Best track on the Beach Boys' SMiLE

well I guess Sunny Afternoon did well in the US iirc

SMiLE was VDP's ticket to the career he deserved. seems like he never got over it. but we probably never would've gotten Song Cycle otherwise

the last time I tried to listen to Song Cycle it was just irritating, suppose I should give it a second chance

If you aren't into that, try Discover America.

his voice is just so ugh

Did people really buy LPs in 1968 when Odyssey and Oracle was released? Didn't people mostly buy singles then?

Song Cycle is my favorite album ever. No other single LP comes close. Just absolutely cracked and brilliant from start to finish. Something about the Looney Toons / Warner Brothers arrangements and lysergic menace... VDP's work is baked into my brain, he scored so many cartoons I watched as a kid (esp. The Brave Little Toaster). Song Cycle is the sound of a fading memory you never even experienced...ill stop now. the 33 1/3 book on it is superb.

What are the reference books about Smile ?

his voice is just so ugh

It has this kind of sleepy quality to it that may clash a bit much w the whirlwind hyperactive arrangements on "Song Cycle". I love that album but I've played it for many people I thought would be equally into it and they had the same reaction.

I think "Discover America" is a better use of his voice, with the slower and poppier and far more rhythmic songs, he comes across like a sly pop prankster. And it has way more prominently-featured backup singers.

What are the reference books about Smile ?

Dominic Priore "Look!Listen!Smile!Vibrate!" is the ur-text

Discover America is great but slight compared to Song Cycle. but it's the kind of album that works in pretty much every scenario

I agree that Smile could have been a popular album. It's hard to fathom what its possible influence would have been, though.

Listening to Smiley Smile now... my god does 'Heroes and Villians' sound so wrong without the "cantina" part.

and 'Vegatables' without the 'Mama Says' part, for that matter.

re: references to the pop canon- that sort of thing sounds fresh and creative to us today, but at the time of the original "smile" sessions it really wouldn't have. that era was the apex of the singer-songwriter cult, and to do a record with somebody else's song on it was seen as proof of your lack of creativity. see for instance david crosby's staunch opposition to the byrds doing a goffin-king tune on "notorious byrd brothers"- never mind that "goin' back" is a fabulous song, it just wasn't _credible_ to do that sort of thing. even the word "pastiche" had (has?) more than a whiff of opprobrium to it; it wasn't really until the '80s and guys like grandmaster flash that the situation started to change. the only time you really saw pastiche in those days was in a satirical context (see for instance _absolutely free_ by the mothers of invention, which band van dyke parks was a member of during that era), and wilson's use of pastiche is resolutely non-satirical.

what the public reaction to the record would have been we can't really know, but it is worth noting that good vibrations is "hooky" in a way that really none of the rest of the album was, that "cantina" section or no the released single of "heroes & villains" is reasonably representative of the essence of the song, that hendrix's dismissal of the single as "psychedelic barbershop" would probably not be a uniquely held opinion.

the smiley song that sounds most off-base to me is "wind chimes", lacking the entire "b" section (during the "wild honey" sessions wilson reworked that section into "can't wait too long", one of those songs that evokes "smile" in spirit but not in chronology)

ah damn "can't wait too long," so good

I'm not so convinced having non-singer-songwriter material was such a kiss of death in the mid-Sixties - maybe with a certain crowd, sure, but the Beatles had only just recently stopped having covers on every record, and the folk world was all about covers, the American tradition, etc., etc. This is the Monkees' chart-topping period also, though I doubt that's the audience we're imagining receiving Smile with reverent awe, and of course doing well with the kids would only further alienate the hipsters. It would be a matter of how it was packaged/presented I think.

I guess the point is there are several hypothetical audiences in play - I suspect Smile would have played okay to a subset of the (already diminished number of) American listeners who bought Pet Sounds (which had two solid hits on it), but one assumes it would have offered almost nothing to those who'd preferred Beach Boys Party! So the question is whether he could have carried through the massive, massive popularity off "Good Vibrations," or picked up some new audience of people whose ears pricked up at "Heroes and Villains," and said "woah, wtf is this, I'm freaking out, maan!" or what.

The thing is, very little about most of Smile is really all that much like "Good Vibrations." The recording method of bits and pieces awaiting assembly, yes - - - but actually, this is a really insane way to make pop records, and more to the point, it just so happens to play really well on "Good Vibrations" which is all about this building swell of teenage love, rushing and tumbling through the head and heart - it's an absolutely brilliant fit for this really ambitious train-wreck structure and these varied and gorgeous arrangements, and you can see why that combination of sounds and feelings would strike a chord. It was their biggest hit, ever -- well, "Kokomo" might have ultimately edged it out in sales, I'm not sure -- and yeah, that probably would have helped the album sell to some people. But "Heroes and Villains" is just not that kind of song. The only songs I can think of in this period that approach it for strangeness or narrative non-relatability all rock or at least have a "hard"/dissonant quality (Strawberry Fields, I Can See For Miles, White Rabbit...I dunno). Many aspects of it are headsticky, for sure, and I love its disjointedness, its weirdness, its vaguely sketched narrative.

Maybe that would have been enough! Draw in the right crowd, get them to spend time with the album and discover just how spectacular the inherent deep cuts are. "Surf's Up" would have been a mind-blower in early '67 and I can see the kind of radio station that would soon play Sgt. Pepper's in its entirety getting on board with that. The idea of "Vega-Tables" drawing in a different crowd entirely as just this odd little novely song is kind of plausible too. Oddly though I think their biggest potential "hit" in this period is probably "Gettin' Hungry" (with a very very different arrangement and performance). Maybe "Wild Honey"?

