Podcasts about Skrillex

Wreckno goes Back To Back! Willy talks with them about the Fantasy Tour, pop star inspiration, having their first hit during covid, working with GRiZ, queer representation in EDM, the neverending party, dads who listen to Skrillex, living in Detroit, fear of deadlines, finding yourself on stage & more!    Back To Back is sponsored by The Cult Creatives: info@thecultcreatives.com http://thecultcreatives.com/about   Join our Discord: http://discord.io/backtobackpod Willy Joy: http://linktr.ee/willyjoy Wreckno: https://www.wreckno.com     PROTECT REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: https://abortionfunds.org/funds/ https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ https://www.sistersong.net/

Vended is an metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. We talk about Griffin's love for Green Day, hearing Skrillex in the 1st grade, playing along to Slipknot songs & much more! SPONSORS: Click this link to purchase from Sweetwater & help support the podcast: imp.i114863.net/rnrmVB VENDED is: Griffin Taylor, Cole Espeland, Simon Crahan, Jeremiah Pugh & Connor Grodzicki TIME CODES: 00:00 - Intro 00:51 - Band Name & Iowa 05:44 - Formation & Covering Nirvana 11:05 - AC/DC, Guns N' Roses & Metal Influence 17:46 - Finding Your Sound 24:20 - Friendship 33:23 - 1st Show & The Pandemic 37:45 - Recording Process of Ded to Me 43:02 - Playing Injured 50:03 - Destroying Your Body At Shows 55:31 - Future of Vended 59:01 - Writing Process  

Grammy Award-winning DJ & music producer Diplo drops by to talk about how he creates his sets, what it's like to play with DJ Diesel, and reveal the origin of his professional alias. The Big Fella's Dallas Cowboys were victorious over the Bears, so Spice pays up and inquires about another friendly wager. Shaq shares his thoughts on the Nets' recent coaching changes and Donovan Mitchell's hot start to the season.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Powertools with mixed from Richard Vission and SaberFollow us on our socials@richardvission@iamdjsaber@SiriusXM@GlobalizationXM@wearepowertoolsRichard Vission TracklistVitor Vintor and Sudden Heat - The HookRichard Vission x Luciana x Christo - Unique (Acapella)Pump It Up (Acapella)Chris Lorenzo feat. Cobrah - Mami (AC Slator Remix)Cassim - Yes Man (Richard Vission Edit)Lekota - I Used To Do (Richard Vission Edit)Honey & Badger - Phone CallTom Enzy, Nfasis, DJ Human Stars - Lento (Richard Vission Edit)Richard Vission and Brian Matrix - BailaJamie XX - Kill Dem (Richard Vission Edit)Dino Sauce - Wanda's ThemeCID - Deep In Your HeartFlash (Acapella)Wuki - The EdgeDombresky and Noizu - Save Our Souls (Richard Vission Edit)3 AM (Acapella)Mark Knight and Crusy - Daddy ShhhUltra Nate - Free (Acapella)Jamie Jones - My Paradise (Vintage Culture Remix)Michael Jackson - Thriller (Eric Prydz remix)Steff Da Campo - SLVR - PapasitoRichard Vission x Luciana x Christo - UniqueMasters At Work - Can't Get No Sleep (Richard Vission Re-work)Saber Tracklist Nitti Gritti & Marten Horger - Want you Afrojack & Steve Aoki feat. Miss Palmer - No Beef (DLMT Remix) Marten Horger - Take Me High (SABER 'love sensation' Edit) Eve - Tambourine (SABER x Mister Gray Remix) Moska - Legend YZY - Disturb (SABER 'on my mind' Edit) Lion & Cosmo - Man Dem Know JOYRYDE - On Fire SAYMYNAME, Nitti Gritti, SAYMYNITTI - Bing Bong DJ Snake - Trust Nobody (SABER Remix) SABER & Noise Cans - Fiyah Julian Jordan, Siks - Juice Julian Jordan - Vibe TV Noise - Astral The Chainsmokers - High (SABER & Fraze Remix) Kura & Vedenzo - In My House (SABER 'Summertime Sadness' Edit) DNF - I'm back (SABER Hyped Edit) Dirty Julian Jordan - Big bad bass (SABER 'Right now' Edit) Levex vs Skrillex & J Balvin - In Da Ghetto x about this (SABER Bootleg) Jauz & Habstrakt vs Chuck Roberts - Like Before x My house (SABER Edit) 

Salomon, a son to missionary parents who opened his eyes to the world, is a self-taught filmmaker whose international background–––a childhood spent in Johannesburg––– , Dubai, and Sydney–––figures strongly in his distinctive, visceral yet meditative work. His textural and experimental style tries to find new ways of exploring visual and narrative storytelling - always with a human story at its core. His work has garnered recognition across the world, with inclusion in both the Saatchi & Saatchi and 1.4 New Directors Showcases, two Golds and three Silvers at the YDAs, a Gold Cannes Lion, multiple AICP wins with work featured at the MOMA, shortlists for Music Video of the Year at Shots, Best Alternative Video and Best New Director at the UKMVA's - and a growing list of awards from the industry including the British Arrows, Cannes D&AD. These honors are all the more extraordinary for a young director ––– , who is just a couple of years into his commercial film career. His body of work includes short films like “Rocket Wars,” which documents the stunning aerial fireworks battle of a Greek village, as well as commercials for Puma, Adidas, Top Boy, S7, Valvoline etc, and music videos for artists like Justin Bieber, Giveon, Little Simz, Skrillex, Don Toliver, Prince, The Weeknd, Daughter, Bearcubs and Young Fathers. Salomon currently lives in New York City with his young family, where he is in the early stages of putting together his debut feature, MOTHERLAND and writing his second, ICONOCLAST. Host: Jamie Neale @jamienealejn Discussing rituals and habitual patterns in personal and work life. We ask questions about how to become more aware of one self and the world around us, how do we become 360 with ourselves? Host Instagram: @jamienealejn Podcast Instagram: @360_yourself Music from Electric Fruit Produced by Tom Dalby Composed by Toby Wright

ACRAZE goes Back To Back! Willy talks to him about his new single "Believe", the experience of having a global smash record with "Do It To It", inspiration from Skrillex, tasteful sampling & mining music's past, festival politics, making the main stage sexy, accidentally starting trends, European tour stories & burnout, club music, keeping it simple, playing to 80,000 people in a French stadium, taking the risk to reinvent his sound & much more!   Back To Back is sponsored by The Cult Creatives: info@thecultcreatives.com http://thecultcreatives.com/about   Join our Discord: http://discord.io/backtobackpod Willy Joy: http://linktr.ee/willyjoy ACRAZE: https://www.acrazemusic.com     PROTECT REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: https://abortionfunds.org/funds/ https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ https://www.sistersong.net/

Welcome to 'WE ARE JK' , J-Kerz is bringing some heat this week mixing KURA, DLMT, HUGEL, Tom & Collin, Nicky Romero, TV Noise & many more! > Send your promo's: promo@j-kerz.com Don't forget to review on all of your favorite podcast apps!

DJ KRADSON in the mix: 01. AG Club - Brass 02. Waka Flocka FLame - Hard In Da Paint 03. Roscoe Dash ft.Waka Flocka Flame vs. Wuki - No Hands (Slick & Celo 'Birdz' Edit) 04. Hairitage - The Movement 05. Jay-Z ft. Kanye West - Paris(Vibe Link Bootleg) 06. 2 Live Crew - Pop That (Jayceeoh 'Fallout' Mash) 07. G-Buck - STFU 08. Party Favor & Skyxxx - Hoot Hoot (Original Mix) 09. Stylust, JLEON - DAAM 10. YG - Scared Money (Trayze 'Put 'Em In Their Place' Mash) 11. UPSAHL - Monica Lewinsky 12. B3RROR, MAY BBY - In Too Deep 13. Malaa - Revolt 14. Donkong, ALOTT - Drown 15. Murbrain - I Feel It 16. Drezo X MASTERIA - Techno 17. NGHTMRE, A$AP Ferg - REDLIGHT 18. JEEMBO - CASHBOX 19. Bru-C $ Hadean - Don't Wanna Know 20. Andy Mineo x Kendoll - Comin In Hot (Sarbasov Mashup) 21. Meek Mill & Drake - Going Bad (Axel Boy Boot) 22. Bru-C ft. Banzai - Inhaler SKVOR in the mix: 01. White Stripes x Sikdope x Skrillex & Habstrakt x Henry Fong & Knock2- What's The ARMY (Flip) 02. Griz & Subtronics x Soulja Boy - Crank Laserbeam Griztronics (Mashup) 03. Florence & The Machine X Liquid Stranger - Dog Days Are Jungle (Edit) 04. Papa Khan - Heaven x Wounds (Flip) 05. RL Grime x Crankdat - I Wanna Know Nothing (Edit) 06. Skrillex x Stalker x Brandon Jonak - Would You Ever Solar (Mashup) 07. MUST DIE! x Jack U - Astronomia Bliss 2K (Flip) 08. A$AP Freg x Typhon & Noughts - Work (Flip) 09. Will.I.Am & Britney Spears - Scream (Flip) 10. Super Mario x Flume - Overworld Paradise (Skvor BOOTLAG) 11. Cardi B x RL Grime - I Like Core (Mashup) 12. Black Eyed Peas - Pump It Blood (Mashup) 13. Lil Nas X - Battle Baby (Flip) 14. Fellsius - D 15. Sofasound - Life Is So Beautiful

Have you ever hung out with someone from a legendary band for nine hours without knowing who they are? Well Darren has! tune in to hear the story, and to hear new music from Thrice, LS Dunes, and for some reason a quick chat about Sublime and Skrillex...? FUN episode! Please remember to rate, review, subscribe, leave a comment, all that jazz. And follow us on social. Thanks for all the support! - Darren & Jake Instagram: @hangthedjpodcast @thedarrenparkinson @thejakelanderson   Twitter: @hangthedjpod   Email:  hangthedjpodcast@gmail.com

Después de cerrar ciclos y tener crisis existenciales estamos de vuelta es toda la descripción

Indonesian based producer Papa Khan is one of the hottest names to hit the music scene in recent times. Papa Khan's humble beginnings started in Palangkaraya, Indonesia where he was born and raised, influencing his music with a reflection of his turbulent upbringing, life experiences and his native culture. Staying true to his roots Papa Khan's music reaches the audience on an emotional and spiritual level with a melodic touch seldom seen in bass music, highlighting his diversity and ability to inspire the thoughts and feelings of the listener. Making his live debut on the Malignant Music presents “Marauda and friends for Bassrush showcase” livestream, instantly capturing the hearts of viewers. Catching the ears of superstar Marshmello, who reached out to release an EP via his platform “Joytime Collective”. The hype for lead single “Rain” went berserk after his Twitter clip went viral and when Marshmello posted a video of him playing the record in a live set announcing the release, even catching the attention of music legend Skrillex. Blossom EP drops November 6th on Joytime Collective. To learn more visit: https://spoti.fi/3Vg3fEo This episode was brought to you by VitaPlur. VitaPLUR E-Boost Gum is a first of its kind rave supplement that provides magnesium, electrolytes and antioxidants sublingually while you chew! With no pills to take or annoying powders to mix VitaPLUR E-Boost gum is the perfect complement to your active lifestyle. Use code: "LIZZYJANE" (all caps) at check out for 10% off any item at https://www.vitaplur.io/ For ad - free podcasts, exclusive content, one on one lessons, + more visit: https://www.patreon.com/thisislizzyjane

