Your first SMiLE experience..

[mammy blue]

early 1980s: My father plays a BB cassette compilation in the car that includes the early hits but also later tracks like Surf's Up. My young mind is completely mesmerized by this mysterious track, and the BB's musical progression is part of my conception of them from an early age.

1987?: Despite my awareness of the BB's progressive music, at a Boy Scout camping trip, I get in a heated argument with a kid who insists that Brian Wilson was more creative than the Beatles, and that he made music that was better than Sgt. Pepper. (I wonder if this guy is buying the box next week.)

1989?: My dad picks up a "Surf's Up" vinyl LP and remembering the title track, I play it and am utterly disappointed by most of the other songs, thinking Surf's Up must have just been a fantastic anomaly in their career. I promptly forget about the LP, and the BB for that matter, for quite some time.

1995: I'm now starting college and I decide to check out that Pet Sounds album that McCartney keeps raving about. At the record store, I look at the tracklist. No Surf's Up. How can the BB's best album not have Surf's Up on it? (I seem to have forgotten about the earlier LP experience).

So I'm playing Pet Sounds in my dorm room, and it's slowly growing on me. A guy from across the hall says, "Hey you like the BB? Check this out." And he lays the GV Box Set on me! I know, what are the chances? The big moment is when I look at the chronological tracklist and I see all the "previously unreleased" songs listed after the Pet Sounds ones, including "Surf's Up". Suddenly I figure out what was going on, and what the hell happened to the Beach Boys after Pet Sounds. And then I actually listen to the tracks on disc 2.... what more needs to be said?

Through the years I am blown away by every Smile fragment that makes its way to the internet, on Anne Wallace's site, the old Smile Shop, etc etc. And 16 years after first learning about SMiLE, the Beach Boys are my favorite band and this music is one of the main reasons why. What a trip it's been.

[Iron Horse-Apples]

1987?: Despite my awareness of the BB's progressive music, at a Boy Scout camping trip, I get in a heated argument with a kid who insists that Brian Wilson was more creative than the Beatles, and that he made music that was better than Sgt. Pepper. (I wonder if this guy is buying the box next week.)

What sort of boy scouts group did you belong to? We used to have farting contests and such like.

I can just imagine him pinning you down and forcing you to admit Brian is the greatest whilst slapping your head.

[Jameswilliam]

Loving these stories!

For me, it was the American Band on VHS in the late 80s so I would have been about 10 and only knew 'The Hits'. When I heard Surf's Up over the opening titles, I thought it was called Chug A Lug so imagine my face when I bought Surfin Safari on cassette not too long after and heard a song about root beer!
Anyways, the thing that stuck with me was Fire and Bicycle Rider Theme and the video of Carl and Dennis changing.
Roll on a few years and I hear the songs on the boxset and then the twofers but the biggest eyeopener was a poster off the Bloo did me a massive favour a couple of years back and posted me 'a few' CDs which included the Smile Project-I'm not sure my ears have recovered.

It doesn't matter whether you've waited 44 or 4 years for this to happen-it is and next Monday/Tuesday is going to be a pretty special day. And, even though I've never even met most of you, I'm looking forward to spending next Tuesday morning with boxset in hand, CD1 starting up and logging on here.

Oh, I also think Phil should be unbanned-give the guy a chance to apologise. Just my 0.0125480p (current exchange rate!)

You are correct... My first actual SMiLE experience was Surf's Up during the american band vhs credits... I always remembered the song i was only about 7 years old... lol... But I always wondered about it, cause it was never on any of the cassettes my parents got me (all capitol bad comps)... Then when i was like 12 , a neighbor was throwing out a bunch of lp's, and me and my friends went through them.  I got a BB album called like "20 Good Vibrations" on Reprise, i recognized a few of the songs.. and i noticed a song called Surf's Up, put it on and im like damn this wasnt the song from the opening title :\.  Then it got to the second section and i rejoiced, and its been my favorite song of All Time.  Also, in the 80s.. most of the american band vhs' that were out, didnt include the inside pop performance, they were all about 70 minutes i think.. took a while to find the full length one.  Was happy to find out the American Band/IJWMFTT Dvd, had the full version!

[mammy blue]

What sort of boy scouts group did you belong to? We used to have farting contests and such like.

I can just imagine him pinning you down and forcing you to admit Brian is the greatest whilst slapping your head.

It was a late night campfire bull session. Somehow the topic of music came up. I thought the kid was crazy at the time, I really did.

We were kind of a strange, geeky troop. We often played Dungeons and Dragons during our free time at camp...

