershwin was inspired by Debussy, & also Ravel (& vice-versa) but Gershwin was an incredibly talented musician who never had the need to directly 'borrow' from anyone, possessing as he did more than enough of his own compositional ability to ensure that his music sounds like no-one else except Gershwin."
Gershwin's songs sound like no-one else and with the exception of some of the early Beach Boys songs Brian Wilson's sound like his and his alone as well. That's not to say they're equals. But when you listen to Gershwin you hear all his influences that's why "Porgy and Bess" sounds so different from "Oh, Kay!" and both are totally different from "American in Paris". Likewise Gershwin's "Cuban Overture" aka "Rhumba Overture" shows the influence of his vacations to Cuba. Gershwin certainly borred from Jerome Kern and many songs show an influence, for example his famous song Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away) is very close to a "copy" of Kern's "Till the Clouds Roll By".
"Brian Wilson, I'm afraid, is just another in a long line of also-rans (though I think 'also-limped' would be a more appropriate appellation for him) whose sole originality came from his marketing bosses' insistance that his songs should always be listened to with the full knowledge of just what a tragic life (sniff sniff) Wilson has had, & thus try to subliminally eliminate the overbearing sense of musical tedium that his 'masterpieces' so consistently induce."
Just in this last paragraph you made clear once again your naked disdain for Brian Wilson. Don't say you gave the album "initial respect" because anyone reading this with half a brain can tell that you hated him and his music in the first place and you were predisposed to dislike the album. And now you're just trying to find reasons to justify your dislike instead of taking the opportunity to discuss the music with his fans and try to discover what makes us like it. I don't really know who you are trying to impress. Maybe you're trying to prove something to yourself?
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo' -
fud-slush — 19 years ago(January 29, 2007 02:36 PM)
There are some Beach Boy songs that I quite like actually - a couple that you mentioned plus one or two from the Pet Sounds album, so saying I had an in-built hatred for Wilson isn't exactly true. Ok, perhaps saying his talent is 'crude' was a little bit much, but it really boils my blood when none-too-musical people throw the superlative 'genius' at Wilson, just because his music takes them to places they've never been before, but where many composers have been already.
I maintain that ones first listen to any piece of music is extremely important - I remember hearing Gershwin's Summertime for the 1st time in a junior school assembly & immediately being entranced by its sublimely balmy soundworld. Wilson might well h5b4ave a distinctive sound, but so do Michael Nyman, Einaudi & the Teletubbies, & yet their music is total garbage.
No, I'm not a music teacher, but I didn't mean to sound braggy about my compositional abilities (believe me, they're non-existent) - I was only responding to your assumption that I knew nothing about music.
So, please, tell me what the Smile album has that mesmerises so many people. Perhaps my initial post was a little over-the-top, but in truth was only a heavy-handed way of trying to get people to repsond & engage in exactly the conversation you & I have been enjoying(?!).
You obviosuly know your music, particularly your Gershwin, & being such a Gershwin fan I'm willing to give Smile another go if you can convince me I won't be wasting my time. It seems that appreciating Wilson's illness is a pre-requisite for appreciating his music, as so many of his fans go on about it, but I'd never think that the Emperor Concerto was even greater than it is because Beethoven was deaf when he wrote it - you either have the ability or you don't. -
funkyfry — 19 years ago(January 29, 2007 04:17 PM)
Well, I'm a little bit dubious as to your purposes after all you posted in this other thread I was just looking at in April, a good 6 months prior to posting this about "Smile", in regards to Brian Wilson being a genius "When I think of a 'genius' I think of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach or Einstein. Why is Brian Wilson a 'genius'?" It seems kind of like you're baiting people, since you already have this disdain of Wilson prior to listening to the "Smile" album.
But I'll take you at your word that you do enjoy some of his songs, and that perhaps you're trying to figure out for yourself just where he fits in the musical world.
Personally I never cared for the early very popular Beach Boys tunes that much. I basically considered it a white imitation of Chuck Berry. But I happened to see Brian Wilson about 8 years ago when he was doing the Bridgeschool Festival with the Who and Neil Young, and I was pretty impressed by a lot of the songs I hadn't heard on the radio, specifically "God Only Knows" and "Surfer Girl." I still didn't buy any of his albums for a few years, but seeing him live (and acoustic) made me appreciate the continuity between his songs, as opposed to just on-off pop hits. I don't really consider myself a huge Brian Wilson fan, though coincidentally after making my first post in this thread last week or whenever it was, a friend called me a few nights ago and said he had tickets for BW at the Paramount so I went out and saw him last night. Good show, a bit too orchestrated, I put up some comments about it in another thread. Al Jardin was there which was nice.
I think what attracts me to his music is this kind of unearthly quality that his vocal harmonies bring forth. My girlfriend says it's like the 60s version of barbershop quartet. His best and most original tunes are not the ones that are the most "rockin'" but rather the ones that give free reign to his vocals which is interesting since he didn't write his own lyrics. I've noticed that influence in a lot of my favorite bands, particularly in the vocals of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" ("Goodbye Cruel World", "Outside the Wall").
