using 'Cabinessence' in 'Heroes and Villains' mix

[mike moseley]

I'm working on some H&V mixes and I've tried putting the CE chorus in there.

Cheating but the H&V intro is a version of it, there's a train whistle in the Cantina mix,
and there's a pic of a train in the Frank Holmes artwork.

It sounds fantastic in there but how much of a cheat do people think it is.?  justified or not..?

[Andrew G. Doe]

Using the chorus of a completed song in a completely different song purely because there's a train whistle and a cartoon illustration to link them...

I'd say that on the Cheat-O-Meter, that's well into Lance Armstrong/Frederick Cook territory.

Why not put the middle eight to "GV" and the tag of "Wind Chimes" in there too ? After all, they were all recorded in LA.  

Um... isn't the 'intro' to "H&V" a version of the basic "Fire" riif, not "Cabin Essence" ?

[Matt Bielewicz]

It's really hard to say, isn't it? If I remember rightly (and perhaps I don't...) although the different sections that ended up in Cabin Essence were recorded under section titles: 'Home On The Range', 'Who Ran The Iron Horse' and 'The Grand Coulee Dam'... their associated recording documentation always said that those sections belonged to a larger whole called Cabin Essence, which suggests that by the time of the recording at the very latest, Brian saw them as parts of a track that was distinct from H&V.

That doesn't, however, preclude the possibility that he composed some or all of those sections possibly with H&V in mind. That might explain why some of the track and BVs to the Cabin Essence chorus sound related to the later H&V Intro. Maybe the CE chorus (or something like it) was going to be part of H&V at one point before October 1966, at the writing stage.

It seems pretty clear that by the time the sections were actually cut, though, they were for a separate track.

So as with a lot of SMiLE stuff, if you're trying to be historically accurate, it depends when exactly your H&V mix is supposed to be 'from'. Is this a May 1966 mix? A notional 'September 1966' version, sounding like what you think Brian might have had in his head when he wrote some of the sections? An October 1966, December 1966, or January, February or March 1967 version? Because I think the one thing we can ALL agree on is that had versions of H&V been completed in any of those months (and who knows, perhaps some of them, or parts of some of them, were...!), they would likely all have sounded rather different from one another.

I know what the June 1967 version sounds like. But that's all I can say!  

Of course, if you throw the 'trying to stick to history' aspect out of the window, you can put Who Ran The Iron Horse where you like! All the more so if you make the kind of mega-edit/mix where bits of H&V, Cabin Essence, Do You Like Worms, TOMP/YAMS etc etc all turn up throughout one gigantic through-mixed track. But that approach is not everyone's cup of Reddi-Whip...!

I'd say Fire, H&V Intro and the Cabin Essence chorus *are* all musically related by dint of the minor-scale arpeggios that appear in all of them (though in Fire, the notes aren't stepped, but played glissando on the strings)... but I'll admit that not everyone would agree with me on that, particularly as those parts are played by different instruments and in different keys on each track. You might say, 'well, those parts are just the kind of musical stuff that Brian was coming up with at the time'... and I wouldn't really be able to argue with that.

[mike moseley]

- yes its a cheat but there is a train sound in the Cantina mix as well as the picture in the booklet

I think the 'intro' is more like the CE chorus - it flips between 2 chords the same way CE does + same key

it sounds amazing spliced into the right place and as parts were shuffled around quite a bit I think its in the right spirirt

plus it helps the song flow - as we've all discovered after much frustration its VERY difficult to edit
a really convincing late '66 H&V because of missing lead vox and also to many butt edits/end tags

so yes its definitely cheating but it sounds fanatstic - I'll upload a snippet later

[mike moseley]

FWIW I don't think the original CE at writing stage had 'WRTIH' in it at all - VDP said it came out very different to what they started with which was Dennis 'singing like a funky cat to his chick' or words to that effect

I think my idea is a cheat but musically and thematically fits very well

[mike moseley]

https://soundcloud.com/spooky-music

track is HV2

rough edit please excuse the low quality had to record through air

I'd start the CE part as is and crossfade the vocals up I think - I tried this
a while ago and it works well

I'm trying for a late '66 H&V and its so hard as so many lead vox - and tracks - are missing, which
is why I'm cheating - strictly speaking the BR lead vox here is a cheat too as it
wasn't recorded till '67 I don't think..?

[Micha]

Um... isn't the 'intro' to "H&V" a version of the basic "Fire" riif, not "Cabin Essence" ?

Andrew, you disappoint me... see my H&V intro experiment. The chords are the same and the piano changes the chords at the same time in H&V intro where they change in Iron Horse - the organ though doesn't. They're both in 3/4 time. Fire is in 4/4 time changes chords way more often, and it's different chords too.

I would call using Iron Horse for H&V "creative", not "cheating" - there's no historical accuracy possible anyway as SMiLE wasn't finished in the 1960s. Is adding the CIFOTM lyric line to the Surf's Up tag "historically accurate"? All we can do is compile the segments we have to something that makes sense in some way to us personally. Use Wind Chimes as air? Why not - it wasn't conceived as part of The Elements, but the decision to use it as such in order to get the album could have been made in 1966 the same as in 2003. That decision wasn't made in 1966, but it would have been possible.

[The Shift]

Um... isn't the 'intro' to "H&V" a version of the basic "Fire" riif, not "Cabin Essence" ?

Andrew, you disappoint me...

Surprised me too…

I reckon WRTIH would fit nicely after the "woo woo woo…"  in the Cantina version.

The WRTIH progression isn't just similar to H&V (intro) and Mrs O Leary's Vache, but also Fall Breaks… on Smiley, and the vox on that ended up on the BWPS version of "… Cow".

Funny things happen like that…

[mike moseley]

have a listen John - sorry for the awful quality - https://soundcloud.com/spooky-music

its HV2 on the playlist

yes I have the train woo woo in there on another test edit

Um... isn't the 'intro' to "H&V" a version of the basic "Fire" riif, not "Cabin Essence" ?

Andrew, you disappoint me...

Surprised me too…

I reckon WRTIH would fit nicely after the "woo woo woo…"  in the Cantina version.

The WRTIH progression isn't just similar to H&V (intro) and Mrs O Leary's Vache, but also Fall Breaks… on Smiley, and the vox on that ended up on the BWPS version of "… Cow".

Funny things happen like that…

[soniclovenoize]

It sounds fantastic in there but how much of a cheat do people think it is.?  justified or not..?

Well did you type "F U N D" while you were making the edit? 

[mike moseley]

F U N D..?

It sounds fantastic in there but how much of a cheat do people think it is.?  justified or not..?

Well did you type "F U N D" while you were making the edit?