Best track on the Beach Boys' SMiLE

who exactly are the people who don't give good vibrations credit? beach boys fans don't hate it - in fact they've generally spent hours of their lives listening to the session tracks - they're just a little sick of it. it is generally regarded as one of the most groundbreaking pop songs of the 60s. are we going to need to defend pet sounds next?

timellison OTM.

It is indeed the centerpiece and the whole cycle of 'Wonderful'—>'Song for Children'—>'Child is the Father'—>'Surf's Up' is like a fucking symphony, if you ask me. The masterful way they did it on the '04 SMiLE really drives that home. There's a moment in 'Child is the Father' ("Easy my child. . .") where you can sing the "my god, my god" part and then the strings introduce the melodic theme (". . .surf's up, mmmhmm. . .) in a minor key right before the proper 'Surf's Up' begins. Then the proper song ends of course with a reprise from 'Child is the Father.' They really nailed it. Truly one of the most affecting pop music moments I've ever come across.

Having a hard time right now thinking of a better way to spend eleven minutes.

"Surf's Up," I think, is more harmonically open, less sort of driven to the dominant or rooted in the tonic. That was certainly a domain that was less explored in pop music. Still is, probably, so yes, it probably gets points for feeling like it's opening doors.

I have a soft spot for that sort of composition. Like hey, let's build up a theme and drive it into the ground as many ways as possible.

Wormholes through music and whatnot.

i too have heard "good vibrations" 10000 times, and it still hasn't lost its ability to surprise and delight me

I blame it on Carol Kaye.

i listened to that whole disc of 'good vibrations' session highlights a little while back and it was delightful. still i get why someone wouldn't vote for it here -- it'd be like voting Like A Rolling Stone in a Hwy 61 poll. obviously a towering, important song, but is it my favorite?

what late great said

I actually have a very salient memory of hearing it for the first time as a small child, on headphones in a children's museum, and even then it blew me away.

What I actually miss most about the 2004 Smile is the wonderful acoustics of those old '60s studios like Western and Gold Star

i listened to that whole disc of 'good vibrations' session highlights a little while back and it was delightful. still i get why someone wouldn't vote for it here -- it'd be like voting Like A Rolling Stone in a Hwy 61 poll. obviously a towering, important song, but is it my favorite?

Actually it would be more like voting for "Strawberry Fields Forever" in a Sgt. Peppers poll.

who exactly are the people who don't give good vibrations credit? beach boys fans don't hate it - in fact they've generally spent hours of their lives listening to the session tracks - they're just a little sick of it. it is generally regarded as one of the most groundbreaking pop songs of the 60s. are we going to need to defend pet sounds next?

I would agree. There is a more than a bit of a straw man argument going on here. "Good Vibrations" was voted the greatest single of all time by Mojo 15 years ago and is easily one of the top 5 in history. I am going to go so far as to say everyone in this thread loves it to pieces.

Austin and timellison both speak very much to reasons I love "Surf's Up." Candidly my favorite version of this has always been the solo piano version with the double tracked vocal from 1966-7. While I miss the incredible "Child" coda, there is such beauty and purity in Brian singing this by himself and power in the dramatic appoggiatura in each verse. It really is an exceptional piece of music.

Interestingly, Priore suggests in his book the possibility that none of what Brian recorded for "Surf's Up"—the instrumental track, piano version, etc.—was actually intended for the final release and that Brian may well have deemed all of it unusable by the time he ditched Smile.

Actually it would be more like voting for "Strawberry Fields Forever" in a Sgt. Peppers poll.
i know what you mean, but "good vibrations" was planned for inclusion on Smile (at least in most accounts and on the printed covers) - the Beatles never thought about putting Strawberry Fields on Sgt Pepper did they?

If Strawberry Fields had been tacked onto Sgt. Peppers, I would totally vote for it. Much better than any of the songs on that record.

Man, I love 'Strawberry Fields', but this whole conversation has kind of made me come to realization: Sgt. Pepper kind of blows in comparison to SMiLE.

OTM

the 2004, or 1966 version? or both?

