The sad, crazy adventures of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys

[sleepy]

From the biz end, Kokomo is money. To date, it has over 7 Million views at YouTube.
So was "You Light Up My Life" and the dreaded "Feelings". Money.
But I created those tunes just screwing around in my home. Not for submission. I've never been Pro. I was deliberately discouraged from doing so. And I had a severe speech impediment then, and years of listening to others as a function of speech therapy. Escucha y repite. And Be Careful to duplicate each sound.

When I was active, strictly as a hobby, I would stop listening to the radio for about a month, and then I was popping a tune a day, and out of that pile, I would have at least 12 to 20 solid tunes a year, all kinds, not including the YLUML or the dreaded "Feelings". Tell Me Something Good!

Hey...I wonder if "Brian's Therapy" is really about... nevermind. He's still a great composer and arranger, and singer. There's been loose talk about a Dirty Dancing reboot. I wonder what Mr. Wilson could do with that Mystery Tune?

And about the depth. Those were the 60's. Twilight Zone. Uncle used me for that also. The story for the "Donna Douglas" episode came from my experiences with plastic surgery. By 1959, I had had two procedures to close my gaping split skull. Needless to say, my unsolicited contributions to Hollywood have been largely in the horror genre. Many well-known titles.

But from my perspective, it was about my struggles with the cleft palate and the social obscenities as a consequence of not talking like other people.
It really was a joke, how some people would ask me "a Yes or No question" and I would murmer a "nEauhh" or a "Nnneoo" sound (phonetic spelling, y'know) and they would then dismiss my answer "on technical formalities" when it was their question!
Like this:

"Is it raining outside?"

"nEauhh."

"WHAT? Oh Never Mind!"

 

[sleepy]

My old man admitted knowing Claude Akins, and Rip Torn.
He once told me that Claude told him, "You know, every time I have to take a shit, somebody wants my autograph".

Well shit. Every time I did anything right or even remotely interesting, the family took it behind my back and never let on. And EVERYTHING was/is business to them. Money mad. Nothing is ever given as kindness. Always, ALWAYS and SOLELY for their business interests.
They laundered the money for my surgeries through the Crippled Children's Fund and The March of Dimes, and Easter Seals.

It's like the Hollywood crap. They stole my Hot Wheels invention, using weighted car bodies with straight pins for axles and plastic bushings for low friction, invented in 1964, and laundered it with a fictitious story, and then years later pinned me over "future Hollywood employment" while still struggling with the speech impediment and with no instructions or guidance from them. Only "sink or swim" on my own guesses.

And then they stalk. The McDonalds franchise down the street. The 7-Eleven franchise down the block. The local hospital, and any of their investments in government and real estate. Like a key to the city. I can't avoid them. Often when I work at a new location, I get the bowling balls and stomping from the roof top right above me where I stand.. I'm not that crazy. That's one of the ways that I know that they own that business.

I called the cops about the hazing sleep interruptions (bowling balls dropping on the second floor above me 24/7, with an aggressive attitude, like 'I'm Talking At You!'). Extreme noise. I called them after 5 days of that crap.
In spite of disturbing the peace, the cops said that "it was a Civil Matter. Not for law enforcement". But the day they blocked me and I snapped my tailbone, they called the cops on me and got a restraining order placed against me. I stay away from them.
But when I took that order to the City Attorney's office, they told me to ignore it. No chance! They're using it to control their arguments.

They managed to remove one of my cats on OSCAR Night two and a half weeks ago. I named her "Trooper" and they've been chiding the name, like a performing trouper, or like a State Trooper.
In spite of all the strays still out there, my cat is gone. Hasn't been back. And that is not like her. The loose talk around here is, "She's O.K. Just join up". Catnapping and extortion. But again, with no clues in a 103 unit apartment complex of actors behaving as strangers to avoid liability issues regarding Hot Wheels??.

 

[sleepy]

And Btw, the number #1 top selling breakfast cereal is Honey Nut Cheerios.
The folks, or their associates, also control The American Cancer Society, and Marlboro.
Apparently, when Lucy sold Phillip Morris products alongside Desi, she was paid in preferred stock.

EDIT: Oh yeah. Honey Nut Cheerios, and Apple Jacks, Fruit Loops, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Golden Grahams, Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp Cereal, Quaker Brown Sugar and Maple and Apple Cinnamon Instant Oatmeals, and you are talking to Capt. Crunch.

Post-its, Magic Transparent Tape, the DYMO Label Maker, felt pens, Dynaflex records, the stereo phonograph, 4 Track, 8 Track, and Cassettes (I had a reel-to-reel portable recorder for speech therapy in 1960, and the spools would fall off the spindles and unspool across the floor constantly. I also played with sewing thread spools and noticed how the thread ends could be joined and used as a continual loop in an enclosed cartridge), and many more.
I was Xerox. Yeah. That stuff.

