XPost: rec.music.artists.beach-boys   
   From: derekbill@allsummerlong.com   
      
   In article ,   
   shnaggletooth  wrote:   
      
   > bozodaclowne@netscape.net (bdcNoSpAM) wrote in message   
   > news:<37f40d91.0410040504.6b7e3ead@posting.google.com>...   
   > > The new SMiLE is incredible.  Possibly the best rock album of all   
   > > time?  Better than Sgt. Peppers ya think?   
   >   
   > I'm not sure if there is really is a "best rock album of all time",   
   > but I certainly wouldn't put this Smile anywhere in that category. I   
   > like it, would give it a letter grade of B+; but the lack of Brian's   
   > falsetto, not to mention the actual Beach Boys' harmonies, takes away   
   > a lot of the magic.   
   >   
   > Even if Smile was actually recorded and released in its entirety back   
   > in 1967 or 1968, I can't see how it could have competed with   
   > Sgt.Pepper in capturing the public's imagination as "the" soundtrack   
   > to the Summer of Love.   
   >   
   > "Wild Honey" is my favorite Beach Boys lp, simple and unambitious as   
   > it is.   
   >   
   > Shnaggletooth   
      
   it's already started. Read some of the reviews of the album and there   
   are superlatives being thrown around like exploding thesauri. And they   
   look like someone praising a classical piece, or an opera or something,   
   but not a rock album.   
      
   About ten years ago, before Pet Sounds got the kind of nearly universal   
   praise it's now received, a number of folks debated whether the album   
   really was a rock or rock & roll album at all. It features little or   
   nothing in the way of straight-ahead guitar work, and the four singles   
   hits from the album include one traditional folk song, a slow paean to   
   loss of innocence with lots of flutes and woodwinds, a song that had   
   practically no chorus and ended with an Escheresque tag more slow   
   baroque than anything else, and a lead-off song that combined   
   accordions, glockenspiel, and tympani.   
      
   Listen to the track on "I Know There's An Answer", and compare that to   
   anything any rhythm & blues artist would have ever dreamt of. Pop   
   maybe, but Rock & Roll?  Way more symphony orchestra, chamber music,   
   and big band than standard guitar-guitar-drums-bass-keyboard.   
      
   And yet hardly anyone would argue today that the album does not belong   
   at or near the top of rock's greats, right?   
      
   Well, if Pet Sounds broke the mold, then SmiLE forces one to nearly   
   forget it entirely.  Now even the lyrics are completely off the map. At   
   some point we're going to have to seriously question whether this   
   record belongs in the same category as practically anything else ever   
   considered  a rock album.   
      
   Listen to Bach and Mozart, Stephen Foster, Gilbert & Sullivan,  George   
   Gershwin, Cole Porter,  Charles Ives,  Aaron Copland, even Rodgers &   
   Hammerstein. Then listen to SmiLE and tell me it's properly classified   
   as rock album.   
      
   It's not.  We have one effing line-blurrer here, folks.   
      
   Anyone wanna disagree?   
      
      
   Derek   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)