Best track on the Beach Boys' SMiLE

I just can't do Smiley Smile. Talk about a depressing listen, knowing what it could have been.

hmm, the only track on Smiley Smile that depresses me is 'Wonderful'. Carl's lead vocal is appropriately plaintive, but the studio chatter is almost masochistic, as if Brian is punishing himself for his failed ambitions by desecrating one of his most affecting compositions with his own laughter. but a lot of the other tracks on Smiley Smile (Vegetables, She's Going Bald, Wind Chimes) were slightly goofy/incidental even in their Smile incarnations, so the Smiley Smile treatment isn't as jarring, and I can appreciate the band's impulse to loosen up for a change (and they at least had the good sense not to revisit 'Cabinessence' or 'Surf's Up'). Smiley Smile would have disappointed me enormously if I had been following the group in the '60s and anticipating a masterpiece, but viewed in retrospect as a laid-back companion to the Smile sessions, it isn't a particularly depressing listen. with all the Smile material available to us in 2015, we at least have a good approximation of 'what could have been', and I'm not particularly interested in speculating about how Smile would have been received it if had been fully realized in 1967 (or at any rate I don't think this knowledge would have much bearing on my enjoyment of the music).

So, after a fresh listen, I'm unexpectedly voting "Cabin Essence" as somehow the most Smile-ish track - we find the group at this really fascinating step just between the kind of genially fleshed-out sonics of Pet Sounds (themselves just this side of easy listening, but so much better), and the much much weirder, bad-trip abyss hinted at by "Fire" - there's something unsettling lurking in the "who ran the iron horse" section, and something lost and sad about the "over and over" part. My sense is that, as much as all the other factors, the gulf between those two worlds, which gives Smile a lot of its compelling quality as a listen, is a big reason for its not being completed, and also for the tantalizing but hard-to-imagine prospect of Brian Wilson being able to pull it all together, to make a whole of fantasia and phantasmagoria. "Surf's Up" does have the aching sense of distance and loss, but the only real hints of a personality pulled in two come with those great dissonant brass shudders, and in the version I have, those are a discrete passage just before the solo-piano song commences -- not really part of the piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTifX3mpnV4

i gave it a relisten this afternoon and "good vibrations" all the way

Smiley Smile is my favourite Beach Boys' album. Think I might have heard it in its entirety before Pet Sounds or Smile. I don't find it depressing at all. It's p much exactly what I want out of a lot of music I listen to.

"Surf's Up", though I prefer the overdubbed version that was eventually released on the like-titled album to the Smile version which still feels a bit incomplete.

Wow, love "It's a Blue World". Need to check out the Four Freshmen....

The Smiley Smile version of Wind Chimes is fantastically eerie. I wouldn't go as far as Dog Latin bt it's a v special album in its own right

i still forget in my mind that "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter" is not a Smile track. I wish they had done whole records like that track. It's like proto-residents.

Also, can we pause itt for a second to just say THE MOTHERFUCKING WRECKING CREW.

'Their Hearts Were Full of Spring' (which the Beach Boys covered during the Wild Honey sessions)

they were copying that well before '67

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

Fall Breaks And Back To Winter is kind of a reconstruction of Fire/Mrs O'Leary's Cow though, no? I love it though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb8a-obj0xs

They did it on their first demo tape as well (1961)

?

Listening to too much Four Freshmen will make you realize why people were primed for the British invasion... definitely a good Brian Wilson primer though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NafK3NFhA

I love the fact that Smiley Smile is a far more uncommercial and strange record than the record it replaced!

hmm idk about that

if anything i think smiley smile is a good riposte to anybody who thinks that weirder = better

i still forget in my mind that "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter" is not a Smile track. I wish they had done whole records like that track. It's like proto-residents.
― demonic mnevice (Jon Lewis)

Yes, Residential, exactly! That one was also known as "Woody Woodpecker Symphony" right? Woody's "laugh" is in there.

"Wind Chimes" is inadvertently hilarious on Smiley Smile, dudes trippin on their wind chimes

Cabin Essence, Child is Father of the Man, Wonderful all mean more to me than Surf's Up, Good Vibrations, Heroes & Villains (all great songs)

it's weird, i first knew "wonderful" and "windchimes" in their SMILE arrangements via Baby Lemonade's mid 90s covers
http://cdn.discogs.com/02ohUR_Uu3OFgO39XqyaXOuE9pc=/fit-in/428x425/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-1529903-1288556500.jpeg.jpg
i knew the smiley smile versions, and was shocked at how beautiful baby lemonade had made them -- without knowing then that they had covered the smile versions pretty much note for note.

