SMiLE: The 2011 Album

What do you think about the 2011 version of SMiLE, Sup Forums?

Favorite track(s)/suite(s)?

I like the "Child is Father of the Man" suite, along with the Elements suite [Vega-Tables, Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, Wind Chimes, and Love to Say Dada

Other urls found in this thread:

smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,15304.100.html
youtube.com/watch?v=7Wzsgnv1J6o
vocaroo.com/i/s0fM6mFeVfXq
youtube.com/watch?v=MuHBcLOiN20
mediafire.com/download/1udcse9z5c0k7ho/Beach_Boys_-_Smile_(MQR).rar
mediafire.com/download/kojmux6l076n0qb/Beach_Boys_-_Smile_(reconstruction).rar
pastebin.com/avc2i1TT
mediafire.com/download/r28otcvjee5kk1b/Stereo_mix.rar
mediafire.com/download/9uif1qlcpcixu0g/BWPS-mu.rar
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I've been listening to the soniclovenoize restoration so I don't really think about the album in terms of suites. Have you heard it? One thing it does with the track list is put Surf's Up at the end, which really changes the tone of the whole thing

Pretty sure Vege-Tables is confirmed not to be part of the Elemental suite.

Surf's Up belongs at the end, this is objectively correct.

>Pretty sure Vege-Tables is confirmed not to be part of the Elemental suite.
The artwork for Smile showed that Vega-Tables was part of the suit.

>Surf's Up belongs at the end, this is objectively correct.
The only evidence for this is an interview that a Brian's friend gave. He never confirmed it.

>The artwork for Smile showed that Vega-Tables was part of the suit.
Source? That's interesting but I'm sure I read something to the contrary.

>The only evidence for this is an interview that a Brian's friend gave. He never confirmed it.
I meant more artistically.

I am a grad student at UCLA
I had a pop music theory course where a group of us grad students researched the original smile.
What we got, from various session documents, unheard tapes and testamony of brian and Van dyke at the time was that this was the tracklist
Our Prayer
Heroes and Villains
Vega-Tables
Do You Like Worms?
Wonderful
The Old Master Painter
Cabin Essence

Good Vibrations
I'm In Great Shape
Wind Chimes
The Elements
Child Is Father Of The Man
Surf's Up

Big thing I learned is that whatever brian says about the project now is utter ass because he has lost his mind and doesn't remember anything. Much of what he has said over the years conflicts with stuff from 66

Sup Forums voted it the AOTY for 2011.

>not You're Welcome

Well I should hope so. Nothing else even came out in 2011.

If this is true its an amazing discovery. Could you explain in more detail the reasoning behind that tracklist?

That's interesting. Almost identical to the SLN tracklist I use except Child is at the end. I think that would work better actually, I'll move mine.

Do you know if Gee or any of the related bits appeared as part of H&V?

No, not You're Welcome.

That was actually an amazing discovery, so the album was meant to have a variety of recurring meodic lines throughout the album, which we sort of get a feel for with all the heroes and villains codas throughout the album. There were to be no suites, it was supposed to be more ambiguous than that, like a Zappa record, Brain really loved Freak out
Child comes second to last because elements was designed to end with the same pulsating chords that child starts with

Where did you get this info from?

Fuck tons of interviews, session notes and session tapes archived after smile failed, someone thought to store all that stuff

I know that the "Oooooh woo oooh"s in Elements:Fire technically dont belong because they came from Smiley Smile sessions,
but damn, that addition to me really makes the song 100 times better. I listened to the sln version, and its just too weak without it

the BWPS version of it is by far one my favorites.
>that sonic encompassing horror of a nightmare fire

the "Ooooooh Woo Oooh's" were originally meant to be on there, but work for Fire ended before they could do it.
So you're good

Then maybe Brian just forgot because i read when he was working on the bwps versions someone brought it up to him and he went something like "oh thats cool maybe they should go together i never thought of that"

There is an original Frank Holmes artwork for Vega-Tables. In the bottom right corner, it says '"My Vege-tables' The Elements". I can't find it now but im sure ive seen it too.

Regarding Surfs Up, some people say that an album called Smile would have ended on a happier note.

I would love to read the entire research. You shlould contact the guys from the Smiley Smile forum, they have been researching this like crazy.

