HUUUUUGE Musical Event going down... TONIGHT in London (Brian Wilson)

[Trauma-san]

Tonight, likely the biggest possible musical event is going to happen in London.  Royal Albert Hall...

The only bigger thing I can think of would be if the Beatles reunited.  That's impossible, so this has to be the biggest.

Brian Wilson is tuning up the band and at 8p.m. Friday Night (it's what, midnight now in London?), he'll perform his legendary lost album, "SMiLE".  

6 shows, back to back, sold out... Later gigs around europe, sold out.... Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, etc. etc. are all in attendance tonight.  Brian's keyboardist is on his website giving everybody cryptic clues as to what the album sounds like, lol.  He's also informed everybody they're going on the road this summer and bringing the album back to America, yay! I'll be there.  This shit is going to be HUGE.  

A full album unreleased from 1967, at the height of the Beach Boys' popularity, thrown in a vault unfinished and unreleased.  Brian's finally finished the album, and performing it in it's entirety uninterrupted live with an 18 piece backing band.  Supposedly, the album isn't even seperated into songs, but has recurring themes and lyrical phrasings that repeat throughout the session.  The only finished song that leaked from the album was "good vibrations", and supposedly the live version is totally different.  HUGE.

[Trauma-san]

L.A. Times article this morning about "SMiLE"!