The one gun Trinitron, The Walkman, and digital averaging of the RGB channels on NTSC color systems for improved picture quality in 1984.
Apparently the t.v. folks were paid in preferred stock, and gained control of the companies.
And anybody like Bob Hope who worked at NBC also got RCA stock.

 

[sleepy]

Or more likely, the Edisons, Graham Bells, Westinghouses, Shockleys, etc. who started the various companies or who were significant contributors, took them "public" and made a point of paying as many performers as they could in preferred stock in order to retain control of the companies. It was a way to "go public" and yet retain ownership while gaining tax advantages for "going public".

A variant of that behavior is Edison losing his electric companies to municipal utilities. But he still manufactured and sold the equipment and parts to the municipalities. Worldwide.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

uh, sleepy... may i ask that commentary remain centered on brian and the boys, with a minimum of stream-of-consciousness stuff... please?


@bill,
i dunno man... sounds like pet sounds is sort of your stones as smile is sort of my beatles. my favorite stuff on the two albums:

pet sounds
- wouldn't it be nice
- sloop john b
- god only knows
- (along with some good songs)
- (along with other songs that are borderline schmaltzy / awkward)

smile
- heroes and villains
- surf's up
- good vibrations
- wonderful
- (along with some good songs)
- (along with some quirky almost nonsensical stuff as you mention)


working thought-- pet sounds hits some peaks, but smile hits none other than mount olympus three times or so. smile is the more ambitious, daring and brilliant album for me, and if mike love and some others had been able to shift gears and show more loyalty to brian, there might have been more of the same.

OTOH... this is one of the most common stories in rock and pop... the clash of visions, the towering rise of ego and all that. coulda, woulda, shoulda. oh well.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

LOL! Well, I am a "Stones" man. But, oddly enough, I think I find myself on the "Beatles" side of this argument. I'm choosing the release that's more polished, while you're going for the one that more embodies a "rock out with your cock out" Stonesish attitude. I can't tell you how weird this feels!
I'm well aware that, at this point, we're more or less exchanging ideas; I think we've both made some very valid arguments for our respective choices, even though my arguments were more validier. I will say this for Smile... when it did an awesome song, it did an awesome song. It's impossible to ignore the genius of Heroes and Villains and I wish so hard that I could erase the first 793 times I've heard Good Vibrations so I could listen to it for only the 329th time. While Sounds may not have some of those extremely high points, it's the overall effort that is so... assured, for an artist so young. Brian took a wrecking ball to the Wall of Sound and entered territory unknown for a rock'n'roll artist at the time; he borrowed from what Nelson Riddle and Sinatra had been doing for years, threw in a little Burt Bacharach, yet still making it sound indelibly rock'n'roll. And let's not forget the source. There were plenty of people who had no respect for the Beach Boys (my brother being one, Paul LeMat's character in American Graffitti for another). What a shock to discover that rock's answer to George Gershwin also wrote goofy stuff like "Surfin' Safari". I really think Brian suffered the slump that so many musical artists have after a groundbreaking triumph. I look at Smile as Brian's Lifehouse, Pete Townshend's follow-up to Tommy. Fortunately, he saved enough songs from that train wreck to make Who's Next. Michael Jackson wasn't as lucky with "everything that came after Thriller". Smile is certainly more adventurous than Sounds... I'm just not sure the payoff for the adventure is equal.
Again, I just like writing a lot of bullshit and am looking at this as our 19th century French salon on Brian Wilson. Although I would ask this; that you listen to the attached file with the headphones on to really dig on the whole production. I have had the pleasure of owning three of those Mobile Fidelity albums in my life (one Bruce and... you guessed it!... two Stones!) and the mastering on this just may beat them out!
So... yeah... big neighborhood barbeque at the compound today to celebrate the mercury climbing above 60! Whoo-hoo! I'm full of ribs, weed and beer! Yep... you just read three pages of drunken, stoned rambling.

EDIT: And y'all better really appreciate that song I posted... it was a bear to find! That's right boys, at 17,875 songs, I now have 40 days and 40 nights worth of music! Perfect if you find yourself on an ark or wandering through the desert preparing for your ultimate battle against Satan. "Control over all the kingdoms of all the earth? Are you kidding? I've got Elvis Costello's first four albums all right here!"

 

[sleepy]

I'm missing my cat. They're doing business on it.
I would have to wonder how much of Brian's challenges were due to Murry's/family manipulations. Like...it's the same damn thing. Everything is business.
The folks have been saying that Nobody gets it without the group. So I would believe that it was no different for him.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Aw... kitty! I hope you find him/her. We're supposed to catsit next week. It's been about 14 years since I had feline company. I remember that typing on a keyboard much like I am now is a bit more challenging.
As far as Brian's challenges vis-a-vis his father... I'd peg it at about 90%.

