After 44 years, The Beach Boys'
SMiLE, the
most famous unreleased album of all time, has finally been released.
Even at its most remorselessly upbeat, the Beach Boys' music was marked by an ineffable sadness – you can hear it in the cascading tune played by the woodwind during Good Vibrations's verses – but on Smile, the sadness turned into something far weirder. All the talk of Wilson writing teenage symphonies to God – and indeed the sheer sumptuousness of the end results – tends to obscure what a thoroughly eerie album Smile is. Until LSD's psychological wreckage began washing up in rock via Skip Spence's Oar and Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs, artists tactfully ignored the dark side of the psychedelic experience. But it's there on Smile...
The first of a ten-part web series on the making of the album and the new reissue has been posted on youtube, featuring new interviews and rare archival footage. The full-length 2-CD version is
streaming at AOL.
posted by anazgnos
on Nov 1, 2011 -
162 comments
Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution is a CBS News special, broadcast in April 1967. The show was hosted by Leonard Bernstein and is probably one of the first examples of pop music being examined as a 'serious' art form. The film features many scenes shot in Los Angeles in late 1966, including interviews with Frank Zappa and Graham Nash, as well as the now legendary Brian Wilson solo performance of "Surf's Up." (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator
on Apr 29, 2011 -
15 comments
Entertainment NewsFilter: the surviving Beach Boys, including Mike Love and Brian Wilson, appeared together in public today, for the first time in ten years, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds.
Mike Love
recently sued Brian Wilson for royalties and co-writing credits, again, after Brian released SMiLE, a
mere 38 years after originally starting on it. The strife between the two has been ongoing for decades. As Brian grew more musically ambitious in the Pet Sounds and SMiLE era, Mike
legendarily admonished Brian not to "fuck with the formula." [m.i.]
posted by ibmcginty
on Jun 14, 2006 -
59 comments
Brian Wilson performed
“Smile” last Friday, in its entirety. One of the most anticipated “lost” albums of all time (a great deal of the material was released on other Beach Boys Albums, as well as the “Good Vibrations” Box set). Smile was Brian Wilson’s answer to the Beatles “
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The now legendary tale speaks of Brian’s slow decent into madness and drug abuse during the recording of “Smile,” (for example, when he was recording “Mrs. O'Leary's Cow,” otherwise known as the “Fire” element to Smile, he and the orchestra all had to wear plastic firefighters helmets. When he got home from recording, there were news reports of a huge fire in the area he was recording in, causing him to believe the “vibes” from the music started the fire. Needless to say, he freaked out a bit.) The album was shelved at the last minute, and for decades, Brian either told people that the Smile sessions had been destroyed, or flat out refused to speak of it at all.
Now,
after 37 years of wondering,
Smile is finally going to be released!!!
posted by Quartermass
on Feb 24, 2004 -
30 comments
The son of a rock god interviews a rock genius... (Scroll down to "Audio") Sean Lennon's 48-minute interview with Brian Wilson covers all aspects of music, from the genesis of a great song, to the competition between artists in the late 1960's. (The interview is in four parts, in RealAudio format.)
posted by greengrl
on Aug 26, 2002 -
15 comments
