A bootleg CD of ‘Sweet Insanity’ (via Discogs)

Circa 1991, the house of hip hop welcomed an honored guest. Accompanied by his longtime shrink, Dr. Eugene Landy, the gifted harmonist Brian Wilson shambled through hip hop’s laundry room into its spacious two-car garage, where he blessed the microphone with this still-unreleased ode to “Smart Girls.” Over a drum machine and a Frankenstein medley of Beach Boys hooks said to be produced by the late, great Matt Dike of Dust Brothers and Delicious Vinyl fame, Wilson spat about how he used to glorify stupid women in his songs, but lately had turned to celebrating “you brainy babes with your attitude.”

The project to which “Smart Girls” belonged was among the final straws in the Landy-Wilson relationship. According to Peter Ames Carlin’s biography Catch A Wave, Landy was, by this point, calling himself Wilson’s creative and business partner rather than his therapist. (A shrewd move on Landy’s part, because the Man soon came for his license.) In the Pico Boulevard HQ of their company, Brains and Genius, which included a recording studio, the pair were hard at work on the follow-up to Wilson’s self-titled comeback album: Sweet Insanity, co-written and co-produced by Landy. Carlin writes that “Smart Girls” was the result of Landy “pushing Brian to try his hand at rapping.”

The MC speaks on the sessions in I Am Brian Wilson:

Since the first solo record had been a success, Dr. Landy wanted me to go right back and make another record. We started one that was going to be called Brian and then was going to be called Sweet Insanity. The title wasn’t exactly the best. It was supposed to be a comment about the way that mental illness could turn into something beautiful, but I wasn’t sure I wanted a title like that. I had spent a lifetime proving that point, but why did we have to say it straight out like that? Plus the way Gene was trying to force me to make the record wasn’t a good scene. He kept on me all the time. He asked questions about every part. It was the strangest and worst way to make a record, with so much pressure and so much interference.

Brains and Genius delivered Sweet Insanity to Sire, who excitedly forwarded it to the trash can.
 
Hear why, after the jump…

 
On April 25, 1967, CBS ran a special documentary that had been put together by David Oppenheim called Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution. The program was significant on a number of fronts. First, the hour-long program has been called in some quarters the first documentary about rock and roll ever made. There had certainly been ample treatment in feature films (mainly the Beatles) of the new forms of pop music that were budding in that decade as well as ample news coverage—whether Inside Pop merits this distinction I will leave for others to debate.

What is clearer is that the program represents almost certainly the first sustained effort to make a positive case for pop music to a mainstream audience on national TV. In other words, if the generational divide caused all cultural matters to be filtered through an “us” versus “them” filter, Inside Pop made no bones about debating the aesthetic and cultural merits of Herman’s Hermits, the Hollies, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, etc. from “their” perspective, from the perspective of those who had not instinctually embraced the new music.

Oppenheim’s resume up to that moment neatly illustrates the point, having made his reputation through working with figures such as Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Casals. Not long after making this program, Oppenheim was hired as Dean of NYU’s School of the Arts, which he has been credited with transforming into a first-rate cultural arts institution. (His son Jonathan Oppenheim edited the groundbreaking documentary Paris Is Burning.)

The program is divided into two halves. The first half is given almost entirely over to Leonard Bernstein, whose credibility as a cultural commentator to the mass audience at that moment can hardly be overstated. Bernstein had been music director of the New York Philharmonic for roughly a decade and had also composed the operetta Candide as well as West Side Story, and if you had asked ten moderately informed citizens in 1962 what American was best known for his work in classical music, probably all of them would have named Bernstein.

As stated, the first half of the program belongs to Bernstein—he is seated at a piano, playing snippets of songs by the Monkees, the Beatles, the Left Banke, and so on, and making observations about unexpected key changes as well as the skillful manipulation of Lydian and Mixolydian modes, whatever they might be. Bernstein goes out of his way to call 95% of pop music “trash” but nevertheless, his essential curiosity and openness to new forms would be impossible to miss. It would have been difficult indeed for such a presentation to be entirely devoid of fuddy-duddy-ism, but it’s truly an impressive performance—if only TV nowadays had similar semi-improv’d disquisitions on music by qualified commentators. Oh, and halfway through it all Bernstein brings in 15-year-old Janis Ian to sing “Society’s Child,” her hitherto blacklisted song about an interracial relationship, which incidentally soon became a hit after being heard on national television.
 