[rab2591]

1987?: Despite my awareness of the BB's progressive music, at a Boy Scout camping trip, I get in a heated argument with a kid who insists that Brian Wilson was more creative than the Beatles, and that he made music that was better than Sgt. Pepper. (I wonder if this guy is buying the box next week.)

What sort of boy scouts group did you belong to? We used to have farting contests and such like.

I can just imagine him pinning you down and forcing you to admit Brian is the greatest whilst slapping your head.

Right!? I feel like my childhood was incredibly unsophisticated after reading some of these posts

[donald]

I had read a number of articles and had been a  fan for a long time but I was actually unfamiliar with the unreleased SMiLE album.  Sometime in the early 80's, as I recall, I bought the Priess book on the band and from then on I was solidly hooked on the myth/ legend of the band.  Sort of became obsessed.  Like many of you.  Then, gradually, over the years, I pieced together the released material and the bits that I could find, and on the release of the box set, finally made my own best guess of what the album might have been like and created  my very own cassette tape, complete with a little Frank Holmes cover I printed off of the internet.  The fun part was putting together element pieces like the snippett of Fire from American Band, pieces from Smiley Smile (Woody Woodpecker), the workshop snippet from 20/20,  Wind Chimes, and the Water music from different sources.

So to answer the thread question, my first SMiLE experience lasted a number of years culminating in that little cassette.

[GuyOnTheBeach]

Is that why your ex is your ex? 

Haha, no, but I'm sure it contributed.

[37!ws]

My first AWARENESS was seeing a mention of "the ill-fated Smile album" in a music reference book, and I thought they were referring to Smiley Smile, which I had on cassette and really enjoyed because of its absurdity and wackiness. You know, how some people refer to albums by just one word to be terse (like when the Ray Manzarek character in the movie The Doors said something like, "I think it's our best album since Days," referring obviously to Strange Days, and how some people call that Beatles album Sgt. Pepper, a shortening that makes me cringe because Pepper isn't the subject; the BAND is!)...plus, the last time I saw the phrase "ill-fated" referred to an album it was Let It Be. I didn't know that Smile was much more than I knew from Smiley Smile.

My first actual EXPERIENCE was when I bought Good Vibrations: 30 Years of The Beach Boys. The ONLY REASON I bought that box set was so I could have the disc 5 version of "God Only Knows," which I heard on the Steve [Dahl] & Garry show on WLUP (I wasn't a fan -- my brother listened to Steve & Garry and he had the show on in his bedroom) -- they were playing bits of the box. By that time my Beach Boys fandom had really numbed and I was getting tired of it, but I NEEDED to own that version of "God Only Knows;" I felt it was worth the price of the whole box! (Then again, I used a $60 mall gift certificate to buy it at Musicland; that was a thank-you gift from my brother and his then-wife; they had just gotten married. Same brother, but he and his wife temporarily moved in to my parents' house while the house they were buying was being prepped.)

I remember hearing Steve & Garry play "Do You Like Worms" and "Love To Say Da Da" simply because the titles cracked them up, and I remember being not impressed in the least. When I got the box, I was still not impressed. "THIS is the genius stuff Brian was working on!?" But I did love "Vegetables," "Wonderful," and the "Surf's Up" demo. (For the longest time, I preferred the Smiley Smile version of "Wind Chimes.") Also really got into the string of "Heroes And Villains" fragments.

Mind you by this time I was already familiar with "Our Prayer" and "Cabinessence," as I heard them on 20/20 from a vinyl copy I borrowed from the library. And you know what? I hated "Cabinessence." I thought it was the Beach Boys just trying to re-create a 1969 version of "Good Vibrations." (mellow verses sung by Carl, very intense verses...) I had no idea those two were discarded Smile tracks until I got the GV box. Learning that they were Smile tracks really made me grow to love "Cabinessence." But overall, I wasn't the least bit impressed by what I had heard from Smile.

Still, I knew I was missing some stuff, so maybe I didn't have the proper context. Right when I started my sophomore year of college that August, I discovered a weekly Beach Boys fan digest called "surfs-up." You'd e-mail your posts and replies, and Ethan Jones would put them together into a digest. And there was this chap named David Prokopy who was talking about his tape sets. So naturally I jumped in and got Dave's 2-tape Smile set, and found the liners to be very eye-opening. I listened to "Fire" on that hot, sunny, August afternoon...and it scared the crap out of me...wow...no wonder Brian wouldn't let it out! But Smile was really starting to fascinate me. I eventually got Dave's "upgraded" tape set after that (still two tapes; never got the three-tape set) with his new stereo mix of "Child Is Father Of The Man."