I love the way he sings Wonderful on Smiley Smile, but that groovy party sound effects interlude is so pointless. If I ever stick that on a mix again I think I'll just snip it or stick some other song between the beginning and end.

I had a "Smile sessions" cd before I heard "Smiley Smile", probably the right way round.

They did it on their first demo tape as well (1961)

― Mark G, Monday, May 18, 2015 12:05 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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― Οὖτις, Monday, May 18, 2015 12:18 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wrong clip posted - I can't find the right one, but "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" was indeed included on the '61 demo tape they made for Capitol, apparently added at the last minute. Song written by Bobby Troup of "Route 66" fame.

I listened to the Smile Sessions last night. I have trouble discerning between sequences like Look -> Child is the Father, which work really well, especially as a lead up to Surf's Up, but they're more like instrumental sketches to me.

I own the Smile Sessions box set and I love it - it looks great on my shelf and all the amazing pullouts and all, but somehow when I put it on, it goes right over my head. Perhaps it's because I listened to my old bootleg copy of Smile, and then the Brian Wilson Smile so many times, I can't get much else out of it, but I dunno... The whole thing seems, I want to say 'polished' or 'unremarkable' or something, but that's not right either because it's far from those... It just drifts by. I found myself craving the rougher vocals but more realised musicality of the 2004 Smile somehow. I may revisit that.

I only know Smiley Smile and the version on the Good Vibrations box otherwise bt wld take Brian's version if I had to pick

I think we all felt that about the "Smile" sessions box, it was more of the same, and we'd already had the best bits.

That's why I rep for the "Albums that never were" blog version as linked to above. There's a mono, a stereo, and a version based on the 'Brian Wilson Presents' track selection order but using the original takes. That last one to me was as unsatisfying as the BWPS itself (if you get me), but the Mono and Stereo versions are great.

Did anyone have the bootleg 3LP version, where side 6 was basically The Beach Boys playing a game of "nominate and vote out" (Basically, the TV show "Big Brother" thirty years ahead), and Mike Love went first out. He was not best pleased.

haha, i really want to hear that.

mark, where is the link to the best bootleg version IYO?

i lost mine years ago.

I don't know, I was wondering if someone else here still had it. If you mean the 3LP version...

If not, I was meaning : http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-beach-boys-smile-1967.html

This really should have been a "best track on Brian Wilson presents Smile" poll, come to think of it. That is the finished version, after all. I understand the appeal of listening to the '60s sessions, and of course it would have been fantastic if the album got finished back then too. Sadly, it didn't. For all its vocal imperfections and all the "what if's?", I'm happy to call the 2004 Smile the definitive version.

In fact, the track order on the 2004 Smile feels so "meant to be", that I actually struggle to hear the album in any other order!

On that note, voted On a Holiday

Does "Hit the dirt, do a two-and-a-half" refer to doing a 900?

I continue to listen to the MokSmile mix more than the official version. It's about an hour long and has all the "best bits" from the available bootlegs at the time. I did replace Surf's Up with the Unsurpassed Masters 16 version though.

2004 is really amazing in an almost too-good-to-be true way.

i remember a lot of people disliking it at the time, mainly because of BW's voice being a little on the croaky side, but it never bothered me. it's really good.

I just watched the live version on Youtube of the full 2004 live performance. Superb.

yeah i kind of wrote it off since i figured why listen to an old throat remake w/ a bunch of anons on harmony when i could be having the young beach boys doing most of it...but the praise here makes me wanna revisit the '04 version soon

I'm one of those Neanderthals who pretty much doesn't get the Beach Boys, but I ended up seeing that 2004 tour and yes, it really was superb.

it's definitely the most fully-formed one of the bunch and there are a few nice surprises in there.

Nice surprises, plus the irresistible emotional draw of hearing this guy complete this thing after nearly forty years, seemingly right in front of you. Like every time two bits come together that you didn't expect to, it could choke you up it's so redemptive.

