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GREIL MONACO�S NO-LIFE TOP 10�The all-SMILEs list

Filed under: Imported

It�s been a long time since I plagarized Mr. Marcus�s schtick, and since he never seemed to be aware of it when people were actually reading this blog, I doubt that he�ll notice now. So here�s a list of mostly non-musical things that have popped in my mind during my re-listenings to the new recording of Brian Wilson�s real masterpiece, the magic music of Smile.

1) It will be the biggest seller in his career. It was the number one seller on amazon a full week before it came out, and three weeks after its release, it still is. This also indicates that word-of-mouth about how good it is has spread�if the CD had been the typical solo-Brian mess (like the album that came out last summer), its ranking would have dropped quickly.

2) This time, Brian gets all the money, kind of. For those who don�t know about Brian�s dad, Murry Wilson, just think of him as the most satanic stage parent of all time. Among the many sins he commited against his son, his selling of Brian�s entire songwriting ouevre to the publishing branch of A&M Records, Irving Music, for a mere $700,000 is at the top of the list. (To be fair to A&M, it was a generous offer in the late �60s, when The Beach Boys were already considered passe.) I don�t know an up-to-the-minute figure for the catalog, but last time I saw one, it was around $50-60 million. So for over three decades, Brian has gotten songwriter royalties for all his music from the golden years, but the big money that�s made in actually owning the songs has eluded him. Until now�with the exception of the previously-released tunes like �Good Vibrations� and �Heroes and Villians,� all the publishing rights belong to him (and his collaborator, Van Dyke Parks).

3) Mike Love gets (practically) nothing from it. I hate Mike Love. Long ago on Usenet, I even posted a one-shot on-line fanzine called Hate That Love. If he hadn�t hitched himself to cousin Brian�s genius, he�d �still be scraping shit off the bottom of cars,� by his own admission. He�s the biggest money-grubber in rock; quite the distinction, but he deserves it. He practically invented the corporate gig, where bands kiss big-biz ass with private concerts. As for playing Vegas, well, he lives in Vegas� enough said. And as BW/Beach Boys lore has told it over the years, he couldn�t have done more to bury this music. The reason the album never came out is, in large part, because of his abhorrance of its �weirdness� and his small-minded career motto, �Don�t fuck with the formula.� He continued squelching it as recently as a few years ago, putting the kibosh on a CD set of all the original Smile sessions. Well, with the exception of a single songwriting credit (a one-third credit for �Good Vibrations,� although they don�t even use his lyrics), he doesn�t get a penny off this.

4) Mike Love also isn�t heard on a single note.

5) It has always been better than �just� an album. Even though the original Smile tracks are, as always, produced and recorded perfectly and the voices of the Boys are irreplacable, what he was making at the time�whether he knew it or not�was only the first version of it. It was meant to be performed and re-interpreted over the years like all . . . okay, I�ll say it . . . classical music has always been. It was his first major work as a serious composer (the re-recording is even done in three movements) and we�re lucky to have one last, definitive performance of it. This brings me to:

6) Enough about his voice. Some diehard, perfectionist fans are doing a lot of griping about how he sounds. They should keep in mind that we�re lucky he�s still around: he�s 62 and has smoked almost as many cigarettes in his day as his brother Carl, who died of lung cancer. Yes, he had one of the purest, greatest voices in pop music, and yeah, he�s only a shadow of it now, but he�s as good here as he�s been in decades (not the highest praise, I know). Plus, a lot of the segments sound great sung by an old man! Complain all you want about how he's sounded on other records of recent vintage, but not this one�it�s a genuine performance by a great singer, the way Johnny Cash�s last discs were. The years make it all more, not less.

Well, that�s it�I know it�s only six, but it�s a short CD.

Posted by Steve Monaco at October 13, 2004 4:38 AM

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