Saturday, July 19, 2025

The Spirit Is Willing Dept.










 




A change of pace for a while. Spirit have been guests on th' IoF© intermittently, but they deserve their own dedicated timeshare accommodation. They're just a magical magic band I've loved forever, always found time to listen. I'll be uploading everything I have, one per diem. Extra tracks versions.




Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Thirty Minutes Dept. - On Abbey Road


Th' IoF©
has played host to many glamorously international stars, but a visit from all four surviving Beatles yesterday came as a surprise! They waxed loquacious anent their controversial last long-playing record album, Thirty Minutes On Abbey Road whilst Kreemé [eighteen my ass - Ed.] served signature dumpster run-off and turtle-dick smoothies, poolside!


FT3 Well, it's fab gear to have you here, lads! Swingin'! Tell us about this new album!

JL Our last album [Aloha, left - Ed.] was meant to be our blaze of glory.

PM Our best-selling album since Pepper.

GH Our only album since Pepper.

PM But anyway, I thought -

GH We all thought, actually.

JL You know, let's get together as a band one last time.

PM Make a proper new studio album.A Beatles album.

FT3 But there were problems with the material?

GH Paul forgot how to write songs, basically.

PM Hey, just fuck off, George, alright?

JL Maxwell's Silver Hammer? Worst. Song. Ever.

RS I liked it.

GH Playing that gave me sciatica.

PM John's love song to heroin had to go, like, first.

JL It was about Yoko.

PM Heroin, Yoko ... same thing.

GH And that fake 'fifties thing, whatever that was. A parody or something?

JL Oh! Darling? Oh shit, more like.

PM And Ringo's song, because if Maxwell's Silver Hammer was cut, well, no disrespect Ringo, but you should have kept that one aside. For kids' parties.

RS I liked it.

JL Nobody else feckin' did.

FT3 So that was like, half the album got voted out?

GH The only reason Old Brown Shoe isn't on it is because it would have made the album look like a George Harrison album.

JL Apart from Come Together, it's just bits and pieces. 

PM It's a suite. A suite. It works really, really, well. So shut up.

JL You feckin' shut yer gob yer feckin' gobshite.

RS Guys! Guys!

[sounds of scuffling, breaking glass etc.]

 

Recreate this classic iconic albumen at home! No irksome download required:

 


 

 

... and here's "anonymous'" prize for getting the right answer:


 





Zed Zed Taupe Dept.


 

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Perfect Tens Dept. - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere


Original Japanese vinyl gatefold sleeve

 

After The Goldrush, or Your Choice Here, are as perfect, but this gets my vote. Musical quality aside, it established a signature sound he kept through the decades. It's not like he broke the mold, Nowhere created it. Deviations from the formula tend to be as unsuccessful as they are ambitious. The downside is, of course, diminishing returns; every record that's not as bad as we feared gets called a "return to form", merited or not. But Nowhere is the start of his Imperial period, and where that fades or rusts away is up to the listener.

David Briggs (google image search)
David Briggs [left - Ed.] gets container-loads of respect for his key role in Young's career, but for such a high-profile producer his work for others is pretty thin. I could think of only Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus - a fantastic album - and Alice Cooper's 
disappointing Easy Action, before looking him up on Discogs. There really isn't much else. Today's deliverable is the two late 'sixties albums what he producted you probably don't have; Summerhill's sole album, and Quatrain's sole album.

But yeah. Lower the Consolette tone-arm onto Cinammon Girl and hear rock music catch fire. Every time.

Here's the deliverable. I've undersold these albums, especially the Summerhill (which is kinda wow, actually). Hadn't listed to them for decades, and either they're better than I remembered or I wasn't listening at the time. Downloads @193. Click th' pic!



 

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Crawlspace Dept. - Neil Young Talks About Unissued "Break" Track!


The sixtieth
anniversary edition of After The Gold Rush will include the previously unreleased track Break, a major archive discovery. Neil graciously agreed to be interviewed by valve radio for an Isle O' Foam© exclusive!