The '66 version, just because it was a contemporary of SPLHCB.

But, I don't know. The more I listen to Brian's SMiLE, the more I like it.

i know what you mean, but "good vibrations" was planned for inclusion on Smile (at least in most accounts and on the printed covers) - the Beatles never thought about putting Strawberry Fields on Sgt Pepper did they?

Yeah SFF and Penny Lane were both supposed to be on Sgt. Pepper.

oh ha, is that right? i stand corrected, i thought they were always meant to stand alone...
those two really would've made sgt pepper the classic album everyone claims it is!

Well they were the first songs written for the album. Either George Martin or the record company decided to put them out as singles which precluded them from being on the album for one reason or another, I don't exactly remember.

I think they were just the first things recorded in the sessions (followed by A Day In The Life maybe?) and they hadn't put anything out in a while by their standards and so it just became "ehh, put these out." Worked out brilliantly that they complemented each other so well thematically, contrasted so much sonically, etc. But I could be making this up completely.

I've been diving back into this pretty extensively the last few days ... and I gotta say, the real achievement of the 2004 version is that it is tight as a fucking drum. I think if you had asked any fan familiar with the boots the odds that anyone, Brian included, could assemble an even somewhat coherent album out of what had been left behind, I'd say they'd have predicted that those odds were almost nil given the sheer number of open questions -- the "Heroes and Villains" puzzle, sure, but also things like "I Love to Say Da Da" which were little more than backing tracks and all those little instrumental things like "Gee," "Look" and "Holiday." That the final product relied on Brian and VDP digging out old, unrecorded music and lyrics and composing a bit of new stuff answers those questions without really diminishing any of the magic in those original tapes is kind of amazing.

Ten years later, with the box making the context that only obsessives knew for 40 years available to the masses, we can appreciate how utterly unlikely the record was to ever see the light of day -- and how special and important of a work Smile ultimately was. To that end, one of my favorite reviews of this record is from Xgau, who was admittedly no fan of the crumbs that had eked out over the years but a major booster once it was finally assembled:

SMiLE [Nonesuch, 2004]
There are many things I don't miss about the '60s, including long hair, LSD, revolutionary rhetoric, and folkies playing drums. But the affluent optimism that preceded and then secretly pervaded the decade's apocalyptic alienation is a lost treasure of a time when capitalism had so much slack in it that there was no pressing need to stop your mind from wandering. Brian Wilson grokked surfing because it embodied that optimism, and though I considered the legend of Smile hot air back then, this re-creation proves he had plenty more to make of it. The five titles played for minimalist whimsy on Smiley Smile mean even more orchestrated, and the newly released fragments are as strong as the whole songs they tie together. Smile's post-adolescent utopia isn't disfigured by Brian's thickened, soured 62-year-old voice. It's ennobled--the material limitations of its sunny artifice and pretentious tomfoolery acknowledged and joyfully engaged. This can only be tonic for Americans long since browbeaten into lowering their expectations by the rich men who are stealing their money. A+

damn, that's what's up

OTM

Yeah, SFF and Penny Lane were supposed to be on Sgt Pepper but then removed to be released as a double A side single since, at that time, they didn't include their singles on their albums (which I'm not sure is true for their other singles...). G. Martin said later that it was the biggest regret of his life.
it would have been between these two and A Day In The Life for the best track on the album (and that would have made the album much more Lennon oriented).
Just like GV would have been one of the best tracks with Surf's Up on Smile if the album had been released.
I'm not sure I follow the issue, actually !

By the time the old Bring is singing on the a capallea "I've been in this town so long" in 2004 "Heroes & Villains" he has completely won me over w that version.

Still kind of amazed it was released. One of the best records of the 2000s easily.

eh the old Brian

hum. the 2004 Smile is fine and it's good to have an idea of what the album could have been but, although they're unfinished, the original cuts have such an amazing sound and charm.
It's like a psychedelic gershwin musical !
Brian's old voice is a bit sad, to me (even if I agree that it's great that he managed to come back and do all these stuff).
there's a track that is amazing because the music and the backing vocals are from his golden days (around 65) but his voice was recorded in the mid-70s and he goes from his ageing voice to his young falsetto :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESrosQNurrs

so touching... a kind of time travel... remembrance of things past !

his voice isn't just a bit sad... it's very sad, and a dealbreaker for me for Smile 2004.

