Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile

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Summary: Smile was nearly complete
Review: The review below is incorrect in stating that Smile was only about 75% finished. The Smile tapes are readily available as bootlegs, and they clearly show an album that was pretty much finished. The song bits had not yet been sequenced, and the Beach Boys' vocals were not completed on every song. However, the album was very near completion, and almost everything that's out in the current Smile was already in the original. In fact, it took Brian only 2 weeks to complete Smile for performance and release in 2004 -- that's how close to finished Smile was.

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Summary: A Fantastic Collection Of Articles On The Legendary Album
Review: The still-unreleased Smile album has been the object of much discussion and conjecture. Most of the written articles on Smile appear here collected in one place. This is an incredible collection giving the reader all the information that anyone could want about the album. I have heard most of the released fragments of Smile. If it were released at the intended time, it would have been an artistic triumph. However, I feel that it would not have equalled Pet Sounds. While the music is far more complex than Pet Sounds, it is not as personal or heartfelt and Smile attempts to be more convoluted, gimmicky, and "clever", especially with the addition of substances. The story of Smile is another matter entirely. It is utterly fascinating reading about the rise and fall of Brian Wilson and how Smile affects Brian, the Beach Boys, and their fans to this very day. This book is one of the most well researched book about any single album and in highly recommended reading if you are a fan of the Beach Boys or 60s rock.

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Summary: Lots of Smiles
Review: This book alone took me from a Smile pretender to a hardcore Smile machine. It provides every imaginable article and fact about Brian's legendary masterpiece Smile. I love everything in it and if you want to dive into the wonderful world of Smile, start here. Brian Rules!

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Summary: Domenic Priore's lookback at SMiLE
Review: This book has so many interesting things about the period in the Beach Boys' life from early 1966 through 1967 and beyond. What interested me about Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! is that there is proof that the Beach Boys were not as square as once believed. The music from the unreleased SMiLE album is absolutely like none other before or since. Brian Wilson's position on top of the music world after Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations was soon brought back to earth when many different things got in the way of the making of such an artistic album. Although most of the book contains news clippings from the time period documented, it worth reading and investigating even though you really don't know what happened. If you really want to discover something new about the Beach Boys, check this book out. You will not be disappointed!

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Summary: Searching for Smile
Review: This book reads like a chronological scrap-book that highlights the infamous "Smile" album that was never released in 1967. This is not a cohesive book but rather a collection of articles and insights from the era. What is interesting is tracing the history of the rise and fall of the "Smile" album from the promise of "Good Vibrations" from the "Pet Sounds" era to downfall of "Smile" itself. The true fan has already pieced their own "Smile" together and yes you can find it if you know where to look although what we have is not what Brain intended in 1967. Well, one day hopefully a book will be written on the whole "Smile" era but this one is a nice collection and will not disappoint the fans. After all isn't what's so great about the album is that it was never released? Enjoy the mystery of "Smile" and you too will be hooked. Do you dig worms?

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Summary: Fascinating browsing
Review: This is a scrapbook of Domenic Priore's obsessive collection of clippings about the "Smile" project from the sixties, most of which sheds little light on anything, but some of which does. Priore himself writes poorly, and his inside jokes fall flat, but he manages to include some essays by others which are genuinely perceptive in their attempts to reconstruct what "Smile" was to be like, and what went wrong. Also included is the famous "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God" article, which remains the first and last word on the subject.