SMiLE - The Ever-Changing Moment Of Sublime Incompletion Just Changed The Game, Again

Old School non-Ai scissor-and-paste artwork ©False Memory Foam Department Of Art Dept.

A SUBTLY TWEAKED NEW VERSION is linked at the end of this piece, tagged with the above swell cover design.

Everybody knows everything about SMiLE, mainly that it was never finished. And, leave it alone. Brian signed off with it on Brian Wilson Presents Smile, and there's a box set of sessions and completed tracks, and that's how it should rest. End of. But people will be people, and the first thing we should have learned by now is that people don't care what we think, and mainly do what they want. And what they want is to get under the hood of SMiLE and resto-mod the fuck out of it.

SMiLE has been the subject of many fan recreations over the decades, none of which in any way affect the original recordings. It's not like throwing a pot of paint at an Old Master Painting, fundamentally damaging the original. There's no desecration, no disrespect. Deep thinkers who claim that all opinions are equal, and it's all subjective, should bear in mind that all versions of SMiLE are just that - someone's opinion, someone's point of view. Nobody's claiming a definitive "answer to the question". We don't have to agree with it. Nobody cares what we think. Welcome to the internet.

The key point that many are missing is that the technology of music; playing, recording and reproduction, isn't a fixed thing. Every advance is part of the process, a pulse in the flux. And no advance is any more or less human or authentic than the last or the next. The microphone itself was seen as the devil's work on its introduction, so was the saxophone, the synthesizer. Drum machines were going to put drummers out of business! Home taping was going to kill music! CDs were going to kill vinyl!

Recently, sonic wizard Dae Lims (Smile A.D. backwards) boosted the SMiLE industry into an entirely new era with his AI recreation. Liberties were taken, opportunities grabbed with both hands. Across the world, jaws dropped, brows furrowed, and shoulders shrugged, as the applause rang out. Lofty opinions were voiced as to the moral rightness and the esthetic integrity of such an exercise. The snowflake-eared winced at the sonic anomalies they thought they heard. But the damage was done - SMiLE was reinvented, refreshed, awakened from its slumber. Old School mixing had taken SMiLE as far as it could, and Dae Lims' revelatory mix opens up Pandora's Box. 

It's not perfect - he makes several questionable artistic decisions. Authenticity isn't the aim of his mix, so omitting Good Vibrations, the album's most famous ("iconic", even) song because there's a fan theory it was never going to be included is bat-shit crazy. And he bolts on You're Welcome, a sonic sore thumb which fits nowhere. His running order is all over the place, his titles are sometimes not the best, and he omits Love To Say Dada/Cool, Cool Water - some of the album's most blissed-out vocals - because, well, reasons. That's what I think, and nobody cares, quite rightly. But if you want to hear my version of his version, the link's below. Right now, it's the version I listen to, but I'm anticipating further developments with open ears and open heart. SMiLE, the perfect imperfection, was never finished - yet. And always will be. That's what makes it won, won, der wonderful.

Smile!

Differences from Dae Lims' version, showing the depths of my madness:

ITEM! "Our Prayer" moved from intro (where it's over-familiar) to outro, serving as a calming out-breath after the rush of "Surf's Up", replacing "You're Welcome". It's the album's chill-out tent.

ITEM! "Good Vibrations" added, because DUH. And - for fuck's sake!

ITEM! "Cool Water/I Love To Say Dada" blended in to the mix with a butter knife. Bliss!

ITEM! The jaunty theme from "Holidays" sneakily snuck into the "Fire" section.

ITEM! "I'm With You Tonight" (SMiLE era recording) smoothed into "Vegetables" (where, according to some authorities, it was intended to fit), replacing some repetition. And a nice little tag added.

ITEM! The "you're under arrest" interjection cut from H&V, because I never liked it. It's badly acted and disruptive to no purpose. You love it! Because hahalol! I don't care!