https://youtu.be/7L4JnAuW00k Dillon Francis, I knew by now, was a very skilled sorcerer. I was fasting, and quickly shifting through times, realms, and dimensions as empty as ever as I knew myself to be; these days the shortest fasts seemed the longest—and by the look and feel of things, I was always still the biggest one in the room no matter where I went. ‘Let's see what this guy can do with half a moon.' If I had to go all the way to the dance floor to continue assessing my feelings for this man, it then had to be true that there were feelings at all—and there had to have been. Either way, I didn't care much; I wasn't expecting any outcome and at the very least and most simultaneously, I was there as a fan. I was, after all, as written, Dillon Francis's biggest fan—and though I didn't wear any apparel that made it obviously so, I sought to seek means to an end at some point for the saga I had written. I had hoped to potentially see Dillon's Kayla Lauren in the wings, as I thought surely for there to be one; it would be odd for any man, especially one that traveled as much as he did, to have two dogs of his own. Again, it didn't seem to matter, as I kept it in the forefront of my mind always that a man like Dillon Francis could have anyone he wanted in the world, most certainly anyone in the audience, If a world renowned DJ were ever to do such a thing as to sink as low as to converse with a peasant, such as I; at the very least, I would record, as always, Shazam, as always, and music mine as much as I possibly could, seeing as I wasn't there to dance or to drink at all, but simply just to observe; my soul acted in certain ways in this environment, and I wanted to know why, or what it was exactly that made it do so, quite unforgivingly. Still, there was magic in the air; and whether it was his, or mine, or neither I neither cared to know nor did, but knew it to be—there was just nothing to to do but submit, as I had learned; and rightfully so, as I was coming to him, it allowed him to assert his dominance, which I liked and needed anyhow, in any event. Allowing any potential anyone to become the master was a given; and though not yet at my beauty's peak of perfection, my sexuality was peaking enough for me to explore my innate attraction to him, as I allowed it. I wanted to be controlled, and so although it felt forced and always ridden with guilt, whatever had happened with Sonny had sent me through an infinite loop and then put Kayla Lauren on display at the worst possible time; and though rarely missing a gym day since, I credited my own perseverance for it rather than her sheer luck at the genetic lottery. I would never be a little white girl, and though at my worst they acted as kryptonite to my super powers, whatever they were—I still had whatever it was they didn't, and perhaps not the affluent white man's proper ideal, still something and someone at best, maybe. I hoped to see a girl he might belong to at the show; but then wondered of course who might stay with the dogs. Are you serious? Either way, I was going to write, and record, and align with whatever my purpose was—as regardless of how, it seemed to have something to do with Dillon Francis. I was fasting, of course, but it hadn't been long; I had fulfilled what would be my calorie deficit with a box of plant based Oreos just the night before departing LA full of grief, stress, and chocolate,'for whatever reason; I would have a vegan doughnut at pink box, I decided, before I left Vegas—maybe to make up for the one I had lost in the wind from the oncoming train just days before—I called it God's work, as nothing else could be so comical and devastating at the same time—but was also still craving a doughnut and, still fitting I to everything I owed that I had purchased in an extra small, very comfortably, thought to be allowed one, at one time or another. It didn't matter to me; the white women of the world were made to steal anything I wanted or needed; especially a Sonny or a Dillon Francis, but at the very least I could ease my grief with sweets and work off the stress whenever I was blessed enough to hold gym memberships. I didn't care much, but needed the processing speed of a wired brain and empty stomach to be able to compute whatever might be meant for me to grasp in the matrix; after all, I had once thought of Dillon Francis to be a computer-program himself; the most nonplahable character yet, but still a record breaking synchronicity or rather large group of them, now, in my book. .Red Hot Chili Peppers - These Are The Ways I can see It's not meant to be Cause I can't stop lying to you And you can't stop lying to me I just keep tying you up And you just keep letting me be So who are you to me A fantasy? Freedom? Sweet relief? Perhaps, just nothing But all comes from nothing All comes from nothing All comes from lusting I'm clutching the clutch with both my feet The break is stuck, Just like my feet in the styrupa, Good luck to me You're just fucking mad at me For having such vivid imaginary catastrophies Maybe it's everything Love is But fucking What? God, I'm lucky; I ought to be I run a Fortune 500 Maybe it's nothing But all comes from nothing All comes from nothing All comes from lusting I'm clutching the clutch with both my feet The break is stuck, Just like my feet in the styrupa, Good luck to me You're just fucking mad at me For having such vivid imaginary catastrophes (Don't forget the apostrophe, Since you'll be forging for me) I can see It's not meant to be Cause I can't stop lying to you And you can't stop lying to me I just keep tying you up And you just keep letting me be So who are you to me A fantasy? Freedom? Sweet relief? Perhaps, just nothing I should be parking my car in the lobby for washing Don't mind me, It's just natural distrust All turns to dust, And all comes from nothing God, I'm lucky I should be working on something (I should be resting on Sundays, the lord says) But take my time word for it, I'm the one writing it Monday Thru Sunday I can see It's not meant to be Cause I can't stop lying to you And you can't stop lying to me I just keep tying you up And you just keep letting me be So who are you to me A fantasy? Freedom? Sweet relief? Perhaps, just nothing ‘Just remember, that every girl you see that makes you sad, is the kind of girl he gets—and that's the reason for it.' , I thought to myself. As long as I remembered Instagram models and actresses existed, I couldn't continue to be hurt by it, but I was still, somehow even after 30 years, getting used to being the ugly fat black girl—and since I wasn't Lizzo or Megan The Stallion, I really wasn't anyboth; there was still no place for me at all in the world I wanted to belong to, and I was still as I represented as I would ever be. Maybe tonight I would use my two drink tickets; a sure recipe for disaster, as I had at least almost made it to the 48 hour mark fasting, If I was counting correctly. Perhaps a vegan doughnut could soak up the liquor and shame after leaving the encore at 3 am with nothing but a handful of words and some samples, and perhaps a podcast episode if there could be one. Dua Lipa, Hallucinate What happens after The Daisy swallows Dillon Francis?! Dillon HART Francis. That's a funny name! He's a funny guy. Sometimes. Sometimes. What was I to do? I just kept writing and had nowhere to send it; there was no pitch, there was no plot, and there was certainly no point. Enter The Multiverse and The Festival Project as a whole made up for everything I could have potentially been worth—which was nothing— and I hadn't a clue at all what I was purposed for; I seemed almost psychically robotic, remembering things as they happened within seconds, only enough to slightly offset a rebuttal that at any rate seemed scripted, but wasn't—at least yet. It seemed as if I was in a movie, but to any such ohaycologist of course this could have been considered mania, psychosis, or delusions of grandeur—or even— Dillusions of Granduer. I was funny too, sometimes. I didn't have to think Dillon Francis was shallow—I knew he was shallow, just as such with Sonny or any other man worth his salt, whatever that actually meant. But, just as I had harshly learned anything else, I was starting to understand why, as the smaller and more agile I became, the more I could do with my own body, and as such began to understand why men preferred slim and petite women. I was settling in well to my non-bianary status, and my celibacy—I could do more on my own or with myself than with any partner to date, and with the only human of interest being himself well over 300 pounds, I opted to keep to myself and simply observe human nature for the time being, rather than to take part in it. I wasn't eating, but for the first time in days I had slept, and pushing anything from the future or past far from my mind, I opted to remain present, and aloof; it wouldn't mean much to try to care at all about anything—the more I cared, the more the universe would subtract from my contentedness. Hear Me Now, Nicky Romero “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” —William Blake As if this isn't the greatest story ever told. I'm pretty sure that's The Passion of The Christ. This is The Passion Of The Christ. That's just blasphemous. It's The Passion of— Go on. I mean, it is infinite. Well, first there was infinite— —everything— —Everything. Now what. Oh, I know. What is it? It's The Passion of Dillon Francis. Why is that? Because, they're going to kill him. Why? Dillon Francis isn't in the Illuminati! Think twice before going there. But I've got a one track mind. A one track mind In a multitrack world Is a square peg to a round hole And a half-heart To a whole world And nothing's left but to give But to give is to get Just live, Try to forget that it's Infinite What's for dinner dear? I met you here, at the crossroads Like I said I would; And you said you wouldn't come, But here you are: A phenomenon Pardon my awful camaraderie Oh! I forgot all my manners Beg your hard on for hours, Till wilted, like later my flowers Oh, the debachery —better off watching your crotch, Than up on the cross, Like last that I saw you— Stop Look, I just want to watch; I just want to wash all the blood off my hands, From the Hog I put on the bonfire (Forgot what it's called in Oahu) Who are you? I died in a fire, you know In your eyes, Despite how I tried to avoid them They light up at night, sometimes No Divine or desire I'm just here to top off my tires, I'm tired, you know —better off watching, I'm novice Another day at the office, A shot gun in place of deposits, collateral Oh, I'm the asshole— I'm actually quite proud of it This is called something of consciousness, Writing a canon, But I'm quite forgetful; A madman, if you can imagine (Disasterous) Now you attack at your best, I'm un-vested Invested my time in unrest, Don't forget I'm just under your bed We mustn't forget how it started Intensive care Must be intense in the moment When you're Dillon Francis Ah yes. Leave A Trace, CHRCHES Tell me again how you're different; I exist just to wash dishes and watch DJs— I'm lazy; A patronage made just to let the white bitches forget all their privelege; In fact, it's a gift In fact, they're chosen— In fact, I'm just “Isn't” It's miserable Everyone Talks, Neon Trees | Three Pound Chicken Wing, deadmau5 | Paradise, Laidback Luke feat. Bright Lights Let me explain, How it's a vibration; I don't care what body you're in— It's all the same love, If it's all the same love, Then I love you I love you I love you, But I'm in a body It's torturous Let me explain how It's a vibration New word: It's Sapiosexual; Oh, I forgot how you Maddened me once, with your syntax and grammar Ah, now I'm sad as Hell ‘Might as well end it”, I thought to myself If looked as disheveled as I felt They would have stopped me from entering Even at ‘Envy' Let me explain, How I'm the villain This just happens over and over To poor Skrillex And Dillon Francis So much fame and fortune It turns into torture The girls on the rail A pecking order; Ready to devour, And be devoured by The man of the hour “ I might as well end it, then” I said. (But just for attention, I'm stuck in this body, Just rotting Cause nobody wants me at this damn party I've had enough of it I need some water and Probably a therapist Oh, ‘Stream of consciousness' There, I remembered it. Who could ever love me (No one does) Who could ever need me (No one does) Who would ever want me (No one does) Uh huh, I'm no fun at parties [Three knocks on the door] I ignore it (This part is important) [three more knocks] Ought to be something, But still, I assume that it's nothing No guts, and no glory Nobody to love me Uh huh I'm no fun at parties Who could ever love me (No one does) Who could ever need me (No one does) Who would ever want me (No one does) No wonder I used to cut myself “I can feel something” I once sung Now I just run; But— I'm still not small enough For somebody to want me I like to eat every now and again But— I guess that's my problem I just want someone to want me That doesn't remind me of Something i'm not But instead as in awe of my body As I am of Anything other than Tragedy Walk like an Egyptian, The Bangles I excused myself for the lackluster workout—after all, it had been days since my last real meal, and three now since my last solid anything; I had been happy with coconut water and alkaline, trying not to stay too far from the petite I was aiming for.; the plaid dress was a perfect match for the boots I had picked out, astonished that with the nearly 300-lb weight loss, my feet had also happened to shrink down a size and a half—I was dressed to impress, but prepared to be humiliated, and to top that—very eager to Google how long it would take me to get from XS, to Pink Box doughnuts—which was open 24 hours. At least I didn't exactly look like a prostitute—and, as an added bonus, might even could keep the dress for work or interviews; the boots walked nicely, at least for now, and I didn't mind the modesty, as I was already as out of place and forgotten as could be. Rather than opting for a coconut water, I stayed empty; not much was needed to do what I intended, which was almost nothing, and I hoped at the very least my senses and delicate nerves would be somehow put at ease. My iPhone microphone was sensitive enough to catch a song from a car waiting for the light halfway across the street— Freddie's Dead, Curtis Mayfield I crossed at the walk and kept my eyes to the ground, steadying my gait I into an awkward trot as not to appear to confident. I was right on time at the bus stop, and, within moments, not to my suprise, the 103 passed by me, even as I leaned against the stop waving my phone wirh the screen lit. “What a dick.” Perhaps I had fasted too long and worked out too hard; I had indeed left my clothes in a heap of heavy and drenched conglomerate of sweat and tears. I did have a headache, and didn't care much to return yet to my dwelling—in fact, there was something calling me out, and so out I went. Summoning a surprisingly inexpensive Über, I trotted begrudgingly to the WinCo behind me for a Pressed Coconjr Water—the world seemed to dysfunction a little too autonomously when I was running on empty, and with less stored fat supply than before, any triggered ketosis often resulted in a heavy cloud of thoughtless disability; I fumbled around clumsily, breathing shallow in the overstimulation of everything and everyone's aura—but that was exactly what I needed to see: Dillon had always glowed in brilliant shades of purple, but at one time, white—which startled me, especially because it was rare for anyone to glow that way. 120 calories of Coconut water wouldn't quite offset the caloric deficits Raul picked me up in a brand new Tesla, of course—which didn't feel like a coincidence, as nothing did; I had just earlier in the day been thinking of Lim Manuel Miranda, whose face was earned on the cover of a magazine as I purchased my coconut wate; I snapped a picture and hurried along to my whatever it was—instead of spending the next two hours on the bus, I'd get to collect the music from the warmup DJ, and since it was his job I wanted to aquire, it was probably in good taste and good fortune to support anyone whose name I didn't already know. As I arrived to the encore, my eyes were blurred and I was still a little woozy, but the headache was gone and replaced with an all-out bad attitude that didn't exactl come from out of nowhere. As easily distracted as I was, and out of place, I was surprisingly quick to lose self awareness; as I stopped to take a portrait for the festival project, security approached, assuming I was as trashed as anybody else hunched over the trash can—I explained I was working on an art project, and she seemed refreshed—I hadn't realized that how it looked wasn't at all out of the ordinary, remembering where I was, and suddenly, remembering where I was, I remembered the first time I was here, which had inspired the poem Red Velvet, which was lost to time and buried in the rubble of my endlessly infinite Google documents I never received my drink tickets—probably for the best, as k had been tempted this time to actually use them. My life was in actual shambles, with no direction whatsoever—and here I was, on the guestlist at Dillon Francis of all places, with nearly no other place to be. Maybe if I was vigilant I would be front and center at the rail—placing me back in the fandom instead of fiending for a reason or purpose any of this had happened. I'm not mad You're a man And an animal Can't help yourself can you you? Don't be mad at me I'm just a fan And an animal I can't help my attraction I'm second to last, Wirh my hand on the rail And I'm not here to dance (But the music's fantastic) Well, Dillon's front row is always a sight for sore eyes. This is hilarious. I'm laughing on the inside. Just, have a little drink with me. WHY DOES THE DJ KEEP PLAYING SIMMERTIME SADNESS!!! ITS NOT EVEN SUMMER. #SELFIE The club scene had changed much since the days of Red Velvet, but not much, also—vanity had always been the norm, but now more was allowable; at least Fat girls were allowed on the Dance floor without bogarting our way in—but now, the whole of the masses needed photographic evidence of everything; I wasn't in the least interested in taking photos of myself, or anything really hit the discarded rmknce of what had been a night of drinking and shenanigans, whatever the outcome; I never knew, but typically lately had made a habit of throwing away the trash after taking the photos for my project; tonight thiugh, something new caught my eye, as the warm up and caught my ears and I Shazammed every song for the taking—.Recycling bins at the foot of the rails—where, by the way, I had been pushed to front and center, looking quite like someone's Grandmother in my spectacles and too- long- for- the-club-dress—but I was comfortable, hadn't been given any trouble at the door, and, for the time being, was actually next to someone's grandparents. b€NZ (feat syaquis) Front row lit Finna get bent Imma get Imma get. I don't mind a white girl It's just for the night, girl But if you hit me with that ponytail one more time, girl We finnafight girl Go ahead Get it Get it Shake that bony ass Like we on skid row. Yas Go ahead. Front row lit Fin a get bent Imma get Imma get. I don't mind a white girl It's just for the night, girl But if you hit me with that ponytail one more time, girl We fin a fight girl Go ahead Get it Get it Front row lit Fin a get bent Imma get Imma get. I don't mind a white girl It's just for the night, girl But if you hit me with that ponytail one more time, girl We fin a fight girl Go ahead Get it Get it Shame that bony ass Like we on skid row. Where we gonna go In the morning Go ahead. The DJ's pace was picking up, so I knew that it had to be toward the end of his set—would I even make it to close—or did I want to? There wasn't much to see, but there might be more to write. I looked around myself, empathy giving way; now I wasn't myself, or anyone in particular—just a bystander in the crowd, drunk off the placebo of experience ‘What if this was your life every night for the last 10 years?' Uhhhh. I Shazamed another tune— What if this is your life for the next 10 years? Oh Fuxk. I'm getting too old for this. Or… just old enough. The night was moving forward, and so people were drunker, and I probably wouldn't stay at the front row too long; but I was right in the place where the bass hit just right, so it felt good enough— but you couldn't see the DJ's hands. Just so you know, When I'm bored at a show— I take out my notebook Oh no, You're not bothering me; No thanks, I'm not really lonely, I'm just Writing a novel Or album Or movie Or something “Are you in the industry?” The tallish blonde girl next to me asked, progressively more drunk than when she first had appeared next to me at the rail—the front row was now predominately female, which I supposed to be typical—what a life. I just shook my head and continued as I was. For the most part unamused, and even a little bored, as I always was at a club show. I wasn't behind the decks, so I wasn't really anywhere at all. Maybe it was the bass, but I had suddenly stopped craving a doughnut, however by 4 am I was probably just about going to be ready for one; Or half dozen, cause— And with a flash of steam and sweat, the man of the hour appeared, but I found it hard to lift my head— I probably should step back from this front row… The energy in your front row is everything; at least to a DJ like me… Okay Gerald, I'll get you a table— you can't tell anyone you're a piñata. Okay ?' okay. GERALD has permanently shapeshifted into a Human being. (To a hot girl) I'M ACTUALLY A PIÑATA. (Drunken hot girl) WHAT? I'M A PIÑATA! WHAT?! GERALD, NO. WHAT? She's drunk! So?! i told you already—don't tell anyone you're using magic—-or I'm using magic— But—Dillon—magic is real! You said so! I know that!!! DFR, Dillon Francis God dammit, I almost forgot about this album. No you didnt. (Shapeshifting) (Spellcasting) (Other Magic shit) Yeah, but I forgot about the album. Yeah, I bet SAVAGE>< Freek In The Ghetto, Skrillex No. No. No. Oh fuck, where is Skrillex? Oh yeah, huh?! OH YEAH, huh. — What the everlivingFUCK. Oh shit. WHAT are you doing? Just playing a game. WHATDIDITELLYOU— Oh shit, she's mad— Run, dude— Run!! OH SHIT. I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU Well— Well. Well, well, well— Suddenly, it seemed everyone in the front row Was alt right- and as always, all the hot white girls moved into VIP—it was a tired game; I would always be black, and I would always be ugly, and so it hurt less than made me think twice or three times who I was dealing with. I just so happened to look over my shoulder and be somewhat attracted to the girl behind me. ‘'maybe it's time to start dating women' …but that would never work. GERALD. WHAT?! I thought I told you— I know, I know— GIMME ANOTHER SHOT. What, Dillon—! I thought you weren't DRINKING! Gerald! It's me! I know it's you. No! It's me! Ū! SUPACREE?! NO' SHH! I'm Ū!!! Where's / Dillon Francis?! WHERE IS SKRILLEX? He's in your heart. Oh shit. I gave that to Dillon Francis. Well, then, you have your answer. Fuxk. Let it happen. Tame Impala Man, I love that kid. I love that kid. So what happened? It's a long story. —NOT THE TIME MACHINE —NOT THE BOX GET IN THE TIME MACHINE! NOT THE BOX—!!!!! UGH, not Dillon Francis. (Yes, Dillon Francis.) What's his deal?! Who's what, him!!? YES. Satan. Hm. Whats your deal with Dillon Francis? What?! I don't have a deal with Dillon Francis… What?! YOU DONT!? NO! Why not? Cause! Being honest..? The devil, being honest: (Psh) I owe him money. What!! Satan, no way. Yes way! Hod that happen?' Lost a bet. Damn. This set is getting good. What are you watching? Gerald's world The legend of supacree Enter the multiverse The infinite Skrillifiles What? Uh oh. What ñ 5) 3 time space time continuums just shattered CONFETTI BLAST OH SHIT, it just shattered twice. We gotta go. Where we going To the planet Which—ducking planet. The one with the ducks. QUACK oh shit. A duck DUCK DUCK!! DUCK—DUCK—DUCK— Damn, this game really has gone on forever— ITS EDM O CLOCK, BITCH—! GET UP!! Mmm. We better go. Yes. We better go ALI and AVICII are very, very drunk in Heaven. THEY FINALLY MADE IT?! —of course we made it! —We knew the way! But of course: GOD No, go back. WHAT ARE YOU serious? MARTY! MARTY MCFLY! DAWG, it's good to see you! Wait. What the Fuxk dimension is THIS?' It's the one with Dillon Francis That's— a —FUCK. Dillon Francis is in a lot of dimensions. Yeah but this is the right one. How do you know? That was the theme song for the TV show. What TV show? Damn. I'm fucked up. What! I thought you didn't drink. I don't I'm an empath. MEANWHILE SUPACREE and SUNNÍ BLŪ have collided in a para-dimensional reality OH, SHIT, it's ME OH FUCK—DAMN. Now what do we do? Drugs? Drugs. Yeaaaaaaaah. One More Time, Daft Punk My son's favorite song. It was the second time it had played today, and the first time it wasn't nearly as bad as the second — now i was glad for the cloud of cold steam, I couldn't hide my upset as much as I wanted to ‘'Just keep writing' Okay. They're trying to kill me With white girls, And memories And it just might work I'm trying to write myself out the box Oh my god And it just my work I'm trying to get lost But I'm all out of sauce This is not gonna work I see you went and hopped on the band wagon Somebody get that dragon. /$3/ Huh That's how much I paid for this You—what?! I paid $3 You paid $3 Yes. For this. Yes. I'm gonna kill you. Ū VS DILLON FRANCIS Uh oh. Here it goes. FIGHT. Oh shit. I've been waiting all season for this. Here it goes. KO. SUPACREE WINS. What. It's over already? This isn't possible. GAME OVER. What the Fuxk. This is insane. No fucking way #%%]!! Wait. What the fuck I thought it was Ū VS Dillon Francisz YeH! It was. What the fuck. So how did SUPACREE win? Huh. Wait, did anybody ever find Skrillex? Oh, My God. Just then, someone threw a Red Bull and it hit my foot enough that it actually distracted me from writing— THROW ANOTHER ONE! No, dont! Why, what's wrong? I have to take back these boots in the morning. Oh good, Jesus made it. What Jesus who! JESÚS CHRIST! What? What do you want? I didn't think you'd come! I had to. I thought you were on vacation. Exactly. Listen, Dillon—I have to tell you something. Uh huh. This isn't going to be easy. Chak Chel, what is it? I need you to listen. Uh, I'm kinda busy. It was at this point— Really, this point—? I had to stop and asses for myself what was really happening. I was writing up a storm, and it did seem to happen automatically, as it had before. I'm a looper Open the coupe up, Stupid, Who did you think I is This is the business Go listen to Skrillex And KILL YOURSELF Huh? JUST KILL YOURSELF. Ah, okay—but not because you said so. Listen, I'm finna spit this quick while you spin it Spit in it: clitoris I'm different bitch After this dinner I'm still in the kitchen With dishes, bitch Till it glistens While I listen To excision (I'm just kidding) Dammit, this is a lot of Skrillex What exactly did you say about Dillon Francis not being in the Illuminati First of all, the Illuminati isn't real. SUPACREE How did you get famous? SUNNÍ BLŪ I'm in the Illuminati. You? SUPACREE I AM the Illuminati. SUNNÍ BLŪ NIce. [Cheers] Hey. Hey. Anybody seen Gerald? … … … Zzz. Damn. Nodding off On the clock I'm on the floor, And yo this shit is toxic Turn the knob a bit; My foot starting to throb again I'm looking hot like Somebody's mom again Damn. I'm getting off On the wrong kind of drama This isn't long at all But it's all wrong, ya'll I dont belong here Lost My Mind, Alison Wonderland OHH THIS SHIT BE HITTING DIFFERENT It did hit different. Someone either vomited or spilled the rest of their drink on me, which took me out of my moment: the music was telling a story, at least to me—and I didn't feel like feeling right then, but it was all I could do ñ. I was surprised that I was still standing at all, Ugh. I don't understand my feelings. This was deeper than it seemed, bigger than it — Ugh. What do you want from me? All I've got is applause, and a cough drop It's just another night at the office I'm somebody's mom In a long lost thought; All zeros on the clock In a tick tock, or two, when you're off And you're long gone, I'll still be wandering Stuck at the mall Till the bus comes —trying to write myself out the box I'm a lost soul I'm a club kid I'm a lost cause But i'll stay till the end, Cause last time I walked off And my thoughts wandered back to the dance floor All that I wanted is A penny for gods thoughts And now she keeps dropping them —and more often then not, She's dropping the knowledge That I'm in the wrong, For just wanting you: But what can I do; I just want to be like you, and less of a primate Something saw right through me, and I felt invisible—now a doughnut sounded good, and I hoped that they would have vegan this early in the morning. There was about a half hour left of the set, and I was tired; I would stay until the end of the set, for some reason—-but now — Oh shit. Remember that one time/— Which TIME One time, I lost my mind and drove off of a bridge. That did happen. That did happen. I had at one point been unwell, and so— ugh, that's it Some smelly kid squeezed his way in between me and the next person over,,probably on molly or something—meanwhile the young white supremacists club of America was codeswitching up a storm, me pretending not to notice, but— he was dancing a little too hard, hitting me a little too much—and clearly not giving any kind of fuck: it wouldn't be my first panic attack on the dance floor, but it probably would be my last; it was the same story over and over again— only the next generation had even less of a Fuxk than I ever did. I left the dance floor and opted to stand behind VIP — DID ANYONE EVER FIND SKRILLEX? Wrf. He died. WHAT. No seriously, I watched him die. Okay. Then what? Then he got up. That's a twist. Now I can't sleep. That sounds traumatic. It was traumatic. How long's it been? I HAVE NOT SLEPT IN ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS. Great, the vampires are here, too. Good. I've been craving Vegan blood. Ihj. What. It's better for you. God dammit, Dillon Francis Why does this always happen? I can't remember half of what I did Before I napped, and landed back in this dimension Now, I'll give you my attention for a minute— But I'm worried about Skrillex Didnt I mention i needed permission (Or just a perscription) To get this ignition I didn't even want to come to this I hate this club It's filled will memories You won't remember me For half another century Cause I can't finish writing I'm too busy riding The bus To work And crying all the time Cause therapy doesn't And I used to love this stuff, but UHH 1–2–3 : BUN UP THE DANCE This is a lot of Skrillex. Is he okay? Is Dillon Francis Okay!? They're both okay. They're both millionaires. They'll be fine. huayayay!!!!. Fuck this. Fuck this. Alright, I'm leaving. Are we eating? If it's vegan. Ah man. What just happened? I'm definitely in the Illuminati. I have a tendency To pretend that You're friends with me Speeded I get it's a Fantasy But I had to see you In the flesh I digress I picture you're just as Obsessed with me Guess I'd regret to suggest that You should have Sex with me Directly but it's nestled in my head In the red Would you get into bed with me After everything I said Or I wrote, and you read Or am I just Better off dead Youre so far ahead, And I get that it's Just a test At best but I've yet to digest Breakfast Caught in a web of Heaven or or empathy Trying to empty my envy For whoever's holding your hand Instead of me Please, Forgive me— But, If you're reading this, It's too late; All triple sixes and Tipping the sinners With witless intentions Wet at the back of the ears But I've known you for years And I said I'd be here; I remembered the dress {Enter The Multiverse}

