TS: SMiLE vs. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

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SMiLE was hyped over its long history of non-release to be the Beach Boy's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts. So, keeping in mind that SMiLE was never given its full release (or realization) in the sixties, I suppose the Beatles win in terms of historical impact, influence and all that jazz.

But on a subjective level, Sgt. Pepper's is one of my least favourite Beatles albums and SMiLE is among my favourite albums, period. So I give the edge to Brian and his boys by a long shot -- SMiLe is more fun, more cohesive, more musically complex; so, yeah, Brian rules, Beatles drool...in this case.

Whaddya think?

― Star Cauliflower (Star Cauliflower), Wednesday, 1 December 2004 23:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmmm... I think I'd need a good five or ten years to answer this one correctly. I do enjoy SMiLE more at this point. However, A Day in the Life is the best song on either album (which may not be the case if it was going up against the original Good Vibrations).

― darin (darin), Thursday, 2 December 2004 00:01 (twenty-one years ago)

sgt.pepper is a cool fucking record. it sounds COMPLETELY bizarre. i don't care what you beetlehaterz say. john lennon was on acid EVERY DAY for years. his brain was mush. he made incomparable nonsense music. both he and brian wilson were big fat fuckin' babies of the highest order.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 2 December 2004 00:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Sgt. Peppers isn't even a great album. Now SMiLE vs Abbey Road, that would be something.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 2 December 2004 00:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Scott that it is the best thing I've read in a while. I pick Magical Mystery Tour over either.

― martin hilliard, Thursday, 2 December 2004 00:16 (twenty-one years ago)

I pick some awesome SMiLE/Sgt Pepper/50 Cent mashup that the only hipster in my village made last week.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 December 2004 00:19 (twenty-one years ago)

"Sgt. Pepper" is better in my book. I think it would be no matter what, but the competition isn't quite fair, as Brian Wilson didn't get to finish "Smile" until he had left Beach Boys, while neither his voice nor his brains were quite what they used to be in their prime.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 2 December 2004 00:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Sgt. Pepper!

― Mickey, Thursday, 2 December 2004 01:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Pepper for me

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Thursday, 2 December 2004 01:52 (twenty-one years ago)

sgt. pepper's pretty easy for me too

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 2 December 2004 02:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Smile by a mile. I think I might even pick Smiley Smile over Pepper. I agree with Martin that MMT would be tougher competition though.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 2 December 2004 02:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I like Smiley Smile and Wild Honey a lot, more than nu-Smile. (and I like nu-Smile fine.)

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Thursday, 2 December 2004 02:54 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah i might like wild honey more than anything else on this thread (if not by these bands). purely on peak moments though sgt. pepper's still wins. take 'fixing a hole', 'lsd', and 'she's leaving home' off it and it might be my favorite beatles album. it'd be a hell of alot better in any case.

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 2 December 2004 02:58 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm glad to see some love for sgt pepper - it's not my favorite beatles album but it gets so much abuse on ilm that i get to feeling sort of sorry for it. the only thing on there i don't like much is "lucy in the sky with diamonds," which is kinda ruined by the chorus. and "good morning good morning" ranks among my top 10 beatles songs any day of the week.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 2 December 2004 03:41 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah the verses in 'lsd' are good enough 'woah duuuude' but the chorus sinks it, i could maybe imagine an effective cover where the singer just ranted the chorus like captain beefheart doing 'sue egypt' only more hyper maybe, but otherwise blech.

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 2 December 2004 03:47 (twenty-one years ago)

SMiLE.

Incidentally, did any of you lovely people happen to video the documentary about Brian Wislon and SMiLE on BBC1 last night? I didn't realise it was on until 2/3 way through! Please get in touch if you can help me to get hold of a copy (you'll need to lose the "downspamdown" bit)!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 2 December 2004 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)

i taped it if you still need a copy.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 2 December 2004 10:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Stewart, if you are down with the BitTorrent I imagine it'll pop up on Easytree.org very soon, the Two-Tone doc from two nights ago is already up.

― mzui (mzui), Thursday, 2 December 2004 11:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Stewart - didn't tape it unfortunately. Wish I had though. Worth it for the lovely clip of solo Brian doing Surf's Up.

― Robert Moore (treble), Thursday, 2 December 2004 11:25 (twenty-one years ago)

titchyschneider: bless your little pointed head - please check your e-mail!

mzui: thank you but what is this "BitTorrent" of which you speak.... and can I eat it?

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 2 December 2004 11:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Stewart, as far as I am aware BitTorrent is not edible, it's a little program that enables the slightly quicker downloading of various audio/video files beloved by traders on the net, it's pretty darn good and many sites that utilise torrents as opposed to normal downloads have popped up.

I go to Easytree.org a lot because they have a lot of live bootlegs and music documentaries, I've gotten a shedload of nice stuff too.

http://bittorrent.com/ - for further info and downloads.

http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/romeria/bittorrentsites.htm - a handy links page.

