Heroes And Villains Playset/Random Heroes Sequence Generator

[Dunderhead]

So I was bored tonight and I had a fun little idea, to create a way to randomly make a version of Heroes and Villains.
What I did was simply, I edited out the master takes of every separate Heroes section using audacity into a unique track (27 in all). I took pains to edit the ends and the beginnings of each section so that there would be no clipping between tracks, and then I put them all into a playlist on itunes.

It's pretty cool, you don't have to do any painful editing anymore. You can just drag and drop the sections around in a playlist and hit start and it will play seamlessly through whatever order you decided.

What's really cool is that you can also turn shuffle on, and essentially you'll be able to listen to a new edit of Heroes and Villains every day.

I'm not sure I got them all exactly perfect, so bare with me. They all playback fine for me with no awkward clipping, but let me know if your media player of choice isn't as cooperative. All tracks are in stereo, except for Barnyard, Great Shape, and Sunshine, unfortunately I just couldn't find any stereo mixes of those that I liked and those three tracks are always kind of a pain in general on fan mixes to get right.

Anyway, enough talk. Just download the .zip and drag and drop the tracks into a playlist. Don't know if anyone has done this before, but I thought I'd share in the event that they haven't.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ewg30qmp899wsec

(If a Mod wants to take this link down, feel free. I'm never really sure what's ok to post here and what's not)

[Freddie French-Pounce]

I haven't checked your sections, but soniclovenoize did this a while back.

[Dunderhead]

oh damn really, wish I would have seen that thread before I did all that editing!
do you have a link to his post?

[Freddie French-Pounce]

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,12031.0.html

[Dunderhead]

That's awesome, I'm just going to send people that now when I want them to listen to some Beach Boys.

My idea's not too different, except you can use it to make your own mix or experiment with any ordering you should wish. You don't have to shuffle, you can just drag and drop things around in the playlist to make a mix on the fly.

I think we all have ideas we want to try out for a sequence of Heroes, but it's a big pain to go into audacity every time. I made this so I could just try out any ordering without having to do an edit every time.

[Freddie French-Pounce]

That's awesome, I'm just going to send people that now when I want them to listen to some Beach Boys.

My idea's not too different, except you can use it to make your own mix or experiment with any ordering you should wish. You don't have to shuffle, you can just drag and drop things around in the playlist to make a mix on the fly.

There was a download version too, which I have, but I don't know where that is.

[Dunderhead]

Gotta track that down myself now that I know it exists.
I was planning on doing the same thing for basically all of smile as well as Good Vibrations, so maybe I'll post those another day.

I really love this site, knowing that my crazy smile idea has already been implemented makes me feel like a little bit less of a weirdo for spending several hours working on this.

[The Shift]

Many cheers Fishmonk… I don't mind how many versions of this kind of thing I have!

[mike s]

I don't think anyones ever nailed a really satisfying version of this song, including Brian!

I've got a work-in-progress on the go but pressed for time to finish it - it cheats a 'bit' by using part of Cabinessence in place of H&V intro, I use the backing track of the chorus with the vox then fading up

trust me it flows perfectly and sounds fab and isn't really that much of a cheat as it and 'intro' are pretty similar + there is train stuff in early versions of H&V

[Al Jardine: Pick Up Artist]

Cool stuff.

It's a shame three score and five isn't in stereo. I'm trying to work on an "extended mix" that goes 1st verse>chorus>2nd verse>a cappella>cantina>children were raised (often wise)>three score and five>a cappella bit over verse, work in that wooshing sound that used to come before cantina>I've been in this town>chorus>bridge to indians>prelude to fade.

It's not going well.

[Dunderhead]

I don't think anyones ever nailed a really satisfying version of this song, including Brian!

I've got a work-in-progress on the go but pressed for time to finish it - it cheats a 'bit' by using part of Cabinessence in place of H&V intro, I use the backing track of the chorus with the vox then fading up

trust me it flows perfectly and sounds fab and isn't really that much of a cheat as it and 'intro' are pretty similar + there is train stuff in early versions of H&V

You know, if I were pressed I'd have to say the "alternate" version is the best one.

1st Verse -> a Capella -> Cantina -> Children Were Raised/Three Score and Five -> Dumb Whistle -> False Barnyard

I think it's the most energetic version, it has the most momentum of any of the mixes I've heard. To be frank, the chorus is a misguided addition in my opinion. Heroes and Villains thrives on this sort of restless, amphetamine fueled energy. It shifts wildly through a dizzying array of ideas, never settling on one but always moving on to the next, propelled by Brian's obsessive compulsive neurosis. The chorus slows everything down and stymies the whole song, giving it the turgid air of stagnated convention.
The track is all about movement, it's just blasts off over the horizon without ever looking back. Look at the second "verse":

My children were raised
you know they suddenly rise.
They started slow long ago
healthy, wealthy, and often wise

At three score and five
I'm very much alive.
I've still got the jive
to survive with the Heroes and Villains.