He Can't Suppress a 'Smile' Brian Wilson buried a musical masterpiece 37 years ago. His doubts now gone, the former Beach Boy has revived and reshaped the songs. By Randy Lewis, Times Staff Writer There's no surf, no sand, no little deuce coupes and only a couple of California girls in sight of the North Hollywood recording studio. Inside, the 61-year-old architect of "Good Vibrations," "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Fun, Fun, Fun" sits stoically at his keyboard, surrounded by a small army of musicians and staring into one of two video monitors. Song lyrics crawl across the screens as the other performers, most of whom weren't born when Brian Wilson's songs topped the charts four decades ago, serve up the densely layered vocal harmonies and rainbow of instrumental colors that his compositions require. Wilson frequently looks away from the monitors and occasionally switches them off, but likes them nearby as a safety net. Who can blame him? The songs he's working on aren't the familiar rock hits he created with the Beach Boys, those relentlessly sunny tunes that painted a fantasy of Southern California life as an endless summer of perfect waves, hot rods and blond beauties. Instead, he's putting the finishing touches on a work he dreamed up 38 years ago, at the height of his creative rivalry with the Beatles. After years of wrestling with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, after half a lifetime spent trying to forget his fabled lost masterwork, Wilson can smile again. "This feels so good," he says to a reporter when the session is over. "So good I can't believe it." Tonight, he'll unveil "Smile" at a concert in England, where fans have long accorded him the heroic status Americans reserved for the Beatles. Paul McCartney is expected to join him on stage during at least one of six sold-out shows at London's Royal Festival Hall. Over the next three weeks, Wilson will give 16 "Smile" concerts in Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. He plans a U.S. tour in the fall to coincide with the CD release of the newly recorded work. To tens of thousands of pop fans, Wilson's completion of "Smile" is no less exhilarating than the discovery of a completed manuscript for Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony would be to classical music scholars. "I can hardly wait," says Rick Rubin, a producer who has worked with acts ranging from Johnny Cash and Tom Petty to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys. Wilson, his once golden hair now streaked with gray but still thick and full, has been touring regularly since 1998, something many pop fans never thought they'd see given his history of emotional instability. Now they'll get the music that most never dreamed they would hear. - The Beatles' Rivals Wilson was 24 when he went to work on the album he conceived as "a teenage symphony to God." Originally to be called "Dumb Angel" to reflect its themes of humor and spirituality, it was retitled "Smile." It was 1966, and a string of more than two dozen hit singles and 10 hit albums had made the Beach Boys, a band from Hawthorne, the most popular American group and the Beatles' chief rivals atop the sales charts. Pop music was going through a transformation in which the album was supplanting the three-minute single as the dominant format. Wilson has long said he felt a sense of artistic competitiveness with the Fab Four. Each group has acknowledged the influence of the other. The Beatles' 1965 album "Rubber Soul" inspired Wilson to move beyond the teen simplicity of the Beach Boys' early work to the musical maturity and emotional expressiveness of 1966's "Pet Sounds." The ambitions of "Pet Sounds" helped spur the Beatles to new heights in their next album, "Revolver." Wilson was determined to top his rivals again with "Smile." He promised it would be as much of a progression over "Pet Sounds" as that was over its predecessor, "Beach Boys Party!" "Smile" was expected at the end of 1966 — while the Beatles were working on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Immediately after "Pet Sounds," Wilson created the band's most intricately crafted recording, "Good Vibrations," a song intended for "Smile." It became the Beach Boys' biggest hit up to that time, proof that there was a market for Wilson's increasingly sophisticated music. Wilson's further evolution with "Smile" stemmed from his collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, a Mississippi-born singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and producer who moved to Southern California in the 1950s. Parks brought a strong literary sensibility to the lyrics he wrote for "Smile," which he and Wilson envisioned as a work rooted in American history, culture and musical vernacular. It was to contain doses of comic-book humor reflecting the whimsicality of the dawning psychedelic age. (Jimi Hendrix once described what he'd heard of "Smile" as the music of "a psychedelic barbershop quartet.") But Parks' impressionistic lyrics led to dissension among the Beach Boys. Mike Love, the band's front man during concerts, was particularly sensitive to pleasing fans and found Parks' lyrics obscure. Other band members worried that "Smile's" musical sophistication wouldn't translate into radio hits. By then, Wilson had left behind the simple three-chord pop song in favor of careening melodies, unconventional chord progressions and shifting sonic textures. Complicating the picture, the group was attempting to start its own label, Brother Records. As part of that move, the band sued Capitol Records. Capitol printed nearly half a million "Smile" album covers, anticipating the arrival of a master tape in fall 1966. But Wilson, working in the studio while the other Beach Boys were on tour, missed deadline after deadline as he continued polishing his work. Lack of support from his band mates was a factor in the delay. But he also was feeling stress from the lawsuit and the weight of his responsibility for ensuring the livelihood of the ever-expanding Beach Boys family — on top of an ongoing struggle with his domineering, abusive and jealous father, Murry. The final blow came in June 1967, with the release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Wilson had been bested by his rivals, and he scrapped "Smile." The band later came out with a watered-down version called "Smiley Smile," a faint echo of Wilson's original vision. - Myth Versus Fact The fate of "Smile" has become legend. While most of the world never heard the album, several influential musicians and journalists were allowed into some of the recording sessions in late 1966 and early 1967. The idea that rock music might be considered art rather than merely entertainment was in its infancy. Yet no less an authority than Leonard Bernstein expressed admiration for the sophistication of "Surf's Up," one of "Smile's" cornerstone tracks, played for him as part of a CBS News documentary about a new generation of musicians. Unlike the guessing game often played with legendary rockers who died prematurely — what music might Hendrix, Buddy Holly or Jim Morrison have made had they lived longer? — the fantasizing over "Smile" is based on more than wishful thinking. Most of the album's songs had been recorded by the time Wilson abandoned the project. For years they lay dormant; reel upon reel of tape waiting to be stitched together and brought to life by their creator. Eventually, tantalizing bits and pieces surfaced, officially and unofficially. Books and countless articles have been written about Wilson's masterwork, and the theorizing has raged on via the Internet. One enterprising group in Europe came up with "Project Smile," a CD-ROM containing all the existing bits and pieces of the work, circulated for free among users worldwide. That do-it-yourself approach had been the closest possibility to a completed version, because Wilson long refused to even discuss it. "Until about three years ago, you couldn't even mention 'Heroes and Villains' to Brian," Wilson biographer David Leaf said, alluding to another key song from "Smile." Leaf is making a film documentary about the completion of "Smile." But Wilson's attitude changed after the enthusiastic fan response to his performance of "Heroes and Villains" at a 2001 all-star tribute to his music in New York. He has not simply dusted off songs intended for "Smile." He has reunited with lyricist Parks to structure the disparate pieces into a fully developed three-movement pop suite and craft a few new lyrics and musical links. - Out of the Darkness Wilson says he was able to revisit perhaps the darkest chapter of his past because "I have emotional security." He gets it from his wife of nine years, Melinda, the three children they've adopted, a team of doctors from UCLA that has diagnosed and helped him manage his depression, and a sympathetic group of musicians whose goal is to aid Wilson in realizing his musical vision. After failing to deliver "Smile," the Beach Boys continued to produce acclaimed albums, but ceased to be a commercial force in pop music. Wilson retreated from the world, and his musical output slowed to a trickle. Melinda Wilson believes that he was in the grip of a depression that went undiagnosed and untreated. "Like many people with depression who don't get proper treatment, he tried to medicate himself with drugs," she says. His first wife, Marilyn, brought in Hollywood psychologist Eugene Landy to help Wilson in the 1970s. Landy lived 24 hours a day with Wilson, recommended medication (provided by one of Landy's associates who was an M.D.) and interceded in the Beach Boys artistic and business decisions. The band members and Wilson's relatives grew alarmed when Wilson rewrote his will to make Landy the main beneficiary. They filed suit against Landy, contending that the psychologist had taken over Wilson's life. In 1991, a judge put the songwriter's affairs under the control of a court-appointed conservator. Melinda describes her husband's path back to "Smile" as consisting of many "baby steps." It started with his resumption of concert appearances in 1998, followed by a more ambitious tour in 2000 in which he and his new band performed "Pet Sounds" in its entirety. Now, he says, at least privately to Melinda, the album he had formerly written off as "a mistake" is "the best work I've ever done." It's not intended as a reconstruction of the album the world should have heard 37 years ago. "It's the way I feel about the music now," Wilson says. And how does he feel about it now? "I think it's perfect." Wilson talks about his music haltingly, at times giving clipped responses of "yes," "no" or "I can't answer that question;" at others offering simplistic-sounding explanations. (Asked how he and Parks composed "Wonderful," a "Smile" song that dazzles musicologists because it abandons the conventional notion of key signature, he says: "We did it through concentration.") Such comments reflect his inherent shyness, Melinda says. But the impression that develops over the course of two interviews is that what he feels about his music is the music and that verbal explanations are, for Wilson, redundant. Wilson doesn't appear concerned, nor does anyone in his entourage, that after 3 1/2decades of analysis and debate, rumor and speculation, the myth will overshadow the music. "It's so far beyond what I would have imagined it could be," guitarist Jeffrey Foskett says after a complete run-through of "Smile" at rehearsal. "The way I see it is that the Beach Boys' first 10 albums made them stars, 'Pet Sounds' made them great, and 'Smile' made Brian Wilson a legend. I just hope that in completing this, it gives him peace and lets him put this behind him after all these years." In one of "Pet Sounds' " directly autobiographical songs, Wilson sang, "I guess I just wasn't made for these times." Now, he says, "I think the time is right."