― mzui (mzui), Thursday, 2 December 2004 11:56 (twenty-one years ago)

i emailed you mr osbourne - the bit torrent would most likely be an easier way for you to get it though. unless you want a nice and state of the art VHS copy of it.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 2 December 2004 11:59 (twenty-one years ago)

State of the ark is more my level I'm afraid - I'll wait for your e-mail!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 2 December 2004 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Smile by a nose . Although I agree that with a couple of changes (For me replacing "She's Leaving Home" and "Within You Without You" with "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane") and I would decidedly go the other way.

― Not That Chuck, Thursday, 2 December 2004 15:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Pepper may be my least favorite Beatle album -- I never bothered to get the CD version. Important work but it hasn't aged well at all (unlike Rubber Soul, Revolver or Beatles for Sale).
So SMiLE, which BTW is even more bizarre than Pepper, gets my vote.

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Thursday, 2 December 2004 15:32 (twenty-one years ago)

The reason why "Sgt. Pepper" in way too many people's opinion "hasn't aged well", is that music went in the wrong direction around 1977.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 2 December 2004 15:34 (twenty-one years ago)

I wonder if saying that Sgt. Pepper hasn't aged well is meant to imply that people couldn't or wouldn't love it nowadays for the exact same reasons that people loved it at the height of the psychedelic zeitgeist? Because there are a lot of us who DO.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Thursday, 2 December 2004 15:51 (twenty-one years ago)

As someone who was actually alive when Sgt. Pepper's was released, I think it's aged remarkably well. The stuff on it that seems corny or stilted now was corny and stilted then. People just overlooked it.

― Not That Chuckk, Thursday, 2 December 2004 15:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmm. I like the Beach Boys & all, but I wouldn't choose SMiLE over any Beatles album.

― briania (briania), Thursday, 2 December 2004 16:55 (twenty-one years ago)

I grew up with Sgt.Pepper. Geir is talking through his hat. 1977? The world was in raptures over the Beatles, maybe understandibly, but music would never progress until it got over the beatles.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 2 December 2004 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

OTM

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Thursday, 2 December 2004 16:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Better question: which answer is the rockist one?

― J (Jay), Thursday, 2 December 2004 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

waaauugh! I'm outtahere.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 2 December 2004 17:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Joking!

Why do I love throwing stink bombs today?

― J (Jay), Thursday, 2 December 2004 17:25 (twenty-one years ago)

It's SMiLE vs. Sgt. Pepper! EITHER answer is uber-rockist. Neither one is a real "rock group" type of album, though.

― briania (briania), Thursday, 2 December 2004 17:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Sgt Pepper for me although I think both are patchily great. Sgt Peppers hasn't so much dated as lost a never-deserved reputation as easily the most impressive Beatles album. At the time it had the illusion of being more innovative and more coherent than their other work: nowadays that seems both less true and less important. On the other hand, if Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane had been included (as originally intended) its reputation would have seemed much less overblown. The near simultaneous release of those songs hugely coloured the reception of Sgt Peppers - I think many people unconsciously judged the album as though those songs *were* on it.

― frankiemachine, Thursday, 2 December 2004 18:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't like Sgt. Pepper too much, but SMiLE sounded too much like "Red, White and Blaine" too me. I could do just as well without the fucking slide whistles, thank you.

Favorties songs: "Good Vibrations", "Sgt. Pepper's (reprise)".

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:28 (twenty-one years ago)

1977? The world was in raptures over the Beatles, maybe understandibly, but music would never progress until it got over the beatles.

Music had progressed a lot since that, the culmination being those brilliant and terribly underrated 20 minutes suites that the likes of Yes or Genesis would make in the mid 70s.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:30 (twenty-one years ago)

One interesting sidenote: I rank "Pet Sounds" ahead of any Beatles album. It's just that I don't find "Smile" quite as brilliant as "Pet Sounds" was.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Music: SMiLE
Lyrics: Sgt. Pepper

― mottdeterre (mottdeterre), Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:38 (twenty-one years ago)

SMiLE sounded too much like "Red, White and Blaine" - haha!

― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:45 (twenty-one years ago)

pet sounds is better than both sgt peppers and smile combined.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Sgt. Pepper is incredible and is better. This coming from one who plans to vote for SMiLE as the best album of this year.

― Chris O., Thursday, 2 December 2004 20:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't like Sgt. Pepper too much, but SMiLE sounded too much like "Red, White and Blaine" too me. I could do just as well without the fucking slide whistles, thank you.

