I recently got a new turntable — I'd been without a functioning one for

about 25 years, long enough, I reckon, to give me some perspective on

the experience of spinning vinyl.

I've heard people say that you can't really appreciate the superiority

of vinyl sound over CD sound except on audiophile equipment, but it's not

true.  I have a decidedly non-audiophile music system and if I listen to a CD

after playing a couple of records I notice a difference immediately. 

The CD sounds thinner, especially on the high end of the sonic range. 

The ability to transmit the high end of a recording in warm, round tones

is what vinyl does best.  And all across the sonic range it imparts a

CD mastering has improved dramatically in recent years.  You can hear

the improvement best by comparing the first CD versions of the Beatles

albums with the new remasters.  With the remastered CDs there's a marked

difference in the roundness and warmth of the tone.  They almost sound

like vinyl — but not quite . . . and again it's in the high end of the

range that you notice the difference most clearly.  When John and Paul

hit their high notes, their voices take on a slightly freeze-dried

The other aspect of spinning vinyl has to do, of course, with the ritual

of the thing.  Pulling a record out of its sleeve, cleaning it, being

careful to set the needle down on it without harming either the needle

or the disc, getting up to flip the record over when one side is done —

I adore the convenience of having tons of music on my computer and

portable devices.  It allows me to listen to more music, and more varied

In re what's left of SMiLE, Brian Wilson's abandoned recording project for The Beach Boys from 1966-67, we stipulate to the following:

1)  It is conceptually incoherent, at least from a rational point of view.  It is probably not conceptually incoherent because it was abandoned before completion — it was probably abandoned before completion because it had no conceptual structure.  Such a work could not by definition ever be completed.  Wilson was working with some fuzzy ideas about what he wanted the album to be, but proceeded largely by feel.

2)  The lyrics, mostly by Van Dyke Parks (above), are uneven.  Some are brilliant, some are overly precious, some are embarrassing.

But we find, after careful listening, that the following propositions are also true:

1)  SMiLE is a great work of art, a masterpiece, and like nothing else in the history of American music . . . well, since Charles Ives, anyway.  In Ives's work, Holiday Symphony, for example, Wilson could have found a workable intellectual rationale for what he was doing — a kind of collage strategy, with discrete passages of music connected to each other by the associations of memory (as well as the whims and tastes of the composer.)  For all the musical influences coursing through SMiLE, though, I doubt if Wilson listened much to Ives, whose intellectuality and dissonance would not have appealed to him.

2)  There is a coherence to SMiLE which derives from the sheer beauty and audacity of the music, and the logic of Wilson's own ear — the clear, utterly sensible flow of Wilson's joy in music, of every kind, from hymns to doo-wop.  It's all unified further by the magical harmonies Wilson conceived for the voices of The Beach Boys.  He recorded the vocal parts over and over again, trying to get the transcendent effect he was after — that little bit of magic beyond the sweet sounds that would constitute a proper musical offering . . . to God, as he saw it.  He wanted SMiLE to be a musical offering to God.

3) SMiLE is a musical offering to God, of the best Wilson felt was inside himself.  He wanted it to be more than he could realize at the time, but it's enough, as it is — a worthy offering.