 

[sleepy]

Y'know. On Topic with absolutely no consciousness whatsoever.

Brian sings a song of tranquility. Murry takes the money and invests in Lockheed, war bonds, and Dow Chemical. Considers Hughes Aircraft.

Brian drops out, walks out, hits dope, encounters the likes of Charles Manson, submerges into "his Blue Period" and has a nightmare about laser-guided missiles..Murry denies Brian access to the piano as punishment, and cashes in Brian's laser-guided missile nightmare as a product.

The antithetical of Brian is likely Jim Morrison and his father.

 

[sleepy]

What do you make of Lennon singing "All I can tell you is, Brother, you have to wait" in the fast and slow renditions of "Revolution"?

Could mean nothing.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

@bill,
that's one of those many tracks i'm talking about on pet sounds that i'm still unsure about. as in, good song or a schmaltzy / awkward song? really, it has elements of both.

great vocal, ridiculous drums (still not sure whether i love'em or hate'em), competent yet somewhat hammy background vocals... and most of the usual aural elements that appeared on brian's other songs of the period... but overall a certain stuffiness and labored quality to the composition and phrasing. which i guess is why brian goes for such an expressive, emotional finale. maybe this song is somewhat about his long-standing desire to break out of his demon-boxes.

...

not sure how much brian had to do with charles manson. the book said that dennis was out one day, saw a couple of cute girls, and enticed them home for fun times. later he went out, left them in the house, and came back to find charlie and a full harem of manson-groupies... almost all young women.

they pretty much settled in, and the only way dennis was able to eventually get rid of them was by selling the house and moving on. somewhere during that timeline, one of the BB's record execs apparently listened to manson's song-stylings (at dennis' insistence) and was professionally unimpressed. charles was evidently flabbergasted / outraged. but like dennis, the record-exec made the equally-wise decision to sell his house and move the hell away. as i understand it, that was the very house manson came back to, where he initiated his murder spree.

and now i've creeped myself out and all. bah..

 

[sleepy]

The record exec was Terry Melcher. He later co-wrote "Kokomo".
And the house was not the initial murder scene. It was the home that Roman Polanski leased after Melcher split, or so says Wikipedia. Now I've read that the Tate murders were over a drug deal that burned them. But the W says different.
Maybe Susam Atkins changed the story to protect somebody?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Melcher#Encounter_with_Manson_family

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

that's right... melcher. TY sleepy.


btw were you able to get that epub reader working? i'd be curious what you thought about the whole manson section, since he is little more than an infamous name to me.

were you in LA at that point? i guess you were a teenager around that time. i was doing what ppl my age were doing... watching scooby do and riding around on big wheels.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

btw i got a copy of "smile sessions" yesterday and have listened to it a couple times.

what i had to go on up to this point were the previous albums, bootlegs, etc. i figured i knew what the album would sound like, right?

okay, in one sense i was right... i'm familiar with almost all of the songs, so few surprises there. what had eluded me however is just how much of a concept album smile sessions actually is. i think it is right in that impressive, interesting group that includes quadraphenia, the lamb lies down on broadway, the wall, and NOT xanadu (sorry livvy-baby, i still luvs you's).

anyway, i was also wrong. smile sessions is even better than i remembered / thought.

i think the thing to remember billy-bill is that pet sounds and smile were both related and yet fundamentally different (you know that classic relationship?)... i.e., one was the quintessential pop-rock advancement for the time period it occurred in. that's not chopped liver any way you look at it. korporal klinger came next, of course. (sorry i meant sgt pepper and the lonely hearts)

but the other beautiful thing in question was:

- a cultural legend and a famous standard-bearer about what can go wrong in the biz, very fast, very badly
- another great album
- astonishing peaks that no other wilson-related product has ever matched IMO
- a sonal firmament that hangs together just as much as the classic car / beach / girl songs ever did, and generally not as beloved and easily-appealing as the other stuff, but...... but...... a kind of statement by the artist-- "now that i know i can please you folks, i need to put more work in to my psyche and well-being... can you come along with me?"

i think the fans would have gone along, just as what happened with the beatles, prince, probably the stones, maybe led zep... etc. (damn brain-thing running out of juice, i guess)

anyway, i'm sitting under a cool leafy green tree at the moment... sipping on a beer with red pepper flakes tossed in. don't you wish you could join me?

 

[sleepy]

You bet. LA was gripped in terror over it. It took several days for them to be apprehended. I hate that whole story, and reading about it this morning bummed me out.

And Holy Shit! Somebody from The Wrecking Crew stopped at my door a moment ago. Very Rare for them to let on around here, but posed as Una Señora de La Biblia, hablando en español, y no La Bamba .