[I`m Wayne Brady bitch!]

Dooope ! Sounds like a incredible album , when does it drop ?

[Trauma-san]

I believe they're releasing it in November, not sure yet if it'll be a live album or a studio recording.  The concert just ended an hour ago, the websites are going nuts over it.  The string section even wore red fire hats during the 'fire' section of the album, which was something Brian famously made them do in his insanity while recording the original album.

[Trauma-san]

First Reviews from the show, comparing Brian to Bach!


Brian Wilson, Royal Festival Hall, London
After years of delays and crisis, Wilson finally smiles
By Keith Shadwick
21 February 2004


Since it was announced last summer in the wake of Brian Wilson's triumphant staging of his masterpiece, the Beach Boys' 1966 Pet Sounds album, this event has been anticipated like no other in rock. For not only is this the first night of this particular event, this is the first time anywhere that this music has been played complete in public.

Smile became the great casualty of early 1967, much like Wilson himself, whose failure to finish the follow-up album to Pet Sounds that winter (the record company had even produced the record sleeves in readiness for release) led to a personal and creative crisis that took him decades to overcome.

When you consider that this album had not only "Good Vibrations", "Heroes and Villains" (in a much more elaborate version to that eventually released as a single), "Wind Chimes" and "Vegetables" on it, but also "Cabinessence" and "Surf's Up", then you begin to realise just what a disaster it was that the original concept slipped from Wilson's control.

But this evening at the Royal Festival Hall he was here to put it right. Wilson had even been back in touch with the lyricist Van Dyke Parks, his collaborator on the original album project, in an effort to tidy up the loose ends and keep the integrity of the original vision. So things boded well.

Even before a note had been played, you were aware that this was a special evening. A few moments of darkness and then Brian Wilson and the band were revealed, gathered in a semi-circle on stage. A few hits, including "Good Timin' " and "In My Room", followed in acoustic fashion, then the full show was launched.

