SMiLiNG at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago

As the applause sustained throughout the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, I looked at the people around me. I saw some misty eyes, and a few people with tears rolling down their cheeks. Brian Wilson and his excellent band had completed their performance of SMiLE. While I wasn't in tears, seeing the work done live was unlike anything I had ever seen, or, more importantly, anything I've ever heard. The audience was divided, roughly 50-50, into those who were alive when Wilson first began working on SMiLE and those who are relatively young enough to still belong to an attractive demographic for advertisers. There was a collective wonder that enveloped the theatre as the music progressed.

Amongst my immediate circle of friends, I am the biggest Beach Boys fan. I own all of their albums, and plunked down for a SMiLE bootleg. That bootleg, one of what – 20,000 different attempts to bring it together? – put me in the camp that it was the great lost album that should stay lost. It sounded like a handful of great songs swimming in an unfocused morass of self-indulgence. Moreover -- damn, it was creepy and depressing.

Mind you, that wasn't going to stop me from picking up a copy of the ‘official' release when it came out on the last Tuesday in September. I threw it on my computer in the office. It was immediately apparent that this was a different animal than my bootleg. I wasn't surprised by how much better it sounded, so much as how it flowed differently, a major improvement. Moreover, by making the final song "Good Vibrations" (most boots finish with "And When I Die"), the album's cycle ends on a much higher note (though I wasn't sold on this new version of the classic – a hard one to do again, I'm sure we'd all agree).

Due to a busy schedule, I only got to throw it on one more time. And I was having a hard time getting a handle on it. The sound is lovely, yet I couldn't wrap my head on what it was doing. It has some symphonic elements, and I don't just mean that it has strings. There are movements and repeating themes. Yet there isn't a solid linear construction. This is a free ranging work that has, at its center, the musical genius of Brian Wilson. There was a level where it hit me immediately as a great piece of music, but I couldn't warm fully to the piece. What the hell was it all about?

Well, I can't say that seeing it performed last night unlocked the key to the mystery. Now, I've read enough to know that each of the three primary movements of SMiLE has a specific thrust. This, however, is then filtered through Van Dyke Parks's lovely yet oft-obtuse lyrics. So SMiLE is, to a large degree, the antithesis of Pet Sounds, which is emotionally direct.

Yet the astonishing musical scope of SMiLE is fitting, as it attempts to take on themes about America and people and...vegetables. Sitting in the theatre, I had no distractions and could let the music envelope me. As I stated earlier, there is nothing like it that I'm aware of. It's disjointed, though not in the sense of Stravinsky or John Zorn. Yet it flows in a manner that has its own internal logic. It is beguiling and, as with anything Brian Wilson, it radiates loving feelings.

I don't know if it's the best pop album ever made, and there will be a substantial number of people making that claim between now and the end of the year. I do know that it's the most ambitious pop album ever made (finally!). I know that I will be listening to it for years on end, discovering new things. Furthermore, I hold out hope that musicians throughout the world will be doing the same, using it for inspiration, as this album sets the bar so high, where it should be.

Finally, one aside. This was my first time seeing Brian Wilson on stage. It was only four or five years ago, when he first got up on the stage with The Wondermints, Jeffrey Foskett and all that other top notch talent. You remember those reports – Wilson looking tentative and uncomfortable, barely singing, acting more like a conductor than the star.

Well, those days are over. No, Brian Wilson will not be subbing for Dr. Phil anytime soon. But the man I saw on stage last night was having a blast. He was joking with the audience, jocular and in about as much control as anyone who went through what he's been through could possibly be. It was delightful and moving to see that. To think that 37 years down the road, the scuttled work that was at the center of his descent into depression and paranoia has been transformed into not just a musical triumph but a victory over personal demons – I must admit, just trying to write about it now chokes me up. Bless everyone involved in finally making SMiLE a reality, and especially Brian Wilson.

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