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Post by Kapitan on Nov 29, 2019 15:52:00 GMT
I meant real in terms of existing as a completed work. Not as it would have been (which I don't believe is an actual thing, anyway: I don't think there was ever a fully conceived work to be finished), but as a set of music a person could hear start to finish without pretending.
As for the "insulting" part, I could not disagree more strongly.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Nov 29, 2019 15:59:13 GMT
But, again, it wasn't completed. After so long and so many changes it could never be completed. Now, they would like you to believe it WAS completed, and that's the fraudulent aspect of the whole plan, and that's what I find insulting. Don't play games with me. I know better. And Brian knew better, too, regardless of what he said. You have a COMPLETE concert presentation. I'll grant you that, and I never had a problem with THAT. But don't tell me that Darian tinkering on a laptop and Brian laying on a couch offering a suggestion here or there - 40 years years and many miles after the music was created - is "completing" SMiLE.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 29, 2019 16:07:49 GMT
Of course it was completed: the finished product was a series of songs that had been assembled in a completed fashion. You're conflating the completion of some mythical work that may or (more likely) may not have ever been in Brian's brain in the 60s. I'm not beginning to say THAT is what was completed. But an album of the music that came from that was completed.
Someone expecting the mythical thing to be completed as it would have been was just being unrealistic. And of course comparing what was completed to that mythical thing would be disappointing. But taken as what it is (was), untainted as much as possible by mythical coulda-woulda-shouldas, I think it's a perfectly good, even great, album.
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Post by kds on Nov 29, 2019 17:15:35 GMT
Personally, I don't think BWPS was ever really about completing a mythical lost album. Its a part of appropriating the two most revered and respected parts of The Beach Boys' history for Brian Wilson.
Starting with taking Pet Sounds on the road, and continuing with the Smile doc, concert, tour, and studio album, and later on Love and Mercy, its all about shouting from the rooftops that "Brian Wilson created Pet Sounds and Smile!!! Not those other guys!!!"
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 29, 2019 17:23:12 GMT
Personally, I don't think BWPS was ever really about completing a mythical lost album. Its a part of appropriating the two most revered and respected parts of The Beach Boys' history for Brian Wilson. Starting with taking Pet Sounds on the road, and continuing with the Smile doc, concert, tour, and studio album, and later on Love and Mercy, its all about shouting from the rooftops that "Brian Wilson created Pet Sounds and Smile!!! Not those other guys!!!" I completely agree that was the purpose from Team Wilson, no question about it for me.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Nov 29, 2019 17:51:17 GMT
But that's not what Team Wilson or Brian said. In almost every interview, Brian specifically said he/they FINISHED SMiLE. He simply - SIMPLY - said that they just added a third, new suite/movement and FINISHED it. He never said anything about creating some kind of new 2004 studio concoction to stand on its own, apart from the 1966-67 material. He/they made it sound like some kind of a continuation, albeit one that was interrupted for 37 years. And all of the headlines followed - Wilson completes masterpiece. The only person who came out and told the truth, and it was captured on film, was Jeff Foskett. In that Beautiful Dreamer joke of a documentary, Jeff explains that this group of assembled SMiLE songs was just a live presentation, nothing more and nothing less. It was only AFTER the success of the live presentation that the light bulbs went off in Team Wilson's heads, and BWPS the studio album was born.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 29, 2019 19:23:46 GMT
Who cares what they said, though? Taking promotional material at face value isn't a great way to maintain sanity. What they said was what they thought would sell records and tickets and promote the narrative they wanted to promote. It's not really relevant to reality otherwise.
That Foskett moment in the doc was SO SCRIPTED! (As was most of it.) I thought that was a moment of pretty bad acting, to be honest. Even if what he said was accurate. (And that is what they said publicly through the live performances, pre-album. "This isn't Smile, this is just a concert of Smile material.")
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Post by lonelysummer on Dec 1, 2019 3:57:36 GMT
I think BWPS gets a bad rap. Sure, I'd rather have had '67 vintage voices on it, but especially when it came out, it was the only real Smile we had. Not fragments, not imaginary, but a real thing. Smile Sessions of course has those voices, but it's still not a cohesive album. It's a shame we never got a real album from that great material. Even twice-"finished," it will never be finished.
Nah, it wasn't real. It isn't real. And that's the problem. It never could be real. Too much water under the dam. Too many changes. Too many...circumstances. If they had just left BWPS where it truly belonged - as a live performance. But, no, they couldn't do that. There was a solo career to keep going, a solo career to keep alive. You know, I wouldn't have cared if Brian and the band re-recorded every note of a live performance and then released it as such, a live album. But, by re-recording it in a studio, releasing it as a studio album, and worst of all, proclaiming it "finished", they insulted the Beach Boys, insulted the fans, and most importantly, insulted the SMiLE music.
I kind of disagree, except that I don't. I enjoyed hearing a completed BWPS, but I did find it offensive that it was used as an excuse to push the lame old story about how "the group didn't like the music". Well they sure put in a lot of time on those vocals (and in the case of Carl and Dennis, instrumental tracks) for it to be something they detested. Yes, that was an insult to fans of the Beach Boys. But if it had been only a live performance, we all would have complained about not having a cd or dvd of the performance. It all worked out in the end - we got the live performance, the studio version, and then finally, the best approximation of a Smile album there could be using the original recordings. And I still think it's amazing music. And is it just me, or did the "completion" of Smile finally allow people to get over the feeling of loss, and start appreciating the many fine albums the group did 67-73? Because that sure wasn't the party line when I first became a fan in the 80's. Back then, the accepted gospel was "the Beach Boys made fun surf, sun, cars and girls music from 61 to 65, then Brian got serious and gave us PS, GV, and then he lost the plot with Smile, and the rest of the group stumbled for several years before the early hits made a comeback and they became an oldies band". Seriously. When I started buying the post-PS albums circa 1984, I expected they would all be pretty disappointing; and instead, I found that I loved each and every one of them!
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Dec 1, 2019 11:28:56 GMT
Nah, it wasn't real. It isn't real. And that's the problem. It never could be real. Too much water under the dam. Too many changes. Too many...circumstances. If they had just left BWPS where it truly belonged - as a live performance. But, no, they couldn't do that. There was a solo career to keep going, a solo career to keep alive. You know, I wouldn't have cared if Brian and the band re-recorded every note of a live performance and then released it as such, a live album. But, by re-recording it in a studio, releasing it as a studio album, and worst of all, proclaiming it "finished", they insulted the Beach Boys, insulted the fans, and most importantly, insulted the SMiLE music.
Yes, that was an insult to fans of the Beach Boys. But if it had been only a live performance, we all would have complained about not having a cd or dvd of the performance. They could've easily released a CD of the live performance along with a companion DVD. And, as I've been saying ad nauseam, that would've been my preference. The band would've nailed the music live, and Brian could've gone into the studio afterward to "touch up" his vocals.
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