Wilson and his nine-piece band delivered a first-half set that gave exact replicas of a series of Beach Boys' classics, from "Catch A Wave" to "God Only Knows". What impressed most was the perfection with which each song was delivered. Wilson even had a small string section on stage for a couple of numbers.

Smile took up the entire second half of the concert. It was an overwhelming performance because all the disparate pieces of this amazing work that people had known and treasured, scattered as they were across so much of the Beach Boys' output, fitted together in a perfect mosaic.

This was a huge panorama that can only be compared to Bach in the way the intricacies interwove in wondrous counterpoint, spinning a web that embraced an entire vision. There were three suites of music, with the most touching part arriving when "Surf's Up" was revealed to be preceded by "Child is Father of the Man", anticipating its miraculous recapitulation at the song's end.

Smile finished with "Good Vibrations" and a standing ovation. They came back for encores, but these were only collective shouts of exultation at what the musicians had pulled off.

This series of concerts runs until 27 February, but don't bother trying to book - they were sold out months ago. But maybe the difficulties preventing the issue of the original recordings, with all its flaws, will be overcome and we'll have a real embarrassment of riches on our hands in 2004. Only 37 years late. Worth the wait? How can you even ask ...

[Trauma-san]

And another one, so far all good.  Must have been a fucking awesome concert, wish I was there.


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37 years on, fans finally hear lost work by master of pop

Richard Williams
Saturday February 21, 2004
The Guardian

Pop music's great lost masterpiece was revealed in all its eccentric splendour in London last night when Brian Wilson, the 61-year-old founder of the Beach Boys, presented the world premiere of Smile, a 1967 project which was intended to top the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band but was abandoned in a welter of psychotropic drugs, warring egos and shattered confidence.
Multiple ovations were the reward for a pristine performance of the 45-minute song cycle by Wilson and his 18 musicians, who reproduced the groundbreaking complexity and sophistication of a work inspired by the friendly but intense transatlantic rivalry between the Beach Boys and the Beatles at a time when pop music was evolving at an unprecedented rate.

Wilson spent hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in a Hollywood recording studio assembling Smile. To the outside world, the 24-year-old Californian was a pop genius at the top of his form: a year earlier he had created Pet Sounds, an album that still appears at the top of most all-time-greatest polls, and Good Vibrations, an epic single which sold millions around the world.

The sudden collapse of the Smile project mirrored Wilson's own disintegration. At what appeared to be the zenith of the Beach Boys' popularity, he entered a period of withdrawal lasting 30 years, during which he was in and out of psychotherapy and made only infrequent appearances on the concert stage and in the recording studio.

Two years ago, however, he returned to action at the head of a band of younger musicians devoted to recreating the most difficult and adventurous of his compositions. When he arrived in London two years ago to perform Pet Sounds in its entirety, Wilson received standing ovations suffused with a degree of affection few performers can have experienced.

His audiences fully understood not just the fundamental nature of his contribution to the evolution of pop music, but the troubled nature of his personal life.

Poignant


That warmth was reproduced last night at the first of five eagerly awaited concerts at the Festival Hall. Once again Wilson was to be found sitting at an electric piano whose keys he barely brushed, but his fans were neither shocked nor deterred by the diminished vocal powers of a man who once played a leading role in pop's greatest harmony group. In his grainy, sometimes quavering voice, his listeners could hear a poignant reflection of everything that has happened to him in the four decades since he brought a mythical California to life with songs such as I Get Around, California Girls and Fun Fun Fun.

Last night, however, was about much more than respectful nostalgia. Smile, which lay in ruins for 37 years, was to be reassembled and presented in something as close as possible to its planned form.

With Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, Wilson had demonstrated his increasing mastery of recording techniques, exploiting editing and overdubbing facilities to create the impression of vast instrumental and vocal resources. Obsessed by his discoveries, and tired of travelling with the band, he immersed himself in laying the foundations of his masterpiece.

The touchingly romantic lyrics of Pet Sounds had been produced by Tony Asher, a Hollywood advertising copywriter; for his new project, Wilson turned to Van Dyke Parks, a 22-year-old prodigy who took his tunes and added words of great poetic resonance but little connection with anything that had previously emerged from the mouths of the Beach Boys. A song called Surf's Up, for example, began: "A diamond necklace played the pawn / Hand in hand some drummed along / To a handsome man and baton."