I hadn't listened to SMiLE in any form in a long while, probably because I played the shit out of it and needed a long break.

I put on the 2011 release, which is still great, but it was a little frustrating how it seemed more and more unfinished as it got to the end. So I put on the 2004 reconstruction and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it this time around. Wilson's latter day voice was a real dealbreaker when I first heard it, but maybe I've gotten used to his post-Beach Boys voice having now seen him live on TV numerous times and in concert in 2016. It does hurt a song like "Surf's Up" (the memory of those high notes is too strong), but everywhere else it was actually fine. The 2004 album doesn't replace the 2011 release, but I definitely enjoy it as a polished, finished album.

I remember sometime in the mid-'00s burning a CD that was sort of the best of both worlds, just to have a "finished" but mostly vintage album, using the bootlegs for most of it but bits of the 2004 album to complete a lot of the "missing" parts. IIRC the 2004 harmonies were fine, but except for "Blue Hawaii" (which was unavoidable) I didn't use any of Wilson's isolated lead vocals. It actually worked really well, even with the change in Brian's voice on "Blue Hawaii." I tossed it after I got the 2011 set came out, but I'm tempted to recreate it again now that I have better sources.

I also made a composite out of the two versions, plus the earliest, "most complete" renditions from other sources; since I was combining recordings from 1967 and 2004, I couldn't think of a good reason to exclude the 1969 "Cabinessence" and the 1971 "Surf's Up".
On a few tracks, I tried to layer the two versions in order to capture most of the new lyrics and vocal melodies, which was difficult as some of the songs are performed in slightly different tempos. The 2004 version, weakened as it is for the reasons you mention, does present a highly cogent structure for all of the fragments, without a huge amount of additional extraneous stuff.
In the spirit of anti-climax, my version ends with "You're Welcome" instead of "Good Vibrations".

i do think the 2004 version is the "real" version, but i also like the idea of _artificial_ versions of smile, like the 2004 version wouldn't have existed in 1967 but is "real" and canonical by dint of being finished and being the work of brian and van, so why should we limit ourselves to some hypothetical "would have happened" scenario? do it up _for want of a nail_ style where the whole thing is a production of Kramer Associates for the USM. do a version called _summer fun_ created in an alternate universe where there are flying cars and brian wilson is a trans woman named diane and the whole thing falls apart over the recording of a song about the donner party. (the discord server i run is currently doing a book club for that book, it's fucking rad, y'all should read it).

i got a thing called "heroes and villains: the complete reconstruction", which is 22 minutes long and rules. i got a nightcore version of the beach boys "love you" done before the word "nightcore" was invented. sometime before 2004 i put together a "real" smile version (taking more or less after the prokopy version using the apocryphal track list from the december 1966 back cover) and an alternate view, mostly compiled from random experiments i grabbed from the old "smile shop" message board:

smile promo ad
heroes and vegetables
the elements (fire/i wanna be around/love to say da da/country air)
i'm in great shape (/barnyard/with me tonight/mama says)
heroes and villains part 2
been way too long
can't wait too long

alt whistles (alternate version of "fire" intro)
who ran the iron horse? ('66 acetate "cabinessence")
the grand coulee dam ('66 acetate "cabinessence", conclusion)
surf's up (remix, basically psychedelic with elements of "george fell into his french horn" used as whalesong in part 2 and no "child is father of the man" vox at the end)
with me tonight
he gives speeches
do you dig worms?
cool cool water
you're welcome
brian speaks! (the bit of his appearance at ringo's birthday where he declares van dyke parks "the biggest butthole in the world" - i mean, orange crate art _was_ kind of a dick move, tbf)

the segue from "he gives speeches" into "do you dig worms" is kinda rad actually, i always forget about it

xp I used the 1969 "Cabinessence" and the 1971 "Surf's Up" too - IIRC, I leaned on the officially released stuff, including the previously unreleased stuff included on the 1993 Good Vibrations box set (which is a great box set, still holds up as the best one they've released IMO).