Please hit me I'd love for this to be the end of the story But then, no one would ever read it— But then, nobody would believe me Anyway I was as depressed as I had ever been with an added element of motion sickness, met with an absolute inability to function or even coincide with what was societally expected of me, and disconnected from any sense of what I thought would be a motion towards freedom. Helpless, worthless, and even now, breathless, my stomach churned monstrously and my vision blurred with dizziness I couldn't offset with food or water—not that I would allow myself much of either, as I had been ejected from LVAC and, unwilling to gamble hadn't considered LA without the security of income. I had stepped back into Eōs with caution, only to be of course rattled about in every way I could—Travis still encouraged me, however the rest of the world was quickly caving in, and I felt much like a trapped rat in the narrow confines of a gym I felt paled in comparison to the other, and was somehow even more overrun with girls twice as thin as I would ever aspire to be—better simply based on privelege and genetics. But DJs married models—actors married models—and rappers, despite my disinterest in the like, married models—and though I had lost the battle with time, my 24 inch waist did measure up, even with the folds of loose skin that barred me from being beautiful at all, and kept me confined in my very own hell. I wasn't in the right place or time, it seemed, and as much as I wanted to avoid anything remnicent of Skrillex or Dillon Francis, it had simple become impossible. Everything hurt; my muscles ached and my head pounded with grief, as if I had lost another child of my own, not only because I had, but because even drifting further and further away from what was, I would always be reminded of him no matter what. One More Time I wasn't strong anymore—nothing motivated me, not even love, which I used to be filled with, but now seemed a hollow void in the bottom of my heart, creeping and eating slowly away at all that was left of my soul, until there were none. It seemed the whole of me was shrouded in darkness; more than a mood or a state of being but instead being itself—I felt more alike and at odds with Sonny than ever before, mot purposely but actually feeling more myself in all black than in anything, perhaps wishfully llre illusive but plainly out of sorts in my usual flurry of colors. My feelings, as they were, and I still had them were of a high frequency, but my body and mind itself of low bearing of my surroundings, so much so that I could barely breathe, even, without my chest caving in or mh heart pounding erratically—I could barely stand to be awake, and let my mind to drift, only to find it was anchored to this desert, like a ball and chain—I had indeed fallen in love with downtown L, and as such neglected to go back, fearing again that all Ioved would crumble and falter under this terrible curse, whatever it was. Still, surrounded by toxicity, I found myself becoming ill and weakened, however regaining my personal depth, having the ability to be alone for longer periods of time—something within me knew my placement to be an error, either or judgement or circumstance, but for fear of the white devil I wouldn't stray I to the beknownst boundaries of LA without a backfall. It wasn't fair, but it wasn't even either—I was playing with a fixed deck against the most skilled magicians of our time, my only weapon, words, as I had all but lost the music that went with it. Goddamn it, Dillon Francis!! I told you that thing was enchanted! Throw it away! NO! Oh, I get it— Travis Apple was a very strange man. He had a knack for making me laugh, and happened to bear a striking resemblance to Dillon Francis—not so much so that I couldn't separate the two, but enough that it was either thoroughly entertaining or extremely frustrating. His eyes were always blue, and he cut me more slack than I felt I deserved, but also seemed to be talking in a backwards kind of code. It just so happened to be that I was so devastatingly attracted to Dillon Francis, that I was perhaps somewhat attracted to him, too—however severely, and I kept a safe distance, which for whatever reason he really never seemed to mind, I was glad he was married, and happily so—it made it easy to stay far away,and never laugh too hard at his antics. Oh come on Oh Come on Oh come on I j-use W-w-w-wanted You're at-t-t-tentiom! Woah' You were my water And now you haunt me Stop It's just those eyes of yours They really drove me wild I really miss your smile It's been a little while But I still love you p God, kid, are you really that miserable? *nods*. I What is it? It's just sushi. I meant why? —apparently, I'm famous. Well, not yet (Eating sushi) Mmmm And at this rate… ‘God dammit.' He was, in fact, the master of illusion; I could only see what I wanted to see, besides what I needed to see, and I suppose all I wanted to actually see was the man that inspired me enough so that nothing really mattered at the end of the day, I just kept writing. It did bring me joy—there was something wild about my imagination to begin with, but, with a certain spark, Dillon had brought a lot more to it than I could have thought on my own. I think I need to go away, For a really long time; I can't be alone, without you I can't be alone without you Nowadays, It's okay to be sad, It's okay to be crazy But I don't feel that way I've been great, I just feel lost without you I just can't be alone, without you Out here on my own, Without you See, that ain't a girl; That's a demon You don't see But I see it (I see it) Not what I want, But I gotta believe it I think I gotta go away For a long, long time Maybe you're the right one Maybe it's the wrong life I don't care, I just want to live right But I'm bad at it Nowadays, It's okay to be sad, It's okay to be crazy But I don't feel that way I've been great, I just feel lost without you I think I need to go away, For a really long time; I can't be alone, without you I can't be alone without you FUCK THIS. I agree. No seriously—FUCK Dillon Francis! Yeah, I know. “Yeah, I know.” But do you remember WHY? Why?

Wuki on the Virtual Sessions presented by The DJ Sessions 10/07/22 About Wuki - Wuki is the genre-blending solo project of Denver-based producer Kris Barman. Influenced by the sounds of Detroit ghettotech and Chicago footwork scenes, Barman's ability to seamlessly mix booty, breaks, electro, and house into hard-hitting club-shakers has become a trademark of the Wuki sound.   The Mile High City resident has earned releases and remixes for notable imprints such as OWSLA, Main Course, Fool's Gold, and Ultra - not to mention support from the likes of Knife Party, Skrillex, and Rolling Stone Magazine.        About The DJ Sessions - “The DJ Sessions” is a Twitch/Mixcloud "Featured Partner” live streaming/podcast series featuring electronic music DJ's/Producers via live mixes/interviews and streamed/distributed to a global audience. TheDJSessions.com The series constantly places in the “Top Ten” on Twitch Music and the “Top Five” in the “Electronic Music", “DJ", "Dance Music" categories. TDJS is rated in the Top 0.11% of live streaming shows on Twitch out of millions of live streamers. It has also been recognized by Apple twice as a "New and Noteworthy” podcast and featured three times in the Apple Music Store video podcast section. UStream and Livestream have also listed the series as a "Featured" stream on their platforms since its inception.  The series is also streamed live to multiple other platforms and hosted on several podcast sites. It has a combined live streaming/podcast audience is over 125,000 viewers per week. With over 2,400 episodes produced over the last 12 years "The DJ Sessions" has featured international artists such as: BT, Youngr, Sevenn, Bexxie, Boris, MJ Cole, Flipside, Skeeter, Bissen, Katie Chonacas, Hollaphonic, Lady Waks, Arty/Alpha 9, Miri Ben-Ari, DJ Ruby, DJ Colette, Nima Gorji, Kaspar Tasane, Andy Caldwell, Party Shirt, Plastik Funk, ENDO, John Tejada, Hoss, DJ Sash U, Arkley, Bee Bee, Cozmic Cat, Superstar DJ Keoki, Crystal Waters, Swedish Egil, Martin Eyerer, Dezarate, Maddy O'Neal, Sonic Union, Lea Luna, Belle Humble, Marc Marzenit, AthenaLuv, Maximillian, Inkfish, Kidd Mike, Michael Anthony, They Kiss, Downupright, Harry “the Bigdog” Jamison, DJ Tiger, DJ Aleksandra, 22Bullets, Carlo Astuti, Mr Jammer, Kevin Krissen, Amir Sharara, Coke Beats, Danny Darko, DJ Platurn, Tyler Stone, Chris Coco, Purple Fly, Dan Marciano, Johan Blende, Amber Long, Robot Koch, Robert Babicz, KHAG3, Elohim, Hausman, Jaxx & Vega, Yves V, Ayokay, Leandro Da Silva, The Space Brothers, Jarod Glawe, Jens Lissat, Lotus, Beard-o-Bees, Luke the Knife, Alex Bau, Arroyo Low, Camo & Crooked, ANG, Amon Tobin, Voicians, Florian Kruse, Dave Summit, Bingo Players, Coke Beats, MiMOSA, Drasen, Yves LaRock, Ray Okpara, Lindsey Stirling, Mako, Distinct, Still Life, Saint Kidyaki, Brothers, Heiko Laux, Retroid, Piem, Tocadisco, Nakadia, Protoculture, Sebastian Bronk, Toronto is Broken, Teddy Cream, Mizeyesis, Simon Patterson, Morgan Page, Jes, Cut Chemist, The Him, Judge Jules, DubFX, Thievery Corporation, SNBRN, Bjorn Akesson, Alchimyst, Sander Van Dorn, Rudosa, Hollaphonic, DJs From Mars, GAWP, Somna, David Morales, Roxanne, JB & Scooba, Spektral, Kissy Sell Out, Massimo Vivona, Moullinex, Futuristic Polar Bears, ManyFew, Joe Stone, Reboot, Truncate, Scotty Boy, Doctor Nieman, Jody Wisternoff, Thousand Fingers, Benny Bennasi, Dance Loud, Christopher Lawrence, Oliver Twizt, Ricardo Torres, Patricia Baloge, Alex Harrington, 4 Strings, Sunshine Jones, Elite Force, Revolvr, Kenneth Thomas, Paul Oakenfold, George Acosta, Reid Speed, TyDi, Donald Glaude, Jimbo, Ricardo Torres, Hotel Garuda, Bryn Liedl, Rodg, Kems, Mr. Sam, Steve Aoki, Funtcase, Dirtyloud, Marco Bailey, Dirtmonkey, The Crystal Method, Beltek, Darin Epsilon, Kyau & Albert, Kutski, Vaski, Moguai, Blackliquid, Sunny Lax, Matt Darey, and many more. In addition to featuring international artists TDJS focuses on local talent based on the US West Coast. Hundreds of local DJ's have been featured on the show along with top industry professionals. We have recently launched v3.1 our website that now features our current live streams/past episodes in a much more user-friendly mobile/social environment. In addition to the new site, there is a mobile app (Apple/Android) and VR Nightclubs (Oculus).   About The DJ Sessions Event Services - TDJSES is a WA State Non-profit charitable organization that's main purpose is to provide music, art, fashion, dance, and entertainment to local and regional communities via events and video production programming distributed via live and archival viewing. For all press inquiries regarding “The DJ Sessions”, or to schedule an interview with Darran Bruce, please contact us at info@thedjsessions.