FT3 Hey Neil! You're looking great!

NY Uh, this is radio, man.

FT3 I stuck this picture of Buffalo Springfield over the speaker. When you didn't look like some homeless bum!

NY Can we talk about the track? I'm really proud of Break. Not even the bootleggers knew about this one. Took everyone by surprise! [laughs - Ed.]

FT3 I just listened to it. Kinda puzzled?

NY Right! It's just me and my guitar, man. Purity. I wanted space, you know?

FT3 You and your guitar? I'm not hearing that. Or anything.

NY Me and my guitar, sitting there in the studio, everything turned off. I wanted to turn everything off, see how the world would sound with everything turned off. Noise is pollution, man. Electricity is pollution. It was gonna be one side of the album. It's edited down from, I think, twenty minutes? Nearly twenty minutes. That's what I wanted. Uh ... and then it got kinda lost. But I found it again! The whole track. Gonna release it on the next Archives set. There'll be this, the single edit, and the original album version. Maybe a Pono™ remix.

FT3  It's better than anything on Greendale.

NY We're gonna tour it. The Break Tour. Me and Pancho and Lefty and Dozy and Grumpy. To empty halls, we're not allowing audiences in because it'll compromise the artistic integrity. But you can still buy tickets, participate in the event that way.

FT3 Well, that's one silver lining right there. Hey, I have to go, Neil - microwave just pinged.

NY Talking of silver lining, my hat is lined with aluminum foil. [tape break here - Ed.]

As a Foam Exclusive, the track Break is available to download in the comments.




Friday, July 4, 2025

Perfect Tens Dept. - A Rainbow In Curved Air



 

"Everything's new to someone" as popular wisdom has it, but back in '69 this music was new to just about everyone. Our someone hearing it for the first time today would find it generically familiar, and check the boxes (ambient, electronica, etceteraria) before moving right along.

Back then (yesterday, in any meaningful sense) we didn't have the boxes to check. Little Boxes were stereotypical, aspirational, suburban homes made of ticky-tacky for pod people. Today the boxes are mental compartments for pod people. Everything gets genred, everything is informed by, rinse and repeat.

In 1969, the box didn't exist for Terry Riley to tick. A Rainbow In Curved Air was music, and that's as far as we needed to go. Music of our time. Riley's previous album for the CBS Music Of Our Time imprint, In C, was a little too formally academic for most, although it has become a standard in the contemporary repertoire.

Rainbow was just a record like no other.

The cover, with its Telly Tubbies good vibes, is absolutely right for the music and the times. Terry riding the rainbow and rocking a hairline receding faster than the Summer Of Love, already an embarrassment for the children of the revolution. This was '69, kaftans burning symbolically in the streets. Two albums featuring "electronics" that better mirrored that depressing year were Pierre Henry/Spooky Tooth's unlistenable Ceremony, and Electric Storm, by White Noise, both dark, scary soundtracks that threw the bad vibes right back in our faces. An early cover for Rainbow toed the dystopian line, all skulls and snakes, but got correctly rejected. So here's Terry, smiling like a sunrise over the Elysian fields. And a damned good thing.

Top side, the title track, was the aural equivalent of well, what? It made me unaccountably, unreasonably happy, and proved a fantastic part of the LSD experience. Flipside Poppy Nogood was night for Rainbow's day, without the nightmares. By today's standards, the "electronics" are primitive, the production almost lo-fi bedroom quality, but the music ... 

His sound and technique was quickly picked up in rock music; Colosseum, Soft Machine, the Monkees, and The Who using it as tonal colour. But nobody, including himself, ever again bottled the lightning. A Rainbow In Curved Air is eternally bubbling Champagne, never exhausted. The genuinely new never gets old.

 

Fascinating analysis here:

 https://teropa.info/blog/2017/01/23/terry-rileys-in-c



Happy 90th birthday, Tezza!


