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SMiLE versus sgt. pepper's????

Posted by centaurus3200 (A) on April 3, 2006 at 22:50:00

while at work today, i decided to do a little aural research. my company is real cool. we have everyone's music collections shared through the server via i-tunes.

I'm known as the "beach boys nut" at work, but never heard, head to head, the "all time greatest concept rock album duo". i.e. beach boy's smile compared and contrasted against Sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band.

now, i am NOT being biased. but for anyone's who's done the same, i think you'll admit that smile was a lot more intricate and technically advanced. both lyrically and musically. i used both the smile bootleg and Brian Wilson's 2004 release of smile. Sgt. pepper's is more straight ahead, more commercial and actually more humorous...because it's less "out-there." whereas "i am the walrus" is good fun and amusing, vegetables and mrs. o'leary's cow is just sorta weird. beautiful, incredibly creative...but weird.

then you have songs like surf's up which is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, both from a lyrical and instrumental standpoint. Brian was just pushing himself and his band (though reluctantly) a lot further into the stratosphere.

lastly, as a complete concept album, smile's tracks flow seamlessly from one to the other, whereas Sgt. pepper's seems more like a conventional album, without the songs meshing in teh same way.

finally, after listening to both albums, i flipped on the magical mystery tour. NOW THAT'S SOME BADDASS SHIT, now isn't it? ;-)

i enjoyed it immensely. still not as intricate as smile, but it rocks a lot harder than anything the beach boys has done. but that was never the beach boys angle. it would have taken a far more vocal and demanding DENNIS WILSON to steer the beach boys into a harder rock category.

anybody who's ever listened to Dennis Wilson's pacific ocean blue knows what I'm talking about. Dennis Wilson was GENIUS too! and had none of Brian's sometimes corny tendencies. brian always kept to his "we are love, love is all, etc." mantra. Dennis had some real hard L.I.V.I.N. and his music reflected that.

two of my favorite songs of all time are Dennis' River Song and Steamboat off of beach boys Holland.

i wonder what would have happened if Brian and Dennis formed a tighter bond for writing music together, a la Lennon/mc cartney.

ok,
done ramblin ;-)

see ya,
Robby

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