When Wilson appeared on a national TV show and sang Surf's Up alone at the piano, Leonard Bernstein was moved to describe it as "beautiful even in its obscurity".

But when the rest of the Beach Boys returned from their latest foreign tour, not all of them were delighted by what they found. Love, Wilson's cousin and the group's lead singer, was particularly disconcerted, aggressively inviting Parks to elucidate some of the lines he was going to sing. Against the wishes of other members of the group, Love's opinion prevailed. Smile was summarily abandoned, its demise hastened when Wilson felt that by recording a piece called Fire he had precipitated a rash of conflagrations in the vicinity of the studio.

Although he had sent his record company a list of the tracks he intended to include on Smile, and although they printed almost half a million sleeves, he never got as far as assembling a final version. As the legend grew, so bootleggers stepped into the breach, working with tapes that had found their way out of the studio archives and attempting to create something faithful to Wilson's original conception.

After Parks had received an ovation just for taking his seat in the stalls, last night's concert began with an imaginative recreation of the mood of the Beach Boys' Party album, an informal singalong with the musicians grouped around Wilson, who led them through lovely versions of In My Room and Please Let Me Wonder, accompanied by acoustic guitars and bongos, before moving into the more elaborate treatments of California Girls, Dance Dance Dance, Don't Worry Baby, Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows and many others.

The second half was devoted to a 45-minute arrangement of Smile, divided into three movements in which even the familiar sections were made to seem new. The a cappella Our Prayer provided a lustrous prelude, but it was the variety of instrumental texture that constantly took the ear. Banjos, calliopes, Swanee whistles, tack pianos, fruity trombones, cackling trumpets and a Polynesian ukelele made it seem like the grandest of American symphonies, and Wilson the natural heir to Charles Ives.

The composer sat impassively as his humour came to the fore, notably when the musicians made barnyard noises and forsook instruments for toys. But great waves of harmonies or a sudden burst of Palm Court strings would send the music charging off in another direction, each one seemingly more diverting than the last. The string and horn players donned firemen's hats for Fire, just as Wilson had invited their predecessors to do in 1967, and the whole piece ended in triumph with the churning chorale, juddering cellos and whooshing theremin of Good Vibrations, which can never in its long life have been engulfed in a more ecstatic reception.




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[Trauma-san]

NME.com

"Brian Wilson performs 'lost' beach boys album at AMAZING London gig"

ALL SMILES IN LONDON




BEACH BOYS star BRIAN WILSON has played the 'lost' album 'SMILE' for the first time ever in LONDON.

The singer played the first night of a residency at the London Royal Festival Hall this evening (February 20), the first dates on a tour which will visit other cities throughout the UK this month.

The gig itself was split into two sections. The first opened with a fifteen minute acoustic set, followed by a ‘Greatest Hits’ show. During this, Wilson, backed by an 18-piece band, performed a number of songs from ’Pet Sounds’, including ’God Only Knows’ and ’Wouldn’t It Be Nice’.

After a short interval Wilson then returned to the stage where ’Smile’ was played for the first time in full.

The concept album was originally intended for release in 1967, around the same time The Beatles put out 'Sgt Pepper'. However, Wilson had a breakdown and the album was never finished, giving it almost mythical status amongst fans.

Throughout the performance Wilson appeared in good form, leading the band through songs like ’Heroes And Villains’ and ’Vegetables’, that saw each member of the group playing multiple instruments in the same song, while making use of more unconventional items such as hammers and saws. The set ended with a storming run-through ’Good Vibrations’

[Trauma-san]

Just posting these up in case somebody's interested, I love this stuff!

London Telegraph, another great review

Former Beach Boy's missing masterpiece is worth the 40-year wait, writes Joe Muggs

 
 
Very rarely has the anticipation for a show been as tense as for this series of concerts by the former Beach Boy Brian Wilson. Last year's shows - based around the legendary Pet Sounds album - were a triumph, especially given the reports that he was a broken man, unable to leave his own home let alone perform in packed concert halls.

Yet still there were no guarantees of his mental health. Wilson has been a virtual recluse for decades and it is widely held that the "Great Lost Album" Smile - which he performed last night for the first time - was instrumental in his breakdown.