Thursday, July 3, 2025

Wilf Brimley's Pstairlift To Psychedelia! Dept.

Home Help Perkie "PP" Pumpkins retrieves Wilf's Werthers Originals™ prior to launching him into senior psychedelic experience! Legacy Foam-O-Graph© now available as luxury Art Print encapsulated in Champagne finish Lucite™. Specify key fob or NEW! wallet size.

 

"Hey! Whatever happened to Wllf Brimley?" is a question oft posed in letters to th' IoF©. Here's one from Sturdley Q. Kowznofski, Grease Pit, OR: "Hey! Whatever happened to Wilf Brimley?"sez Sturdley, echoed by Chyronette Fütz, Perineum, ND, who ax "Hey! Whatever happened to Wilf Brimley?" Well, Foameteers®, I'm here to set your fevered minds at rest! Since his untimely death at 107, T.V's Wilf [Bert Bupkiss in NBC's Bert's Bait Shop - Ed] has been riding his Pstairlift To Psychedelia right here on th' IoF©!

Today he has two treasures to share, brought back from his voyages into the Psychotropic Antipodes!


First up [above - Ed.] is Forty Watt Banana! Rare Indo-Jazz-Psych-Fusion from Kiwiland! Handsomely adorned with original sleeve - unavailable elsewhere!


Second helping [above - Ed.] is more sitar-soaked antipodean noodling from Sidney psychonaut Don Robertson! You certainly won't regret downloading today's dual deliverable!


This post funded in part by Kurt's Kangaroo Karnival, Oolowoolobongalong, Jumbuck County, Adelaide.

 


Friday, June 27, 2025

It's Th' Sat'dy Slugfest! Dept. - Rush vs. Peter Sarstedt!


Longtime IoF© residents
will remember with some affection regliar Sat'dy Slugfest™ FoamFeature©, wherein [grammar - Ed.] two wildly mismatched acts beat th' shinola outta each other in celebrity cagefights! Hoo boy! Some fun! Especially as outcome was decided by th' bums in' ringside seats - youse!

Who can forget thrilling contest between ... er ... anyway! This weekend you gots front row tix to th' hottest card in fightdom! Stepping into th' cage is none other then prog powerhouse and latterday FoamFavorites© Rush! Yay! Bellying up against the talented trio we have sensitive pop troubadour Peter Sarstedt! Which will be a cause for some astonishmink if you ain't read th' title of this piece awready, or, like Steve Shark, you ain't readin' this crap right here neither!

So! Who will wear the prestigious Slugfest Sash? Loveable Canucks th' Rushes, or winsome warbler Pete??? YOU decide!!! LET TH' FIGHT BEGIN!!!


Poptastic Pete prepares for fight by fingering dollybird fan! Note costly beverages, elegant smoking materials, stylish décor!


Th' Rushes relax before contest by propping each other up, too relaxed to stand!

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Jason Statham's Portfolio O' Powerpop! Dept.



You'll know hunky Jason Statham from his award-winning participation in the 1990 Commonwealth Games, where his diving skills for Team Britain attracted major underwear designers! But did you know he's also something of an authority on Powerpop?! We relaxed poolside whilst [grammar - Ed.] Kreemé [can't source picture so have embedded placeholder image above - Ed.]
served signature Vegemite™ n' Bailey's™ smoothies!

FT3 Jase, baby! Lookin' smooth n' stubbly with a twinkly hint o' GTA, maybe GBH! How's it hangin' my man!

JS Oh, comme çi, comme ça.

FT3 So - th' Jaseman digs Powerpop! Who knew?

JS Not I, dear boy! When do I get paid?

FT3 [laughs awkwardly] Ha ha! Which you brung us a couple albums awready!

JS You mean those things you forced on me as I stepped from the helicopter? I rather think my secretary disposed of them.

FT3 Haw! That's th' Stathers fo' ya! Always wit' th' gags!