 
The second half of the program is a conventional narrated documentary focusing on the West Coast music scene with some British Invaders mixed in. Frank Zappa pops up and says a few sardonic things. Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits and Graham Nash of the Hollies get into an animated post-gig debate about the efficacy of pop music in bringing about societal change (Noone pessimistic, Nash optimistic). Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, still going by “Jim” at that point, materializes to tell every adult in America that “the drug revolution is just coming about and there are gonna be a lot of heads rolling from it,” which I’m sure went over like gangbusters.

The program gets a little boring around the 2/3 mark by focusing too long on Herman’s Hermits, who whatever else their virtues are don’t make a good case for groundbreaking trends in music, but hang on because Oppenheim saves the best for last, an extended in-studio rendition of “Surf’s Up” by Brian Wilson. Recorded on December 17, 1966, Wilson’s performance is made much more haunting because we have information the home audience did not, namely that Wilson was undergoing severe psychological stress at the time, that the Beach Boys nearly broke up over the Smile album (for which “Surf’s Up” was composed), and that more than three decades would pass until said album would reach the public in its final form.

Watch after the jump…

 
Working with my friend LeRoy Stevens of the record label Small World, the LA-based artist Jeff Hassay has created an audio souvenir of Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson’s childhood home in Hawthorne, California. Now you can own a piece of the idyllic spot where their father, Murry Wilson, used to take out his glass eye and make his boys look into the empty socket. “I said a major third goddammit!”

Dirt Sounds is a field recording of the Wilsons’ old neighborhood, pressed on a record made partly of soil from the site of their former dwelling. Small World explains:

Beach Boys House: Dirt Sounds is a hand-made record containing soil from the house where Brian Wilson grew up in Hawthorne, California. The house no longer exists. There is a modest statue commemorating the location in a small, slightly derelict neighborhood. Dogs, cats, birds, cars, planes, a helicopter and various gardeners’ power tools all lend their sonic presence along with the wind and Jeff’s occasionally audible breath as he wanders the neighborhood. The audio is an 18 minute field recording of the location on an afternoon in 2016, almost exactly 50 years after the album Pet Sounds was released.

The records were made by pouring clear resin and dirt into silicone molds. Produced over a six month period by Jeff Hassay and LeRoy Stevens, each record is unique and weighs between 400 and 600 grams.

The LP and poster set drops on June 6 in a limited edition of 100. Pre-order it here.

After the jump, watch LeRoy and Jeff making the records by hand…

 
On their 1992 debut album Gordon, the easygoing and likable Canadian band Barenaked Ladies made the fourth track a catchy little ditty called “Brian Wilson.” It’s a song about aimlessness and inactivity and the pointless cycle of routine that the musically inclined sometimes find themselves in. The central character of the song wonders if he’s in a “creative drought” as he listens to the Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile and visits his favorite record store. The song includes a reference to Brian Wilson’s notorious therapist Eugene Landy, who for several years more or less took over Wilson’s life.

The song is obviously a heartfelt homage, but it’s also a public act of empathy directed at a man whose fans the world over knew was living in a haunted world of pain and confusion.

Here are a few representative lines from the song:

I had a dream
That I was three hundred pounds
And though I was very heavy
I floated ‘til I couldn’t see the ground
I floated ‘til I couldn’t see the ground
Somebody help me,
I couldn’t see the ground
Somebody help me because I’m

Lying in bed
Just like Brian Wilson did
Well I am
Lying in bed
Just like Brian Wilson did

On 2000’s Live at the Roxy Theatre, Wilson graciously acknowledged the gesture by playing a brief chunk of the song, specifically the fourth verse and the chorus—the chorus was performed by the backup singers. Wilson replaces the word guitar with piano in the line “Playing my guitar and building castles in the sun and singing ‘Fun, Fun, Fun.’” Here, have a listen:
 

 
Intriguingly, the very next song in the Roxy set is “Til I Die,” the final track off of Wilson’s 1995 album I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times. One wonders if Wilson wasn’t pointedly stringing those two song titles together…..

As yet, I have not uncovered any recordings of Yoko Ono covering “Be My Yoko Ono,” which is the fifth track off of Gordon. 

