This is as the sticker on the CD case says "The best pop album never made" By that they mean it never came out when they intended it to back in the 70s because of various reasons, mainly from Brian having a nervous breakdown and not wanting anything to do with it. If you dont know who Brian Wilson is his the guy responsible for everything the Beach Boys did.

When he finally got the courage to get back in the studio and finally finish making this work of art he created one of the best albums made, while still staying true to his old roots, but modernizing it with current technology and the like.

If you havent heard this album do yourself a favour and get it, you wont be disappointed. It also has the final complete version of Good Vibrations on it, yes it did get released as a single back in the day, but that was just because SMiLE never came out then after all the hype they had to release something, even if it wasnt a complete version and still managing to be one of the most used songs today

kcwm said:

The original Smile session bootlegs are better. Plenty of them around.
[Edited 9/28/07 21:38pm]

There's something wierd with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, not just on the Org, but in the 'real world' too. If someone starts a Beatles thread, you get a ton of responses, yet most Brian Wilson/ Beach Boys threads die a quick death. An exception to this was a couple of weeks ago, when I did a BW thread after seeing Brian and his modern band play live in London (awesome show by the way! ).

In a nutshell, Brian Wilson/ the Beach Boys have an image problem.

Yes, it's true that the Beach Boys are the most successful group in American history, and Brian gets heavy props nowadays for his work on 'Pet Sounds', 'Smile' and other excellent stuff. But a lot of people still seem to steer clear of them, due imo to their clean-cut, stripy shirted early image. Obviously, people are less familiar with Dennis Wilson's later less than clean cut appearance and lifestyle.

As a result, especially with 'Pet Sounds' and even more so with 'Smile', people deprive themselves of imo some of the best music and vocals of the last 50 years (beyond pop music, 'Smile' imo is comparable to Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' and 'An American in Paris',Duke Ellington's great extended suites like 'the Far East Suite' and 'The New Orleans Suite' and perhaps Jimi Hendrix's '1983'/ 'Rainy Day, Dream Away'/ 'Moon,Moon, Turn the Tides ...', as great extended works of 20th century American music.

For me, 'Smile' (the finished 2004 version) is up there with anything (and I mean anything) the Beatles did. If this had been released, as planned, before 'Sgt Pepper', 'Pepper' would've looked like a 'Smile' rip-off. Of course, there are major differences, but Brian Wilson and Lennon/McCartney were both riding the same zeitgeist. And where there were three, and including George Martin, four 'creative' Beatles, doing the writing, arranging, producing etc, ALL of these duties except lyric writing were done by Brian Wilson alone, writing the tunes, arranging and producing the music/ records and directing the musicians in the studio. Imo the melodies and rhythms on 'Smile' kick 'Pepper's ass anyday .

And what a sequence of albums the Beach Boys made in the '60s - excellent to great records would include 'Today', 'Summer Days (And Summer Nights!)', 'Pet Sounds', the original 'Smile' sessions, 'Wild Honey' (their kind of R n' B album), 'Friends', '20/20' and finally 1970's 'Sunflower'. All these are excellent records imo, and are on an overall par with what the Beatles etc were doing at the same time, if often different stuff. There is also a reason why the Beach Boys are sometimes called 'the greatest choir in modern pop music history', with Brian as the choirmaster.

But back to 'Smile'

'Smile' is as rich musically as what Frank Zappa was up to around the same time, and the melodies and lyrics (words by Van Dyke Parks) are for all times. It may be eccentric music at times, but I regard 'Smile' as one of the true masterworks of 20th century pop music. Songs as great and well made as 'Heroes and Villains', 'Cabin Essence', 'Wind Chimes', the extraordinary in its day 'Good Vibrations' (actually a multi-sectioned, avante garde and yet pop psychedelic r n b 'pocket symphony' with full choir - all in around 3 minutes ) and the fuzz guitar meets Edgard Varese of the dark, disturbing 'Mrs O'Leary's Cow' (aka the 'Fire Music') deserve an even wider audience.

Comparing the finished 2004 version with the two thirds finished 1967 version ... Yes, the '67 takes have some exquisite musical passages (some not included on the '04 version) and playing that beats '04, but the overall effect of the properly completed and sequenced '04 article, with the equally great playing of Brian's current band, and the different, more world-weary quality of Brian's more mature voice, is imo a better and more concise listen than the wondrous but sometimes over-extended '67 tapes, which I'm sure Brian would have cut down before release then anyway.

All this may sound a little over-the-top (I am a big BW/Beach Boys fan and I love 'Smile' ), but if you ain't heard 'Smile' (which is in effect a psychedelic/ spiritual musical travelogue across America and its history from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii), imo you're missing some wonderful music. It'll definitely put some of the Beatles later music (especially 'Pepper', 'Magical Mystery Tour' and 'Yellow Submarine') into better context for you too, as Brian Wilson was easily working on the same level as them from 1965-67.
[Edited 9/29/07 14:19pm]

I always dig the Beach Boys but I could never find the topics to save my life. "Good Vibrations" is my all-time favorite from them.