JS My IBAN code. It's been fun.

 

[tape runs out at this point - Ed.] 



Yes, watersport fans, Jason's Powerpop Pick is a couple crisp biscuits from unfairly obscure Th' Tisburys, and gee, are they ever swell! You certainly won't regret downloading today's dual deliverable @193™! "A Still Life Revisited" is contender for prestigious IoF© Long-Playing LP Record Album O' Th' Year Award Award! BUY IT NOW! (Bandcamp link in comments)



 

 

 

 




Friday, June 20, 2025

Blue Cheer - The Years Of Quiet Introspection Dept.


The Blue Cheers, yesterday! [wrong line-up, ya doofus - Ed.]


 

"We were listening to a lot of Donovan," smiles Dickie [Petersen - Ed.] today, "and I guess that put our heads in a peaceful place. We were getting it together in the countryside, this ashram in a fucking field outside Newark or somewhere - no! Hunters Point! And reading the Desiderata around the fire. Getting a shitload of pussy, too, but in a more meaningful way. Sometimes we're like, stay overnight! You can fix breakfast! We've grown. Spiritually I mean, physically we're the same, maybe a little smaller, or maybe that's because we're further away. I remember Leigh [Stephens - Ed.] getting into watercolors, doing these beautiful pictures of flowers and gnomes and shit. Chicks dig sensitivity in a guy. They'd be like giving him a rim job and he was like hey! I haveta finish this fucking unicorn for fuck's sake! [laughs]. I was learning to play madrigals on this dulcimer I ripped off Joni [Mitchell - Ed.], and we had mantras out th' ass, man! Nobody meditated louder than us! OOOOOOOMMMMMMMM my freaking God!! So those three albums, kind of our tri-ology, were like us asking for forgiveness for the early stuff, where we were like, woh-ah! Too fuckin' loud, dude! So that kind of explains the gentler mood of those albums. We couldn't hear shit. Didn't know what we were playing. The Incredible String Band stayed with us, and I gave them a song I wrote they never credited us for. Creation, I think - no! Big Ted! They're like Mormons, I guess that explains it. So yeah."

 

Today's deliverable is a bumper bonus BlisterPak™ of  the self-titled album from 1969 [Blue Cheer - Ed.], The Original Human Being, and Oh! Pleasant Hope, all-time Cheer favorites on th' IoF©, and anyone who sez otherwise can go suck a newt.

 

 


Wednesday, June 18, 2025

News Dept. - News From Th' IoF© News Desk

Can you spot Kevin, this week's Red Panda, readers?


 

There's been some disgruntlement muttered over the years about the "low quality" of the loadups handed out freely for your abusement. In order to address this "issue", henceforth, all deliverables are to be upgraded to @193, going forward.


Respectfully thine,


Farquhar Throckmorton III

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

"Metallic Pastry" Dept. - Elderly Canucks Garner Prestigious Award!

Foam-O-Graph© - taking the Intelligence out of Artificial!

For regular visitors to th' IoF©, the annual Metallic Pastry™ award ceremony is the red carpet event of the year!
Yes, friends, prestige-wise, this gathering of the glitterati ranks above even the Eurovision Song Contest, and is hotly competed for by musicdom's finest!

Deriving from a cryptic crossword clue signifying Steely Danish, the costly trophy, hand-hewn from repurposed Styrofoam®, honors the band to most successfully replicate the standards of musical excellence and ironic collegiate style of that much-missed combo!

This year our deserving winners are Canuck swing sophisticates Monkey House, whose poolside mood perfectly evokes those lovable varsity troubadours "Walt" n' "Don"! We all "joined in the fun" [above- Ed.] as sultry, pouting marine biologist Kreemé presented them with the coveted award!


Their recent long-playing LP album Crashbox [left - Ed.] is a surefire deck party favorite, and the latest in an extensive catalog stretching back to the Diefenbaker administration!