^^

I had a listen to it yesterday and I'm sad to say it thrashes Smile Sessions. Hadn't realised how incomplete those versions are by comparison. A wonderful box-set, but something like 'I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night' is so much better with Brian's lead vocal. Listening to Sessions is like listening to the Stack-O-Tracks version

I love that a) it got finished, beautifully and b) it's also still around in all these ghost forms. Tbh I'm glad it all worked out the way it did. Xpost yeah Brian's older voice suits those elements if Smile rly well

I love the way the 2004 Smile is perfectly, neatly divided up into three distinct "movements" and the pieces flow together so well and so seamlessly that it feels like this was how the record was meant to be all along, even though if it had been finished/released in the '60s, it may have taken a different form entirely. The second "movement" in particular (from 'Wonderful' to 'Surf's Up') is just incredible, I think. I have no problems calling the 2004 Smile the definitive version, really. It's an impressive set of material.

Yes but those voices. The feeling of those voices
The wrecking crew
These factors are overwhelming for me

ah they're not so bad.

xp yeah that's really the deciding factor for me -- beach boys vocals + wrecking crew are going to beat pretty much everything/anything.

Not the 2004 voices! The o.g. ones

It's a case of the sublime being the worst enemy of the excellent

Xp

Yes but those voices. The feeling of those voices
The wrecking crew
These factors are overwhelming for me

I have zero interest in the 2004 version for precisely these reasons

Surprised we don't have a dedicated thread for "Smile" other than this.

Anyway, I came here to say the 2004 Brian Wilson is the definitive version

cosign, there's a certain mystique to "unfinished works" but there's this idealist counterfactual narrative. wilson and parks finished smile. that is the album. whether or not it _would_ have been the album in 1967 doesn't matter. obviously the '66-'67 recordings have _value_, they're _great_, but the album literally exists and the stuff on the smile sessions box isn't the album.

2004 doesnt have the otherworldly alien feel like the og sessions do

that's true. i own the box, i listen to the original recording sessions, honestly, i probably listen to fragments of the original sessions more often than i listen to the completed album. i guess what gets me is when people try to speculate about the "real album". i mean there is a certain sense of, i mean, to me it's not like wilson and parks just threw everything they had into it. it's a record from a long time ago, some other folks who had the bootlegs put them together and played around with things and eventually came up with something that wilson and parks could look at and say "yeah, ok, we can release that". if the '66-'67 sessions are a result of a singular vision, well, two singular visions maybe, the 2004 record isn't that. but insomuch as there is a "real album", that's it.

doing what the _smile sessions_ box does, taking all the tracks that they re-recorded for the 2004 set and sequencing them in their unfinished form, i mean, it's interesting but it's hugely anachronistic. and i guess to me that's the disappointing thing, the extent to which the "fan mixes" since 2004 seem like just different ways of putting the stuff used in the 2004 mixes together. i like fucking around, you know, just doing weird shit. somebody put together a mix of "heroes and vaillans" that's more than 20 minutes long. back before the record came out, you know, everybody was trying to fit things into the format of that random-ass tracklist full of songs that didn't actually exist. i did a version with an edit of "country air" in there, it's anachronistic sure but i still think it sounds good.

idk maybe people are still fucking around and i'm just not plugged in to how it's going, or maybe, you know, it was just a limited time thing

i haven't read _glimpses_ but i have read _summer fun_, fall of '22, it was a dark, traumatizing read. _smile_ has always been a bit of a fucked vibe. a lot of it is my memory of, in 2000, playing "holidays" for this girl i was at the new jersey shore with, super fucked situation, and her saying it was really sad music that sounded like it was trying really hard to be happy. anyway, yeah, i mean ultimately if you're going to do riff on _smile_ you can change it around quite a lot. shit, why not do that, fuck around with the _smile_ backing tracks, add and remove shit until you have something that approximates the way _summer fun_ is described in the book. that would be interesting. because there aren't any _lyrics_ to _summer fun_, they weren't recorded. it was all backing tracks.

some other folks who had the bootlegs put them together and played around with things and eventually came up with something that wilson and parks could look at and say "yeah, ok, we can release that". if the '66-'67 sessions are a result of a singular vision, well, two singular visions maybe, the 2004 record isn't that.

idk BriWi seems to have had some intentions, particularly regarding how the modules fit together, that eluded the nerds and bootleggers for decades. it's revelatory. certain movements and passages that feel very disconnected and fragmentary in fan mixes suddenly cohere.

it's also, yes, anachronistic. it's interesting that where the Beach Boys revisited and developed (or curtailed) that material in the 70's, , he seems to regard those later versions as definitive. so you get the abridged Surf's Up, and he insists on using the "Cool Cool Water" intro for "Love to say dada". iirc the 3 movement structure is a modern reconstruction.

it's a real mixture of intentions that are native to the original sessions, but that nobody who heard the recordings had a clue about. some songs that Carl & the Beach Boys reworked and completed in the 70's that are sort of frozen in that period, and then some additional material that was created for the 2004 release, and some new perspectives.

