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- [00:00]
Host
Jokerman podcast is brought to you by Distrokid and their new direct to fan tool. Allowing any artist to sell merch. Distrokid Direct allows artists to create a merch store in minutes without any upfront costs or any technical skills or know how they'll take care of all the logistics and the nitty gritty. And as with distribution through Distrokid, they never take a cut of the proceeds. You, the artist, keep 100% of your earnings. Once again, that's Distrokid Direct. Open a store today@distrokid.com direct whole ass thing. Obviously, as we talked about on our most recent episode, we gave the story the series of events leading up to Smiles creation re presentation in 2003. 2004.
- [00:54]
Co-host
Rebirth.
- [00:55]
Host
Rebirth, that's right. Today we get to just talk about the actual artifact, which feels like, you know, we've done like, I don't know how many episodes we've done about Smile or like things in the Smile universe leading up to this, but it feels like a lot. And now, only now, after all these years, all these hours, do we actually get to talk about, we open the kimono, we get to see the real thing. Can I still say that? Is that allowed?
- [01:20]
Co-host
As long as kimonos can still be opened? I think that that's something that can be said. I don't know. It's not like they don't exist.
- [01:28]
Host
That's true. And you know, kimonos can be worn by any number of human beings, regardless of race, gender, sex, orientation. All of the above.
- [01:37]
Co-host
Yes. But it would be wrong to wear one and claim that this, that it's part of your story and your culture if it's not.
- [01:45]
Host
That's right. That's right.
- [01:48]
Co-host
No, that was not well said, actually. It's not true.
- [01:54]
Host
Well, smile. Here we are. Are you smiling? You happy?
- [01:58]
Co-host
I am smiling, yes.
- [02:02]
Host
Yeah, I see. I see a smile there on the zoom. We should talk a little bit about that, I guess. Like just the title Smile, you know, which is a really like, great, like a perfect title in its simplicity and its all encompassing nature. But is, I mean, I don't know that smile, like, does that speak to the sound of the music? That is what Smile is to you.
- [02:29]
Co-host
I always thought it was a strange choice, like historically, I think, when I first heard of it, and then for many years I thought that's a weird title for that. And then the COVID art, like the proposed concept cover art for the Beach Boys version. Yeah. Of the store selling Smiles and the story. Kind of like Literalized cartoon thing. I didn't love it, but now I feel a bit more. I appreciate it more. I think that it. It's most interesting in terms of how its utter simplicity belies the dizzying complexity of the actual thing.
- [03:24]
Host
Yes. Yeah, I think that. Absolutely. I do really like the imagery and the whole design aesthetic to Smile.
- [03:31]
Co-host
Like the Brian Wilson Presents Smile.
- [03:34]
Host
Well, the Brian Wilson presents Smile, absolutely. It's very simple and clean and speaks. I think it captures Brian in 2004 at his best in a very clear and straightforward way. But even the original packaging of Smile and the whole thing, I love the. The fact that it looks like it's drawn like the picture the Smile Store seems to be drawn with, like, crayons or markers or something. It's like. It is that. It's a little bit what we were talking about last time, like this completely childlike, naive innocence to a lot of this thing. And yet, like you said, you know, dizzying complexity at the same time. So I think that combo is really strong and compelling to me. I have always really loved the initial proposed title, the working title as well, Dumb angel, which obviously Brian ended up segueing away from and turning it into Smile. I feel like that maybe speaks to the music, speaks to Brian himself, frankly, a little bit more than just literally the word smile. And yet, of course, we can't. Smile has just taken on such a totemic nature over the course of however many decades at this point. So it's gotta be called Smile. It always had to. But Dumb Angel, I do think there was something kind of magical about that.
- [04:56]
Co-host
Well, I think that they are after the same thing. It's interesting to know that it was originally proposed to be called that because it gives you, I think, a bit of a flavor of what Smile. What kind of smile might be in Brian's head. What is the meaning of the smile? It's a Dumb angel is kind of perfect. It's almost too accurate. Smile. It just. Smile is broader and also such a huge concept. It's such a. Such a broad thing. Just the idea of you're gonna make the music for Smile. It's ambitious. It's like calling an album Good or goodness or, like, Life, you know, it's a lot to live up to. Dumb angel is. I think that's a great title, but it's.
- [05:53]
Host
Yeah, it's almost too descriptive, you know, and the music, like, even as descriptive as Dumb angel is, the music contained therein is still so many times more extraordinary and unprecedented than that title that, like, by just Giving it this very broad, completely just basic, almost non title in some ways like that. I think that sort of sets the table nicely. There's a Hemingway quote that comes to mind from A Farewell to Arms. And there's this great quote that's always stuck with me. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. In other words, these concepts, glory, honor, courage, are so inconsequential compared to the reality that you can only describe it by literally just again, the name of a road, village or something like that. Exactly. And I feel the same way about Smile.
- [06:57]
Co-host
I was expecting maybe you were going to pull out a quote by Hemingway about smiles.