One thing the 2004 version had going for it is that everything feels tighter and performed better (with greater polish and precision). So on a few instrumental sections, I still used the 2004 version even when a bootleg was available because it played better for me.

This may be too much to post, but going by memory...

1. "Our Prayer/Gee" was from the 1993 box set. But the trombone segue sounded better to me on the 2004 album (it sounded almost trumpet-like)...couldn't use every bit of it due to the crossfade into the "Heroes and Villains," so I basically started with the 2004 horn, then as it plays the last elongated note, crossfaded it into the 1993 track of the same horn note. It actually was kind of cool how the tonality changed with that crossfade. Then I overlapped this on to the beginning of "Heroes and Villains."
2. "Heroes and Villains" mostly the alternate version from the 1993 box set, but I remember needing a section from the single version to match what was on the 2004 album.
3. "Roll Plymouth Rock" (aka "Do You Like Worms?") I think this was on the 1993 set, in which case I took that recording then spliced in the verse parts from the 2004 album since those lyrics didn't exist then.
4/5. "Barnyard," "Old Master Painter," "You Are My Sunshine" were probably bootlegs, unreleased back then.
6. "Cabin Essence" the 1969 release found on the 1993 set
7. "Wonderful" also from the 1993 set
8. "Song for Children" - the opening (which segued in from "Wonderful") was from the then-still-unreleased boot, but when the tempo picks up, I actually used the 2004 set. I remember the boot sounding a bit off in the performance, and the weird tap-dance-like break felt like a misguided choice that wasn't in the 2004 version.
9. "Child Is Father of the Man" the bootleg (unlike "Roll Plymouth Rock," the new 2004 verses were sung by Brian alone, and I wanted to avoid that as much as possible so I didn't splice them in.) The ending segue came from the 2004 album though.
10. "Surf's Up" the 1971 version
11. "I'm in Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop" - bootleg
12. "Vegetables" opening segue may have been flow in from the 2004 album. But the track was mostly the 1993 set...but I remember doing a few major edits to it. Too complicated to recall the sources, but I remember where I did the edits due to some nice details that popped out (like a whistle shooting up on one edit and needing to overlap one section before an edit with a sped up a capella part).
13. "Holiday" was mostly the bootlegs, but I think I took the slow outro from the 2004 set where the harmonies sounded better - really sounded gorgeous as a better recording. Doing so also brought in the segue that was needed too.
14. "Wind Chimes" was the 1993 track. I remember editing it to the opening segue on a bass note that sounded DEEP. The "doo doo doo-ya doo doo" part on the back end came from the 2004 album - I remember making the edit somewhere in the piano break, and it was cool how the sound of piano notes changed with that edit.
15. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" was mainly from the 2004 album because the vintage recording sounded less intense and less energetic than the 2004 recording. But I think the opening may have been taken from a vintage recording from the 1993 set.
16. "In Blue Hawaii" was from the 2004 album because the album wouldn't sound finished any other way. Then I closed with "Our Prayer" from the 1993 set, but I used the whole version (minus "Gee") because I gave the album complete, symmetric closure that way. I didn't think "Good Vibrations" was essential, it was more like a really great footnote or bonus.
17. "Good Vibrations" but from the DCC gold CD of Endless Summer because they fade out later and I like that extra bit.
18. after 20 seconds, "You're Welcome," which kind of played like a hidden track à la Sgt. Pepper's runout groove.

"the best of both worlds, just to have a 'finished' but mostly vintage album"

This is the way to do it!

I played the shit out of the 2004 recording and now the original bootlegs sound wrong to me!

I think I value the unity over the singing quality, I guess. What I really miss is the reverb/echo

Do you like the 2004 versions of "Cabinessence" and "Surf's Up" better than the 1969/71 recordings?

