Best track on the Beach Boys' SMiLE

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.

nah it's all '66-'67 recordings, there _are_ fan reconstructions using a combo of them for the unfinished tracks (like In Blue Hawaii) but the official release is all vintage

if you search "soniclovenoize smile" it turns up a triple disc fan compilation which offers how it might have been in 67, an assembly of original sessions conformed to the 2004 Wondermints version, and a disc of reconstructed tracks. The second disc is *amazing*, better than the other reconstructions I've heard. The link is missing from the main post but lossy and lossless reuploads are linked in the comments.

this is that: http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-beach-boys-smile-upgrade.html

and here's the liner notes for the second disc: http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-beach-boys-smile-2004.html

I thought of this guy when I first saw "reconstruction," but knew that all his links had vanished a while back. And the ones I found in comments on this 'un lead to The account that created this link has been terminated due to multiple violations of our Terms of Service. Just like his others, but I already had most of what I wanted.

I used the mega nz one, a few days ago, worked fine; I hope I didn't break it!

there's some more recent links in the comments that still work yeah

Hum I couldn’t find a working link for the 67 reconstruction

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-beach-boys-smile-upgrade.html?showComment=1646491845433#c5694448617647941503

Got it, thanks !

This is the one that they say Darian used as a reference for the 2004 release. It kicks ass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMJ-asYwzYU

This is the one I listen to the most. It adds in cool dialog from the sessions and stuff.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S-J-pVPCbsmJHxTPrCH6h-Pmcjv52hpS

all four parts of the "purple chick" mix are on yt that's just part one above

The entire Beautiful Dreamer documentary is apparently on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SriaRRcA6w

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?