I normally go for corny English whimsey over corny Americana anyday but for some reason Smile & VDP's Song Cycle both do the psychedelic Disney thing in a manner I find irresistable. If I could get some slide whistles and calliopes together with lyrics about hobbits and tea cozies I'd be all set.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 2 December 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

what do people find dated about sgt pepper, anyway?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 2 December 2004 22:26 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't find sgt. pepper dated at all, i just rate it as a very good album that's not as good as the great ones that came right before it. and as conceptual albums go, i don't think either it or smile holds a candle to village green preservation society, which i hear as an alternative, and better, example of what the beatles were trying to do with pepper.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 2 December 2004 22:34 (twenty-one years ago)

i think a better fight would be the beatles' mid-'60s, pre-pepper singles vs. the beach boys' mid-'60s, pre-pet sounds singles. but that's a different thread i guess.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 2 December 2004 22:35 (twenty-one years ago)

"Music had progressed a lot since that, the culmination being those brilliant and terribly underrated 20 minutes suites that the likes of Yes or Genesis would make in the mid 70s."

*Culmination*? Of what??

(I know you didn't use the word "progress" to start with, but christ...yeeuchh.)

― Bumfluff, Thursday, 2 December 2004 22:52 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't consider "Village Green Preservation Society" a concept album at all. It's a great album, but a true concept album has to have the tracks segued together, meant to be played as a whole, and not interrupted until the entire album is played through.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 2 December 2004 22:56 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't think pepper is a concept album either. like vgps, it's a collection of pop songs that work equally well as a whole and as individuals. but i do think both albums have unifying concepts; in the kinks' case, it's the stripped-down, almost anti-rock, arrangements and the thematic thread of memories, loss and a yearning for young and innocent days before technology like cameras and modern trains fucked everything up.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:11 (twenty-one years ago)

(addendum: i've never understood exactly what a "concept" "album" is opposed to any old album with a concept like, say, the ramones' first several LPs or the wu-tang clan's debut.)

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:16 (twenty-one years ago)

(insert AS betwen "is" and "opposed" in above parenthetical thing.)

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Wu-Tang's debut I would say is a concept album, along with a lot of other hip-hop albums.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 2 December 2004 23:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Hawthorne vs. Weybridge

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Friday, 3 December 2004 01:18 (twenty-one years ago)

just heard smile and it's got gr8 songs but some songs are excess.
Sgt Peppers is sheer perfection - every track listenable and one listen of every song makes it etched in your memory forever
Roe vs Wade - i thought it was 2 ways to crross the Delaware

― wilsonette, Friday, 3 December 2004 01:38 (twenty-one years ago)

99% of people who listen with their ears prefer SMiLE

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Friday, 3 December 2004 01:43 (twenty-one years ago)

A concept album does not need to be segued. It just has to have a unifying... concept. Maybe you are confusing it with a rock symphony.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 3 December 2004 02:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Dude, Matos, Pepper is as much a Macca hanging in London with John Dunbar and Barry Miles album as it is a Weybridge album!

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 3 December 2004 02:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Though, of course, Van Dyke Parks was also visiting the sandbox...

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 3 December 2004 02:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I think both are kind of overrated. I think "Wild Honey" is the best single Beach Boys album, unless it's "Love You." But, shit, I went out and bought a really nice LP reissue of "Sgt. Pepper's"--I mean, that's one LP-as-LP you ought to have to give your kids or something--and I find it completely unlistenable. Just terrible. "A Day in the Life" has got to be the most overrated fucking song of all time, unless it's_____(fill in the blank with whatever). The whole thing with that "Sgt. Pepper's" garbage is that it was supposed to be the culmination of the Beatles' "development." Which was actually "Strawberry Fields"/"Penny Lane," which pretty much live up to the hype. Once people got over all that, "Pepper's" was revealed as the clinkity-clackity mess it really is, all bad stereo separation and stupid guitar solos. Leonard Feather and Leonard Bernstein and your uncle who had discovered his secretary's ass and marijuana could groove to Paul and "She's Leaving Home," which isn't really all that terrible as a song I guess. "A Little Help from My Friends" is good, that's obviously one we all wish we could have written, it's charming.

As someone who thinks "columnated ruins domino" is actually kind of cool as a line, I regard "Smile" as a noble experiment in Americana. But the Beach Boys had become so attenuated by that time, so cut off from the source of their power, it's kind of sad. That said, I like them a million times better than I do the Beatles--their experiments seem so much more solid. And the Beatles, Geir, never did ANYTHING as good as "Johnny Carson" or "Honkin' Down the Highway" or "Solar System" from "Love You," which really takes the idea put forward by the author of that great Beatles book, "Paperback Writer," re the Beatles getting back together and doing shit like "Yoko's Gone Broke-O," which I can only dream they actually had done. Well, Paulie came close with some of that whimsy he foisted off on the world, but it was just so sane, whereas you can't say that about Brian Wilson...and that's a compliment. Anyway, fuck fuckin' "Sgt. Pepper's." I know, these threads get me all into kicking the dead pony of the Beatles, but someone's got to do it.

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Friday, 3 December 2004 04:45 (twenty-one years ago)

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