In Sahanaja's recollection, "He'd be saying, 'Oh yeah, that's supposed to be a part of this song,' or 'Use that bit to connect these two songs here,' and it was really neat."[30] However, on another occasion, Sahanaja said that Wilson did not assert his original ideas for the album: "Brian Wilson is not going to tell you in October/November of 2003, 'No, this was supposed to be like this.'

it was really sad music that sounded like it was trying really hard to be happy

girl you were at the jersey shore with otm

The SMiLE Cabinessence vs the Smiley one is the one of the most o_O ?! choices in their career up there with Hey Little School Girl and Problem Child. The Smiley one is SO BAD. The og one is one of the best things ever produced by a human.

can’t remember what the 2004 one sounds like… the og/sea of tunes stuff is so fused into my mind

"CabinEssence" isn't on Smiley Smile, and the 20/20 version seems to be simply the original track with lead vocals overdubbed?

I'd say "Wind Chimes" is the most boldest Smiley Smile remake, and "Wonderful" the least successful. Never really liked "VegeTables" in any version.

The Smiley version of « wonderful » is sabotage

i'd love to hear a smiley smile version of cabinessence

the first times i heard Cabinessence were on a bootleg without the lead vocals and i imagined the prominent "doing! doing! doing!" vocals being sung by cartoon squirrels or beavers. the looney stuff connected with me most at that time and i always loved Vegatables. "if you brought a big brown bag of them home, i'd jump up and down and hope you'd toss me a carrot" !!! i mean come on

the thing about the sessions that the finished album with 3 movements kind of disguises imo is how Brian's ideation of the album evolves over the course of the dates, how the kind of album he wants to make is a rapidly moving target and he pivots when he gets excited about a new direction or theme. and like splitting it into 3 movements where the whole thing has this very moving emotional arc that wasn't apparent before, it just makes the constant readjustments seem very deliberate, like there was this master plan all along. and it's much more clear on the stack o tracks that this wasn't the case.

iow i think on the old bootlegs there's a sense that Brian can't keep up with the album itself, that it's overpowering him in quite a sinister way, that it has its own animus that can't be tamed and it's quite dangerous. and like, now we've harnessed that and we're in control of what it does, even though it feels like playing with fire at times

no pun intended

like i wondering if the 2004 version is definitive why the 2011 one is ultimately more satisfying in some way and maybe it's cause that one retains more of the sense of playing with fire, like this is some potent shit that we've revived and are messing with

like i don't wanna lump the sessions in the "the mystique of unfinished works" because there are unfinished works that just feel aborted or half baked, and this feels like it got the better of its composer and ate him alive?

Brian can't keep up with the album itself

Definitely. Even the way he keeps juggling the "bicycle rider" theme in different keys, tempi and arrangements suggest a kind of obsessive tinkering when you hear it in a dozen different places in the sessions tapes.

...and he kept at it until he wrote "Can't Wait Too Long", maybe my favourite Beach Boys song of all.

love this reading, Deflatormouse. and I'm a fan of the 2004 one! not sure I've ever heard the 2011 one. hmm.

transition from the huge 2011 mix O'Leary's Cow with 'Fall Breaks' vocals into Cool Cool Water intro is this moment of tremendous psychic relief that Love to Say Dada in its original form never achieved- deeply healing, the most satisfying possible resolution to everything that's come before. And then it goes abruptly into unfinished 'Love to Say DAda' without the "Blue Hawaii" stuff, the album once again has the upper hand and it undermines the resolution, it's just a deeply unsettling note to end the third act on.

2004 Smile doesn't give me that.

feel like I've read at least two Brian Wilson books but I can't remember anything about why The Old Master Painter? Is Brian Wilson the inventor of interpolation? And I could guess, but why The Old Master Painter?