Smile (Dumb Angel), to give it its full title, was conceived by Wilson in late 1966 as "a teenage symphony to God". Hyped up by the success of the Pet Sounds album and the Good Vibrations single, and by the knowledge that the Beatles were working on Sergeant Pepper, Wilson set out to write the ultimate pop record.

Working with the enigmatic lyricist Van Dyke Parks, he intended to create a document of the American soul through the 20th century.

Inevitably, the project ran into problems. The initial song-writing sessions were conducted with all the participants lying on the floor, under the influence of $2,000 of Afghani hashish which Wilson hoped would inspire the process, as well as various types of psychedelics and prescription amphetamines.

The atmosphere was not helped by the conflicted image of the Beach Boys: the rock establishment simultaneously respected them for their recent output and reviled them as "squares" for their squeaky clean past. This combination of drugs, paranoia and acclaim led Wilson's thought process to become increasingly fragmented, bizarre and obsessive.

Amid this paranoia and competition, the hugely ambitious sessions broke down - as did Wilson - and the song-cycle has never seen the light of day except in fragments on subsequent, inferior, albums, or as bootlegs of varying quality. Last night was the first time the material has been fully exposed.

Wilson cut a bizarre figure when the curtain came up. Surrounded by younger, tanned, hipper musicians, he looked almost preternaturally white and still - and slightly confused. As the first few acoustic renditions of early Beach Boys classics went by, though, it became clear that his sweet, vulnerable voice is still intact, and that he still has a feeling for and pride in his formidable works.

The first half of the show consisted of non-Smile material. Though Wilson's voice may be somewhat cracked - and his memory for lyrics assisted by prompter screens - he came visibly more to life with each classic, particularly California Girls and a heart-breaking God Only Knows.

Nothing, though, could prepare us for the second half. From the opening of Heroes and Villains, Wilson was a transformed man. Though still reading his lyrics, he sat taller, sang louder and waved his arms about to conduct the band. The atmosphere was truly electric, and the music echoed everything from Philip Glass to Kurt Weill to Chuck Berry.

It's nigh impossible to pick out songs, as it was all a glorious, tangled symphony of celebration and sadness - though the comical Vegetables and a transcendent Good Vibrations were incredible.

All right, Wilson did seem a man apart from the stage around him, but the glory of late Beach Boys was always the contrast between the fragility of his voice and his songs and arrangements.

Last night we witnessed that and so, so much more. Leonard Bernstein said Brian Wilson was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century: he was not wrong.

[I`m Wayne Brady bitch!]

This sounds like some genius shit , cant wait for the record ! Live or not !

[CharlieBrown]

Just got off the phone with my parents and they managed to get tickets and went and saw it on the opening night, said it was amazing. Does anyone know if a bootleg of the concert has hit the net yet or when someone sees a copy of it on a bootleg site/catalog PLEASE TELL ME. I can't wait until November .

[Trauma-san]

As soon as I see one, I'll let you know.  I'm checking about every couple hours, lol.  

[Trauma-san]

I downloaded the album, pretty damn good, but it's a horrible quality recording from the audience that is muddled and hard to hear.  It's crazy, he'll do a song and the crowd goes nuts applauding and the next song just starts at the end of the first song, so they don't even stop, they just keep playing music for 45 minutes.

[Trauma-san]

Now, he's singing this awesome song about 'the barnyard' with the background singers baying and neighing like sheep, lol.

[CharlieBrown]

Trauma can you put up the tracklisting or what the file is called with it all on as all i've been able to find is one of the bootlegs thats been going round for years. Cheers if you do.

[Trauma-san]

Sure.  It starts out with "Prayer" which is an acapella song without lyrics. Figure that one out.

The harmonies are great, so the crowd gives a rousing ovation, and then Brian just jams into "Heroes and Villians", but it's arranged differently than before.  It starts off with the "dit diddy, dit diddy, dit diddy How I love my girl!" part from the bootlegs, and then goes into 1,2,3,4! "I've been in this town so long...." from the released version of H&V.  From there, they play around with different themes of it and stretch the song into about a 6 minute song.  

Next track is "Do you like worms?", but with more lyrics over the timpani, more melodies, and much more of the "bicycle rider" theme over the top of the song.  You'll know what I'm talking about if you have the boot.

It then goes into "Baryard" with Brian singing "Out in the barnyard the chickens  do their number" and going on with crazy lyrics like that, while the guys in the background act like sheep and shit.  