01. David Guetta - One Love (Record Mix) 02. Basto! - I Rave You (Record Mix) 03. Deadmau5 - Professional Griefers (Record mix) 04. Antonio Giacca - Chemistry (Record Mix) 05. Tiesto - Red Lights (Record Mix) 06. Ian Carey, Micelle Shellers - Keep On Rising (Record Mix) 07. Bassjackers, Kshmr, Sirah - Memories (Record Mix) 08. Alesso, Roy English - Cool (Record Mix) 09. Lost Frequencies, Dimaro - Are You with Me (Record Mix) 10. Nicky Romero, Vicetone, When We Are Wild - Let Me Feel (Record Mix) 11. Keanu Silva - Pump Up The Jam (Record Mix) 12. Hardwell - Everybody Is In The Place (Record Mix) 13. Ivan Gough, Feenixpawl, Georgi Kay, Axwell - In My Mind (Record Mix) 14. Afrojack, Martin Garrix - Turn Up The Speakers (Record Mix) 15. Jay Hardway - Electric Elephants (Record Mix) 16. Oliver Heldens - Melody (Record Mix) 17. Global Deejays - Sound Of San Francisco (Record Mix) 18. Duck Sauce, Skrillex, Kill The Noise - NRG (Record Mix) 19. Chocolate Puma, Tommie Sunshine - Scrub The Ground (Record Mix) 20. Moti - Lion (In My Head) (Record Mix) 21. Abel Ramos, Albert Neve - Party (Record Mix) 22. Kygo, Conrad, Bassanova - Firestone (Record Mix) 23. The Naked & The Famous - Young Blood (Record Mix) 24. Eric Prydz, Retarded Funk - Call on Me (Record Mix) 25. Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl (Record Mix) 26. Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling (Record Mix) 27. Chris Lake, Laura V - Changes (Record Mix) 28. Example - Changed The Way You Kiss Me (Record Mix) 29. Diplo, Sleepy Tom - Be Right There (Record Mix) 30. Clean Bandit, Dash Berlin - Symphony (Record Mix) 31. Nws - Flute (Record Mix) 32. Steve Angello - Knas (Record Mix) 33. Deorro - For President (Record Mix) 34. Prodigy - Omen (Record Mix)

It's still Skrillex.

Playlist: Illy, Pat Lok - DOing it better (remix)Zion Y Lennox , Daddy Yankee - Yo Voy (BeatBreaker House Remix)Melleefresh - Candy Cane (Hotknife Funky House Remix)Evelyn King, Spooner Street - Evelyn King - Love Come Down (Spooner Street Edit)Royale BR, HOWZ - Royale BR & HOWZ - Look AroundUsher, Koltens & Nash - U Remind Me (Koltens & Nash Bootleg)Wildchild, So.Close - Renegade Master (So.Close Remix)Abba, Justice, Öwnboss, Sevek, TESO - Gimme Gimme Gimme (TESO EDIT)INNDRIVE - Go Away (Extended Mix)J. Balvin, Skrillex, LUISDEMARK - In Da Getto (LUISDEMARK VIP Remix)Keanu Silva, Alle Farben, Voost, David Guetta, Kid Cudi, Rowan Lace - Memories Sound Better With You (Rowan Lace Mashup)Yolanda Be Cool, Kolya - We No Speak Americano (Kolya Funk Extended Mix)Lee Rose - WannabeMazdem - Somebody to Love (Extended Mix)Dr Dre, Thomas Anthony - Still Dre (Thomas Anthony Remix)Tiga, FractaLL, Rocksted - Mind Dimension (FractaLL & Rocksted Edit)The Weekend, Nerko - Gasoline (Nerko Remix)Chris Lorenzo, Cobrah, Thomas Anthony - Chirs Lorenzo, Cobrah - MAMI (Thomas Anthony, Control Room, Monkey Twerk Remix)Nelly Furtado, Jamy Nox - Maneater (Jamy Nox Remix)Torro Torro, Smalltown DJs, Rrotik - House Shake (Rrotik Remix)Hamdi - Skanka (RWB GARAGE EDIT)Irene J Eileen - I Know YouNOTION - Dancehall DubOdd Mob - LEFT TO RIGHT (Extended Mix)Overmono - So U KnoGroove Delight & Gangbang - CompletamenteLAZY X LOLEATTA MASLOW - UNKNOWN RE RUBJames Brown - Superbad (Remix)Re Fill, Ben Hauke - Stillness (Ben Hauke Remix)TOBEHONEST - DakaPADDY - Call Ur NameA Tribe Called Red, Northern Voice - Sisters (Feat. Northern Voice)The Floozies, Manic Focus - Ah Jeez (Manic Focus Remix)Tanya Tagaq, The Halluci Nation - Colonizer (The Halluci Nation Remix)

F*ck Skrillex. F*ck You. F*ck This Podcast.

Welcome to Roadcase!!  We're very excited to have the extraordinarily talented Patrick Holland on the show. Primarily known for his electronic music as Project Pablo, Patrick has just released his first guitar-driven, indie pop album entitled You're The Boss. Having spent years touring the world playing DJ sets and festivals, Patrick became disenchanted with the Electronica scene and has taken a turn inward, writing and performing his own songs, and to his own surprise, finally put his own voice out there, singing his own lyrics. The contrast of these two worlds is striking yet Patrick is up for the challenge, confronting his own demons head on as he moves forward in his most authentic way possible. It's wonderful and refreshing -- and the finished product of Patrick's initial foray into this new lane has yielded a beautiful, melodic, and wholly original musical effort.  So hop on the Roadcase bus to learn about this intriguing and thoughtful artist, Patrick Holland. It's gonna be a great ride!! https://hollandpatrick.com/For more information: https://linktr.ee/roadcasepod and https://www.roadcasepod.comContact: info@roadcasepod.comTheme music:  "Eugene (Instrumental)" by Waltzer

Conor joined Sevan Matossian on his YouTube livestream of The Sevan Podcast to discuss his journey from being a troublemaking teenager to joining the Navy to discovering his passion for fitness and training celebrities like Dillon Francis, Zedd, Skrillex, and many more. Check out the full video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0It3xycZl6Y&t=2551s&ab_channel=TheSevanPodcast Follow The Sevan Podcast: @thesevanpodcast Follow Big Night Fitness: @bignightfitness Follow Conor Murphy: @conortmurphy

Le mix de DJs From Mars dans 103 Klubb le 22 Septembre 2022 de 20H à 21H Tracklist: Abba vs. Axwell X Ingrosso X Angello X Laidback Luke vs. Julian Jordan - Gimme The Big Bad Bass And Leave The World Behind (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Da Hool vs. Wildchild vs. Plastik Funk X Jasted X Metano - Renegade Master Meet Her At The Love Parade And Say Goodbye (Djs From Mars & Plastik Funk Bootleg) | Daft Punk vs. Shouse - Love Tonight One More Time (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Acraze vs. Tiësto vs. Martin Solveig vs. Tujamo & Jørd - Do It To It vs. Intoxicated Business vs. Clap Your Hands (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Avicii vs. Alice Deejay vs. Sidekick X Lumberjack & Brømance - Wake Me Up With Deep Fear Off Alone (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Iio X Nadia Ali vs. Veracocha - Rapture Carte Blanche (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Axwell & Ingrosso vs. Energy 52 vs. Julian Jordan - More Than You Know vs. Cafe' Del Mar vs. Sound Of The Bass (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Swedish House Mafia X Kazuma vs. James Hype & Miggy Dela Rosa - One Ferrari (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Tiësto vs. David Guetta & Kid Cudi - Lethal Industry vs. Memories (Djs From Mars Mashup) | The Prodigy vs. Justice & Simian vs. The Drill - We Are Your No Good Drill Friends (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Eric Prydz vs. Axwell Ingrosso vs. Major Lazer vs. Dada Life vs. Nicky Romero X Teamworx X Mr. Sid X George Z - Pjanoo Dreamer Lean On Noise Techno (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Daft Punk vs. Zombie Nation vs. Crissy Criss X Funtcase X Defectiøn - Harder Faster Stronger Kernkraft 400 Malfunction (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Swedish House Mafia vs. Supermode vs. 22Bullets & Smack & Lovespeake - Don't You Worry Child Tell Me Why Ride Or Die (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Sidney Samson vs. Icona Pop - I Love It vs. Riverside (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Guru Josh vs. Ivan Gough X Feenixpawl X Georgi Kay X Axwell vs. Vinne - Infinity In My Mind Po De Anjo (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Chemical Brothers vs. Benny Benassi X Justus - Galvanize Satisfaction (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Eric Prydz vs. Tiësto vs. Galantis - No Money vs. Opus vs. Wow (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Bomfunk Mc's vs. Fatboy Slim vs. Dnmkg & Alannys Weber - Rockafeller Freestyler Heartbreak (Djs From Mars & Mo27Da Mashup) | Calvin Harris vs. Loud Luxury vs. Toby Green - Feels So Close To Astro Body (Djs From Mars & Mo27Da Mashup) | Fatboy Slim vs. Bingo Players vs. Twoloud & Konih - Eat Sleep Rattle Repeat And Gimme Some More (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Faithless X Mike Candys X Jack Holiday vs. Swedish House Mafia - Insomnia Save The World (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Federico Franchi vs. Skrillex vs. John Summit - La Danza Cream In Da Getto (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Kid Cudi vs. Freejak - Sandstorm Day N Nite (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Alesso & Otto Knows - Million Voices Heroes (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Moguai vs. Skrillex & Damian Marley - Aciiid vs. Make It Bun Dem (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Meduza & Goodboys vs. Alesso & One Republic vs. Galantis vs. Steve Angello - Piece Of Your Heart vs. If I Lose Myself vs. Runaway vs. Knas (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Rune vs. Pnau vs. Avicii X Aloe Blacc vs. F-Rontal - Calabria vs. Changes vs. Sos vs. Graphit (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Atb vs. Yves La Rock vs. Öwnboss & Sevek - 9Pm Move Your Body Till I Rise Up (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Avicii vs. Meduza X Becky Hill X Goodboys vs. Sound Of Legend X Siks - Levels vs. Lose Control vs. All That She Wants (Djs From Mars Mashup) | Ran-D vs. David Guetta & Morten & Lovespeake - Zombie vs. Save My Life (Djs From Mars Mashup)

Future/Sound® with CUSCINO is a weekly, nationally-syndicated radio mixshow produced, hosted and curated by iTunes-charting DJ and music producer CUSCINO.  The weekly radio show features a continuous mix of progressive trap, FutureTrap, FutureBass and urban/hiphop artists exploring new sonic ground, challenging sonic boundaries, and creating new movements in sound across the globe.Known as a tastemaker, SoCal's CUSCINO takes listeners on an hour-long musical journey each week through the freshest selections and newest releases from bleeding-edge bass-centric artists, producers and DJs worldwide like RL Grime, NGHTMRE, Party Favor, UZ, Noise Cans, Yellow Claw and many more.Not one for genre boundaries, CUSCINO shows his growing listener base that the lines between the origins of hip-hop and today's trap & futureBass are even more blurry than we think.Learn more about the show, what FM stations it is currently aired on, and how to become an affiliate station here.This Week's Playlist:Isaak – So GoodShyGhy – Spring AwakeningBillie Eilish – Bellyache (xelu. Remix)P3PPER x purpoze – Sirius / InextremisKaivon – Hollywood Hillsonte – medicinethéos x that boi retrol x MCTR – any goodEASTGHOST – Only Onecapshun – LostNazaar – Love Burns (Blaize Remix)BSTN – NatureLidez x Double K – It Goes / Hard NationTequila Funk – Jungle TripTitomahi – No FearPavosh – X-TraNomis – Transcending RealityRay Volpe – LASERBEAM ft. ADVM BOMBHVRCRFT – S4Buyaka – Eater FutureSoundRadio.comConnect with CUSCINO at:Twitter.com | HUDL Music (@CUSCINO) | Instagram (@ThatCuscinoSound) | YouTube | Soundcloud | FacebookWant to become an affiliate station for Future/Sound®?Contact Keith at FutureSound@radio-linx.com or call 480.993.3150 for details

Future/Sound® with CUSCINO is a weekly, nationally-syndicated radio mixshow produced, hosted and curated by iTunes-charting DJ and music producer CUSCINO.  The weekly radio show features a continuous mix of progressive trap, FutureTrap, FutureBass and urban/hiphop artists exploring new sonic ground, challenging sonic boundaries, and creating new movements in sound across the globe.Known as a tastemaker, SoCal's CUSCINO takes listeners on an hour-long musical journey each week through the freshest selections and newest releases from bleeding-edge bass-centric artists, producers and DJs worldwide like RL Grime, NGHTMRE, Party Favor, UZ, Noise Cans, Yellow Claw and many more.Not one for genre boundaries, CUSCINO shows his growing listener base that the lines between the origins of hip-hop and today's trap & futureBass are even more blurry than we think.Learn more about the show, what FM stations it is currently aired on, and how to become an affiliate station here.This Week's Playlist:Isaak – So GoodShyGhy – Spring AwakeningBillie Eilish – Bellyache (xelu. Remix)P3PPER x purpoze – Sirius / InextremisKaivon – Hollywood Hillsonte – medicinethéos x that boi retrol x MCTR – any goodEASTGHOST – Only Onecapshun – LostNazaar – Love Burns (Blaize Remix)BSTN – NatureLidez x Double K – It Goes / Hard NationTequila Funk – Jungle TripTitomahi – No FearPavosh – X-TraNomis – Transcending RealityRay Volpe – LASERBEAM ft. ADVM BOMBHVRCRFT – S4Buyaka – Eater FutureSoundRadio.comConnect with CUSCINO at:Twitter.com | HUDL Music (@CUSCINO) | Instagram (@ThatCuscinoSound) | YouTube | Soundcloud | FacebookWant to become an affiliate station for Future/Sound®?Contact Keith at FutureSound@radio-linx.com or call 480.993.3150 for details

What So Not returns to Back To Back! Willy talks with him about his new album "Anomaly", working with Killer Mike, Daniel Johns & more, pushing to the limits & learning how to relax, making an animated film, big wave surfing, bringing up the next generation, lessons from Skrillex, struggling festivals & socioeconomics, working as an accountant, honoring dance culture & much more!   Join our Discord: http://discord.io/backtobackpod Willy Joy: http://linktr.ee/willyjoy What So Not: https://whatsonot.com https://whatsonot.lnk.to/anomalyAT     PROTECT REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: https://abortionfunds.org/funds/ https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ https://www.sistersong.net/