Regarding "Smile" in particular, I like the way that there is no separation between the musical themes. There aren't really any "songs" on the album, it's more like the music all flows together and the whole is greater than the parts. That's the type of rock album I like, like Sgt. Peppers and Dark Side of the Moon. Another band I've been getting into lately which is so2000mewhat similar to Brian Wilson is Procul Harum. I don't really know what "Smile" is about yet, if I ever will. From listening to the lyrics and the way they are blended together it's hard for me to believe the album is just intended as a humorous peice. There are many references to iconic peices of American history and iconic images of what you could call "American Exoticism". The way "Surf's Up" and some of the other "tropical" references were mixed into the album makes me feel he is trying to take his bands' association with "girls, summer, good times" and satirize what he's already done. If that's what he's doing, then "Smile" is a kind of love letter to the dearly departed American Dream the Dream that brought the white man from the Eastern shores all the way to California and then when California was no longer exotic turned his eye to Hawaii. "See what you have done to the church of the American Indian", "Rock, Plymouth Rock Roll Over". I think the question Van Parks and Wilson were asking in the album is: "Is what we are telling our children, and what we are leaving them, really better than what they had before?" Are we filling our kids' heads with mythology to justify our continued destruction of their world or are we going to leave them a legacy of peace and love? Might sound too 60s but I think that's what they were saying, I could be wrong.
I think Brian Wilson's music had been used for so long to glorify not only the fun-loving lifestyle but also the kind of ideal that the sun is shining somewhere. Kids in the mid-west might be freezing their buns off but could dance their feet to "California Girls". You have to wonder how a song like that would be popular anywhere but here in California. But the reality is that the song isn't about California, it's about the idea of California, the dream of California. The last thing I think Brian Wilson wanted to do was to make an album like the one I mentioned above ("The Wall") where he used spite, anger, vitriol, and sarcasm to attempt to demonstrate to the audience how artificial a lot of our social conventions are after all, a satire should be funny. It should not leave your world in rags, just telling you how everything that you do is wrong and evil but giving you no alternative world vision. Brian Wilson is trying to represent the culture of positivity, but with "Smile" he doesn't just want to celebrate good times and party; he's subverting some of his asso -
fud-slush — 19 years ago(February 01, 2007 06:48 AM)
Thanks for your detailed post, funkyfry.
I have given it another listen but like the first time, it mostly left me cold.
I wanted to like the 'barbershop harmonies', as your girlfriend calls them, more than I did, but they seem just a little too self-conscious & designed for me, as if they've really been put on a pedastal saying, 'listen to these lovely harmonies that took me ages to work out', whereas the vocals in say, some classic Freddie Mercury / Queen songs have a far more spontaneous & relaxed feel about them, to my ears anyway.
Perhaps you have to be an American or even a Californian to get the most out of Wilson.
I'm a huge fan of Sgt. Pepper's (the best Beatles album & one of the best albums period IMHO) but will check out Procol Harum if I get a chance.
I suppose I have had a lot of vitriolic things to say about Wilson in the past, but as I mentioned before, this is more to do with people erroneously hailing him as a genius or droning on about his mental problems, but 27 years does seem a hell of a long time to compose anything (even Wagner's Ring Cyle didn't take that long & he composed two other 4 hour+ masterpieces in the interim) so perhaps I was expecting a whole lot more than I heard.
Anyway, regards,
Fud. -
bigbang84 — 19 years ago(February 02, 2007 05:25 PM)
You have to remember though that even though the album took a long time to finish and release, 90% of it was composed and arranged by Brian in 1966 thru early 1967. It didn't take him "ages" to work out at all. In fact, he was coming up with so much music around that time that the project overwhelmed him (there are other reasons, of course). It took so long to release because he abandoned it and was afraid to revisit it until recently. That's a whole other story though.
I cou5b4ld be wrong, but if you have an opportunity to hear the original sessions, you might find the music more enjoyable. There is a more evident degree of spontanious creation on the original tapes than there is on the released album. As a hardcore fan, I enjoy those more than the released album, even if they are relatively incomplete. -
fud-slush — 16 years ago(October 01, 2009 12:58 PM)
It was a bit of fun Sandino - I can't believe it's still here (or that you found it)! - but if there is anything epic regarding Wilson, it can only ever be either his ego or capacity for drugs, neither of which seem to have been enough to engender anything inspiring
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a-bone-1 — 16 years ago(October 01, 2009 06:26 PM)
Just give it up mate, you're not trolling anyone.
Listen to the original recordings of "Wind Chimes" or "Cabinessence" and tell me that Wilson wasn't on a completely different level to anyone else in pop music in 1967.
The chord stuctures and vocal arrangements are to die for. -