Your voice in the dark.: The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne

One more metaphysical question (another small drop in this infinite bucket): Have you felt as if time or destiny or God (depending on which, if any, you believe in) or all of them added together are pulling you into this one fateful moment? Usually when I get this feeling it's when there's some disaster on course for me, like an asteroid or something. I felt something like that leading up to the angry night that is now happily remembered as 'Jurassic Party', I felt the same leading up to the new U2 album and more than a few classes at the collegiate level. But for every few times I can feel the impact before the impact, it seems like there are a few moments that glimmer like a lamp post in the middle of a winter wood (for your information, I'm within a stonesthrow of finishing Chronicles of Narnia book #2). Amélie in Birmingham and 'Happy B-day Camping/Gary P.' are just that and more, & now also this tale that took 14 lines to introduce.

That moment may just be this Sunday when a very close friend and I will attend maybe the most ridiculously built up/anticipated concert that I can ever remember. Which is ironic actually because the artist and the album being performedd carried that exact tag, a weight which added to many others, caused a delay of only 37 years (pulls off headphones, puts on record critic hat).

Have you heard of The Beach Boys' album 'SMiLE'? It's not any problem if you haven't, technically it doesn't exist. Up until last year it was mythically known as "the greatest album that never was". So as to not lose the few people reading to begin with, I'll give you the cliffnotes/whet your appetite version, maybe try to break the record of I believe 4 total links in a single go by tacking a few "for further reading" spots at the end. But it started I would have to say with the fact that The Beach Boys are badd to the bone. You could totally make the argument that they were the most influential/greatest American band, for their music, but also for the one thing that they share with the bands I think are the greatest ever (see The Beatles, Rolling Stones, U2, Radiohead, The Doors): they evolved. When it looked like the 'Summer of Love' was going to leave them behind, their leader Brian Wilson heard The Beatles 'Rubber Soul', had his mind blown, and created 'Pet Sounds', maybe the perfect (and only?) "Our album" AND "Break-up album". And so Paul McCartney heard this (including his then and now favourite song of all times 'God Only Knows'; good choice, Paul) and The Beatles were inspired and went into creating 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. Upon completeing 'Pet Sounds' and the song/"Pocket Symphony" 'Good Vibrations', Brian Wilson took a deep breath and announced their new album 'Dumb Angel', which soon changed to 'SMiLE', which was to be his and their combined "Teenage symphony to God".

So basically, with the pressure of it being the greatest album ever AND the difficulty of recording the way he did (probably the equalvalent of putting a film real together by setting all the frames stills out on the floor and taping them together in order) AND extreme tension in the band and with his Father AND drug problems, after a year of recording and a week before The Beatles 'Sgt. Pepper's' came out, the album collapsed. Through stories of Brian Wilson fearing that the recordings of a song 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow' (about the cow that started the great Chicago Fire) were responsible for starting fires all over the city and the filling of his living room with sand and tales of "Inappropriate music", only demos, rough draft songs stuck onto other albums by the rest of the band and this song (Brian recorded for TV alone a few days before Christmas) remained for fans to go through and to piece together their own album of what might have been. Some people put 'Do You Like Worms?' at the begining, 'Cabinessencee' right after and etc., while other songs with names like 'George Fell into his French Horn' and 'What is a Young Girl Made Of' never came. It is different for each person. I put this song at the end when I made my own 'bootleg' a few weeks ago.

But I was a year too late to not know the "official" tracklisting. Last year, out of nowhere Brian Wilson decided to pull together musicians and the original lyricist and just make it. And he took all the snippets and rough draft tunes from the vault. And he did it. And it is unreal. It just goes for all the stars in the sky. American history, childhood and back to Hawaii.... And Suddenly he is touring it, playing the whole album in order, and I get to see this. Listening to the album once through each day as far as I can remember, hearing the Beach Boys all day at work today, even how sunny it was all day and how grey it became the other half of it (get your microcosm of the album on).... I really want to keep going, but I really waved "so long" to 'the point of no return' to where I think only my eyes are seeing any of these words at the end. I couldn't say enough about it anyway.

(Go to these places to see other people try though:)

~ http://www.bradcoweb.com/smile/smile5.htm
~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_(album)