The Smile obsession

I am writing my new novel as a series of blog entries, not necessarily in chronological order, to reassemble them in its final form - not unlike the way Brian Wilson composed "Smile."

Thanks to GarageBand, I have now reassembled the various musical components of "Smile" into a form that, to me, captures what I expected to hear when the album would have appeared in 1967. It's exhilarating, like solving the toughest puzzle ever created.

I'm a tad nervous that I've become obsessed with "Smile." But I gotta tell you, there are a lot worse musical compositions to get obsessed over. Over and over the crow cries uncover the corn fields.

UW spins a classic: 'All Summer Long'

Listening to the "All Summer Long" album - it's simply amazing how much 1964 changed the musical landscape, mainly due to two bands whose names started The Bea ...

I had never heard the whole album all the way through; it wasn't one that was in my collection. I didn't buy albums when I was 11 years old - yumpin yiminy, they cost almost $3 each! - and I had the mistaken impression that the early Beach Boys singles, not the albums, were their important contributions.

To be sure, the singles on this album are the immortal gems - "I Get Around" may be the most perfect single pop music recording of 1964, and yes I do know I'm placing it above all that Beatles stuff, the Four Seasons at their prime and my beloved "(Just Like) Romeo and Juliet" - and "Little Honda," "Wendy" and the title track "All Summer Long" are all here.

But here are 12 little bits of musical magic, assembled at a time when the average record album was an afterthought - the band's hits with a few covers thrown in to fill out the package. "We'll Run Away," "Girls On the Beach," "Drive-In," "Don't Back Down" - whoa. Those may not be staples of Oldies Radio, but they are beautiful little tunes with imaginative chord changes and soaring harmonies that weren't quite like anything else being done at the time.

Maybe it all changed when the Fab Four crossed the Atlantic - or maybe pop music began to change when the Wilson boys and their cousins started exploring the possibilities.

P.S. T-minus 3 days and counting to the relaunch of Uncle Warren's Attic.

Artie Shaw's pocket symphony

Brian Wilson has famously used the phrase "pocket symphony" to describe the Beach Boys classic recording "Good Vibrations." If what he means is that a lot of interesting themes are colliding in the space of three minutes as opposed to the more luxurious time span of a symphony, then here's a pocket symphony that was a big hit in 1940: "Frenesi" by Artie Shaw and his orchestra.

One of the premier band leaders and jazz clarinetists of the swing era, Shaw packed a little ballroom dancing, some classical elements and international flair and of course big band jazz into three perfect and infectious minutes. Like "Good Vibrations," when you dissect the song in your mind it's hard to believe so many music delights can occur in such a short time span. Shaw was an innovative musician and this, to me, is his masterpiece.

Made for these times

"I keep looking for a place to fit where I can speak my mind..."

The mark of a great artist is that she puts words or images to a thought or feeling that is inside many people but hasn't been expressed in a way that most of us will understand. Brian Wilson is a great artist.

In the song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times," Wilson puts words and music to the awkward feeling that each and every one of us feels when we recognize there is no one else in the world quite like "me."

"I've been trying hard to find the people That I won't leave behind ..."

The search for friendship, the search for meaning, the search for "fitting in." Ultimately we won't find complete fulfillment from other people. John Maxwell writes about being in the audience when someone asked his wife if "John makes you happy" and getting surprised when she responded, "No." Then she explained that true happiness is something you find inside yourself and not the responsibility of other people - and he realized she was right.

"They say I got brains, but they ain't doing me no good; I wish they would ..."

As a result of that realization, Wilson sings, "Sometimes I feel very sad," and he gets frustrated when his hopes and expectations don't quite come true ...

"Each time things start to happen again, I think I got something good goin' for myself, but what goes wrong ..."

The sadness makes Wilson wonder if "I guess I just wasn't made for these times," but in giving voice to the sadness, he touches something in every heart, the sense of uniqueness that is both the joy and curse of our existence. He sings about the loneliness of being unlike any other living soul on Earth.

"Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around, no one wants to help me look for places where new things might be found - Where can I turn when my fair weather friends cop out? What's it all about?"

But there is also the joy in realization - If Brian Wilson can give voice to my loneliness, I'm not alone.

And if each of us is a unique being, how precious that is: How important it is that we treat each other with the respect and care that something precious and unique deserves.

None of us will ever quite fit in precisely, because we were designed to be different. That can make us sad and lonely, but it can also give us strength and inspiration, voiced in such motivational clichés as "If it's going to be, it's up to me."

Looking for a place to fit where you can speak your mind? So is everyone else - so gain power from that fact and speak your mind anyway.

Do the thing you fear, and you will find, like Brian Wilson did, that you have something to say that people need to hear.