I had no choice but to say, "No Espanol". That was not a case of stalking,
though they are indeed tracking. Say hi and hello.
I will be quiet now.
</pre>

 

[sleepy]

And oh yeah. About the Calibre reader and book, I've had some trouble with scrolling. I think it's a settings issue. But I haven't gotten too far into the book, and my past and present real life issues are just too close to the story to be fascinating.
If I catch a reference in this thread, I look it up.

I couldn't find the section about a contract with CBS. That is interesting to me since I've had several incidents involving CBS, Paramount and Viacom. And Desilu.
So if the Boys are connected to any of those, in spite of The Warners (or because of them), then that places things going on more in-house. It connects a few of the dots.

But, I remember the tv bio movie was on ABC. All the same. The Beatles Anthology was on ABC, but the 50th Anniversary was on CBS. I guess it goes to whoever pays the bucks.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

on android i swipe my finger and it goes to the next page... assume that on PC there is a counterpart... maybe involving arrow keys / spacebar / etc.

bill...!?

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Dammit, why can't y'all write in the middle of the night, like normal people? Yes, in this situation I am holding myself forward as a "normal person". Hoodle dang, but I had too much of something yesterday... the inside of my skull feels broken!
On the Calibre thang, it's got a built-in program that allows one to read books from the PC. Once you've opened the book, there's some purple arrow buttons about halfway down that make turning the pages a breeze. And grandpa would highly recommend increasing the font size, which you'll find right above the page-turning key.
Speaking of which, Bill's library to the rescue. After reading Helter Skelter a couple of times as a young'un, I thought I had pretty much covered the Manson territory. This book proved me wrong. The author shows that, much like Wichita's own BTK killer, Manson was less a criminal mastermind but a psychotic dipshit who really got lucky.
But it's the drums that do it, Nic! LOL, that's my favorite part of the song! Well, not quite. You're correct in assuming that the first part is a pretty average BB song about longing for a girl with a whole lotta orchestra layered over the top. But then there's that part near the end, where the strings hit that weird minor chord, the drums coming in like thunder from Olympus and, all of a sudden, we're listening to a very different song. All of a sudden, wimpy Beach Boy is left behind as the singer snarls that "You didn't think that I would sit around and let him take you?" It's almost a completely different song, yet flows so well with what came before it. And, sonically, it sounds much more angry than even the words would show it to be. It's the most amazingly melodic example of primal scream therapy that I've ever heard!
Trying to do a "what if?" scenario for Brian and the Boys is a maddening game. If Brian were a little bit more sane, would there have even been a "Smile"? Would he have been able to find a consistency in his genius, or was that period more like a creative atom bomb that he was destined to fail at replicating even if he had remained relatively sane? I think the only answer I could say with some degree of certainty is that the group's '70s output would have been better. There's no way it couldn't have been. There certainly is no way it could have been worse.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

One last argument for Pet Sounds... or at least a way to explain why I think it may top Smile. Pet Sounds is timeless. And by that, I mean that, when you listen to it, it sounds like it could have been recorded last year. In many ways, I think Smile was a victim of its time period, much in the same way Corporal Klinger is (although Brian's inherent mastery makes Smile a more rewarding experience than John and Paul doing acid and hanging some poor violinist upside-down by his ankles or whatever). Or, to belabor the comparison, Sounds is The Beach Boys Abbey Road. AR leaves behind the more irritating examples of experimentation for experimentation's sake found on Klinger, and taken to a divisive extreme on the White Album. Abbey Road doesn't sound like four guys sittin' around and fucking the dog. It has a maturity and a certain timelessness that, were it to be recorded a year ago, it could almost easily have been a product of its time now as when it was recorded some 45 years ago. Meaning Pet Sounds is that rare achievement of music as Dorian Gray... never seems to age, never sounds dated. And, if you think about it, there aren't many records that are like that.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

time standards... time standards... that's part of me whole devil-be-bitch, william!


so then GTFO of here with yer wisdom and yer logic, senor.


ah pardon me maties but saint patrick's is nigh and i'm starting to feel even more silly than usual... i am, i am.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

LOL! You're using a Catholic saint's day to as an excuse to crap out of our salon? Shame on you! You make Voltaire cry!

 

[sleepy]

I got no drink. I have Listerine!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

You make Voltaire cry!

so... mission accomplished, muvvlefluffle. :)

 

[sleepy]

Pardon me dense. What is Corporal Klinger? You mean M*A*S*H*?
I wouldn't think so, but still.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Pardon me dense. What is Corporal Klinger? You mean M*A*S*H*?
I wouldn't think so, but still.

That's what Nic renamed Sgt. Pepper. I find it fitting.