- [07:03]
Host
I don't think he was one for writing about smiles too frequently, but yeah, here it is. Smile, Smile, Smile. Brian Wilson presents Smile. You sent me this fantastic video that I somehow had not seen. Today we're talking about the record that exists. Smile came out in September 2004. They cut this in the course of about three, four days, I think in Southern California when they had finished all the London shows. I think they recorded it in spring 2004. And it came together really easily. Brian was really involved in the presentation or in the recording. He was directing people. And you know, by all accounts it was kind of a flashback to the heady days of 1965. And then the record itself, you know, comes out in 2000, late 2004. But this video that I had never seen of them doing the whole thing. Again, I think the video was shot in late 2004, right around the time the record came out in Burbank. In beautiful Burbank. That's right. Not at the warehouse. This is at center staging in Burbank according to the YouTube description. But it's the whole ass thing. So that's a great companion piece to this music. I do love just the stage setup, the way everyone looks. These insanely 2004 ass fits that everyone is kitted out in. It's really beautiful.
- [08:24]
Co-host
To me it looks like people at a tiki bar like, you know, in their best tiki bar going outfit.
- [08:30]
Host
A lot of like bowling shirt type things and like a short. I think probing Gregory is wearing like a long sleeve T shirt under like a short sleeve T shirt and they're both like too tight on him. It's very 2004.
- [08:42]
Co-host
That is. Yeah, A lot of props and things too. The fire hats.
- [08:48]
Host
Fire hats for the strings. That's right.
- [08:50]
Co-host
Vegetables, drills, the whistles I think that this video, for me, is the real thing. Like this, to me, is better than the recorded album. I think it sounds better. I think it has more energy. And just the fact that you can literally see Brian Wilson up there playing it in real time. And there's an audience, too, but it's not like a very. I mean, the changes from the recorded version are almost not even worth mentioning. It's like a tiny little nod here and there to like, you know, adjusting a line or like saying something to the audience. But basically it's just exactly what you get in the recorded release, but live. And it has so much power to watch that. And I haven't tried just listening to that, but I just wanted to start out by saying that I think it's an unbelievable document. And the way that Brian is performing it. And there's moments that are inexpressibly poignant. During Surf's up, he's got tears in his eyes when he says, a broken man too tough to cry. And there's. He's doing all these, like, expressive hand motions.
- [10:12]
Host
Like, he's like jazz hands.
- [10:14]
Co-host
He's like, turning like. He's like. Like puppet, like marionette guy hands. It's. It's amazing. It's amazing.
- [10:23]
Host
It is really great. You couldn't ask for anything more in terms of visual documentation of this performance and sonic.
- [10:29]
Co-host
And I don't mean to diminish the record version, but, man, it's amazing how locked in, how honed they had this. And it sounds terrific.
- [10:46]
Host
That's part of the whole thing, right? Is that. And we talked about this on the last episode, is that it was envisioned as a performance from the ground up. That's what it was. It was not a record. It was not a song cycle. It was not song recording after recording and recording studio, you know, stitched together in an album. It was a performance. And I think that is. I mean, that's part of. That's partially because it was commissioned as a performance from the London Whoevers. But at the same time, I think I read a quote from Darian at one point. He brought it to Brian as. We're just trying to figure out how to play some of this music live. This is not the be all, end all, earth shaking fulfillment of your destiny. It does end up being that, of course, in a way. But it was staged initially as being staged, just a performance. And so the record that exists, that you can stream on Spotify or whatever, or you can buy on a compact disc, that is a studio, like, attempt at capturing what was going on on stage in performance, and they do a great job of it. But the performance itself does have its own special miraculous quality that you can't get out of a, you know, a studio capturing.
- [12:05]
Co-host
No, it's like the cast recording of a musical.
- [12:08]
Host
Like there's versus seeing the actual thing.
- [12:11]
Co-host
Exactly. There's versions like there are, you know, original cast recordings of shows that people prize and some that you know, are considered better than others, like the, the British version versus thing American or whatever. But yeah, there's some of that feeling exists because the way that Smile was never completed in terms of being its original form as, as a studio album. And then as you mentioned, like it's, it's resurrection was always with physical, in person, live performance in mind. Whoever got to see it like that, the people in that room, that was the real peak of this whole endeavor.
- [13:05]
Host
Yeah, they. They toured all over the world after the London premieres that we talked about, you know, recounting leading up to. In the last episode. And so like that, I think. And the video obviously is the closest. Closest to that as you're going to get. It's very well produced, looks really nice. There's a bunch of different camera angles and stuff. So it's a really quality document of the performance. But the performance itself, like that does seem to have been the ideal way to experience this whole thing.
- [13:32]
Co-host
Is there something that it could never have been? Like, the version that it never got to be was something that was always intended to be a studio record album. An experience of you would have listening to it on the record with headphones or on big loudspeakers in your house. And it was made to compete, you know, with the Beatles, with what they were doing in that form. And, you know, this is not a live touring group at that point. Sure, the Beach Boys are still alive concern to some degree, but that is not where Brian's attention was at all. It's as if something which was originally going to be a great novel was never able to be finished and then instead was finished as a play. And that is kind of what we have. But we'll never know what kinds of details, what depths and what complications it might have all completely changed by the time that it was actually done had it been allowed to gestate in its original chrysalis. But there's something authentic about the way that it exists here. And that seems to be like carried through just in that, in that live form. Like that's the missing ingredient. Like we can't have the actual detailed studio magic that would have surely been part of whatever its original record form could have been. But by injecting that personal, that live, that in person, human element as a performance, it fills in the gaps. Like, that's the only thing that could live up to the gaps, I think, is by performing it, by enacting it and introducing all the complexity and variability of actual performance. If you can't have the original thing, you can at least have the biggest gesture toward it, which is literally people putting their sweat and energy into it on a stage.