Prog bands influenced by The Beach Boys' SMiLE

Atavachron wrote: But the myth was a reality, just a deeply mis-produced one.   As for the rest you see differently, all I can say is maybe one day everyone posting here will have a chance, accidentally or not, to sit down, listen to both the original and the remake, and be able to not only compare them but fully take them in.   Maybe no one will change their mind, or maybe they'll hear what Paul McCartney always did: a musician's record made by a people's band.

But the myth was a reality, just a deeply mis-produced one.   As for the rest you see differently, all I can say is maybe one day everyone posting here will have a chance, accidentally or not, to sit down, listen to both the original and the remake, and be able to not only compare them but fully take them in.   Maybe no one will change their mind, or maybe they'll hear what Paul McCartney always did: a musician's record made by a people's band.

^ Yes but it existed, and was fairly close to a complete vision in outline and some completed material.   Smiley Smile was Smile in spirit, was undoubtedly heard by anyone who knew any work by the band was worth hearing, and therefore had to have had influence.   An ethereal influence perhaps, but a real one.

Dean wrote: For many years (erm... 40?) SMiLE was more a myth than a reality so the number of bands that could have even remotely been influenced by it would be pretty small. Of course some may have been influenced by the myth of SMiLE, or at least the idea of SMiLE, but more would have been influenced (at the time) by Pet Sounds.

Yes and no; Smiley Smile was widely distributed in '67, it just was so bizarre and unlike typical Beach Boys, no one knew what to make of it.   I think some thought it was a joke--  a novelty like the Beatles Fan Club issues, Christmas Albums, etc.

^ There's nothing strange about it--  it's just other people seeing what you do not.   They were the first rock band to take the form seriously.   Up to then it was Buddy Holly, Everly Brothers, the bubblegum pop-act-of-the-week, (some quite brilliant I might add), until Brian and brothers decided to treat rock as a real art form even though it was a largely snickered-at young person's fad.  

"Smiley Smile makes Pepper look like commercial trade music" may indeed be, as Lemming has suggested, defensive, but it is in defense of a group laughed-at even though they were responsible for the earliest form of Art Rock as we understand it today, produced with love and far more musical ambition than the Beatles or Hendrix or f*cking Genesis for that matter.   Yes Brian was crazy, yes the music sounds dated and tween-oriented, yes they were a product of the early '60s before psychedelia became the norm.   But they were also artists; serious, adult, ambitious, and it was because of what Brian saw was possible that we have modern rock in the evolutionary state it is.   Or was.


Edited by Atavachron - June 17 2014 at 20:39

SteveG wrote: Dean, great suggestion. I remember being a young music fan that, along with my friends, that tried so hard to reconstruct the lost Smile album from outtakes, bootlegs, and the like, that we probably never even seriously considered the music!! So, I can clearly see how someone could have been influenced by the myth or idea of Smile. Again, well done.

Atavachron wrote: SteveG wrote: Atavachron wrote:  ^ So you don't like Smiley Smile and you don't like Smile.   That means you probably wouldn't have liked the original album as conceived back in '67, which if given the proper attention likely would've rivaled Sgt. Pep for new and original pop music.   Smiley Smile, even as released in its stillborn state, was bold;  a whole new way of looking at experimental rock music which in '67 made Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Freak Out look undisciplined, and the Beatles tame.   It is a breakthrough if completely unacknowledged masterwork. If the original Smile album was released as conceived back in 1967, I highly doubt that it would have rivaled Sgt. Pep. any more than the Four Season's Genuine Imitation Life Gazette album did when it was released in '69, as the musical times had quickly changed with the advent of acid rock mixed with social consciousness. As Jimi Hendrix once opined after first hearing Hereos and Villians, the song sounded to him like a  "psychedelic barber shop quartet". (His observation was not meant to be a compliment.)  However, without a machine to alter past events, the best we can do is speculate. Smiley Smile makes Pepper look like commercial trade music, even unfinished.   And how do you know Hendrix meant his comment as a slight?   Do know the context of the statement, or are you assuming that's how he meant it?   I gather the latter, as it fits your viewpoint.   In reality, Mr. Hendrix was quite adept at where pop music and rock 'n roll was headed and would have seen the LP for what it was: an innovation.   He was too sensitive and open to all musics, and besides 'Heroes and Villains' is just one cut off the record, and a great one BTW.   It was "Psychedelic Barbershop", that was the point.   Hendrix heard that new sound and probably wished he'd been as good and well-organized as the Beach Boys.   They did as much or more for the art of rock than Jimi ever did when he was alive.

I do indeed know the context of Hendrix's statement and it was as I have stated. The point of my post was to demonstrate the quickly changing musical trends as well as social and cultural back drops by which music is greatly judged. The Beach Boys never had the same critical acclaim that the Beatles enjoyed or were the media darlings that the Beatles were. Furthermore, they were not taken seriously within the newly established counter culture and were quickly dismissed as unhip musical relics. All these factors, combined with the fact that the music of Smile in any of it's released forms remains critically subpar to that of Pet Sounds, is the basis for my opinion.

Edited by SteveG - June 18 2014 at 08:47

That Calvert song is a hoot......more like a parody than an homage though.

I have to admit that I'm not familiar with the Smiley Smile album but do acknowledge that what became Brian Wilson Presents Smile is mostly brilliant, prescient and hugely influential. However, the claim that Smiley Smile (which I've only heard as a piecemeal compilation) makes Sgt Pepper sound like commercial trade music is disingenuous at best and defensive at worst (and there are at least two other Beatles albums I think superior to the routinely overstated Pepper) What Hendrix thought of any music in his lifetime will never serve as any litmus test of quality in my book (Jimi's output is incredibly patchy) When you say they in the context of the Beach Boys, who exactly do you mean? (Forgive my ignorance, but I'm guessing that the creative muse was not just Brian?)

That's an easy one! Brian Eno!

"Driving Me Backwards"  (Though that one could have also been influenced by early Zappa)
"Some Faraway Beach"
"Some Of Them Are Old"
"Back In Judy's Jungle"
"The Great Pretender"
"Put A Straw Under Baby"
"Taking Tiger Mountain"
"The Big Ship"
"Golden Hours"
"Everything Merges With The Night"



Edited by KingCrInuYasha - June 16 2014 at 13:50