It immediately switches into "Old Master Painter/You are my sunshine" almost exactly like the original recording.  Sounds really depressing, and is really short like the bootleg.

The strings glide down straight into "Cabinessence" almost exactly as the original bootlegs.  

Supposedly what this section is all supposed to be about, or one rumour I've heard is... the prayer at the beginning is just to show the album is spiritual.... the first song, "Heroes and Villians" is about his family (fictional)... He's talking about this girl he met, Margarita, he married her, they had kids (heroes and villians).  She dies, and he goes on living for the kids.  At the end of that song, they flash back in time, and "do you like worms" is about life before the girl, Barnyard & Cabinessence are about his life on the farm with her, etc. and "Old Master Painter" is her funeral.

They stop for about 10 seconds, applause, then break into "Wonderful" which sounds... "Wonderful".  Damn, the harmonies and shit are just beautiful, so awesome, like the original version, but watch out, because there's about 10 versions out there.    At the end, it basically buts right up against "Look".  "Look" is the one that sounds like Good Vibrations, and has the "duh duh duh duh DUH, duh duh duh...." thing from Good Vibrations in it played staccato on the harpsichord.  Look stops about half way through, where they fit in the "Child is the father of the MANnnnnnn" loop from the song of the same name.  This is probably the best part of the album.  At the end of "Look"... the bass starts throbbing in, and the complete "Child is the father of the man" harmonies break in, pretty awesome shit.  At the end of that, It breaks straight into "Surf's Up!" with orchestra.  The end of "Surf's Up" has "Child is the father of the man" butted up to the end of it, also... which sounds amazing.  "I heard the word, a children's song... "A CHILLLLDRENNNNS SONNNNNNGGGGGG..... THE CHILD, THE CHILD, THE CHILD IS THE FATHER OF THE MANNNNNN"  Beautiful.  

Stops here for another 10 seconds or so, rousing applause, and then he breaks into the mythical "elements" section.  This was the biggest mystery around SMiLE.  It starts off with "I'm in Great Shape", with vocals (which were never on any boots)... breaks into "I wanna be around Friday Night", which explains why the songs are often called the same thing.  This turns into "Woodshop" where Brian pulls out an electric drill, and the band puts down their instruments and plays hammers and wood and saws and shit.  Pretty wild.  The strings keep playing, and the Brian breaks into "Vega-tables" which sounds pretty similar to the bootleg versions, with both of the outros played simultaneously... fits perfectly.  The end of "Vega-tables" breaks straight into "Holidays", with lyrics.  Segues smoothly into "Wind Chimes", pretty much like the unreleased SMiLE version.  This ends with all the fury and splendor which is "Ms. O'leary's cow" followed by "FIRE".  The orchestra put on red firemen's hats for this part like they did in 1967 to record it.  "FIRE" fucking THROBS, it sounds like you're in the middle of hell, and the band played this part the loudest of the entire album.  There are vocals to it, but they're just "doo doo AHH AHH's" and stuff over the top in harmony.  "FIRE" ends with the "Water-water-wata-water-water" chant from "I love to say Da-Da", with Brian going "Is it hot as hell in here, or is it me? It really is a mystery... if I die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take my misery..." and other lyrics... and he goes "I wish I was really at the BEACH" and when he says "Beach" the whole mood changes to a bright little upbeat song, the part from "I love to say Da Da" before the wah wah part.  Then it breaks into the "Wa Wa" with the backup band singing "Blue Hawaii" over the back of it.  More lyrics about water.  Turns into a nice little "Down in Blue Hawaii... so far away from Blue Hawaii... I don't know what I'd do if you should die..." pretty beautiful stuff.  Builds up at the end, to a strings suite, With ascending "AHHHH's" like on Prayer, which are interupted by Brian going "AHHHH" and running straight into "GOOD VIBRATIONS", with unreleased vocals from an early version than that released.  There's also a slow section with the band going "dum, de dum, dum, de dum... " The band goes nuts and rocks out the end of the album, ending with ascending "AHHHHH'... AHHHHH HHH AHHHHH" harmonies to close out the album.  

There's no real tracklisting because it's all jsut one big file, and the album can only kind of be divided up into 3 suites, since there's no real 'songs' it's all a fluid movement between themes.