The Beach Boys - Smiley Smile

The Great Albums

Bill Lambusta

Albums, Music Commentary, Criticism, Billlambusta, Brianerickson, Music

4.3 • 749 Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2015

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brian flies solo this week to talk about one of rock's most misunderstood albums, Smiley Smile (1967, Brother) by The Beach Boys. He attempts to recontextualize the album's importance in music's "back to basics" movement of the late 60s as The Boys transition from their signature lush, orchestral pop into something more primal. And somewhere in there, Brian realizes, quite aggressively, that Sgt. Pepper's might not be quite as good as the rest of the world thinks it is. This and more as he talks about what makes the album great, one track at a time.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're too late, Mama, enough and outside your head.
0:05.0	No more, no more, no more.
0:14.0	Upside your head.
0:18.0	You're too late, Mama, enough and up and upside your hair.
0:23.6	No more, no more, no more.
0:28.6	Upside your hair.
0:35.6	You're too late, Mama, enough and outside your hair. You're too late, mama, and nothing upside your hair.
0:41.3	No more, no more, no more, no more.
0:44.3	Hello and welcome to the Great Albums podcast.
0:47.3	My name is Brian, and this week I will be flying solo because Bill is on vacation with his wife Maureen. They have
0:57.2	traveled out west, so I will be taking the controls. So it's just you and me for the next
1:03.5	about an hour or so. And that really weird stuff you just heard in the intro, well, we'll be
1:10.5	reviewing the album,
1:11.9	Smiley Smile by the Beach Boys, the follow-up to their famed Pet Sounds record.
1:20.5	And this album had kind of a bit of a maligned history, I guess you could say.
1:29.0	You know, at the time Brian Wilson was kind of,
1:32.7	you know, Brian Wilson, the leader of the Beach Boys was kind of in a bit of a race with the Beatles
1:38.1	to just kind of progress the idea of studio production and technology at the time.
1:45.4	The Beatles made Rubber Soul and Revolver, and Wilson was just kind of knocked out by that
1:51.3	and went ahead and made Pet Sounds, you know, breaking all sorts of ground.
1:55.5	And, you know, Bill and I have referenced Pet Sounds a number of times just in terms of
2:00.6	bands that put those little
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bill Lambusta, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bill Lambusta and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.