A Note On Upcoming Posts:
I will be running two series on this newsletter for a while.
Once a week, on Tuesdays, there will be a post shared with everyone, from my series Reviews of My Life, the first of which was posted here. Reviews of My Life will be free to all readers.
I will also begin posting another ‘series’, also weekly, on Thursdays, called Good Luck. Good Luck is a novel of mine edited by Joseph Grantham. I’ll post the first chapter on my birthday, November 25th 2023, and will end at the conclusion of the 2024 calendar year. Good Luck is a novel. Good Luck is about me, my memories, creative life, dreams, and some fun I’ve had or haven’t had. Paid subscribers will receive the Good Luck chapters on Thursdays.
Thank you very much for reading my work, sharing it with friends, passing the word along about the art I make.
— Much Respect
Bud Smith
Some Recommendations
🎵
Yesterday I learned something new about one of my favorite musical ‘competitions.’ That back and forth that happened between Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, and McCarthy and Lennon of the Beatles, in the mid-60s.
When I was a young boy, I heard one of the most famous rumors in popular western music, which was that Brian Wilson was driven mad by trying to compete with Lennon and McCarthy. That the guy who wrote ‘Surfin’ U.S.A’ could be sent to a mental ward by the guys who wrote ‘Yellow Submarine’ seemed completely fucked.
I grew up. Some things made more sense.
In 1994 I was in the 7th grade and just starting to pay closer attention to the music of my mother and father’s generation and what was worth listening to and studying, because it influenced the bands I had begun to love.
I began to understand the vast underlying stream of influence that traced a path back to the dawn of time. Or something like that.
Around this time I heard from a friend’s older brother that Pet Sounds was the greatest album ever made, but that there was as an even greater lost album by Wilson called Smile, that never saw the light of day because Wilson had heard Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and—well—he surrendered.
That’s all anybody ever wanted to talk about whenever Wilson’s name came up—how he was a genius, a tortured genius—and he’d gone crazy following his muse and having to one-up two aforementioned Liverpoolian geniuses.
That story, reminds me of the story of John Henry racing the steam drill. Do you know that one? Well John Henry dies trying to race the steam drill (all he’s got is his sledgehammer) but in the end, tho he dies, he still ‘wins’.
Pet Sounds imho beats Sgt. Pepper’s in a race to the death.
But! All the ‘facts’ as presented to me by people’s older brothers with access to their parents’ vinyl collection, were, predictably wrong with the details of this legendary battle of musical ides between Wilson and McCarthy/Lennon.
Wilson wrote Pet Sounds competing with Rubber Soul.
Wtf.
The Beatles wrote Revolver in response to Pet Sounds. (Most notably, McCarthy heard ‘God Only Knows’ and wrote ‘Here, There, and Everywhere’).
Smile, the legendary lost masterpiece I had heard about (eventually cannibalized and released as Smiley, Smile in 1967)—finally saw release in 2011 as The Smile Sessions—and was conceived in response to Revolver. All right, sure. Very interesting.
But the actual interesting thing I learned yesterday concerned Rubber Soul and how that album could possibly push Wilson to create Pet Sounds. It never quite made sense to me. But Andrew Hickey enlightened me on his podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 songs which is a podcast that is beyond incredible. He does such an amazing job of telling the massive story where rock music comes from. Yesterday I heard his podcast on the song “God Only Knows” and learned something cool as hell from him about Rubber Soul. Which is my point of why I am writing all this to you right now.
Wilson had been inspired not by the version of Rubber Soul that I grew up listening to on CD, and was like, eh, that’s all right. But rather the version that was for sale in America at the time on vinyl—Dec. 6th 1965—which had scrapped my two least favorite songs, “Drive My Car” and “Nowhere Man” and replaced them with two vastly superior tracks from the UK version of Help!, the songs being, “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “It’s Only Love”. Holy shit. Rubber Soul with my two least favorite songs deleted plus two of the best tracks from Help! (UK) added in to make a truly compelling and cohesive album with no filler… not the year’s latest singles plus some other junk to pad the LP. I can see why Wilson was so inspired. He’d never heard anything like it. A pop album as perfect artistic statement, the same way novels and films had figured out how to do it before.