Huh, that's cool. All the document I found said was that brian wanted "vocal overdubbing" to the track so it could have been anything I suppose

the smiley smile forum has a fuck ton of good info as well as people in high positions who have original demo cuts and other rarities.
There was a sale by VDP's wife who has a bunch of demo cuts of Smile stuff that some guy there bought and listened to.
sadly we'll probably never get a digitial version to hear for ourselves

There's a lot of ambiguity about what was and wasn't conceived during the SMiLE era.
Most people think the recapitulation of Child in Surf's up is fine because it sounds fucking awesome but it was originally recording during the sessions for Surf's Up the album. Maybe the idea did come from the SMiLE era but I think if one is willing to accept it, you may aswell accept any other later additions too.

That makes sense. So you're say that officially the only ending surfs up had in 67 was just Brian singing ahhh on the outro (like in the master take and 67 solo take)?

Link? Did he even describe some of the stuff on the tapes?

It's impossible to tell how it would have sounded because brian wrote these skit sections and psycedelic sounds interludes that was supposed to be interwoven between the tracklist. The point was to make provide a simply lookiing tracklist on the backcover and on the record and then shock people with how disjointed it was.

Think We're only in it for the money, but beach boys edition

Both of you are correct,
The "coda" the record was supposed to end with was actually going to be something different, similar to an our prayer coda

I imagine so. But iirc I don't think there was even a final mix from the 66-67 recordings. Just a bunch of recorded material that hadn't been fully assembled.

he described it great detail but at some point you just want to hear it for yourself too.

smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,15304.100.html

Look at reply #113 by Andy

Haha, that sounds great. It actually makes a lot of sense.

>Be Brian
>conceive module system of recording
>record dozens of sections and parts for heroes and villians
>cant figure out how to connect them
>literally hundreds of possibilities
>has a breakdown over it

poor guy cant catch a break

Just thinking about it is giving me a mini-breakdown, I can't imagine what it could have been like for him.

1/2

We went through the first two or three acetates and nothing was groundbreaking. In general, over half of them sounded like unique mixes of already bootlegged material, but it could've been the result of listening off of an acetate.

Anyway, we get to one of the acetates labeled "H&V". At some point, a completely new version of I'm In Great Shape starts playing. It was radically different from the versions in circulation (of which there is one with harp and saxophone, one with celeste, and one with heavy piano if I remember correctly)! This version of IIGS has more heavy instrumentation, but has the IIGS bassline. There was definitely percussion, maybe snares and other various pieces. It's pretty similar to the false barnyard instrumentation, and my guess is that it's on disc 1 of the link at the beginning of this thread (and is mislabeled, but I guess I can see how the two got confused).

At this point I thought "wow, amazing!", but then something really interesting happened! In two clearly spliced edits (speaking of which, I can't remember if IIGS had the tape distortion effect the earlier takes had, but if it did it was much, much more subtle), IGGS went directly into the harpsichord playing that's underneath "my children were raised, you know they...", from the official H&V single, but with the arrangement from H&V part 1 from the SS/WH twofer that goes into "healthy wealthy and OFTEN wise" (all with no vocals), then directly into the full instrumental arrangement behind "three score and five", and that then played out until the finish of the acetate. I cannot remember if the three score and five vocals were on top of the section or not...it all happened so fast and I was just caught off guard. Either way, it's the first time I'd heard that arrangement of those pieces, and it came straight from the men. So clearly this was the highlight to me.

2/2


The second biggest highlight for me came from Do You Like Worms. Maybe this piece is out there so forgive me for not having heard it. One of the mixes of Bicycle Rider on an acetate was the kick drum, and the oooga cha vocals, with very light harpsichord in the mix. It was extremely rhythmic and very punchy. It was nothing mindblowing, like hearing Ribbon of Concrete being sung would have been, but it just sounded amazing.

There is also a completely new/original keenywokapula vocal take on one of the DYLWs with a different mix. Not mindblowingly new, but mindblowingly great to listen to.

Like I said earlier, I think there were several unique mixes of previously heard stuff, but outside of the new IIGS and the edits, I didn't notice anything else that was revelatory.

As to the quality...well, they're old acetates that have been sitting in a storage facility in Arizona for years, along with boxes of clothes, photos, records, etc. They were very crackly and poppy, probably like some of the lower quality CIFOTM acetate recordings that are floating around. I'm no record expert, but maybe someone who is can say whether or not the quality could be improved by a very good cleaning. The acetates were dusty.

I'd tried to reference it in the Alan Boyd lecture thread, but I don't think these new pieces would make an official release due to their quality, and the discrepancy between the amount of work it'd take to get these cleared for a release versus the lack of interest from general Beach Boy fans for these tracks (I say general, but that definitely doesn't apply to people on this site, like me, who'd pay hundreds/thousands to hear any new SMiLE-related fragments).

