The Question of Favorite Music, Part IV (in a series)...

Order. The matter of song order on an album is critically important. One of my rules, that I've applied on this site, is that an album can receive a score of 90 points out of 100 only if the songs on it are in perfect order - Which is one of the reasons that Joni Mitchell's For the Roses falls just short of ninety points.

Roses starts with Banquet, probably her least accessible song with its jazz rhythms and odd structure. Roses should have started with the welcoming and friendly See You Sometime ("Pack your suspenders, I'll come meet your plane... I just want to see you again..."), which requires no deep analysis.

But then stop and try to think of the albums you know in which the songs were arranged perfectly. Probably not more than a handful will come to mind... My mind answers with Domino by Van Morrison, The Rising by Bruce Springsteen, Straight Up by Badfinger, Abbey Road by the Beatles, and Medusa by Annie Lennox.

Medusa shows that the artist is sometimes in charge... Lennox took just a few minutes to write down a list of favorite songs she wanted to cover; she then insisted that the songs be recorded in this order... and placed on the resulting album in this order. Good for her.

But sometimes the artist is not in charge. Back in 1986, Peter Gabriel recorded the album So, which he intended to start with the reflective song Red Rain before transitioning into his great single Sledgehammer. The album was to end with the beautiful and even more reflective In Your Eyes.

When So was released, Sledgehammer - as the single - was the first track and In Your Eyes was lost in the middle of the collection... It was to be 14 long years before this placement error was corrected. Today you can buy So and hear it the way Gabriel, as the creating artist, intended you to hear it.

Then there's the matter of, as Bob Seger phrased it, "what to leave in and what to leave out." The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's album arrived in good order, but to this day seems overly short at 43 minutes long. Two songs were recorded during the time of the Pepper sessions that might have fit perfectly on the album... Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

Think about these two songs for a second... They both have the feel and sound, the "voice" of Pepper if you will. Adding them would not have - in my view - taken anything away from the psychedelic theme of Pepper, it would only have made the album stronger. And today's Pepper would be a respectable 51-minute or so road trip CD that would be quite fine to listen to in the car.

I know, some people see Pepper (or, to be more exact, hear it) as a 90-plus point album. To me, because of this missed opportunity, it remains an album to be scored in the realm of 80-or-so points.

Order and inclusion/exclusion. Two small issues of great import in music.

Notes: The book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick, recording engineer, is the source for the fact that Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's sessions. In fact, the first two Pepper songs took three weeks to record, and Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields also took three weeks to record. According to Emerick, "three full weeks (was) a huge amount of studio time in those days."

Also, Emerick alternately refers to the album in question as either Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pepper's or Pepper, as these different versions of the title now seem to be accepted as common usage.

A Retro-Review of Brian Wilson's Smile...

Note: I originally wrote this record review in early 2004, when the long-delayed Smile was released. However, at that time I had no place to post it; now I do.

"God is not subtle." Albert Einstein. But could God have a sense of humor?

A REVIEW OF SMILE

OK, so first of all, forget everything you've read or heard about this being Brian Wilson's Sgt. Pepper's album. This is not Sgt. Pepper's - Pet Sounds was that and more - but another Abbey Road, side two.

Side two of the Beatles' Abbey Road was basically a collection of unfinished songs, ideas for songs that Paul McCartney called "bites." Brian Wilson called his song ideas "bits" and today, in the age of digital recording, they might appropriately be called "bytes," but that's another story. (The idea of playing song pieces derives from the English music hall and American burlesque halls, where musicians who ran out of sheet music to play filled in with their ideas for future songs.)

Smile is a collection of bites and bits and more; and like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's the work is more than the sum of its parts. It is a collection of musical ideas intended - like the Who's Tommy or Chicago II - to be experienced by the listener as one piece, from start to finish, for better or worse.

Let me get the worst out of the way right now. The biggest flaw with Smile is Brian's need, then and now, to show us what a comprehensive student of music he is. The pivotal and repeating "Heroes and Villains" theme borrows from Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf." Further, as we listen we hear the influences of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copeland, Gershwin, Erik Satie, Mozart, Dvorak, movie soundtracks such as How the West Was Won, casino crooners, Spike Jones and his City Slickers, and the colored vinyl children's records that Brian first digested. Some also hear Bach and/or Schubert.

It is all, at first, a bit too much, a kitchen sink approach to music. Just like the 23 tracks on the symphony-like Chicago II was at first too much, especially with the producer's note: "This endeavor should be experienced sequentially." But the more you listened, the more the whole effort made sense and eventually you couldn't consider re-arranging the track order.

This is what happens with Smile. Initially, it seems too cute, too bloated and busy. But then you remember the very appropriate title of this collection, and the original album art that looked very much like the cover of a children's book.

Oh... This isn't meant to be SERIOUS, this is for fun, deliberately childlike and childish in a deliberately non-grown up way.

Come to think of it, too much of our music is far too serious. From Springsteen's post-9/11 The Rising, to Sinatra's aging album September of Our Years ("Tonight is not for fun, tonight is for serious..." said the liner notes), to personal and brilliant but troubling confessionals like Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell's Blue, it is all too serious. It is all so tiredly adult.

So, Smile isn't Paul Simon's Graceland nor Peter Gabriel's Us, but it is equally life-affirming when heard with a different ear; a child's ear, before the end of the innocence. (Interestingly, like those two albums, Smile is acceptingly multicultural and not Anglo-Saxon ethno-centric.)

Smile is not one of those hard to absorb albums about the weariness of life or life's losses or heavy lessons. It's not a divorce album or an album about eventual survival or death. It is a simple collection of songs about enjoying life simply ("eat your vegetables") and having fun. Let's play that funny horn and make silly noises! Let's pretend to fly! I'll be Davy Crockett!

Smile is an album dedicated to the enjoyment of music, the enjoyment of life no matter how short - even if your siblings (like two of Brian's) pre-decease you. Enjoy life even if the worst is going to happen, when you grow up someday.

Smile tells us that music is enough. Smile reminds us that life is a miracle and so this music is Brian's prayer, his tribute, a child's contribution to God. A simple prayer, a fun prayer, a prayer meant to make even God smile.

Smile is not a masterpiece, but for human beings it is close enough.

Thank you, Brian.