Was "Love To Say Dada" finished?

[Summertime Blooz]

Uh, guys... surely the only reason the recordings from the second day of the 'I Love To Say Dada' sessions are known as 'Air Dada' is because... SMiLE Shoppers started calling the piece that in the early 2000s, when the recordings leaked generally?

As I recall it (and I may have it wrong - I wasn't around ALL the time back then), the stuff from the second day of ILTSDD sessions leaked, and someone on the SMiLE Shop board said 'wow, there's a chirping, birdy-like flute in the gaps in between the piano bits... flutes need air... and birds FLY in the Air... and Brian said that Air was an unfinished piano piece... this is an unfinished piano piece... so perhaps THIS was Air from the Elements!!!'. Or the thinking went something like that, anyway. And maybe it wasn't all one person that reached that conclusion, but I can't remember.

But anyway, that recording became known as 'Air Dada'. But not because it was SLATED as that, or because Brian called it that back in the day, or anything like that.

It occurred to me today looking at the sessionography for TSS box that maybe the title for LTSDD  Part 2 (Second Day) had some special significance. I always assumed it just meant the second day of sessions for LTSDD, but what if that is not the proper interpretation? 5/18/67 was actually the third day of sessions for LTSDD, although it was the second day for LTSDD Part 2. But why is the session labeled this way? I don't see anything else in the sessionography notated as Second Day or Third Day etc. We do know that at one point in December LTSDD was being labeled as 'All Day'. Not being a Bible reader, I thought I would check out how the Second Day fits into the story of the 7 Days of Creation, and found out that it was on the Second Day that God created the sky. I wonder now if LTSDD Part 2 (Second Day) was intended to be  it's own thing, separate from the standard issue LTSDD. If sky might be considered to equal Air, I think it could does give extra mileage to the theory that LTSDD Part 2 (Second Day) was indeed intended for The Elements as Air. There was a session scheduled for 5/19/67 (vocals  for Second Day perhaps?) that was canceled. Am I reading too much into this, or do you think there might be something to this theory?

Just to follow up on this wild-eyed idea of mine, I offer the following quote from BW about the Air element (which I know most of us have read before):
“Yeah. There was a cut-a piano piece, an instrumental, no vocals-we never finished that.”
-Brian Wilson (“The Beach Boys” by Byron Preiss. 1979)

So they "never finished that", implying that it was started. Remember that they canceled the session for the day after  LTSDD (Second Day) was recorded. Was Brian going to finish Second Day at that session, but never got around to it because the session was canceled? Could it be that the mysterious "piano piece" has been hiding in plain sight all this time since Second Day doesn't really sound like a piano piece at all because of the taped strings?

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

I have read as much as I possibly can on "Dada" and I have officially inferred, as a "song cyclist" myself, that Dada would be a running theme in "The Elements" and that "day 2" would have been air and day 1 would be part of the transition from air to water, which would have been something like "Cool Cool Water"

[runnersdialzero]

"Da Da" was not finished, at least not until it became "Cool Cool Water". There's no way to know what it was intended for unless Brian actually tells us something, which I don't see as likely.

[ahoutman1]

I was always under the impression it was recycled into Aren't You Glad as well?

[Julia]

Uh, guys... surely the only reason the recordings from the second day of the 'I Love To Say Dada' sessions are known as 'Air Dada' is because... SMiLE Shoppers started calling the piece that in the early 2000s, when the recordings leaked generally?

As I recall it (and I may have it wrong - I wasn't around ALL the time back then), the stuff from the second day of ILTSDD sessions leaked, and someone on the SMiLE Shop board said 'wow, there's a chirping, birdy-like flute in the gaps in between the piano bits... flutes need air... and birds FLY in the Air... and Brian said that Air was an unfinished piano piece... this is an unfinished piano piece... so perhaps THIS was Air from the Elements!!!'. Or the thinking went something like that, anyway. And maybe it wasn't all one person that reached that conclusion, but I can't remember.

But anyway, that recording became known as 'Air Dada'. But not because it was SLATED as that, or because Brian called it that back in the day, or anything like that.

It occurred to me today looking at the sessionography for TSS box that maybe the title for LTSDD  Part 2 (Second Day) had some special significance. I always assumed it just meant the second day of sessions for LTSDD, but what if that is not the proper interpretation? 5/18/67 was actually the third day of sessions for LTSDD, although it was the second day for LTSDD Part 2. But why is the session labeled this way? I don't see anything else in the sessionography notated as Second Day or Third Day etc. We do know that at one point in December LTSDD was being labeled as 'All Day'. Not being a Bible reader, I thought I would check out how the Second Day fits into the story of the 7 Days of Creation, and found out that it was on the Second Day that God created the sky. I wonder now if LTSDD Part 2 (Second Day) was intended to be  it's own thing, separate from the standard issue LTSDD. If sky might be considered to equal Air, I think it could does give extra mileage to the theory that LTSDD Part 2 (Second Day) was indeed intended for The Elements as Air. There was a session scheduled for 5/19/67 (vocals  for Second Day perhaps?) that was canceled. Am I reading too much into this, or do you think there might be something to this theory?

I wanted to give this particular post a shoutout because it's what completely changed my understanding of the song. The whole "Second Day...like the Bible...Dada was Air AND Water" theory is maybe my favorite unproven-yet-totally-plausible speculations I've ever heard about SMiLE. Like, seriously this just makes so much sense that if it isn't what Brian intended it's the coincidence of a lifetime. I usually hate elements guessing/framing and multi-part suites of it, but if you held a gun to my head I'd guess that by 1967, if the concept was still going to be on SMiLE at all, it would've been a two (or three) song thing, with Fire/Workshop as Fire/Earth (Veggies probably started as Earth but grew into its own thing as a single if not before) and Second Day as Water/Air. I still think the Psychedelic Sounds were demos or inspiratory experiments for the other three elements in '66.

This framework is so much better than trying to shoehorn 4 disparate "instrumental/a capella" pieces together into one cross-fading track, or the BWPS third movement. Just these two tracks, possibly divided across the sides of vinyl and bridging Americana (with Fire burning down the old society and its sins) and Cycle of Life (with life beginning in the water/taking its first breath, a baptism, etc).