I really hope these acetates wind up in the hands of the right people, and get catalogue/archived/thrown into the history bin. I think they're extremely valuable pieces and I'm glad they finally came out, 13 or so years later (and really 28 years or longer since AGD asked about them in '85).

Here it is. The text was part of the original 1966 artwork.

I read about this before. This is an example of Brian not knowing what the fuck to do with Heroes and Villains

I kinda got a read on what the final mix of Heroes and villains was to sound like if people wanna know

Do tell

Yes please!

>GGS went directly into the harpsichord playing that's underneath "my children were raised, you know they...", from the official H&V single, but with the arrangement from H&V part 1 from the SS/WH twofer that goes into "healthy wealthy and OFTEN wise" (all with no vocals), then directly into the full instrumental arrangement behind "three score and five", and that then played out until the finish of the acetate

oh shit. can someone make a assembly of this? id love to hear it

Since this thread is here I thought I'd share a reconstruction I made of Cabin Essence as backing track only

Basically what I did was line up all the sessions segments (verse, tag, etc) and overlayed it with the final version, adjusting the pieces to match position and duration.

Whats nice about the backing version is that you hear more nuances in the instrumentation, which is pretty neat.

www.filedropper /cabinessenceinstrumental

Does anyone know where this guy got the vocals from at 3:06-3:12? They sound great

youtube.com/watch?v=7Wzsgnv1J6o

Alright, so they did a good job on the 2011 mix of getting close, the closest edition is roughly 6 minutes which I found out is resonable considering the testamony at the time, Brian didn't want it so long though so this is where we reached a dead end as to what to do
Start with Heroes and Villains pt 1 intro with the all vocal harmony around the 40 second mark
this part should be about a minute long,
Then the chorus, then the la la la la section which leads into the cantina section
now the children were raised section with the piano descending at the end of it, and the three score five! section after that leads to that dom dee doo bee doo doom vocal section that leads into ( brace yourself) the fade of old master painter before returning to the Ive been in this town section, the second chorus and the fade

>actually its the whistling in section that fades into the outro usually before cabin essence

Thats awesome.

I think those are the same vocals from the end of Wonderful, but taken from the sessions and mixed differently. Im not sure though, maybe they are from BWPS.

Btw, this is the best thread ive seen on Sup Forums in a while.

im trying to picture this in my head but i cant;

>listen to HV part 1 from 40 seconds to the distortion part of bo do do doo
>switch to old master painter (whole song or just the end?)
>back to HV to the end

is that it?

What career opportunities come with a course like that?

vocaroo.com/i/s0fM6mFeVfXq this?

thank you, this is excellent

No, I think he is talking about the fade of Old Master Painter-You Are My Sunshine.

youtube.com/watch?v=MuHBcLOiN20
At 1:04

You seriously need to put the info in a pastebin

Thanks. Ill also post some links to Smile fan mixes if you guys dont have them yet

>MPQ SMiLE Mix
mediafire.com/download/1udcse9z5c0k7ho/Beach_Boys_-_Smile_(MQR).rar
>sln 12-track SMiLE Mix (Mono with indepth analysis)
mediafire.com/download/kojmux6l076n0qb/Beach_Boys_-_Smile_(reconstruction).rar
>full analysis of why this is the correct arrangement
pastebin.com/avc2i1TT
>stereo mix of sln
mediafire.com/download/r28otcvjee5kk1b/Stereo_mix.rar
>Brian Wilson Presents Smile
mediafire.com/download/9uif1qlcpcixu0g/BWPS-mu.rar

Thanks, I don't think I have the MQR mix yet.

That's really interesting
Is there any online repository for all the interviews and stuff you used

Never actually given BWPS a proper listen before. It's actually really great and very different to Smile reconstructions. It does show how futile attempting to unify the album's central concepts and motifs is though. It works much better as a collection of random but linked odds and ends of songs.

BWPS was my introduction to Smile, and I loved it immediately. I still go back and listen to it every so often because, as you said, it offers something a bit different. I like the vibrance of the instruments moden production and the seamless transitions between tracks, as well as some of the melodies they added, like on Do You Like Worms / Roll Plymouth Rock and Love To Say Dada / In Blue Hawaii (especially the beginning)

Can you upload the entire analysis?

bump for a good thread

bump