The first two lines seamlessly blur past and present. The first is in the past tense, the second in the present, as if decades had passed in a single instant. On "often wise" there's also that really distinctive sour piano "joke", and it's essential musically I think. Brian made a real mistake taking it out, it's a matter of that "density" I was talking about. The "often wise" means just that, his children made mistakes along the way. They were often, not always wise, and the music on that line really conveys that brilliantly.
In the next verse, the singer is already "three score and five", or 65 years old. A turn of phrase which immediately conjures up the authority of Lincoln, and brings the song back to the traditional American iconography that Smile so frequently employs. And of course at the time the song was being written, the 20th century was, like the singer, 65 years old. A coincidence perhaps, but an interesting one none-the-less. And if you connect that with the very first lines of the song, "I've been in this town so long...", it paints a pretty interesting picture. As if the singer represents some vital element that has been "taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long long time" by the people of "the city" (is there any symbol of modernity that's more well worn, and persistent than 'the city'?).

Really the lyrics of Heroes and Villains are just good poetry, plain and simple. Their incredibly memorable, intelligent, and just brimming with ideas and images. And Brian does a wonderful job teasing them out with his music. It's a fantastic collaboration, plain and simple.
I mean look at this line,

In the cantina margaritas keep the spirit high.

Not only does it preserve the song's sense of time and place, but it also alludes to the "Two-Step to lamp lights cellar tune..." section of Surf's Up.

'The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne.' The poor people in the cellar taverns, trying to make themselves happy by singing.
Then there's the parties, the 'drinking, trying to forget the wars, the battles at sea. "While at port a do or die.' Ships in the harbor, battling it out. A kind of Roman empire thing.

Spirit has a double meaning, evoking both the human spirit but also the alcohol the patrons are drinking, and the margaritas are eventually personified in the form of "Margarita". The use of the word "high" is interesting too, as is the "you're under arrest" which ends the section. It's a really compact few lines. The image of cowboys drinking in a saloon and growing intoxicated becomes this subtle metaphor for the kids in the 60's doing drugs, and their persecution by the establishment. And the element of personification, where the drink morphs into a woman that the singer professes his love for introduces a troubling aspect, of being blinded by the drugs, or relying on them too heavily.
The only thing missing is a sound effect track. This part absolutely begs for one, and I don't think the Cantina section is complete otherwise. I'd love to hear the sound of the bustling saloon in one stereo channel and lonely sound of Brian playing the piano in the other (had the song ever been actually released). It would have really made it, giving the listener a sense of the singers isolation from the tumult and excitement of the counterculture. Where he's off in a corner, isolated, ignored by the crowd as they party themselves away. 

As you add more and more of the various bridges Brian recorded, you sort of loose sight of the song's real magic, as they don't really contribute any substantial lyrical or thematic ideas to the final song. To be certain, I love all of those fragments, but stuffing them all into a 10 minute song unfortunately dilutes the poetic content pretty substantially.

and blah blah blah, you get the idea. I have a habit of droning on, so I'll spare you guys the rest of my analysis.

[Magic Transistor Radio]

Great idea! I would like to add that I made a recent mix of my own where I took out the singles bicycle rider chorus as well. It went like this:
  1) Verse 1
  2) I'm in Great Shape
  3) Verse 2
  4) Cantina including 'often wise' verse to explosion sound
  5) Barnyard
  6) You Are My Sunshine up til the descending violins
  7) 'Childeren were raised verse' up until 'by the heroes and'
  tag at the end of You are My Sunshine track on SMiLE sessions

It is 7 min long but works well

[Summertime Blooz]

Cool stuff.

It's a shame three score and five isn't in stereo.

Isn't it? Well- at least I tried this on my own mix and it sounds good to me.
http://www.mediafire.com/?ym1gkjq4pvapxm3

[Bean Bag]

Cool stuff.

It's a shame three score and five isn't in stereo. I'm trying to work on an "extended mix" that goes 1st verse>chorus>2nd verse>a cappella>cantina>children were raised (often wise)>three score and five>a cappella bit over verse, work in that wooshing sound that used to come before cantina>I've been in this town>chorus>bridge to indians>prelude to fade.

It's not going well.

 

That was funny!  Yeah...I've had several Eureka! moments of sequencing this song (and other SMiLE songs) end with me wondering "wait...what was I doing again?"

[Bean Bag]

I don't think anyones ever nailed a really satisfying version of this song, including Brian!

Yup...I totally agree.  I feel like what Brian finally came up with (the official Smiley version) robbed Worms of it's theme and progression...leaving me to wonder, just what would Worms have ended up being?  He never really returned to it.

But since so much of SMiLE is birthed from HV and so much was recorded for it...it's the big, master puzzle of SMiLE.  You solve it...you solve SMiLE.  Or something like that...

[mike s]

Cantina version:  full of genius sections and moments but a fully realized and flowing song..?  no way, too choppy + the 'you're under arrest' is not very well delivered and the feedback thingy before barnshine is interesting but would not stand repeated listens, its too jarring

the thing about H&V is: THE VERSE IS THE CHORUS - the repeated verse melody IS the hook