4cr/1hr: Come on. You know we have to talk about it. What else could we possibly talk about, besides anything else at all? This is the best soapbox ever because now I can finally call out one of the most blasphemous things I've seen about this whole Cbat thing: that fucking playlist is a LIE. He "posted" a link to the other songs and it's like Usher and shit. Let me be among the (hopefully) many and say that y'all shamed dude with his sex music and he took a long hard look at it and was like "oh shit they're gonna make fun of me more. I gotta spice it up and make it more human." Then he looks up a top 40 and is like okay gotta toss on some old classics so people don't think I'm different, I'm one of them. Usher. Before/after Cbat does not make sense. Use your brain people. Have you ever heard someone listen to like weird trance shit and then all of a sudden go, hey I'd like to hear what Ursher baby is doing. If you're gonna lie, keep Usher out of it. The rest of the playlist was definitely Skrillex and then like whale noises over a trash compactor. Also I just remembered Sean Paul was on that too. I think it was "Get Busy" which confirms further in my mind that this playlist is a lie. I've never heard someone listen to dogma-wave and then just go, hey you know what would sound amazing and continue the vibe? Maybe some Sean Paul or some FUCKING USHER. As you can see I ain't too thrilled about that whole thing. Everyone knows that listening to music during sex is disrespectful to our ancestors who watch from the other side. They used to listen to like 40's War Bond music so TECHNICALLY you should be having sex to that. Stop being so selfish. Also let your partner choose the music, always defer. If they defer back, make them regret it by playing "Pocketful of Sunshine" or anything by Joe Satriani. With a 3/4 time signature, no one will ejaculate and you'll last pretty much forever. I'd say thank me later, but it definitely works so you can go ahead and thank me now. Looking for where to thank me? LOOK NO FURTHER than this baller ass linktree thing, it has all of our deets! And if it doesn't work then complain on Twitter @PodHigher and like a couple Tik Toks or something cause a lot more are coming soon. Thanks for hanging with us, we'll see you next time! Oh right this is a combined course, we ran low on money. These credits won't do anything anyways, but yeah. https://linktr.ee/podhighereducation --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Firstly, we're celebrating 6 years of SITB. 6 years! I am not going to lie, I almost forgot because it seems like just yesterday that I was saying how crazy it's been that 5 years have gone by. Thank you so much to everyone that has supported me along the way. I absolutely love what I do. Secondly, we have our FIRST 3 timer on the show today! My dear friend Isaac Palmer was in town and we had such a fun time chatting and catching up. In 213 we got it all in and discussed: -The Past, Present and Future of Isaac Palmer: Isaac was one of my first guests - episode 11, over 6 years ago! He was on again for episode 037 but so much has happened since then in our lives. He's an incredibly smart and talented dude who shared his full story about his successes in music, his travels around the world and also some of the issues he's had with his health over the years. Powerful stuff throughout. -Isaac Palmer Discography: Isaac is one of the most talented and hardworking producers I have ever met - he taught me almost everything I know about music production and he's 8 years younger than me! The time and effort that he has put in has led him to release tracks like "Inception" with Tony Junior on Maxximize Records, "Need You" with Thmpsn, and a remix of "I Love You" from The Chainsmokers. Not to mention a slew of remixes that he's released for free over the years - most notably Skrillex's "Ego Death" which is absolute HEAT! -Self-Made: Isaac has taken 0 shortcuts in life. He's had to overcome more obstacles at his age than most people do in a lifetime. His passion for music has helped him get through some tough times and he continues to stay humble and motivated in the studio on a daily basis. Isaac is the MAN and against all odds has networked his way to becoming a true force in the industry - but a positive force at that. His story is an inspiration to me and so many others. It's truly an honor to have Isaac on the podcast - I've seen him grow (literally) over the years and he's like a brother to me. When I think about how far he's come on a personal and professional level, I can't help but smile and get excited for the future that is ahead of him. He deserves everything coming his way, but he's the one who is making it happen. Isaac, thank you so much for coming on the show - I can't think of a better guest to have on 3 times and also celebrate 6 years of SITB with me. So much love and respect for you my man!

