Michael Anton’s fine essay on the Beach Boys, California culture, and the SMiLE Sessions album is now available on the Claremont Review of Books website. On the merits of SMiLE , compare and contrast his take with my Songbook essay, The SMiLE that Wasn’t . He doesn’t quite admit that . . . . Continue Reading »
SMiLE was to be the follow-up to Pet Sounds , but its recording was apparently so arduous for The Beach Boys, the session musicians, and the increasingly unstable Brian Wilson, that he called it off in the Spring of ‘67. Driblets of the studio material were released over the years, Wilson . . . . Continue Reading »
Do you like “Do You Like Worms?” ? Let’s try an experiment: I’d like readers who have not really heard the Beach Boys’ SMiLE , their ambitious 60s album only recently “released” in a Brian Wilson-approved form, to listen to two of the most popular songs from it, . . . . Continue Reading »
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