BEACH BOYS Smile cd box on sale for one hour only

[beccabear67]

the beach boys ALWAYS relied on heavy voice processing: reverb, delay, phasing, pitch shifting, even surfing safari is sped up.

I need to actually listen to the piles of outtakes I have someday but I'm sure you're right, yet I think compared to today they used things very sparingly compared to some groups, at least up to Good Vibrations, and the Holland album tracks like 'The Trader' don't seem overly polished. The bits I've seen of them live in the '70s show they didn't need any crutches vocally (unless maybe Dennis), but they would have had someone manipulating the sound live to a point as well. I much prefer a live take of Heroes & Villains to the album track as Mike Love is particularly good on it.

 

[beccabear67]

Consider , however, that it has been well documented that Paul, the true revolutionary in the band, was spinning his wheels & kicking his heels attempting (successfully, to my mind) to keep up with BW.

Paul was responsible for a lot of the music in Strawberry Fields... I was surprised to find that out being as most people think of it as solely John's song and Penny Lane the flipside as all Paul's. He was very talented in using the mellotron/tape loops it seems and Strawberry Fields dovetails nicely into Blue Jay Way and Flying. I had an LP of all Strawberry outtakes and it bored me at the time though unlike the Flying outtakes. Am I ready for Sun Ra now?

 

[axel]

apart from that, many of his moves are controlled by his wife. i don't know but believe it's her we have to thank (...) for stuff like brian wilson presents smile, lucky old sun, disney, reimagines gershwin et al.
those albums don't sound as HE did care.

The Gershwin and the Disney albums are really pretty sophisticated musically. I wonder who did those if not Brian. Certainly not his wife. Or is she a trained musician?
I don't know anybody, certainly not active in the music business these days, who does arrangements like that. I'm not sure as to how far Darian Sahanaja is involved in those projects.

My guess was/is that Brian can't write songs like he used to (again: who can? Paul McCartney? AAHHHHHH! In fact Brian's singing is still way above Paul McCartney's and Ray Davies' pseudo-soulful phrasing), but that he still has the knack for arranging.
And to call an album "Brian Wilson reimagines Gershwin" and then it would be someone else doing the imagining would be pretty idiotic, to say the least...

 

[mansson66]

What he means is of course that BW isn't the driving force anymore. Someone else says: Brian, do this. Brian, do that. Then he makes the records. If he didn't have people around him pushing him he would probably not get off his butt and make them.