Well anyway. Here’s superior Rubber Soul tracklist:
Rubber Soul (US, 1965)
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Norwegian Wood
You Won’t See Me
Think For Yourself
The Word
Michelle
It’s Only Love
Girl
I’m Looking Through You
In My Life
Wait
Run for Your Life
And here is the link to a ‘playlist’ someone made of that version on Apple Music.
Of course you can punch these songs into any music service. I just prefer Apple Music because they have Neil Young and nobody is as good as Neil Young. Not Wilson, not Lennon, not McCarthy. Nobody.
📖
I thought I was going to read Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and Salem’s Lot this October because it’d fit with Halloween-time and all the raising of the dead, etc. I devised this plan in March, when my other idea was to read It at the beach. I didn’t think that would be as funny or stupid, as the previous summer when my beach read was The Old Testament and then The New Testament (not that I read the entire King James version, but rather cherry picked it a bit, for a kind of greatest hits, as I saw it). I had taken a razor blade and cut apart the Penguin edition of the Bible and glued it back together to form this new, consolidated 600 page edition for my own use. Worked out good, and I got some good practice with my near-non-existent book binding skills. I was mentioning this edited edition I had made to a friend, and he pointed me in the direction of a commercially available paperback, very close to what I had made, which if you are interested, you can find here, for used, $5 or so. Why read the Christian Bible? Why read Stephen King? Well, they are both full of entertaining make-believe stories. I’d never read The Bible (am non-religious) and I had never read Stephen King (except The Shining, Different Seasons, On Writing)—so, I dove into the King James Bible and King’s big ones—mostly so I could learn, and talk to people about them. Last year’s obsession were the Bible stories, the best and often most popular/culturally influential, you can find in G.B. Harrison’s The Bible for Students of Literature and Art (linked above). Now listen, I don’t think I’m done with religious writing (I still very much want to read Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich this year), but Stephen King—I think I’m done with Stephen King for a while. Starting in June I read 11/22/63, then It, The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Stand, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Wastelands, and Wizard and Glass. These books were all entertaining page turners but these books were all dumb as shit. Added up, that was approximately 6500 pages where I didn’t have to think about anything. My brain was on autopilot. For all the talk of great character work that King does, I often found the characters were written just-about-at surface level. None of what any of them did was much of a surprise—half because of heavy-handed foreshadowing. You could see it all coming a mile away. What you couldn’t see coming a mile away was what the supernatural shit was going to do. When King gets stuck, even slightly, he sends in some ghosts, he sends in an alien or two, he has people have psychic dreams—he has people have psychic abilities so they just KNOW. Anyway, I’m not going to read Salem’s Lot or Pet Sematary, because I got burned out on the King-isms. I’ve got to abandon my goal of reading the extended Dark Tower reading for awhile. I’m reading Sentimental Education by Flaubert, who I know I can depend on not to send along any magical bullshit that is not tied to anything truly defining for any character. See, that’s the thing with the Old Testament, it’s ALL magic, and I loved it so much because all the magic in that is tied to the struggle of one character trying to grow up and become worthy of being the main character (protagonist of the novel)—you know who I mean—God. And the New Testament was all right too.
Thanks for reading. I’ll send along some new short stories soon. Been writing them.
Buh-Bye
—Bud
Can’t wait to get to the late 60s on Hickeys podcast, which I came upon via your recommendation. I started with the Velvet Underground and was tempted to just go from there but I figured I’d start from the beginning and glad I did. A lot of the stories in the beginning are very similar but also each has its own special, eye opening history not only about the music, but about America and the world at the time.
Ive only read the Shining,, it was also pretty stupid and shallow but it made a lot more sense than the movie at least.