ITEM! Various granular edits and smoothies throughout which will be noticed by nobody (I hope).

Leaving aside the contentious issue of "authenticity", this is the definitive, best, most enjoyable, and complete (thanks to Dae Lims' creativity) version of SMiLE! currently available. Until the next one, anyway.

(PS that's the link, up there, the word Smile!)

Aloha, Already!

Feeble fistbumps and arthritic high fives to all th' Four Or Five Guys© what made this place so copacetic over the years with comments and contributions an' stuff. It was only ever about that.

This link has lots of beautiful, helpful shit about what Aloha means, should youse bums be desirous of acquirin'. And you might find time for a slight return to the very first post at th' IoF© for more elucidatory exegesis.

https://babssez.blogspot.com

https://web.archive.org/web/20110420031316/http://rebuddha.blogspot.com/

This post, this place, made fungible thru th' continued participation of th' Four Or Five Guys©. If you're ever floating down the Mekong River, look out for th' House O' Foam©, where welcome is assured!

The Deaf, Dumb And Blind Kid Is A Cork On The Ocean

Right from the start, The Who sprang from youth culture in the way the Beatles never did. Mod was the first truly indigenous UK youth culture, and The High Numbers were its house band. Rockers - pitted in tabloid-staged seaside battles against the Mods - were greasemonkeys abetted by Teddy Boys - ageing dandruff dandies clinging to scratched American 78s, the fag-end last gasp of the dying decade.

At the birth of the 'sixties the USA was in youth culture limbo, black origins being whitewashed into the family values that would attract TV sponsors, so the Mods took their tailoring cues, as did Motown, from Italy. Cutting-edge, finger-popping sharp. Meanwhile, the Beatles were doing their show band schtick, affecting rebel leather (yeah, ri-ight) or beat group uniform, completely out of touch with street level London. But they were cute and pretty and happy in a way The Who could never be, never wanted to be, and the lovely lads were welcomed into the cosy coal-fire parlours of an England in dire need of a knees-up. The Who were ugly fucked up pill-poppers, and fucking furious. They smashed stuff up. They were a pre-psychedelic explosion of colour and wildness, living Pop Art, not appropriating it, and their look was their own, not the artifice of a Hamburg stylist. Their music offered no comfort to the mums and dads who'd lived through the war, but confronted them with noise and shock value that still holds its edge; My Generation is the definitive fuck you to the nine-to-fivers. For this they fought on the front lines? Had their houses bombed? Where was the gratitude? The respect?

Townshend was obviously aware of the Fab Four, but it's tough to point at any overt musical debt. Check out Ol' Bignose with his record collection [left - Ed.]; face out in the stack is Surfin' Safari. He was an admirer of the Beach Boys, influenced more by the California of Paul Revere & The Raiders than the Liverpool of Gerry And The Pacemakers. The Beach Boys were also embedded into their own youth culture, inseparable from it, and sang about cars, the beach, school, surfing, clothes ... and girls. The Beatles were self-isolated from cultural context, a kind of magpie nest to display stolen glitter. They mostly sang about ... girls. Brian Wilson had another link with Townshend - he wasn't embarrassed to express his interior life, and it's this rare balance of intro- and outro-spection that makes them both sensitive songwriters and documentary journalists. Pop as celebration and psychotherapy, without being self-conscious or ironically removed - accurate reflections both of the times and the soul of the artist. Go to the mirror! Smash the mirror!

Where Wilson was the suburban teen dreaming of love and marriage, Townshend struggled with the twisted legacy of his own childhood in the ruins of WW2, uprooted, abused, and searching for redemption and meaning. Brothers in spirit, both performing for the party happening outside their bedroom door and locking themselves away from it, shut out, shut in, shut down. My Generation and I Get Around are the same song - this is us! youth anthems without a Beatles equivalent. People try to put us down, just because I get around, round, get around ... Similarly, In My Room and Pictures Of Lily are polarised views of the same interior space. Brian finds spiritual comfort in his lair of solitude while Pete rubs one out under the sheets. When I grow up to be a man is drawn from the same dark well as hope I die before I get old - the deaf, dumb, and blind kid is a cork on the ocean.