I have always thought that Smile is one of the most important records of the 20th Century.
While I prefer the 2004 version (better produced than the 1967 bootlegs), the '67 original bootleg version is awesome in its own terms; I even wonder how Brian was able to make that kind of cerebral/psychodelic/symphonic music, it was 1000 years ahead of its time, and THAT'S why Smile was never finished or released...Smile was (and still is) an ugly beast, difficult to diggest, not pop enough for the mainstream or pop/rock audience and maybe too self-indulgent and over-excited for the jazz/classical music fans; everybody was scared of Smile: the rest of the Beach Boys, specially Mike Love, (who saw the album as horrific music from Mars), the Capitol label and even Brian himself, who I believe he even didn't know what the hell that album was.

The result? Smile is the definitive pyschodelic album of all time; Sgt.Peppers is just a pop album with fancy production and well-crafted songs. Smile is a pure, monolithic album which isn't very influential because it's nearly impossible to be directly influenced by such rich, delirious, cerebral, personal, visionary, weird, crazy, futuristic music.

By the way, I've always thought that Brian should have released Smile as a solo project. While et Sounds still felt like a Beach Boys record, Smile certainly didn't.
[Edited 9/29/07 16:22pm]

i agree that smile should have been a brian wilson solo project from the beginning...the beach boys did nothing but hold this genius back.

it's easy to forget how ingenius and groundbreaking most of his work was after hearing it and everything that was influenced by it for so many years.

smile still sounds fresh and innovative, though. it flows perfectly. one of very few perfect albums, in my opinion. i read a week or so ago that he is contemplating recording the sequel, which i believe he recently performed in london...

i'd recommend reading brian wilson's autobiography "good vibrations" for some real insight into how important this project really was to him, and to pop music, for that matter.

it's a shame we lost this guy for so many years...but then again who knows. the mystique he's created around himself has probably sold alot of records....

What can I say what hasn't been said before about Smile? I went to the Smile concert Brian gave before the album came out and was completely blown away. If this shit was finished in 1967 I would be impressed to see the Beatles'Peppers still be the soundtrack to the summer of love. I guess Smile would have to be, it's the perfect mindfuck for those tea loevrs and the perfect pop/psych masterpiece, there's only a few albums that come close and even of those I'm not sure if they hold a candle to Smile. I'm talking about Kaleidoscope's Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd's Piper at the gates of Dawn (although an entirely different form of psych, but an inspiration nonetheless).
nyways I believe that every self respecting music lover should own this album!

peedub said:

I agree. In most ways, by the 'Smile' era (late '66- early '67), the other Beach Boys, talented in their own rights as they were, needed Brian far more than he needed them. If Brian had gotten the guts to go against the family (literally in this case) and said to them, 'Okay, I'll make this record without you. I'll either sing all the parts myself (which he was perfectly capable of doing, being the vocal harmony arranger for the group and an excellent singer), or I'll get some other singers to sing for me,' and he hadn't done the drug thing so bad, who knows what he would have accomplished over the following years?

It wouldn't have made any difference in the long run, as the Beach Boys became estranged from each other anyway, with Brian particularly estranged from his cousin and early writing partner Mike Love and his little brother Carl Wilson, who went on to be the de facto leader of the group in the '70s, '80s and '90s until his sad death in 1998.

And to further evangelise 'Smile' for the unconvinced music fans, while definitely not a jazz album, there is a great deal of 'inferred' jazz and even proto-progressive rock writing and instrumentation in 'Smile', with frequent use of marimbas, vibrophones, horns and the trademark 'Four Freshmen meet Bach' Wilson baroque harmony arrangments, which are one part jazz and one part classical in origin. Then there's the wierd chords and hints of swing era crooner music that filter through here and there (Brian was/is something of a fan of the likes of Sinatra et al). 'Smile' is about as far away from good-time surf music as you can get, really.

And I don't wish to over-do the 'wierdness' aspect, and put anybody off getting it. Other than the lyrics, which are generally abstract, if lovely and often amusing, the music of 'Smile', while certainly eccentric, inventive and multi-faceted, is just some of the most heart-breakingly beautiful music I've ever heard.

ipeedub said:

This is the performance I attended. . Brian and his great band performed Brian's new work, a new song cycle called 'That Lucky Old Sun', inspired by the old song most famously recorded by Louis Armstrong.

'That Lucky Old Sun' is basically a themed work, dealing both with the musical and cultural life and history of California and Los Angeles, reflected through the prism of Brian's life and experiences. While not technically a 'sequel' to 'Smile', it is similar in that it has different 'movements' and recurring motifs etc, and the music is sometimes reminiscent of 'Smile' and some of his other stuff. Most importantly, while perhaps not quite as good as 'Smile' (but then few things are), 'That Lucky Old Sun' is probably the best and most consistent selection of new Brian Wilson music 'released' since his first, self-titled solo album in 1988, and probably since 'Smile' itself.

It seems that 'Lucky Old Sun' is going down very well with audiences (and with me ) and that Brian and the band are keen to record it in the near future. So, fingers crossed for another great new Brian Wilson record next year!