But the summer of 1993 was when I had my first real Smile experience.

[JohnMill]

My first AWARENESS was seeing a mention of "the ill-fated Smile album" in a music reference book, and I thought they were referring to Smiley Smile, which I had on cassette and really enjoyed because of its absurdity and wackiness. You know, how some people refer to albums by just one word to be terse (like when the Ray Manzarek character in the movie The Doors said something like, "I think it's our best album since Days," referring obviously to Days, and how some people call that Beatles album Sgt. Pepper, a shortening that makes me cringe because Pepper isn't the subject; the BAND is!)...plus, the last time I saw the phrase "ill-fated" referred to an album it was Let It Be. I didn't know that Smile was much more than I knew from Smiley Smile.

My first actual EXPERIENCE was when I bought Good Vibrations: 30 Years of The Beach Boys. The ONLY REASON I bought that box set was so I could have the disc 5 version of "God Only Knows," which I heard on the Steve [Dahl] & Garry show on WLUP (I wasn't a fan -- my brother listened to Steve & Garry and he had the show on in his bedroom) -- they were playing bits of the box. By that time my Beach Boys fandom had really numbed and I was getting tired of it, but I NEEDED to own that version of "God Only Knows;" I felt it was worth the price of the whole box! (Then again, I used a $60 mall gift certificate to buy it at Musicland; that was a thank-you gift from my brother and his then-wife; they had just gotten married. Same brother, but he and his wife temporarily moved in to my parents' house while the house they were buying was being prepped.)

I remember hearing Steve & Garry play "Do You Like Worms" and "Love To Say Da Da" simply because the titles cracked them up, and I remember being not impressed in the least. When I got the box, I was still not impressed. "THIS is the genius stuff Brian was working on!?" But I did love "Vegetables," "Wonderful," and the "Surf's Up" demo. (For the longest time, I preferred the Smiley Smile version of "Wind Chimes.") Also really got into the string of "Heroes And Villains" fragments.

Mind you by this time I was already familiar with "Our Prayer" and "Cabinessence," as I heard them on 20/20 from a vinyl copy I borrowed from the library. And you know what? I hated "Cabinessence." I thought it was the Beach Boys just trying to re-create a 1969 version of "Good Vibrations." (mellow verses sung by Carl, very intense verses...) I had no idea those two were discarded Smile tracks until I got the GV box. Learning that they were Smile tracks really made me grow to love "Cabinessence." But overall, I wasn't the least bit impressed by what I had heard from Smile.

Still, I knew I was missing some stuff, so maybe I didn't have the proper context. Right when I started my sophomore year of college that August, I discovered a weekly Beach Boys fan digest called "surfs-up." You'd e-mail your posts and replies, and Ethan Jones would put them together into a digest. And there was this chap named David Prokopy who was talking about his tape sets. So naturally I jumped in and got Dave's 2-tape Smile set, and found the liners to be very eye-opening. I listened to "Fire" on that hot, sunny, August afternoon...and it scared the crap out of me...wow...no wonder Brian wouldn't let it out! But Smile was really starting to fascinate me. I eventually got Dave's "upgraded" tape set after that (still two tapes; never got the three-tape set) with his new stereo mix of "Child Is Father Of The Man."

But the summer of 1993 was when I had my first real Smile experience.

You had a very strange route to get where you are today as far as this record is concerned.  In fact I think you took The Long And Winding Road route to get here  

It's weird that "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" was the track that finally "drove you out of your tree".  Maybe because I'm probably more of a lyrics guy, although I thought that song was awesome I was already won over long before I heard that so I guess it always surprised me when people name check that track as the one that converted them.

Also in more general terms, I find it interesting how many people over the course of years/decades fell in and out of love with The Beach Boys.  I can honestly think of only one band that that has ever happened to me with and it basically was due to the fact as to how much that band's sound changed in a negative way and once that happened I never looked back and in fact discarded almost all of that particular group's records at a church yard sale.

Anyhow as the mystic says: "any road will take you there"

[John Stivaktas]

Around 1991 I picked up The Early Years version of Smile on CD from Red Eye Records in Sydney. The quality was obviously from cassettes and some songs were not from the SMiLE sessions such as Heroes and Villains and Wind Chimes (both from Smiley Smile) and Vegetables (which was the Laughing Gravy version!). A year later I got the Chapter One release which was way better in terms of audio quality.

Another important event was when I borrowed 'Tens Years of Harmony' from my local library on cassette. I heard Surf's Up for the first time and was absolutely blown away. Even today that track sends chills down my spine. A few years later I picked up the Good Vibrations Box Set and haven't looked back.