Summary: <p>Shrunken Head Lounge Surf Radio Show Running Time: 29 minutes 30 seconds</p> <p><strong>Beach Boys Smile Part 1</strong></p> <p>The genesis of <i>Smile</i> lay during the recording of <i>Pet Sounds</i>. On February 17, 1966, during the sessions for <i>Pet Sounds</i>, Brian Wilson started work on a new single, "<a title="Good Vibrations" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Vibrations">Good Vibrations</a>", the most expensive — reputed to have cost more than $50,000 — and complex pop recording of the time. "Good Vibrations" was created by an unprecedented recording technique: nearly 30 minutes of seemingly unrelated musical sections were recorded, then spliced together and reduced into a three-minute pop song. Many within the Beach Boys' camp were skeptical, but the song quickly became the band's biggest hit yet, which went to #1 in both <a title="United Kingdom" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom">Britain</a> and the <a class="mw-redirect" title="USA" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA">USA</a>. <i>Smile</i> was intended to be an entire album produced in the same fashion.</p> <p>In an October 1966 interview, Brian Wilson quipped that the Beach Boys' next project was "a teenage <a title="Symphony" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony">symphony</a> to God". His plan was to take his work on <i>Pet Sounds</i> to a new level, with an album-length suite of specially-written songs which were both thematically and musically linked, and would be recorded using the unusual sounds and innovative production techniques which had made their recent hit "<a title="Good Vibrations" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Vibrations">Good Vibrations</a>" so successful.</p> <p><img border="0" hspace="0" align="baseline" src="http://theshrunkenheadlounge.com/images/album_covers/beach_boys-smile_lg.jpg"></p>