For comparison’s sake, here’s the video for the Barenaked Ladies version of “Brian Wilson”: 
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece Smile: A “New” Old Version
Legendary footage of Brian Wilson performing ‘Surf’s Up,’ 1966

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks in the studio, 1966

The great Brian Wilson turns 71 today!

At what point does he get to become a Beach Man?
 

 
Above, Brian Wilson debuts “Surf’s Up” on the Leonard Bernstein’s CBS-TV documentary special, Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution in 1967.

“C’mon Mr. Wilson. Let’s go surfin’ now.”

“Everybody’s learning how.”

California Highway Patrolmen John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd force Brian Wilson to get out of bed and on his board after issuing him a citation for failing to surf in one of the more iconic music/comedy crossovers of the 1970s. From the Lorne Michaels produced Beach Boys TV special, It’s OK.

Mike Love… he sure do look flamboyant here, don’t he?
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion of Los Angeles, CA!

 
Forget about Smile, this 5-inch Eva-Tone flexi-disc record was included in the box with purchases of the “California Dream Barbie” doll in 1987/88. The tune was co-written by Brian Wilson, his controversial psychiatrist Dr. Eugene Landy and Landy’s then girlfriend, later his wife, Alexandra Morgan.

Although credited to The Beach Boys, I don’t think the rest of them had anything to do with this turkey.

“Living Doll (Barbie)” is an adaptation of “Christine,” an outtake from Wilson’s self-titled solo album. Don’t expect to see this one, ever, on any Brian Wilson rarities box set! (It does appear on the Sweet Insanity Sessions Vol. 1 bootleg).

More about the song here.
 

 

 
Via WFMU

 
We seek to write the perfect sentence. The one that opens the paragraph, like a key in a door, to places undiscovered. It was how to begin this story on Duglas T Stewart, the lead singer and mainstay of BMX Bandits, whether with a fact or a quote, or oblique reference that would set the scene to unfurl his tale.

Duglas has written his fair share of perfect sentences - in dozens of songs over his twenty-five-year career with BMX Bandits. From the first singles in 1986, the debut album C86 in 1989, through to Bee Stings in 2007, Duglas has been at the center of an incredible family of talented musicians who have together created some of the most beautiful, toe-tapping and joyous music of the past 3 decades.

In the early 1990s, when Nirvana was top of the tree, Kurt Cobain said:

’If I could be in any other band, it would be BMX Bandits.’

It was a tip of the hat to a man who is responsible for singing, writing and producing songs of the kind of beauty and fragility Cobain aspired to.

Not just Cobain, but Brian Wilson and Kim Fowley are also fans, with Fowley explaining his own definition of what it means to be a BMX Bandit:

’It means a nuclear submarine floating through chocolate syrup skies of spinach, raining raisins on a Chihuahua covered infinity of plaid waistcoats, with sunglasses and slow motion. It sort of means, pathos equals suburban integrity of loneliness punctuated by really nice melodies.’

But let’s not take Kim’s word for it, we decided to ask Duglas to tell Dangerous Minds his own version of his life and love as a BMX Bandit.

DM: What was your motivation to become a musician?

Duglas T. Stewart: ‘Initially it was two things. I heard Jonathan Richman in 1977 and it sounded so human and full of warmth and humor and beauty. It also seemed to fly in the face in the punk ethos of DESTROY. It really made a connection with me and I thought I’d like to try to do something that hopefully might make others feel like I did listening to Jonathan. Listening to his music gave me a sense of belonging. I felt less alone.

‘The other thing was I met Frances McKee, later of The Vaselines, and I thought she was incredible. I loved everything about her from her mischievous sense of humor to her slightly overlapping front teeth. She said to me one day she thought it would be fun being in a group, and so I thought I would start a group and she could be in it and that way I could spend more time with her and have a vehicle for expressing how she made me feel.

‘Also I had a lot of self belief so I knew if I started a group it would be way better and more interesting than any other local groups at that time.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The fabulous BMX Bandits: Interview and performance of ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)

 
More from Duglas on music, art & books, and from BMX Bandits, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Duglas T Stewart
 

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks in the studio, 1966

Beach Boy Brian Wilson performing “Surf’s Up” (for my money, his single greatest song) from the then “upcoming” Smile album in 1966. If you’re a big Beach Boys fan, this clip might bring tears to your eyes.

