Smile: Two Years Later

It was two years ago today that what was believed impossible, if not just improbably, happened:

Brian Wilson's Smile was released for all to hear.

I stopped at Target on the way in to work that day to pick it up. They had just opened and hadn't had a chance to put the new releases out yet. I asked one of the "team members" about it, and he sent someone to the back room to get it out. Said person walked back from the stock room and handed it to me. I was stunned. Beyond stunned.

"I can't believe it! This is it!"

It was an extremely rainy day. I had to turn the volume pretty high up to hear it. Yes, I've heard the stuff on disc 2 of Good Vibrations. I've heard various bootlegs. I've heard an audience recording or two of the London concert debut of Smile. And you know what? The studio recording still sounded as if I were hearing Smile for the first time. Just breathtaking.

My wife and I each bought our own copies, as neither of us could wait for the other to get home.

Anyway, I just want to address some criticisms and issues:

• The belief that Darian Sahanaja was involved with -- perhaps even composed some of -- the arrangements, some songs, etc. Well, nobody knows for sure except Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, and Darian himself. And if he did, who the heck cares? It's frickin' brilliant!


• "The 2004 version of Smile doesn't match Brian's original vision!" Uhhh...actually, it does, as far as anybody can tell. Why? Well, because the vision never happened until now. Brian didn't have a final vision of Smile in 1967 -- if he did, then why did he take so much time to work on it?


• The whole 'all upper-case except the letter i' spelling. I can't stand how some people insist on spelling it SMiLE. One thing is sure -- there's no evidence that that's how Brian wanted it spelled. You can thank the Capitol Records art department for that, and you can also thank Mark London, who loosely copied the font from the 1967 version.


• "It's not right without the Beach Boys! They have a unique vocal blend! It doesn't even sound like the Beach Boys!" First of all...the Beach Boys were not willing participants in 1966 and 1967, so why would they be willing now? Second of all, do you really think Smile would have been finished in 2004 had the ever-warring Beach Boys been present? And it doesn't sound like the Beach Boys? Well...let me quote a guy named Jesse Ryan, with whom I used to work. On the afternoon of September 28, 2004, I put Smile in the office CD player so I could hear it without the loud rain. After the fade-out of "Good Vibrations," Jesse said, and I quote: "Was this the Beach Boys the whole time?"

So there. That's what I have to say, other than that Smile is brilliant, I love it, and I hope someday that Brian tours that thing again. Seeing it in concert four times was not enough.

Sympathy for customer service workers

Well, I finally did something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I kept forgetting to do it, but by golly, I remembered this time that I wanted to do it.

I took a weekend trip to North Carolina for a wedding in the family. Yesterday I flew back into Midway. I grabbed my single piece of luggage from baggage claim, and all was good. I went over to Southwest Airlines' baggage office -- you know, where they have that wonderful, sought-after job of listening to people bitch (and usually rightfully so, I imagine) about their luggage being lost, damaged, or both.

I opened the door and stepped halfway into the office. I said, "Hi there. I wanted to let you know I got my luggage on time, and all is good! Just thought you'd like to hear some good news from a customer for a change."

The lady behind the counter half-laughed and thanked me.

Five years later

Of course, I can't let today go by without discussing the goings-on of five years ago.

I was living in New Jersey at the time. It was close to 8:45am, and I had just woken up. It was an absolutely perfect September day: not a cloud in the sky, a warm breeze, and a very comfortable mid-70s. Seriously, you couldn't ask for better weather.

A little over a month before I quit my job, which was causing too much stress for me to live healthily, and I had really felt the impact of the market -- while I never before had trouble scoring an interview and a job really quickly with my experience, at this time I just couldn't get someone to even open an envelope containing my résumé. I booted up my computer and was getting ready to dial into the 'net to search online for a job.

My mother-in-law called me from the doctor's office where she was working. She asked me to turn on the TV because she and her coworkers had heard something about how a plane hit the World Trade Center. Then she heard that two planes hit, one for each tower.

I turned on the TV, expecting to see a part of maybe a small propeller plane sticking out of the building with a puff of white smoke. Instead, I saw a massive fireball with black smoke endlessly billowing into the sky. As an uncontrolled reflex, I said something I never said to an elder before, nor have I said since: "HOLY SHIT!"

The latest my mother-in-law heard wasn't quite accurate; at that point, only one tower had been hit. It was a considerable time after that when I saw on TV an explosion in the other tower. From where the camera was, it looked like a bomb had gone off in the second tower, but the news crew repeatedly replayed the tape to see if they could notice anything, and they did: a small dot zoomed toward the tower, and on impact, caused the explosion. Of course, that small dot turned out to be another airliner.

I remember hearing of a plane crash in Pennsylvania...and a plane crashing into the Pentagon. All I could think was, "What next? What's happening to this country?!"

I had to get away from the TV. We lived two blocks away from the beach, so I decided to take a walk that way. As I walked down the block, I could hear TV and radio reports coming from each house. When i got to the beach, I looked up at the beautiful blue sky and saw a brown streak across the sky, a streak that gradually got darker toward the north.

My wife came home early from work, unsurprisingly. Friends from back in Illinois called to make sure we were okay. I tried to call my parents, but I couldn't get a connection. I tried on my cell phone and got through and talked to my dad, who told me he was relieved that I called because he and my mother were worried sick about us, as they knew that for various reasons we'd have to take occasional trips into New York.

And I must speak out about something...the Concert for New York, and more specifically, Paul McCartney's song, "Freedom." Definitely not the best thing he's ever written (and not the worst, either -- ever hear "Mrs. Vanderbilt"?), but you know what? It's not too bad. One thing to keep in mind is that he wanted to write a song that's simple and easy to sing along to, which it is on both counts. And I admit that toward the end of the concert when Paul said they were going to perform it again, I did kind of groan, but it's a simple song with a simple message. And you know what? It went over very well in concert -- then again, that concert that I saw was at Madison Square Garden...but both Beatlefests I attended in 2002 -- in Jersey and outside of Chicago -- had Battle of the Bands acts who performed that song, and they both got a really good applause, so obviously some people like it.

And I just love how there are a few people -- including Martin Lewis -- who claim that Macca was telling an untruth when he said he could see the World Trade Center on fire from the runway at JFK Airport. Let me get this straight...two of the world's tallest buildings have a very frightening amount of black smoke pouring into the sky and you can't see that?? (Plus, I've talked to several other people who have said that they were able to see the World Trade Center from the runway at JFK -- it just depends on which runway you're on and where you were on the runway.)

I don't know how much I can say that everybody else hasn't been feeling, but I can say this much:

• My wife and I successfully turned to The Beatles for comfort.


• Nearly three thousand lives were lost that day, but I prefer to look at it this way: tens of thousands of lives were saved.


• When I woke up the next morning, I felt much better -- because I realized that I was still alive. Truly, September 11, 2001 was the one time in my life when I legitimately feared for my life.