Youthful Don [no relation - Ed.] Breithaupt [94 - Ed.], the band's lead piano player, was kind enough to grant th' IoF© an exclusive interview in which he waxed loquacious anent th' band's fascinating and oft controversial beginnings high in the snow-girt Canadian Rockies!

FT3 Heyyyy! Donsie baby! Great to have some folks from Canadia on th' isle!

DB Can I ask why every sentence in this piece ends with an exclamation mark?

FT3 Except for that one, which terminates in a query!

DB Gee whillickers, you're right!

FT3 Ha ha!

DB Ha ha!

FT3 Well, thanks for swinging by th' IoF©, Donsie!

DB My pleasure!

FT3 Seriously though folks, I think you do really well, seeing as how English ain't your first language.

DB I had to translate from the original Canadian, of course.

FT3 Did anyone ever tell you the band sounds like Steely Dan? 

DB Steely who?

FT3 Steely Dan with someone who can sing. What I can't understand is why it took me so long to discover you guys.

DB I blame Grimsdale.

FT3 Right! And on behalf of th' Four Or Five Guys©, I pinch your claws, dude. Awesomeness!

DB How do you pronounce that little © again?

FT3 ©.

DB Anyway, please give away all our albums. You have my permission.

FT3 I'd love to, but I can't find that first album.

DB [frowns] Did we make one?

FT3 Ha ha!

DB Ha ha!



Today's deliverable is all their albums except the rare first (now linked in the comments by Splendid Fellow Easily Confused), presented in easy-on-th'-ear @193! You will certainly not regret downloading this swell collection! Run - don't walk! - to your neighborhood record store and buy them all!

 

 

Thursday, June 12, 2025

God Rest His Sweet Soul

Hey, Bri - surf's up!



Brian in Paris, back whenever, on the SMiLE tour, and I never felt anything like it, before or since, a wave of love lifting the audience as he came onstage. It was enough he was there, he'd made it, through everything. He needed a mess of help to stand alone, and everyone involved with that tour was there out of love for him, and that love was palpable, physical, real - we were there to thank the guy for making our lives better in a way that nobody else ever did, or could. The Dumb Angel, the corny goofball who touched souls all around the world, millions of us, millions and millions, countless lonely surfers in our rooms, dreaming of the world he dreamed for us. The dream was real, more real than the actuality of California beach culture, which was just as competitive and exclusive and stupid as any other lifestyle. We basked in the warmth of his summer sun, every one of us ...

 

That's Why God Made The Radio

I was first aware of the Beach Boys hearing I Get Around and California Girls on the radio. Our family didn't have a record player (nor a phone, or a TV with more than one channel) so my soundstage was formed by a certain magic transistor radio, which I can recall in eidetic detail, down to the smell of the plastic and the precious treasure of the gilt grille - god, I loved that radio.

Those two songs sounded like nothing else in my Beatles-dominated head. The harmonies, the arrangements - not that I knew an arrangement from a sack of coal back then - and most of all what they were singing about. The Hit Parade was full of love songs with placeholder lyrics. I Get Around was about freedom, but written in code! I'm a real cool head getting bugged? It was more than a song on the radio - it was a shining signpost to another world out there, far beyond the grey suburban skies of Bakelite Britain. The impact it made was transforming, making me at once hopeful and dissatisfied, a lure and a tease. No California Girls for you, dweeb!

Music could point to somewhere else. Somewhere better. A whole New World. The Beatles never managed that, for all their inspirational energy. But the Beach Boys were already a private pleasure, and when I bought the God Only Knows e.p. they stayed that way. Yikes! The leader looked like a middle-aged gym teacher advertising his baldness with a fishing hat. The rest were fat, homely and wearing cheesy shirts. Not that I knew it, but Brian wasn't even in the picture. I knew none of their names, and didn't particularly care. These kids weren't hip!  There was already a big gulf between the music and the look, and it was something they never quite bridged. But that song! It was a love song, sure, but it was beautiful in a way I couldn't begin to define. Something ... holy? Not religious, although God got a namecheck. Spiritual? None of these words got close to how God Only Knows made me feel. It made everyone who heard it feel the same way, unless they were too busy being tough. And it pointed to somewhere else, in its own way. It was a love song about love, the quality of love, universal, undirected love. Music could be gentle and still be overwhelming. Another revelation. Musically, it's deceptively complex, that is to say it sounds simple enough, but the dizzying chord changes leave musicologists uncertain even as to what key the song's in. 