Watch out, and watch this: Too many apps on my phone I'm better off alone I'd better kill myself Nobody will ever love me Nobody will ever love me Watch out, watch this: My iPhone is trying to kill me, For real? See; It's natural selection I'm trying to unselect me Caviar, a delicacy How delishish The devil in me says to keep digging my grave I was once at a rave, And he gave me a halo A lion, I'm brave— I once said Spin it, Spin back the record again If it's all in my head Then I'm better off dead I'm better off dead Watch this! @Dillon Francis I'm stuck in a trance— Hanzel was lighting the candle And summoned me, Out of a dead sleep, With no pants on— It was a tech house set But I'm on acid Spinning an axis And stuck in a state of trance —i thought it was armin van buren at one point I have to give up at some point, writing, right? Now this is just point in history Point me away from the misery Mystery flavor is like Fruit punch, Or raspberry— Something like that, If you ask me; But white as the rabbit I pulled out the hat In the back seat I'm hatching a plan to go mad, But I need the recepits from Pasqualle for my taxes What the Fuck does that mean? I don't know; I'll read this In a year, When I unbury it Maybe I married my best friend, Deserved to get hit So I'm just going back to him Scratch that, he's mad at me I have no family Reckless abandonment God I'm attracted to everything Except for that See? She's racist. No, it's my ovaries! The lighter you are, the less the adversity I see you eyes turned to grey; Don't abandon me Yes, I wear contacts I'm faking attractive I laughed at him, had to He actually had magic @Dillon Francis How many hats to you have? Thanks to Hanzel, I'm back on this planet Why light a candle, when you know I haven't an answer; What did you ask? No, i haven't had breakfast yet — Thanks for reminding me I'm in a casket Goddamnit @Dillon Francis What are you? I'm an adversary GOOGLE: adversary ..??? ad·ver·sar·y /ˈadvərˌserē/ noun one's opponent in a contest, conflict, or dispute. Hmm. Oh. Opponent to what?! Could be anything, really. I don't like him… 2 for $ MIX AND MATCH INCLUDES BIG KING REALLY. Which one's the Big King? The little one, I think. He's not little In fact: LOOK AT EM. Dawh. Look at Skrillex. Dawg. Look at Skrillex. He bossed up. He was already boss. Well. He Sauced up, then. What kind of sauce is that?! I don't know, but looks like Dillon Francis is eating it. DILLON FRANCIS IS EATING IT pause. How am I still writing this show. She doesn't eat? She hasn't eaten. She doesn't eat. I haven't ate yet! BET. BET. OK—Bet. Nice. Sick. What are we betting. … … … WAIT. ,,, josh pan? … … Did you unpause? Unpause what? Uh. The game. This is the game. No, the game. This is the game! What are you talking about?!! Now I'm famous> This is The Game. sup. This is Sunni Blū Sup. It is?! Yea it is. Wait, it is?! I thought you were the kidd?? I am the kidd. Then, why is The Game meeting Sunnï Blu? For a collab. Duh. Wait. Pause. QUIT PRESSING PAUSE. Wait. Go back. I didn't get that last part. WE WATCHED IT A HUNDRED TIMES ALREADY. Screw you. We're watching it again. Ugh! I hate this! Dude. I hate watching this with you. It takes 3 hours to watch an episode! You guys are talking over all the good parts! It's all the good parts! This shit's exciting. I'm defaulting. What? This isn't—this isn't fair. I'm not doing this. What?! It isn't safe anymore. It was never “safe” SAFE! Oh nice. Baseball. It is baseball. Who's playing? All the DJs. What. For what?! It's the DJ GAMES. THE DJ GAMESsssssssss ITS THE DJ GAMES! OH FUCK YEAH. I fuck this. I quit. what. You can't quit. I can quit. I just did. You can't quit the DJ games. I just did. But you can't. I just did. Hey. Hey, what's up. I'm gonna be late. What's going on? My bus driver's drunk. Are you sure? CITY BUS DRIFTING IN SLOW MOTION /Hans Zimmer Music Yes. Welhp. What. That's it. I'm just gonna have to kill myself. Why, what happened? I'm pretty sure that's the only way to beat this level. What, really? Nah. I'm pretty sure Let me see. *SUPACREE jumps into oncoming traffic* YOU DIED. Aww. I died. WHAT THE FUCK. Well, you said. GAME OVER [fade to black] I HAD NO LIVES LEFT. WELL, YOU SAID! THATS'S NOT THE WAY TO— [fade to white] NEW LEVEL UNLOCKED: GOD MODE OOOHHHHHHHH. WHAT?! LVL i - DREAMSTATE What is this. SUPACREE. I— what? Hello? Follow me. Who is this? I know you. Oh. The above and beyond part. That's funny. I was just— So wait. If the end of this episode, is the end of that movie, then… I guess whatever's happening about now is whatever happened before that part. What part? I, having run off from I, runs into a forest alongside The Endless River, which opens out into a beautiful meadow, the micolored cosmic sky twinkling sweetly above, strange auroras dancing in the skies; a field of glowing and stardusted singing wishflowers at her feet, she frustratingly falls into them, soft grass puffing with the twinkling sounds of fairy dust and sprites (a homage to the lion king) the wishflowers softly sing her to sleep with the subtle and sweet frequencies of Skrillex. (A homage to the wizard of Oz) From Above & Beyond, a flock of Cosmic Creatures in flight spot a golden glimmer from afar; they descend dimensions-- to get a closer look; Closing in on the universe within the confines of a massive structure, which propels itself seamlessly through galaxies faster than the speed of light and sound, though she appears as a large golden space station, slowly drifting through the atmosphere. Manned by yet unseen beings, the golden ship descends upon Skrillex, almost silentl— a swishing whir as the ship, more similar to a futuristic building, an ovaline rounded structure seemingly structured in brass, gold, and silver as it docks to the soft soil of planetary terrain. The landing is soft enough not to have awaken Ū, still sleeping; but an immense light pours from the openings of the ship, waking her--and blinding Sonny as he finally approaches from behind, having been searching for her. She is drawn into the light; he shields his eyes as the beings emerge from their massive station. Monologue/Montage I fell in love with you...it was an accident. I fell in love with you, because I had to; I hadn't thought about it before, but i've been thinking about it ever since. Had I succeeded in my attempted suicide, we wouldn't have come face-to-face… Had I succeeded in my attempted suicide, I'd have no reason to write something so pathetic as this, pititul letter, which you will probably never read. Probably, anyway. I've spent a majority of my lifetime very deeply troubled, yearning for all the attention one could ever crave--until suddenly, I no longer craved any at all. Solitude, rather than isolation, became sacred, and safe to me; It was in the solace and quiet of my very own world, that you entered my kingdom...and it became ‘ours'. Silence. Nature. Astrology. My greatest found pleasures, in a cavalcade of endless self-doubt, self-loathing...a tiresome collection of all the hatred I've harbored for myself in my twenty-something years. I fell in love with you...I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to do anything, except be. Another festival, another escapade...another chance to dance, in the sunlight--the moonlight, under stars… And under the stars, is where I was forced to find you. Now, it seems, can't escape your presence--or lack-thereof. Unrequited? Perhaps. But, not unprovoked. I love you because it is in me to do so. I will always love you, always. There is a world where you're in love with me, as I am you; All I can do now, is hope that this is that same very world, and that as days go by, we draw closer to one-another, rather than further apart. In truth, friendship, in the very least, would serve as a worthy reward...for all the worry, all the wonder, and all the willing I've done for you; in honesty...I'm ashamed in my inability to let go--yet also proud, that I am able to love this much, this hard. To see you with someone else, now, would be a gentle relief; to know that you are kept in love, with graciousness...a subtle gift, an answer to a prayer I asked. Loneliness, I wouldn't wish upon you for anything--love is, in fact, my whole wish for you--be it mine, or not. While I can wish that it will be mine, I've also wished for you, the very best--I would want not for my flaws to burden you. Flaws are what create our perfection; God is, as I am. Losing you, the flame of fear that set my heart and soul to fire; Cancerous, weakened, plagued--premonitions impolitely penetrated my fragile, eggshell mind… the death of a friend, fast-forwarded and reflected into my mind's-eye; How could I forget a face like yours--eyes like those? How could I not know you, as I have? Tears bearing your name roll over my nose, like the rain on a rose...the burden of belonging to one, rather than some; To all, rather than none. So now, I keep my favorite photo of you in my phone...a comfort, to the weary and wounded heart I carry. I can pretend that your sweet voice accompanies mine, as I sing to soothe myself, as I sway in solitude; A gentle kiss, I imagine to give, if ever the chance. I love you, without reason to--and with every reason to, I love you. Find me, again As the ship departs, charging to go into warp speed, Sonny is left alone on his own planet; as a slight panic falls over him, A key-like object falls from the ship as it dissappars at warp speed into a portal. As his hands clap together, catching the object, the sound rings outward--this clapping pages The Skrillex, which lands promptly beside him, exclaiming-- "I AM SKRILLEX"; he has never seen this ship before, however proceeds onto the ship as though familiar with extra terrestrial phenomena all together. We only see him enter the ship; we do not follow him inside, but instead cut to Ū on the Interdimensional SpaceTime Station. Ah wait. So Skrillex is a planet? Skrillex is a lot of things SKRILLEX is a planet . That explains it. No it doesn't. I mean, it might. No it doesn't! I mean, it kindof does, if you think about it. BleepBleepBloop bleeepbleepbloopBloop bleepBleepBleeppBoopBoop bloopbloopBloopBloop. bleepBleep. bloop. Bleep? … Oh, check it out. What. LIZ LEMON is drunk on a bus eating a wrap from subway. Why is it not a sandwhich? Cause it's a wrap. Yeah, but why? THAT'S A WRAP. Finally. Fuck nevada. Fuck Nevada. They put us at The Trump again. It's good continental breakfast. —? What?! That's not continental breakfast, you dipshit. That's room service. It gets added to your bill. Oh, so it comes out of the food budget. SUPER JEWISH ACCOUNTANT I'm not paying for this. No, you're not paying for it—the company's paying for it. I represent ‘the company'. What's that mean? The company's not paying for this. So I have to pay for it. Someone has to. What the Fuck. —! — FEARLESS is an inner-city pigeon who grew up in CENTRAL PARK EXT. CENTRAL PARK. DAYBREAK ENTER THE MULTIVERSE - THE FESTIVAL PROJECT (TM), INC. COPYRIGHT 2022 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Episode one hundred and fifty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Heroes and Villains” by the Beach Boys, and the collapse of the Smile album. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixteen-minute bonus episode available, on "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" by the Electric Prunes. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode. I used many resources for this episode. As well as the books I referred to in all the Beach Boys episodes, listed below, I used Domenic Priore's book Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece and Richard Henderson's 33 1/3 book on Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher.  His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin is the best biography of Wilson. I have also referred to Brian Wilson's autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, and to Mike Love's, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music in general, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it, including the single version of “Heroes and Villains”. The box set The Smile Sessions  contains an attempt to create a finished album from the unfinished sessions, plus several CDs of outtakes and session material. Transcript [Opening -- "intro to the album" studio chatter into "Our Prayer"] Before I start, I'd just like to note that this episode contains some discussion of mental illness, including historical negative attitudes towards it, so you may want to check the transcript or skip this one if that might be upsetting. In November and December 1966, the filmmaker David Oppenheim and the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein collaborated on a TV film called "Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution".  The film was an early attempt at some of the kinds of things this podcast is doing, looking at how music and social events interact and evolve, though it was dealing with its present rather than the past. The film tried to cast as wide a net as possible in its fifty-one minutes. It looked at two bands from Manchester -- the Hollies and Herman's Hermits -- and how the people identified as their leaders, "Herman" (or Peter Noone) and Graham Nash, differed on the issue of preventing war: [Excerpt: Inside Pop, the Rock Revolution] And it made a star of East Coast teenage singer-songwriter Janis Ian with her song about interracial relationships, "Society's Child": [Excerpt: Janis Ian, "Society's Child"] And Bernstein spends a significant time, as one would expect, analysing the music of the Beatles and to a lesser extent the Stones, though they don't appear in the show. Bernstein does a lot to legitimise the music just by taking it seriously as a subject for analysis, at a time when most wouldn't: [Excerpt: Leonard Bernstein talking about "She Said She Said"] You can't see it, obviously, but in the clip that's from, as the Beatles recording is playing, Bernstein is conducting along with the music, as he would a symphony orchestra, showing where the beats are falling. But of course, given that this was filmed in the last two months of 1966, the vast majority of the episode is taken up with musicians from the centre of the music world at that time, LA. The film starts with Bernstein interviewing Tandyn Almer,  a jazz-influenced songwriter who had recently written the big hit "Along Comes Mary" for The Association: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] It featured interviews with Roger McGuinn, and with the protestors at the Sunset Strip riots which were happening contemporaneously with the filming: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] Along with Frank Zappa's rather acerbic assessment of the potential of the youth revolutionaries: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] And ended (other than a brief post-commercial performance over the credits by the Hollies) with a performance by Tim Buckley, whose debut album, as we heard in the last episode, had featured Van Dyke Parks and future members of the Mothers of Invention and Buffalo Springfield: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] But for many people the highlight of the film was the performance that came right before Buckley's, film of Brian Wilson playing a new song from the album he was working on. One thing I should note -- many sources say that the voiceover here is Bernstein. My understanding is that Bernstein wrote and narrated the parts of the film he was himself in, and Oppenheim did all the other voiceover writing and narration, but that Oppenheim's voice is similar enough to Bernstein's that people got confused about this: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] That particular piece of footage was filmed in December 1966, but it wasn't broadcast until April the twenty-fifth, 1967, an eternity in mid-sixties popular music. When it was broadcast, that album still hadn't come out. Precisely one week later, the Beach Boys' publicist Derek Taylor announced that it never would: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson, "Surf's Up"] One name who has showed up in a handful of episodes recently, but who we've not talked that much about, is Van Dyke Parks. And in a story with many, many, remarkable figures, Van Dyke Parks may be one of the most remarkable of all. Long before he did anything that impinges on the story of rock music, Parks had lived the kind of life that would be considered unbelievable were it to be told as fiction. Parks came from a family that mixed musical skill, political progressiveness, and achievement. His mother was a scholar of Hebrew, while his father was a neurologist, the first doctor to admit Black patients to a white Southern hospital, and had paid his way through college leading a dance band. Parks' father was also, according to the 33 1/3 book on Song Cycle, a member of "John Philip Sousa's Sixty Silver Trumpets", but literally every reference I can find to Sousa leading a band of that name goes back to that book, so I've no idea what he was actually a member of, but we can presume he was a reasonable musician. Young Van Dyke started playing the clarinet at four, and was also a singer from a very early age, as well as playing several other instruments. He went to the American Boychoir School in Princeton, to study singing, and while there he sang with Toscaninni, Thomas Beecham, and other immensely important conductors of the era. He also had a very special accompanist for one Christmas carolling session. The choir school was based in Princeton, and one of the doors he knocked on while carolling was that of Princeton's most famous resident, Albert Einstein, who heard the young boy singing "Silent Night", and came out with his violin and played along. Young Van Dyke was only interested in music, but he was also paying the bills for his music tuition himself -- he had a job. He was a TV star. From the age of ten, he started getting roles in TV shows -- he played the youngest son in the 1953 sitcom Bonino, about an opera singer, which flopped because it aired opposite the extremely popular Jackie Gleason Show. He would later also appear in that show, as one of several child actors who played the character of Little Tommy Manicotti, and he made a number of other TV appearances, as well as having a small role in Grace Kelly's last film, The Swan, with Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdain. But he never liked acting, and just did it to pay for his education. He gave it up when he moved on to the Carnegie Institute, where he majored in composition and performance. But then in his second year, his big brother Carson asked him to drop out and move to California. Carson Parks had been part of the folk scene in California for a few years at this point. He and a friend had formed a duo called the Steeltown Two, but then both of them had joined the folk group the Easy Riders, a group led by Terry Gilkyson. Before Carson Parks joined, the Easy Riders had had a big hit with their version of "Marianne", a calypso originally by the great calypsonian Roaring Lion: [Excerpt: The Easy Riders, "Marianne"] They hadn't had many other hits, but their songs became hits for other people -- Gilkyson wrote several big hits for Frankie Laine, and the Easy Riders were the backing vocalists on Dean Martin's recording of a song they wrote, "Memories are Made of This": [Excerpt: Dean Martin and the Easy Riders, "Memories are Made of This"] Carson Parks hadn't been in the group at that point -- he only joined after they'd stopped having success -- and eventually the group had split up. He wanted to revive his old duo, the Steeltown Two, and persuaded his family to let his little brother Van Dyke drop out of university and move to California to be the other half of the duo. He wanted Van Dyke to play guitar, while he played banjo. Van Dyke had never actually played guitar before, but as Carson Parks later said "in 90 days, he knew more than most folks know after many years!" Van Dyke moved into an apartment adjoining his brother's, owned by Norm Botnick, who had until recently been the principal viola player in a film studio orchestra, before the film studios all simultaneously dumped their in-house orchestras in the late fifties, so was a more understanding landlord than most when it came to the lifestyles of musicians. Botnick's sons, Doug and Bruce, later went into sound engineering -- we've already encountered Bruce Botnick in the episode on the Doors, and he will be coming up again in the future. The new Steeltown Two didn't make any records, but they developed a bit of a following in the coffeehouses, and they also got a fair bit of session work, mostly through Terry Gilkyson, who was by that point writing songs for Disney and would hire them to play on sessions for his songs. And it was Gilkyson who both brought Van Dyke Parks the worst news of his life to that point, and in doing so also had him make his first major mark on music. Gilkyson was the one who informed Van Dyke that another of his brothers, Benjamin Riley Parks, had died in what was apparently a car accident. I say it was apparently an accident because Benjamin Riley Parks was at the time working for the US State Department, and there is apparently also some evidence that he was assassinated in a Cold War plot. Gilkyson also knew that neither Van Dyke nor Carson Parks had much money, so in order to help them afford black suits and plane tickets to and from the funeral, Gilkyson hired Van Dyke to write the arrangement for a song he had written for an upcoming Disney film: [Excerpt: Jungle Book soundtrack, "The Bare Necessities"] The Steeltown Two continued performing, and soon became known as the Steeltown Three, with the addition of a singer named Pat Peyton. The Steeltown Three recorded two singles, "Rock Mountain", under that group name: [Excerpt: The Steeltown Three, "Rock Mountain"] And a version of "San Francisco Bay" under the name The South Coasters, which I've been unable to track down. Then the three of them, with the help of Terry Gilkyson, formed a larger group in the style of the New Christy Minstrels -- the Greenwood County Singers. Indeed, Carson Parks would later claim that  Gilkyson had had the idea first -- that he'd mentioned that he'd wanted to put together a group like that to Randy Sparks, and Sparks had taken the idea and done it first. The Greenwood County Singers had two minor hot one hundred hits, only one of them while Van Dyke was in the band -- "The New 'Frankie and Johnny' Song", a rewrite by Bob Gibson and Shel Silverstein of the old traditional song "Frankie and Johnny": [Excerpt: The Greenwood County Singers, "The New Frankie and Johnny Song"] They also recorded several albums together, which gave Van Dyke the opportunity to practice his arrangement skills, as on this version of  "Vera Cruz" which he arranged: [Excerpt: The Greenwood County Singers, "Vera Cruz"] Some time before their last album, in 1965, Van Dyke left the Greenwood County Singers, and was replaced by Rick Jarrard, who we'll also be hearing more about in future episodes. After that album, the group split up, but Carson Parks would go on to write two big hits in the next few years. The first and biggest was a song he originally wrote for a side project. His future wife Gaile Foote was also a Greenwood County Singer, and the two of them thought they might become folk's answer to Sonny and Cher or Nino Tempo and April Stevens: [Excerpt: Carson and Gaile, "Somethin' Stupid"] That obviously became a standard after it was covered by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Carson Parks also wrote "Cab Driver", which in 1968 became the last top thirty hit for the Mills Brothers, the 1930s vocal group we talked about way way back in episode six: [Excerpt: The Mills Brothers, "Cab Driver"] Meanwhile Van Dyke Parks was becoming part of the Sunset Strip rock and roll world. Now, until we get to 1967, Parks has something of a tangled timeline. He worked with almost every band around LA in a short period, often working with multiple people simultaneously, and nobody was very interested in keeping detailed notes. So I'm going to tell this as a linear story, but be aware it's very much not -- things I say in five minutes might happen after, or in the same week as, things I say in half an hour. At some point in either 1965 or 1966 he joined the Mothers of Invention for a brief while. Nobody is entirely sure when this was, and whether it was before or after their first album. Some say it was in late 1965, others in August 1966, and even the kind of fans who put together detailed timelines are none the wiser, because no recordings have so far surfaced of Parks with the band. Either is plausible, and the Mothers went through a variety of keyboard players at this time -- Zappa had turned to his jazz friend Don Preston, but found Preston was too much of a jazzer and told him to come back when he could play "Louie Louie" convincingly, asked Mac Rebennack to be in the band but sacked him pretty much straight away for drug use, and eventually turned to Preston again once Preston had learned to rock and roll. Some time in that period, Van Dyke Parks was a Mother, playing