Not putting singles on albums was a British thing, I think?

Nope, I can't think of a single hit potential besides Good Vibrations.

flappy bird, I saw a reddit thread about what movie you could watch over and over again. After some thought I scrolled endlessly down the comments to find Brave Little Toaster. Those songs. I completely forgot it was VDP. But yeah, they were the main reason I picked that movie.

Hang on, "Heroes and Villains" was a hit.

xposts I think the thinking was that if a single was put on an album, people would stop buying the single.

I could have seen Surf's Up being a hit in the wake of God Only Knows.

I could see "Wonderful" cracking the top 20 anyway

I did:

29 Brian Wilson Wonderful Oct 2004

OK, top thirty..

Hang on, "Heroes and Villains" was a hit.

― Mark G, Friday, May 22, 2015 2:49 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Would love to know more about this - Wikipedia just tells me it peaked at #12 in the US (not a major hit by their standards) but not how long it was on the charts, etc.

Not to reset the goalposts, but I suppose with my probing of hitness/hit potential I'm more trying to get at the expectations/hopes/crucial needs Brian Wilson et al. had for this album. I don't think it would have been enough for Smile to eke out #15 on the albums chart or whatever, to be just another album some people maybe bought for a few weeks.

yeah he needed to top Good Vibrations, and that just wasn't going to happen with this other material

ah damn "can't wait too long," so good
might like this song better than anything on smile! holy lord, that intro.

In the UK,

HEROES AND VILLAINS
BEACH BOYS
CAPITOL
Highest position: 08
Weeks on the chart: 09

It's not their biggest hit, granted, but it's up there with the biggest ones.

("I get around" was one place higher and three weeks longer)

In the US Cashbox chart (exclusively sales-based) Heroes and Villains was a #8 / 8 weeks on the chart

Good Vibrations was #1 / 14 weeks

"I Get Around" is highly under-rated and has a killer chorus. "I'm a real cool head/I'm making real cool bread" pretty awesome pre-rap boasting.

p confident that if we polled the Beach Boys singles that would win tbh

of course, only one way to find out...

What are the reference books about Smile ?

Dominic Priore "Look!Listen!Smile!Vibrate!" is the ur-text

Thanks !
As for "Heroes&Villains" I'm surprised it was such a hit. It doesn't seem present at all in the soundtrack of that era...
How did "California girls" and "Wouldn't it be nice" chart, for instance ?

In Cashbox,

California Girls, #3 / 11 weeks
Wouldn't It Be Nice, #7 / 10 weeks*

*b-side God Only Knows charted #38 / 7 weeks

Believe it or not, the BB single that spent the longest time on the Cashbox chart was their 1976 cover of "Rock and Roll Music," at 22 weeks.

crazy that they didn't get to #1 with "California girls" !

Yeah, and that was #3 in Billboard also. The records that kept it down were "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" by Herman's Hermits and "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher

Columnated ruins domino!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

yeah he needed to top Good Vibrations

i know what you mean and it's true (at least had to match it), but you got me thinking: what #1 hit has ever topped "good vibrations?" in terms of arrangement scope, compositional diversity (/cohesion), melodic richness, performative nailed-ness? or opening it up much wider, what top 40 hit in general? the only thing i think comes close is "bohemian rhapsody" (#9 peak on hot 100 originally, #2 in '92), though on these terms i'd put "good vibrations" several notches above

And "Strawberry fields" didn't make it to #1 either !

I voted "Our Prayer". I don't think the Four Freshman songs posted here really get at the appeal of this song. to me it's like a Van Gogh painting: the beauty is in part a function of the desperation, the evident madness, of BW's singing, of his reaching without a clear idea of what's he's reaching for. but BW's reaching is just one vocal, and the others don't seem aware of its particular urgency. BW is hiding in plain sight, doesn't want them to understand what he's expressing (because Mike Love would punch him). so his expression is concealed in a structure the others will recognize and accept, & BW has to coax them into it. Listen to the dialogue on the Smile Sessions: it's nothing serious for Love, BW has to struggle to get him in line, pleading "c'mon", a little voice among the others. it's not "And Your Dream Comes True", "something's not happening". Brian's pleading is so soft. Carl wants to get it right, but doesn't hear it right. "it's not fast enough, Brian": they're catching on to the structure. & then they finish it, only a little reassembling will be needed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow

challops ftw

Has there been a discussion of Brian's 2004 version versus the original 1966 version?

Brian's (and everyone's) vocals are so much better on the '66 version (which is expected), but some of the transitions and how the album unfolds belong, IMO, easily to the 2004 version (thinking mainly 'Cabin Essence' through 'Surf's Up' here — that whole cycle just about brings me to tears it's so good; while the '66 version is also quite good, it just doesn't match the emotional heights the '04 version reaches).

I'm really split on this.

what is challops about surf's up winning? it almost won the beach boys poll

And it's fucking brilliant to boot.

I can take 2004 and leave those old tapes behind. I'd never heard of them before this new SMiLE project had been announced. I think there may have been something about the sonics on the early sessions that I found appealing, but there's more of a chance I'll revisit Brian WIlson's 2004 comeback before looking back to when the train went off the rails or whatever.

That's just insane. The 66 sessions are endless enjoyment for hours and hours. Plus there are edits in the style of 2004 format.

I don't know, like I said, the sequencing on the '04 version is pretty seamless.