Destabilized tonal centers, yesterday

 

There is no other pop composer capable of such subtle complexity, and it is a mark of Brian's genius that it all sounds so natural - like a pop song! He was hearing every note, every harmony, every chord, every sound, in his head and then getting the world's best session musicians to recreate them in the studio, directing with a precise and respectful authority beyond his years - he knew exactly what he wanted. Genius doesn't seem big enough a word.

 

 

Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Pet Sounds was out of my budget, and the cover showed the same weird disconnection with the music, something that made it look corny and old-fashioned, especially in comparison with the visually suss Beatles, whose zeitgeisty Revolver appeared the same year. My sister's boyfriend played me his copy of Pet Sounds, and I couldn't quite get my teenage head around it. Where were the guitars? It came from a different planet, not just another continent. And where the early hits had (nearly) always carried you outside in the sun, there was an interior quality to this music. It pointed to a different place - inside. And I learned that it was someone called Brian Wilson opening his soul in a way that sounded like nothing else. Orchestrated pop had always been an exercise in adding a bored string section sawing through the changes. The tonal palette (another sack of coal to me at the time) of Pet Sounds owed nothing to anybody, delicious new combinations of sound, "like jewellery", and an overall mood of yearning melancholy that never dipped into self pity and bitterness. This wasn't rock n' roll, you couldn't dance to it, it made no concessions to fashion or form, and it remains a literally peerless artistic achievement. But because pop albums are forever magically linked with their covers, it will be forever tainted by its appearance, much as the group. We listen with our eyes, which were not made for the job.

Teenage Symphony To God

If Pet Sounds was strangely beautiful, the next record lit up everything in an unprecedented super-nova of bliss and joy. Good Vibrations left everything behind in its shining wake. Carl's first breath-of-God sigh, Ah, encapsulates the mood of the entire song; ecstatic wonderment. More has been written about this extraordinary song than perhaps any other pop single, because more went into it, but one central aspect of it doesn't get many column inches; the balanced integration of the sacred and profane, of sex and spirituality. Brian was insistent on it being a rock song, which the beat and Mike Love's lyrics (superb, credit where it's due) emphasise. The good vibrations are very physical - excitations! Why not? And yet they're in the same song as the heavenly chorale, which comes from a higher place. Michelangelo lusted over his godlike David; the division of the erotic and the spiritual is our own schizophrenia. It's doubtful that Brian had any of this in mind, just as he never planned to incorporate destabilised tonal centres in God Only Knows, but that's how genius works, as a mystery. The question where does this music come from leads us up some very interesting paths.

 A Poisoned Chalice

It was the first single I bought with my own money, and the clunk of the Dansette autochange and the Van Allen Belt crackle of the vinyl became part of the ritual. Even my toxically critical father (who could flatten a glass of champagne from across the room) grudgingly admitted this was special. Decades later, in my absence, he'd pointedly throw it in the trash, but the Good Vibrations had been indivisibly part of me since that first Ah! The song, its performance and production, remain beyond the reach of criticism, and like any work of genius our response should be gratitude, and maybe a little humility (what have we done in this life?). In going further and delivering more than Pet Sounds, it posed a cursed question - what next? When you've gone further and deeper and higher than most albums, most symphonies, most careers, in one side of a seven inch single, where do you go from here?