In the context of the record, yeah, I prefer it. If I was just gonna play the isolated track, I'd 100% chose the old one

One of the nice things about the re-recording is how it doesn't sound egregiously modern. I guess using one of the studios Brian preferred back in the day helps (the acoustics are probably very close if not exactly the same as they were before), but also having the same echo chamber(s) intact and a vintage tube console makes a huge difference. There is noticeably less echo on the vocals, but with Brian's current voice, it feels like the better choice - it's like their owning the fact that it's not the same voice anymore rather than trying to unsuccessfully hide it by burying it in reverb.

yes---I too wanted to make a 60s-'04 Smile, though I didn't think it out like yall did, I just wanted to put thee olde Boys vocals around latter-day Brian, in most cases, or maybe leave Wonder Mints audible as supporting harmonists in some cases, with Carl & co. up front (but benefiting from '04 singers' skills).
The main thing about the Nonesuch album was that I felt I really got Brian's original intention, or maybe it was there more (consciously, specifically) as he and Parks finished it: that he was struggling, and his subject was that struggle, with American fantasy, all the stuff that a middle class white kid in 50s-60s suburban Southern California (among others) might find his head fed with, by himself and others, as he looks back across the West, for instance (Wilsons prev from Illinois), and out in projection and refraction to "Blue Hawaii" (also title of an Elvis movie). And the voice! As I wrote at the time, "He's the Old Boy In The Bubble, he just keeps rollin' along."
Thought of this again when I recently read one of Joan Diddion's late works, Where I Was From, past tense because she's come to realize and struggle with her own California Children of the Pioneers mythos, of Rugged Individualism in an artificial paradise of water and land politics, plugged into and dependent on Big Gov in a lot of ways, like Cold War military contracts supporting your little town, blank check even, for quite a while, 'til after the gold rush--)
Oh yeah, the Nonesuch Smile does give me a lot of different facets to play with, like this 2004 interpretation reminded me of Brian saying that "Good Vibrations" came from something his mother told him, regular grassroots wisdom from way before the hippie era, another part of the heritage, like folk remedies (if COVID had showed up earlier, would have had some of the same solutions)(thinking of some groovy friends' parents now too)

Which associations don't mean that his Mom was wrong!

I'm conditioned because I've lived so long with the '71 edit of "Surf's Up", but no matter how correct it actually is, having "Child Is..." as a separate track placed <before> "Surf's Up" just feels totally wrong to me.

Also: recently I was listening to the '70s Reprise vinyl edition of 20/20 and had 'a moment' with "Cabinessence" sounding so massive even over my bookshelf speakers, sitting there slack-jawed contemplating how mere mortal human beings made this, achieving those sounds--it still feels like it was made tomorrow.

Wow, I would love to hear some of these assembly edits. I love the completed Wondermints version (and saw the tour, which brought me to tears a few times) but there is such electricity and magic in the original vocals that I miss them despite the Wondermints' great talents.

Also: recently I was listening to the '70s Reprise vinyl edition of 20/20 and had 'a moment' with "Cabinessence" sounding so massive even over my bookshelf speakers, sitting there slack-jawed contemplating how mere mortal human beings made this, achieving those sounds--it still feels like it was made tomorrow.

I listened to Smile for the first time in years a couple weeks ago and was struck by how the effect of the Who Ran the Iron Horse section, especially between the cello and fuzz base, sounds almost like a synth.

xp If the original vocals still existed on isolated tracks, it would have been cool if they had recorded the 2004 album around them.

i also like the idea of _artificial_ versions of smile, like the 2004 version wouldn't have existed in 1967 but is "real" and canonical by dint of being finished and being the work of brian and van, so why should we limit ourselves to some hypothetical "would have happened" scenario?

^gets it

a 60s-‘04 Smile

That’s what the 2011 Smile basically already is, ffs

need to know more about this nightcore “Love You”

found it referenced on RYM, mediafire link is still active:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1tnjnyqcomm

Never had one download automatically before.

a 60s-‘04 Smile

Wiki:

It features comprehensive session highlights and outtakes, as well as an approximation of what the completed album might have sounded like, using the 2004 version as a model.