As of right now, both these guys are still, blessedly, alive, and their music will live as close to forever as makes no difference - that is, longer than you and me.

Disappeared Albums Undisappeared Dept.- Viva Saturn's Ships Of Heaven

Artwork by IOF© Department of Art Dept.

Do your own research, it'll take a minute, max. Ships Of Heaven is only mentioned on the internet a handful of times, in passing, as Viva Saturn's final album that Restless Records shelved, bafflingly, in 1998. There was, I think, a single released from it, Ships Of Heaven b/w Angel Sister, but that's not on Discogs, or anywhere. Nor is the artwork, which I only have at thumbnail size [left - Ed.].

A request in the comments to the Rain Parade piece [below - Ed.] prompted 4/5g© Geriatrix to rummage in his underwear drawer, and lo! Wrapped in an old pair of drop-seat BVDs he discovered a CD given to him by name redacted, containing eight songs from the unreleased album! You probably don't care, because you're distracted by an active shooter in the crack house across the hall, but I've been hunting this sucker for, like, decades. I mean, among other shit I had to do, but this was always on the list.

Eight songs was a little meager for an album-length album, but the CD was mysteriously missing the title track, which when added bulks the whole deal up to acceptable length, for back when albums were an acceptable length. Unfortunately, the tracks weren't named, so if you can help, help!

It's as swell as I hoped. Maybe as swell as Bright Side, which is super-swell. Psychemelodic, guitars out th' ass. And it's a beautiful link to the astonishing Last Rays Of A Dying Sun. Plus, at no cost to you, th' freeloadin' bum scratchin' yer balls, I researched the original cover illustration (from a 17c alchemical text which also supplied the art for the cover of the Third Ear Band's Alchemy album, but you knew that) and crayoned up a new cover [above - Ed.].

This post made possible thru the divine intercession of Geriatrix, who shall be carried aloft by oiled Nubians in procession around the IOF©, while slender doe-eyed dames strew petals in his path.

Paisley Overground Dept. - Rain Parade

Yup, they got the cover right, too

Did you ever buy an album on the strength of the band's name and title? Without hearing or seeing it? Back in the early 'eighties, I grabbed anything with even the most vestigial whiff of patchouli about it. Even then - forty years ago, fercrissake - I was ahead of my time, already living in the past. Where all the good stuff is. Where everything is. Just choose what you like. Don't be fooled by the marketing initiative of "now". So when I saw a couple of import albums listed in the NME small ads my Psychey Psense tingled. Rain Parade? The Three O'Clock? Emergency Third Rail Power Trip?? Baroque Hoedown?? I just knew these people were getting it right. Take my money! TAKE MY MONEY!!

I wasn't disappointed. Rain Parade seemed to have done the impossible, magicking up music that distilled the late 'sixties without actually sounding like any of the standard reference bands. That gorgeous, swimmy melancholy ... yes, yes, yesss ...

So here they are again, with their first album for since when. It sounds like there's no yawning chasm of time between it and Crashing Dream (and that was a good album - here on th' Iof©, good is always good enough). Maybe a year has passed in the Rain Parade substack. Max. Thirty-eight, you say? You're kidding. You must think I was born yesterday. You'll make up your own minds, but it's shaping up a close second to their first. And for why? On account which songs. This isn't an exercise in style; the songs have something to say and a seductive way of saying it, recognisably Rain Parade, the chordal hovering, the curling leads ... yesss.

Nobody has to buy an album unseen and unheard in these collapsing times. Nobody has to buy an album. Last Rays Of A Dying Sun is worth your fungible tokens. We're not going to be around for the next one, at this rate.

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