The Vultures Gather

Pretty much everyone's reaction to Heroes & Villains was that it simply wasn't as good as Good Vibrations. It had the complexity, including lyrics that needed interpreting, but seemed to lack heart. I didn't care what the song was about, it didn't connect with me, it was just - there. That relentlessly descending verse melody was like clumping down the cellar steps, again and again, where Good Vibrations had soared. The uniquely brilliant harmonies and inventive arrangement were almost enough to make me want to buy it, but not quite. It was, to my ears, a bunch of people showing off - impressive, yup. But the magic touch, Brian as God's radio, was missing in action. Heroes & Villains was a weirdly academic exercise, and his first artistic step sideways, the first time he trod water instead of surfing the crest of the wave.

I knew none of the now canonical back story - the Beach Boys were still the wholesome Californian dreamspinners for everyone outside Brian's circle - but as Brian's inspiration, instinct, and ear had made musical complexity sound simple and beautiful, the complexities of his life were spinning out of control. The sucking vampires of L.A. covered him with their shiny wings. Drugs, lawyers, personal relationships, drugs, professional pressure, imagined competition, more drugs, more lawyers, crippling mental and physical health problems, all combined in a thermonuclear shitstorm that would have crushed weaker men. The only shelter he had was the studio, increasingly invaded by people who had no right to be there.

Think this is the original cover? It ain't. Check it out!

 

The punters at the racks knew none of this, but the sense of betrayal I felt on buying Smiley Smile on faith was like a punch in the gut. I paid how much!? for this!? Fool me once, pal ... Sgt. Pepper had been released half a year previously, an eon in pop terms. Smiley Smile, although reassessed since, was a kiss-off, the sound of Brian turning his back on the world, and he never really quite came back.

 

 

 

 

 

A Ghost In The Machine, An Angel In The Architecture

My fascination for Brian and the Beach Boys was kickstarted again on the release of  Sunflower, where Brian seemed to be recharged and working at close to full capacity. It still didn't make them exactly hip - the cover styling was literally vanilla, and Dennis' rocking out didn't quite convince. Surf's Up would be a leap into credibility, although Brian's presence had faded into a discarded snapshot. The sudden career vault of Endless Summer was the start of endless tours without him, or a propped-up pod-person version. His reappearances since then have verged from the oh-please-no sad to the qualified triumphant, providing us with enough high happinesses to take us through to the unexpectedly fine That's Why God Made The Radio. He has been indulged as much as loved, which is perhaps right, and music which sounded like baffling dreck at the time is now appreciated as wayward sunbursts of his genius. I have an undying affection for 15 Big Ones, others love Love You much more than they would have at the time. It's Okay!

SMiLE, a project agonisingly close to completion and mired in complication, remains the shining Everest of his art. Where Heroes & Villains under-achieved as a single, it makes perfect sense as an album track, and that's what Brian was doing, making an album that was bigger and brighter than Pet Sounds. He got ninety-nine percent there; a little self-editing (the old "kill you babies" trope), a little arrangement - why he never used his beautiful verse to Roll Plymouth Rock, seemingly forgetting all about it for the oddly shallow Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE recording, is head-scratching - and a little studio polish and we'd have had the album in the racks. A weeks work, if they'd let him be. Life is complicated, right? We're beyond lucky to have what we have, we're blessed.

Death never makes me sad, but life often does. Brian effectively left the building decades ago, but you know what they say about art ... he gave the best of himself to us, and that will live forever, or as near as makes no difference. At a particularly low point of my life, I heard his high harmonies in a blue sky dream, a brief phrase, I want to live the life, I want to live my life, a blissful comfort I woke from crying. I'd heard the music in my sleep. No ears, no vocal cords required. This is what Brian heard all the time, and brought down to us as best he could with everything he had. I know where harmony comes from, and I have Brian to thank for that. We all do.

 



 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's where the light gets in



... and as an extra, here's a gorgeous swansong, a combination of the best of That's Why God Made The Radio and No Pier Pressure. No filler, no whimsy, virtually no Mike Love. Brian went out on a high. Click the pic!