electric harpsichord. He may even have had more than one stint in the group -- Zappa said "Van Dyke Parks played electric harpsichord in and out." It seems likely, though, that it was in summer of 1966, because in an interview published in Teen Beat Magazine in December 66, but presumably conducted a few months prior, Zappa was asked to describe the band members in one word each and replied: "Ray—Mahogany Roy—Asbestos Jim—Mucilage Del—Acetate Van Dyke—Pinocchio Billy—Boom I don't know about the rest of the group—I don't even know about these guys." Sources differ as to why Parks didn't remain in the band -- Parks has said that he quit after a short time because he didn't like being shouted at, while Zappa said "Van Dyke was not a reliable player. He didn't make it to rehearsal on time and things like that." Both may be true of course, though I've not heard anyone else ever criticise Parks for his reliability. But then also Zappa had much more disciplinarian standards than most rock band leaders. It's possibly either through Zappa that he met Tom Wilson, or through Tom Wilson that he met Frank Zappa, but either way Parks, like the Mothers of Invention, was signed to MGM records in 1966, where he released two solo singles co-produced by Wilson and an otherwise obscure figure named Tim Alvorado. The first was "Number Nine", which we heard last week, backed with "Do What You Wanta": [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "Do What You Wanta"] At least one source I've read says that the lyrics to "Do What You Wanta" were written not by Parks but by his friend Danny Hutton, but it's credited as a Parks solo composition on the label. It was after that that the Van Dyke Parks band -- or as they were sometimes billed, just The Van Dyke Parks formed, as we discussed last episode, based around Parks, Steve Stills, and Steve Young, and they performed a handful of shows with bass player Bobby Rae and drummer Walt Sparman, playing a mix of original material, primarily Parks' songs, and covers of things like "Dancing in the Street". The one contemporaneous review of a live show I've seen talks about  the girls in the audience screaming and how "When rhythm guitarist Steve Stillman imitated the Barry McGuire emotional scene, they almost went wiggy". But The Van Dyke Parks soon split up, and Parks the individual recorded his second single, "Come to the Sunshine": [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "Come to the Sunshine"] Around the time he left the Greenwood County Singers, Van Dyke Parks also met Brian Wilson for the first time, when David Crosby took him up to Wilson's house to hear an acetate of the as-yet-unreleased track "Sloop John B". Parks was impressed by Wilson's arrangement techniques, and in particular the way he was orchestrating instrumental combinations that you couldn't do with a standard live room setup, that required overdubbing and close-micing. He said later "The first stuff I heard indicated this kind of curiosity for the recording experience, and when I went up to see him in '65 I don't even think he had the voices on yet, but I heard that long rotational breathing, that long flute ostinato at the beginning... I knew this man was a great musician." [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B (instrumental)"] In most of 1966, though, Parks was making his living as a session keyboard player and arranger, and much of the work he was getting was through Lenny Waronker. Waronker was a second-generation music industry professional. His father, Si Waronker, had been a violinist in the Twentieth Century Fox studio orchestra before founding Liberty Records (the label which indirectly led to him becoming immortalised in children's entertainment, when Liberty Records star David Seville named his Chipmunk characters after three Liberty executives, with Simon being Si Waronker's full forename). The first release on Liberty Records had been a version of "The Girl Upstairs", an instrumental piece from the Fox film The Seven-Year Itch. The original recording of that track, for the film, had been done by the Twentieth Century Fox Orchestra, written and conducted by Alfred Newman, the musical director for Fox: [Excerpt: Alfred Newman, "The Girl Upstairs"] Liberty's soundalike version was conducted by Newman's brother Lionel, a pianist at the studio who later became Fox's musical director for TV, just as his brother was for film, but who also wrote many film scores himself. Another Newman brother, Emil, was also a film composer, but the fourth brother, Irving, had gone into medicine instead. However, Irving's son Randy wanted to follow in the family business, and he and Lenny Waronker, who was similarly following his own father by working for Liberty Records' publishing subsidiary Metric Music, had been very close friends ever since High School. Waronker got Newman signed to Metric Music, where he wrote "They Tell Me It's Summer" for the Fleetwoods: [Excerpt: The Fleetwoods, "They Tell Me It's Summer"] Newman also wrote and recorded a single of his own in 1962, co-produced by Pat Boone: [Excerpt: Randy Newman, "Golden Gridiron Boy"] Before deciding he wasn't going to make it as a singer and had better just be a professional songwriter. But by 1966 Waronker had moved on from Metric to Warner Brothers, and become a junior A&R man. And he was put in charge of developing the artists that Warners had acquired when they had bought up a small label, Autumn Records. Autumn Records was a San Francisco-based label whose main producer, Sly Stone, had now moved on to other things after producing the hit record "Laugh Laugh" for the Beau Brummels: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Beau Brummels  had had another hit after that and were the main reason that Warners had bought the label, but their star was fading a little. Stone had also been mentoring several other groups, including the Tikis and the Mojo Men, who all had potential. Waronker gathered around himself a sort of brains trust of musicians who he trusted as songwriters, arrangers, and pianists -- Randy Newman, the session pianist Leon Russell, and Van Dyke Parks. Their job was to revitalise the career of the Beau Brummels, and to make both the Tikis and the Mojo Men into successes. The tactic they chose was, in Waronker's words, “Go in with a good song and weird it out.” The first good song they tried weirding out was in late 1966, when Leon Russell came up with a clarinet-led arrangement of Paul Simon's "59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)" for the Tikis, who performed it but who thought that their existing fanbase wouldn't accept something so different, so it was put out under another name, suggested by Parks, Harpers Bizarre: [Excerpt: Harpers Bizarre, "Feeling Groovy"] Waronker said of Parks and Newman “They weren't old school guys. They were modern characters but they had old school values regarding certain records that needed to be made, certain artists who needed to be heard regardless. So there was still that going on. The fact that ‘Feeling Groovy' was a number 10 hit nationwide and ‘Sit Down, I Think I Love You'  made the Top 30 on Western regional radio, that gave us credibility within the company. One hit will do wonders, two allows you to take chances.” We heard "Sit Down, I Think I Love You" last episode -- that's the song by Parks' old friend Stephen Stills that Parks arranged for the Mojo Men: [Excerpt: The Mojo Men, "Sit Down, I Think I Love You"] During 1966 Parks also played on Tim Buckley's first album, as we also heard last episode: [Excerpt: Tim Buckley, "Aren't You the Girl?"] And he also bumped into Brian Wilson on occasion, as they were working a lot in the same studios and had mutual friends like Loren Daro and Danny Hutton, and he suggested the cello part on "Good Vibrations". Parks also played keyboards on "5D" by the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] And on the Spirit of '67 album for Paul Revere and the Raiders, produced by the Byrds' old producer Terry Melcher. Parks played keyboards on much of the album, including the top five hit "Good Thing": [Excerpt: Paul Revere and the Raiders, "Good Thing"] But while all this was going on, Parks was also working on what would become the work for which he was best known. As I've said, he'd met Brian Wilson on a few occasions, but it wasn't until summer 1966 that the two were formally introduced by Terry Melcher, who knew that Wilson needed a new songwriting collaborator, now Tony Asher's sabbatical from his advertising job was coming to an end, and that Wilson wanted someone who could do work that was a bit more abstract than the emotional material that he had been writing with Asher. Melcher invited both of them to a party at his house on Cielo Drive -- a house which would a few years later become notorious -- which was also attended by many of the young Hollywood set of the time. Nobody can remember exactly who was at the party, but Parks thinks it was people like Jack Nicholson and Peter and Jane Fonda. Parks and Wilson hit it off, with Wilson saying later "He seemed like a really articulate guy, like he could write some good lyrics". Parks on the other hand was delighted to find that Wilson "liked Les Paul, Spike Jones, all of these sounds that I liked, and he was doing it in a proactive way." Brian suggested Parks write the finished lyrics for "Good Vibrations", which was still being recorded at this time, and still only had Tony Asher's dummy lyrics,  but Parks was uninterested. He said that it would be best if he and Brian collaborate together on something new from scratch, and Brian agreed. The first time Parks came to visit Brian at Brian's home, other than the visit accompanying Crosby the year before, he was riding a motorbike -- he couldn't afford a car -- and forgot to bring his driver's license with him. He was stopped by a police officer who thought he looked too poor to be in the area, but Parks persuaded the police officer that if he came to the door, Brian Wilson would vouch for him. Brian got Van Dyke out of any trouble because the cop's sister was a Beach Boys fan, so he autographed an album for her. Brian and Van Dyke talked for a while. Brian asked if Van Dyke needed anything to help his work go smoothly, and Van Dyke said he needed a car. Brian asked what kind. Van Dyke said that Volvos were supposed to be pretty safe. Brian asked how much they cost. Van Dyke said he thought they were about five thousand dollars. Brian called up his office and told them to get a cheque delivered to Van Dyke for five thousand dollars the next day, instantly earning Van Dyke's loyalty. After that, they got on with work. To start with, Brian played Van Dyke a melody he'd been working on, a melody based on a descending scale starting on the fourth: [Plays "Heroes and Villains" melody] Parks told Wilson that the melody reminded him vaguely of Marty Robbins' country hit "El Paso" from 1959, a song about a gunfighter, a cantina, and a dancing woman: [Excerpt: Marty Robbins, "El Paso"] Wilson said that he had been thinking along the same lines, a sort of old west story, and thought maybe it should be called "Heroes and Villains". Parks started writing, matching syllables to Wilson's pre-conceived melody -- "I've been in this town so long that back in the city I've been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time" [Excerpt: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, "Heroes and Villains demo"] As Parks put it "The engine had started. It was very much ad hoc. Seat of the pants. Extemporaneous values were enforced. Not too much precommitment to ideas. Or, if so, equally pursuing propinquity." Slowly, over the next several months, while the five other Beach Boys were touring, Brian and Van Dyke refined their ideas about what the album they were writing, initially called Dumb Angel but soon retitled Smile, should be. For Van Dyke Parks it was an attempt to make music about America and American mythology. He was disgusted, as a patriot, with the Anglophilia that had swept the music industry since the arrival of the Beatles in America two and a half years earlier, particularly since that had happened so soon after the deaths both of President Kennedy and of Parks' own brother who was working for the government at the time he died. So for him, the album was about America, about Plymouth Rock, the Old West, California, and Hawaii. It would be a generally positive version of the country's myth, though it would of course also acknowledge the bloodshed on which the country had been built: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Bicycle Rider" section] As he put it later "I was dead set on centering my life on the patriotic ideal. I was a son of the American revolution, and there was blood on the tracks. Recent blood, and it was still drying. The whole record seemed like a real effort toward figuring out what Manifest Destiny was all about. We'd come as far as we could, as far as Horace Greeley told us to go. And so we looked back and tried to make sense of that great odyssey." Brian had some other ideas -- he had been studying the I Ching, and Subud, and he wanted to do something about the four classical elements, and something religious -- his ideas were generally rather unfocused at the time, and he had far more ideas than he knew what to usefully do with. But he was also happy with the idea of a piece about America, which fit in with his own interest in "Rhapsody in Blue", a piece that was about America in much the same way. "Rhapsody in Blue" was an inspiration for Brian primarily in how it weaved together variations on themes. And there are two themes that between them Brian was finding endless variations on. The first theme was a shuffling between two chords a fourth away from each other. [demonstrates G to C on guitar] Where these chords are both major, that's the sequence for "Fire": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow/Fire"] For the "Who ran the Iron Horse?" section of "Cabin Essence": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Cabinessence"] For "Vegetables": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Vegetables"] And more. Sometimes this would be the minor supertonic and dominant seventh of the key, so in C that would be Dm to G7: [Plays Dm to G7 fingerpicked] That's the "bicycle rider" chorus we heard earlier, which was part of a song known as "Roll Plymouth Rock" or "Do You Like Worms": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Bicycle Rider"] But which later became a chorus for "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] But that same sequence is also the beginning of "Wind Chimes": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wind Chimes"] The "wahalla loo lay" section of "Roll Plymouth Rock": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Roll Plymouth Rock"] And others, but most interestingly, the minor-key rearrangement of "You Are My Sunshine" as "You Were My Sunshine": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "You Were My Sunshine"] I say that's most interesting, because that provides a link to another of the major themes which Brian was wringing every drop out of, a phrase known as "How Dry I Am", because of its use under those words in an Irving Berlin song, which was a popular barbershop quartet song but is now best known as a signifier of drunkenness in Looney Tunes cartoons: [Excerpt: Daffy Duck singing "How Dry I Am" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap4MMn7LpzA ] The phrase is a common one in early twentieth century music, especially folk and country, as it's made up of notes in the pentatonic scale -- it's the fifth, first, second, and third of the scale, in that order: [demonstrates "How Dry I Am"] And so it's in the melody to "This Land is Your Land", for example, a song which is very much in the same spirit of progressive Americana in which Van Dyke Parks was thinking: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land"] It's also the start of the original melody of "You Are My Sunshine": [Excerpt: Jimmie Davis, "You Are My Sunshine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYvgNEU4Am8] Brian rearranged that melody when he stuck it into a minor key, so it's no longer "How Dry I Am" in the Beach Boys version, but if you play the "How Dry I Am" notes in a different rhythm, you get this: [Plays "He Gives Speeches" melody] Which is the start of the melody to "He Gives Speeches": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "He Gives Speeches"] Play those notes backwards, you get: [Plays "He Gives Speeches" melody backwards] Do that and add onto the end a passing sixth and then the tonic, and then you get: [Plays that] Which is the vocal *countermelody* in "He Gives Speeches": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "He Gives Speeches"] And also turns up in some versions of "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains (alternate version)"] And so on. Smile was an intricate web of themes and variations, and it incorporated motifs from many sources, both the great American songbook and the R&B of Brian's youth spent listening to Johnny Otis' radio show. There were bits of "Gee" by the Crows, of "Twelfth Street Rag", and of course, given that this was Brian Wilson, bits of Phil Spector. The backing track to the verse of "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] Owed more than a little to a version of "Save the Last Dance For Me" that Spector had produced for Ike and Tina Turner: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "Save the Last Dance For Me"] While one version of the song “Wonderful” contained a rather out-of-place homage to Etta James and “The Wallflower”: [Excerpt: “Wonderful (Rock With Me Henry)”] As the recording continued, it became more and more obvious that the combination of these themes and variations was becoming a little too much for Brian.  Many of the songs he was working on were made up of individual modules that he was planning to splice together the way he had with "Good Vibrations", and some modules were getting moved between tracks, as he tried to structure the songs in the edit. He'd managed it with "Good Vibrations", but this was an entire album, not just a single, and it was becoming more and more difficult. David Anderle, who was heading up the record label the group were looking at starting, would talk about Brian playing him acetates with sections edited together one way, and thinking it was perfect, and obviously the correct way to put them together, the only possible way, and then hearing the same sections edited together in a different way, and thinking *that* was perfect, and obviously the correct way to put them together. But while a lot of the album was modular, there were also several complete songs with beginnings, middles, ends, and structures, even if they were in several movements. And those songs showed that if Brian could just get the other stuff right, the album could be very, very, special. There was "Heroes and Villains" itself, of course, which kept changing its structure but was still based around the same basic melody and story that Brian and Van Dyke had come up with on their first day working together. There was also "Wonderful", a beautiful, allusive, song about innocence lost and regained: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wonderful"] And there was CabinEssence, a song which referenced yet another classic song, this time "Home on the Range", to tell a story of idyllic rural life and of the industrialisation which came with westward expansion: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "CabinEssence"] The arrangement for that song inspired Van Dyke Parks to make a very astute assessment of Brian Wilson. He said later "He knew that he had to adhere to the counter-culture, and I knew that I had to. I think that he was about as estranged from it as I was.... At the same time, he didn't want to lose that kind of gauche sensibility that he had. He was doing stuff that nobody would dream of doing. You would never, for example, use one string on a banjo when you had five; it just wasn't done. But when I asked him to bring a banjo in, that's what he did. This old-style plectrum thing. One string. That's gauche." Both Parks and Wilson were both drawn to and alienated from the counterculture, but in very different ways, and their different ways of relating to the counterculture created the creative tension that makes the Smile project so interesting. Parks is fundamentally a New Deal Liberal, and was excited by the progresssive nature of the counterculture, but also rather worried about its tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to ignore the old in pursuit of the new. He was an erudite, cultured, sophisticated man who thought that there was value to be found in the works and attitudes of the past, even as one must look to the future. He was influenced by the beat poets and the avant garde art of the time, but also said of his folk music period "A harpist would bring his harp with him and he would play and recite a story which had been passed down the generations. This particular legacy continued through Arthurian legend, and then through the Middle Ages, and even into the nineteenth century. With all these songs, half of the story was the lyrics, and the folk songs were very interesting. They were tremendously thought-driven songs; there was nothing confusing about that. Even when the Kingston Trio came out -- and Brian has already admitted his debt to the Kingston Trio -- 'Tom Dooley', the story of a murder most foul 'MTA' an urban nightmare -- all of this thought-driven music was perfectly acceptable.  It was more than a teenage romantic crisis." Brian Wilson, on the other hand, was anything *but* sophisticated. He is a simple man in the best sense of the term -- he likes what he likes, doesn't like what he doesn't like, and has no pretensions whatsoever about it. He is, at heart, a middle-class middle-American brought up in suburbia, with a taste for steaks and hamburgers, broad physical comedy, baseball, and easy listening music. Where Van Dyke Parks was talking about "thought-driven music", Wilson's music, while thoughtful, has always been driven by feelings first and foremost. Where Parks is influenced by Romantic composers like Gottschalk but is fundamentally a craftsman, a traditionalist, a mason adding his work to a cathedral whose construction started before his birth and will continue after his death, Wilson's music has none of the stylistic hallmarks of Romantic music, but in its inspiration it is absolutely Romantic -- it is the immediate emotional expression of the individual, completely unfiltered. When writing his own lyrics in later years Wilson would come up with everything from almost haiku-like lyrics like "I'm a leaf on a windy day/pretty soon I'll be blown away/How long with the wind blow?