This is an excerpt from Leonard Bernstein’s landmark CBS-TV documentary special, Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, which aired the following year on April 25, 1967. Bernstein’s film also featured Graham Nash and Frank Zappa and was one of the very first serious documentaries about rock music—Bernstein took the then-unusual approach of treating pop as a legitimate art form—produced for American television.
 

 
This is The Beach Boys’ so called lost concert from March 1964. The line-up includes Brian Wilson, and in a 20 minute set, The Beach Boys rip through a selection of 9 superb songs, including tracks from their freshly released album, Shut Down Vol 2.

These are: “Fun Fun Fun”, “Long Tall Texan”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, “Surfer Girl”, “Surfin’ USA”, “Shut Down”, “In My Room”, “Papa Oom-Mow-Mow”, and “Hawaii”.
 

 
It’s OK: The Beach Boys’ 15th Anniversary TV Special aired in 1976 on NBC. It was a weird affair created when Brian Wilson was at the lowest ebb of his struggle with substance abuse and depression. Produced by Lorne Michaels and written by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the show features a barely willing Wilson lured back into the studio and, in a bit that is both funny and sad, onto the beach and a surfboard. As most of us know, Brian was not a surfer and in this clip he’s barely a pedestrian. I have a feeling this may have been therapeutic for Brian.
 

 
With Smile more or less put to bed, Brian Wilson can now move on to completing the work of another American master.  As today’s LA Times reports:

Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been authorized by the estate of George Gershwin to complete unfinished songs Gershwin left behind when he died in 1937.

He plans to finish and record at least two such pieces on an album of Gershwin music he hopes to release next year.  The Gershwin-Wilson project may strike some as an odd coupling: one New York musician famous for sophisticated 1920s and ‘30s pop songs including ” ‘S Wonderful” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” as well as such expansive, classically minded compositions as “Rhapsody”; the other the driving force behind Southern California beach culture hits such as “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “I Get Around” and “California Girls.”

But their career paths and evolution of their artistry have common threads, noted people involved with the project and some independent scholars, and that gives the proposed collaboration logic.  Todd Gershwin, George’s great-nephew and a trustee of the George Gershwin family trusts, said, “George for his time was a visionary.  He certainly crossed genres and musical lines, tried things that hadn’t been done before and Brian Wilson has done exactly the same thing.”  For his part, Wilson, 67, described himself Tuesday as “thrilled to death.”

To see what Wilson’s up against, the following clip shows Gershwin himself pounding out I Got Rhythm.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Although over the years there have been many, many fan made “reconstructed” (bootleg) versions of what Brian Wilson really intended to do with his lost Beach Boys masterpiece Smile, in 2004 his Brian Wilson Presents Smile album and tour pretty much set the record straight. And if this wasn’t exactly what Wilson had intended back in 1967 (before Mike Love, new fatherhood, mental illness and various other factors buried the project) then at the very least it’s Wilson’s final word on the piece, what he once called his “teenage symphony to God.”

Wilson’s ill-fated Smile, of course, became legendary amongst rock snobs. In 1993 Beach Boys fans discovered just how far along Wilson’s unfinished project got. On the Beach Boys box set, Good Vibrations, author and filmmaker, David Leaf (The Beach Boys and The California Myth, 1978) sequenced a stunning 30 minute selection of Smile outtakes. I can tell you for sure, it was a mind-blowing thing to hear. Elvis Costello described hearing Brian Wilson’s original demo for “Surf’s Up” as like discovering a lost recording of Mozart and I must agree.

What we have here, though, is the so-called “Smile [Purple Chick bootleg]” put together by some Beach Boys fans using mostly original stereo Beach Boys recordings—using Wilson’s 2004 album as a guide—to step by step recreate Smile with these vintage sources. It’s fantastic! They re-edited, pitch shifted and used a few moments from Wilson’s BWPS album to connect the tracks and the results are quite good, a revelation even. Although I am not sold on their remake of Good Vibrations (my brain just refuses to accept it) I have to say that it’s entirely valid. After all it’s what Wilson did himself. Still, I swapped that track out on the CD I made for the car (and you might want to also).

A Good Smile Bootleg