/Until I die" to "He sits behind his microphone/Johnny Carson/He speaks in such a manly tone/Johnny Carson", depending on whether at the time his prime concern was existential meaninglessness or what was on the TV. Wilson found the new counterculture exciting, but was also very aware he didn't fit in. He was developing a new group of friends, the hippest of the hip in LA counterculture circles -- the singer Danny Hutton, Mark Volman of the Turtles, the writers Michael Vosse and Jules Siegel, scenester and record executive David Anderle -- but there was always the underlying implication that at least some of these people regarded him as, to use an ableist term but one which they would probably have used, an idiot savant. That they thought of him, as his former collaborator Tony Asher would later uncharitably put it, as "a genius musician but an amateur human being". So for example when Siegel brought the great postmodern novelist Thomas Pynchon to visit Brian, both men largely sat in silence, unable to speak to each other; Pynchon because he tended to be a reactive person in conversation and would wait for the other person to initiate topics of discussion, Brian because he was so intimidated by Pynchon's reputation as a great East Coast intellectual that he was largely silent for fear of making a fool of himself. It was this gaucheness, as Parks eventually put it, and Parks' understanding that this was actually a quality to be cherished and the key to Wilson's art, that eventually gave the title to the most ambitious of the complete songs the duo were working on. They had most of the song -- a song about the power of music, the concept of enlightenment, and the rise and fall of civilisations: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surf's Up"] But Parks hadn't yet quite finished the lyric. The Beach Boys had been off on tour for much of Brian and Van Dyke's collaboration, and had just got back from their first real tour of the UK, where Pet Sounds had been a smash hit, rather than the middling success it had been in the US, and "Good Vibrations" had just become their first number one single. Brian and Van Dyke played the song for Brian's brother Dennis, the Beach Boys' drummer, and the band member most in tune with Brian's musical ambitions at this time. Dennis started crying, and started talking about how the British audiences had loved their music, but had laughed at their on-stage striped-shirt uniforms. Parks couldn't tell if he was crying because of the beauty of the unfinished song, the humiliation he had suffered in Britain, or both. Dennis then asked what the name of the song was, and as Parks later put it "Although it was the most gauche factor, and although maybe Brian thought it was the most dispensable thing, I thought it was very important to continue to use the name and keep the elephant in the room -- to keep the surfing image but to sensitise it to new opportunities. One of these would be an eco-consciousness; it would be speaking about the greening of the Earth, aboriginal people, how we had treated the Indians, taking on those things and putting them into the thoughts that come with the music. That was a solution to the relevance of the group, and I wanted the group to be relevant." Van Dyke had decided on a title: "Surf's Up": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surf's Up"] As the group were now back from their tour, the focus for recording shifted from the instrumental sessions to vocal ones. Parks had often attended the instrumental sessions, as he was an accomplished musician and arranger himself, and would play on the sessions, but also wanted to learn from what Brian was doing -- he's stated later that some of his use of tuned percussion in the decades since, for example, has come from watching Brian's work. But while he was also a good singer, he was not a singer in the same style as the Beach Boys, and they certainly didn't need his presence at those sessions, so he continued to work on his lyrics, and to do his arrangement and session work for other artists, while they worked in the studio. He was also, though, starting to distance himself from Brian for other reasons. At the start of the summer, Brian's eccentricity and whimsy had seemed harmless -- indeed, the kind of thing he was doing, such as putting his piano in a sandbox so he could feel the sand with his feet while he wrote, seems very much on a par with Maureen Cleave's descriptions of John Lennon in the same period. They were two newly-rich, easily bored, young men with low attention spans and high intelligence who could become deeply depressed when understimulated and so would get new ideas into their heads, spend money on their new fads, and then quickly discard them. But as the summer wore on into autumn and winter, Brian's behaviour became more bizarre, and to Parks' eyes more distasteful. We now know that Brian was suffering a period of increasing mental ill-health, something that was probably not helped by the copious intake of cannabis and amphetamines he was using to spur his creativity, but at the time most people around him didn't realise this, and general knowledge of mental illness was even less than it is today. Brian was starting to do things like insist on holding business meetings in his swimming pool, partly because people wouldn't be able to spy on him, and partly because he thought people would be more honest if they were in the water. There were also events like the recording session where Wilson paid for several session musicians, not to play their instruments, but to be recorded while they sat in a pitch-black room and played the party game Lifeboat with Jules Siegel and several of Wilson's friends, most of whom were stoned and not really understanding what they were doing, while they got angrier and more frustrated. Alan Jardine -- who unlike the Wilson brothers, and even Mike Love to an extent, never indulged in illegal drugs -- has talked about not understanding why, in some vocal sessions, Brian would make the group crawl on their hands and knees while making noises like animals: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains Part 3 (Animals)"] As Parks delicately put it "I sensed all that was destructive, so I withdrew from those related social encounters." What this meant though was that he was unaware that not all the Beach Boys took the same attitude of complete support for the work he and Brian had been doing that Dennis Wilson -- the only other group member he'd met at this point -- took. In particular, Mike Love was not a fan of Parks' lyrics. As he said later "I called it acid alliteration. The [lyrics are] far out. But do they relate like 'Surfin' USA,' like 'Fun Fun Fun,' like 'California Girls,' like 'I Get Around'? Perhaps not! So that's the distinction. See, I'm into success. These words equal successful hit records; those words don't" Now, Love has taken a lot of heat for this over the years, and on an artistic level that's completely understandable. Parks' lyrics were, to my mind at least, the best the Beach Boys ever had -- thoughtful, intelligent, moving, at times profound, often funny, often beautiful. But, while I profoundly disagree with Love, I have a certain amount of sympathy for his position. From Love's perspective, first and foremost, this is his source of income. He was the only one of the Beach Boys to ever have had a day job -- he'd worked at his father's sheet metal company -- and didn't particularly relish the idea of going back to manual labour if the rock star gig dried up. It wasn't that he was *opposed* to art, of course -- he'd written the lyrics to "Good Vibrations", possibly the most arty rock single released to that point, hadn't he? -- but that had been *commercial* art. It had sold. Was this stuff going to sell? Was he still going to be able to feed his wife and kids? Also, up until a few months earlier he had been Brian's principal songwriting collaborator. He was *still* the most commercially successful collaborator Brian had had. From his perspective, this was a partnership, and it was being turned into a dictatorship without him having been consulted. Before, it had been "Mike, can you write some lyrics for this song about cars?", now it was "Mike, you're going to sing these lyrics about a crow uncovering a cornfield". And not only that, but Mike had not met Brian's new collaborator, but knew he was hanging round with Brian's new druggie friends. And Brian was behaving increasingly weirdly, which Mike put down to the influence of the drugs and these new friends. It can't have helped that at the same time the group's publicist, Derek Taylor, was heavily pushing the line "Brian Wilson is a genius". This was causing Brian some distress -- he didn't think of himself as a genius, and he saw the label as a burden, something it was impossible to live up to -- but was also causing friction in the group, as it seemed that their contributions were being dismissed. Again, I don't agree with Mike's position on any of this, but it is understandable. It's also the case that Mike Love is, by nature, a very assertive and gregarious person, while Brian Wilson, for all that he took control in the studio, is incredibly conflict-avoidant and sensitive. From what I know of the two men's personalities, and from things they've said, and from the session recordings that have leaked over the years, it seems entirely likely that Love will have seen himself as having reasonable criticisms, and putting them to Brian clearly with a bit of teasing to take the sting out of them; while Brian will have seen Love as mercilessly attacking and ridiculing the work that meant so much to him in a cruel and hurtful manner, and that neither will have understood at the time that that was how the other was seeing things. Love's criticisms intensified. Not of everything -- he's several times expressed admiration for "Heroes and Villains" and "Wonderful" -- but in general he was not a fan of Parks' lyrics. And his criticisms seemed to start to affect Brian. It's difficult to say what Brian thinks about Parks' lyrics, because he has a habit in interviews of saying what he thinks the interviewer wants to hear, and the whole subject of Smile became a touchy one for him for a long time, so in some interviews he has talked about how dazzlingly brilliant they are, while at other times he's seemed to agree with Love, saying they were "Van Dyke Parks lyrics", not "Beach Boys lyrics". He may well sincerely think both at the same time, or have thought both at different times. This came to a head with a session for the tag of "Cabinessence": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Cabinessence"] Love insisted on having the line "over and over the crow flies uncover the cornfield" explained to him, and Brian eventually decided to call Van Dyke Parks and have him come to the studio. Up to this point, Parks had no idea that there was anything controversial, so when Brian phoned him up and very casually said that Mike had a few questions about the lyrics, could he come down to the studio? He went without a second thought. He later said "The only person I had had any interchange with before that was Dennis, who had responded very favorably to 'Heroes and Villains' and 'Surf's Up'. Based on that, I gathered that the work would be approved. But then, with no warning whatsoever, I got that phone call from Brian. And that's when the whole house of cards came tumbling down." Parks got to the studio, where he was confronted by an angry Mike Love, insisting he explain the lyrics. Now, as will be, I hope, clear from everything I've said, Parks and Love are very, very, *very* different people. Having met both men -- albeit only in formal fan-meeting situations where they're presenting their public face -- I actually find both men very likeable, but in very different ways. Love is gregarious, a charmer, the kind of man who would make a good salesman and who people use terms like "alpha male" about. He's tall, and has a casual confidence that can easily read as arrogance, and a straightforward sense of humour that can sometimes veer into the cruel. Parks, on the other hand, is small, meticulously well-mannered and well-spoken, has a high, precise, speaking voice which probably reads as effeminate to the kind of people who use terms like "alpha male", and the kind of devastating intelligence and Southern US attention to propriety which means that if he *wanted* to say something cruel about someone, the victim would believe themselves to have been complimented until a horrific realisation two days after the event. In every way, from their politics to their attitudes to art versus commerce to their mannerisms to their appearance, Mike Love and Van Dyke Parks are utterly different people, and were never going to mix well. And Brian Wilson, who was supposed to be the collaborator for both of them, was not mediating between them, not even expressing an opinion -- his own mental problems had reached the stage where he simply couldn't deal with the conflict. Parks felt ambushed and hurt, Love felt angry, especially when Parks could not explain the literal meaning of his lyrics. Eventually Parks just said "I have no excuse, sir", and left. Parks later said "That's when I lost interest. Because basically I was taught not to be where I wasn't wanted, and I could feel I wasn't wanted. It was like I had someone else's job, which was abhorrent to me, because I don't even want my own job. It was sad, so I decided to get away quick." Parks continued collaborating with Wilson, and continued attending instrumental sessions, but it was all wheelspinning -- no significant progress was made on any songs after that point, in early December. It was becoming clear that the album wasn't going to be ready for its planned Christmas release, and it was pushed back to January, but Brian's mental health was becoming worse and worse. One example that's often cited as giving an insight into Brian's mental state at the time is his reaction to going to the cinema to see John Frankenheimer's classic science fiction horror film Seconds. Brian came in late, and the way the story is always told, when he was sat down the screen was black and a voice said from the darkness, "Hello Mr. Wilson". That moment does not seem to correspond with anything in the actual film, but he probably came in around the twenty-four minute mark, where the main character walks down a corridor, filmed in a distorted, hallucinatory manner, to be greeted: [Excerpt: Seconds, 24:00] But as Brian watched the film, primed by this, he became distressed by a number of apparent similarities to his life. The main character was going through death and rebirth, just as he felt he was. Right after the moment I just excerpted, Mr. Wilson is shown a film, and of course Brian was himself watching a film. The character goes to the beach in California, just like Brian. The character has a breakdown on a plane, just like Brian, and has to take pills to cope, and the breakdown happens right after this: [Excerpt: Seconds, from about 44:22] A studio in California? Just like where Brian spent his working days? That kind of weird coincidence can be affecting enough in a work of art when one is relatively mentally stable, but Brian was not at all stable. By this point he was profoundly paranoid -- and he may have had good reason to be. Some of Brian's friends from this time period have insisted that Brian's semi-estranged abusive father and former manager, Murry, was having private detectives watch him and his brothers to find evidence that they were using drugs. If you're in the early stages of a severe mental illness *and* you're self-medicating with illegal drugs, *and* people are actually spying on you, then that kind of coincidence becomes a lot more distressing. Brian became convinced that the film was the work of mind gangsters, probably in the pay of Phil Spector, who were trying to drive him mad and were using telepathy to spy on him. He started to bar people who had until recently been his friends from coming to sessions -- he decided that Jules Siegel's girlfriend was a witch and so Siegel was no longer welcome -- and what had been a creative process in the studio degenerated into noodling and second-guessing himself. He also, with January having come and the album still not delivered, started doing side projects,  some of which, like his production of tracks for photographer Jasper Daily, seem evidence either of his bizarre sense of humour, or of his detachment from reality, or both: [Excerpt: Jasper Daily, "Teeter Totter Love"] As 1967 drew on, things got worse and worse. Brian was by this point concentrating on just one or two tracks, but endlessly reworking elements of them. He became convinced that the track "Fire" had caused some actual fires to break out in LA, and needed to be scrapped. The January deadline came and went with no sign of the album. To add to that, the group discovered that they were owed vast amounts of unpaid royalties by Capitol records, and legal action started which meant that even were the record to be finished it might become a pawn in the legal wrangling. Parks eventually became exasperated by Brian -- he said later "I was victimised by Brian Wilson's buffoonery" -- and he quit the project altogether in February after a row with Brian. He returned a couple of weeks later out of a sense of loyalty, but quit again in April. By April, he'd been working enough with Lenny Waronker that Waronker offered him a contract with Warner Brothers as a solo artist -- partly because Warners wanted some insight into Brian Wilson's techniques as a hit-making producer. To start with, Parks released a single, to dip a toe in the water, under the pseudonym "George Washington Brown". It was a largely-instrumental cover version of Donovan's song "Colours", which Parks chose because after seeing the film Don't Look Back, a documentary of Bob Dylan's 1965 British tour, he felt saddened at the way Dylan had treated Donovan: [Excerpt: George Washington Brown, "Donovan's Colours"] That was not a hit, but it got enough positive coverage, including an ecstatic review from Richard Goldstein in the Village Voice, that Parks was given carte blanche to create the album he wanted to create, with one of the largest budgets of any album released to that date. The result was a masterpiece, and very similar to the vision of Smile that Parks had had -- an album of clever, thoroughly American music which had more to do with Charles Ives than the British Invasion: [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "The All Golden"] But Parks realised the album, titled Song Cycle, was doomed to failure when at a playback session, the head of Warner Brothers records said "Song Cycle? So where are the songs?" According to Parks, the album was only released because Jac Holzman of Elektra Records was also there, and took out his chequebook and said he'd release the album if Warners wouldn't, but it had little push, apart from some rather experimental magazine adverts which were, if anything, counterproductive. But Waronker recognised Parks' talent, and had even written into Parks' contract that Parks would be employed as a session player at scale on every session Waronker produced -- something that didn't actually happen, because Parks didn't insist on it, but which did mean Parks had a certain amount of job security. Over the next couple of years Parks and Waronker co-produced the first albums by two of their colleagues from Waronker's brains trust, with Parks arranging -- Randy Newman: [Excerpt: Randy Newman, "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"] And Ry Cooder: [Excerpt: Ry Cooder, "One Meat Ball"] Waronker would refer to himself, Parks, Cooder, and Newman as "the arts and crafts division" of Warners, and while these initial records weren't very successful, all of them would go on to bigger things. Parks would be a pioneer of music video, heading up Warners' music video department in the early seventies, and would also have a staggeringly varied career over the years, doing everything from teaming up again with the Beach Boys to play accordion on "Kokomo" to doing the string arrangements on Joanna Newsom's album Ys, collaborating with everyone from U2 to Skrillex,  discovering Rufus Wainwright, and even acting again, appearing in Twin Peaks. He also continued to make massively inventive solo albums, releasing roughly one every decade, each unique and yet all bearing the hallmarks of his idiosyncratic style. As you can imagine, he is very likely to come up again in future episodes, though we're leaving him for now. Meanwhile, the Beach Boys were floundering, and still had no album -- and now Parks was no longer working with Brian, the whole idea of Smile was scrapped. The priority was now to get a single done, and so work started on a new, finished, version of "Heroes and Villains", structured in a fairly conventional manner using elements of the Smile recordings. The group were suffering from numerous interlocking problems at this point, and everyone was stressed -- they were suing their record label, Dennis' wife had filed for divorce, Brian was having mental health problems, and Carl had been arrested for draft dodging -- though he was later able to mount a successful defence that he was a conscientious objector. Also, at some point around this time, Bruce Johnston seems to have temporarily quit the group, though this was never announced -- he doesn't seem to have been at any sessions from late May or early June through mid-September, and didn't attend the two shows they performed in that time. They were meant to have performed three shows, but even though Brian was on the board of the Monterey Pop Festival, they pulled out at the last minute, saying that they needed to deal with getting the new single finished and with Carl's draft problems. Some or all of these other issues almost certainly fed into that, but the end result was that the Beach Boys were seen to have admitted defeat, to have handed the crown of relevance off to the San Francisco groups. And even if Smile had been released, there were other releases stealing its thunder. If it had come out in December it would have been massively ahead of its time, but after the Beatles released Sgt Pepper it would have seemed like it was a cheap copy -- though Parks has always said he believes the Beatles heard some of the Smile tapes and copied elements of the recordings, though I don't hear much similarity myself. But I do hear a strong similarity in "My World Fell Down" by Sagittarius, which came out in June, and which was largely made by erstwhile collaborators of Brian -- Gary Usher produced, Glen Campbell sang lead, and Bruce Johnston sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "My World Fell Down"] Brian was very concerned after hearing that that someone *had* heard the Smile tapes, and one can understand why. When "Heroes and Villains" finally came out, it was a great single, but only made number twelve in the charts. It was fantastic, but out of step with the times, and nothing could have lived up to the hype that had built up around it: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] Instead of Smile, the group released an album called Smiley Smile, recorded in a couple of months in Brian's home studio, with no studio musicians and no involvement from Bruce, other than the previously released singles, and with the production credited to "the Beach Boys" rather than Brian. Smiley Smile has been unfairly dismissed over the years, but it's actually an album that was ahead of its time. It's a collection of stripped down versions of Smile songs and new fragments using some of the same motifs, recorded with minimal instrumentation. Some of it is on a par with the Smile material it's based on: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wonderful"] Some is, to my ears, far more beautiful than the Smile versions: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wind Chimes"] And some has a fun goofiness which relates back to one of Brian's discarded ideas for Smile, that it be a humour album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "She's Going Bald"] The album was a commercial flop, by far the least successful thing the group had released to that point in the US, not even making the top forty when it came out in September, though it made the top ten in the UK, but interestingly it *wasn't* a critical flop, at least at first. While the scrapping of Smile had been mentioned, it still wasn't widely known, and so for example Richard Goldstein, the journalist whose glowing review of "Donovan's Colours" in the Village Voice had secured Van Dyke Parks the opportunity to make Song Cycle, gave it a review in the New York Times which is written as if Goldstein at least believes it *is* the album that had been promised all along, and he speaks of it very perceptively -- and here I'm going to quote quite extensively, because the narrative about this album has always been that it was panned from the start and made the group a laughing stock: "Smiley Smile hardly reads like a rock cantata. But there are moments in songs such as 'With Me Tonight' and 'Wonderful' that soar like sacred music. Even the songs that seem irrelevant to a rock-hymn are infused with stained-glass melodies. Wilson is a sound sculptor and his songs are all harmonious litanies to the gentle holiness of love — post-Christian, perhaps but still believing. 'Wind Chimes', the most important piece on the album, is a fine example of Brian Wilson's organic pop structure. It contains three movements. First, Wilson sets a lyric and melodic mood ("In the late afternoon, you're hung up on wind chimes"). Then he introduces a totally different scene, utilizing passages of pure, wordless harmony. His two-and-a-half minute hymn ends with a third movement in which the voices join together in an exquisite round, singing the words, "Whisperin' winds set my wind chimes a-tinklin'." The voices fade out slowly, like the bittersweet afternoon in question. The technique of montage is an important aspect of Wilson's rock cantata, since the entire album tends to flow as a single composition. Songs like 'Heroes and Villains', are fragmented by speeding up or slowing down their verses and refrains. The effect is like viewing the song through a spinning prism. Sometimes, as in 'Fall Breaks and Back to Winter' (subtitled "W. Woodpecker Symphony"), the music is tiered into contrapuntal variations on a sliver of melody. The listener is thrown into a vast musical machine of countless working gears, each spinning in its own orbit." That's a discussion of the album that I hear when I listen to Smiley Smile, and the group seem to have been artistically happy with it, at least at first. They travelled to Hawaii to record a live album (with Brian, as Bruce was still out of the picture), taking the Baldwin organ that Brian used all over Smiley Smile with them, and performed rearranged versions of their old hits in the Smiley Smile style. When the recordings proved unusable, they recreated them in the studio, with Bruce returning to the group, where he would remain, with the intention of overdubbing audience noise and releasing a faked live album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "California Girls [Lei'd studio version]"] The idea of the live album, to be called Lei'd in Hawaii, was scrapped, but that's not the kind of radical reimagining of your sound that you do if you think you've made an artistic failure. Indeed, the group's next albu