The Smiley Smile Message Board

Just watched this on youtube:

The Beach Boys/Dennis Wilson - Cabinessence/Truck Drivin' Man

As someone has commented, it sounds almost too good to be true. Is this really the Dennis vocal isolated, minus tampering by the uploader?

yeah, why is that so hard to believe?

Sure sounds like a cheap mic connected to a computer and some guy in his boxers singin' over a warbly distorted snippet of Cabinesscence to me.

Then again, that's what I think EVERYTHING sounds like. And I never messed with isolating vocal lines since the artifacts are so horrid sounding when I last tried years and years ago -- are the filters this good now?

There would be people here who not only wouldn't know about this ten years after the fact, but deny it after hearing it.

It's such a fun coupla lines, did anyone ever ask why it was so buried in the mix? Did he not watch his oos and ahs? It's pretty well syncopated.

Because the 20/20 "Cabinessence" backing track is in mono and the vocals are in stereo, the vocals can be isolated pretty easily. Obviously, additional tweaking needed to be done to isolate just the "Truck Drivin' Man" chant, but it's legit.

In my opinion, all the vocals are buried on the 20/20 version. I suspect a 1966 mix would have pushed those vocals more to the foreground.

Man, I wonder what was going through Brian's head when they were mucking around with his tapes and the sounds drifted through the walls to his bedroom.

The reason i was curious as to its genuineness-ness (is that a word?) is because we didn't get an isolated Dennis vocal on the Smile Sessions - despite it being clearly being something that'd be a real blast to listen too - and so i'd assumed it wasn't possible to isolate it successfully, or at least not in any listenable way...

Through the ceiling to his bedroom. His room was right above the studio.

There's a good thread (or discussion on another thread) somewhere on this topic.  If you search "Truck Drivin' Man" you'll find a couple of them - right around the time of the Smile Sessions late last year.

Can you imagine, laying around in bed and you hear THAT music drift up? Whew. Talk about mixed emotions. I love the anecdote about him appearing downstairs to add those lines to "Surf's Up."

Lots of fake fans here...you REALLY can't pick out Dennis Wilson's voice in that song even at a low volume and then GASP when someone isolates it? Sheesh...

Some fans make me hang my head in shame...

so it's fake?

or impossible to verify because so deeply buried and low in the mix?

Probably because it was recorded during the 20/20 sessions and not during Smile. The boxset only has Smile sessions that's why there's no further stuff from '71 Surf's up (except the finished vocals), overdubs for Prayer and Cabinessence. That's my guess



EDIT:

It's no fake !

If it was recorded during the 20/20 sessions, it would be on it's own track of an 8-track tape, and thus extremely easy to isolate. That it's not should tell you all you need to know.

Wait a minite.  Wait a gaul durn minute.  It's late in the day and I'm real tired at work, so forgive me if I'm asking a dumb question here.

Right around the realese of the Smile Sessions box last year, I posed the question on this board asking why the isolated "Truck Drivin' Man" section was not included on the Smile Sessions release. After what I thought was a legit answer (from a known Smile-o-Phile) and he wasn't kidding, he said it was because that section wasn't recorded during the SMiLE era, in '66/'67. That's why it wasn't included as its own track on any of the Smile Sessions releases.

Has this since been debuked or am I halucinating? Wasn't it recorded in '66 and mixed into Cabinessence by Carl & Desper in 1968??  Or was it recorded in 1968 and mixed into the existing '66 Cabinessence?

None of your questions are ever dumb, Mikie

Yeah, well, after AGD's post above, I guess I'm a little confused now.  Gotta search down that thread that discussed this already.

Yeah I remember AGD saying that the "truck drivin' man" vocals were from '68, which didn't make sense to me (forgive me if I'm misquoting you AGD).  Neither Brian nor Van Dyke participated in the '68 overdubs, so who else would have even known the part?

Someone find that thread!  I have a bad feeling it was somewhere in the ridiculously big thread we had going for the Smile Sessions.

Well, they might have had a demo to work from that hasn't surfaced.

I'm assuming the reason it wasn't included in TSS is the same reason we don't have an official stereo mix of the "Good Vibrations" single: some kind of electronic manipulation would need to be done to isolate the vocals and this was considered a step too far for an official release. Dennis' vocal does not exist on a separate track, so the low fidelity heard on that YouTube clip is about as good as that vocal would ever sound. Since the vocal is already present as part of the second "Cabin Essence" chorus, it's not like it has remained unreleased. The isolation is fun to listen to, but inessential.

I stand corrected - the "TDM" vocal was recorded in 1968. Sorry 'bout that but the last month or so has been some rough and frankly the BB are some way down my list of priorities right now.

Thanks, AGD.  I thought that's what was concluded back then!   :-D

And again, that's why it wasn't included in the Smile Sessions set(s).

To me, it's more essential than inessential, Roger. As essential as including the 'Cornucopia' version of Vegetables or the 'Three Score & Five' section of Heroes. The words were written by Van Dyke, so to me it's still a part of SMiLE. But! The justification for not including it on the Smile Sessions is valid since it wasn't recorded back in '66/'67.  :)

But it is on the TSS set...mixed, as always, under the second "Cabin Essence" chorus on Disc 1. The same is true of other vocals ("Surf's Up" for example) where the recordings date from later than the SMiLE period. A more pertinent question is why are there no vocal sessions for "Cabin Essence" represented on the set apart from the segments used in the montage vocal track? Was it a space issue? Do the multi-tracks exist for the roughly assembly '66 version, but the vocal session tapes do not? My understanding is that the multi-tracks don't exist for the 20/20 version, which is why the "new" mono mix simply removes one of the stereo channels to eliminate Carl's ADT vocal. Given that Dennis' chant only exists mixed down in that '68 master, electronic manipulation would need to be done to isolate it and the quality would have been too poor to stand along side the true isolated vocals from this song (which appear in the vocal montage track).

I agree Dennis' bit is important, but asking for it to appear on its own is a bit like asking for the "dig a hole in the ground" or the laughing bits from the "Cornucopia" version of "Vega-Tables" to be isolated from the song they were intended to be a part of...and the set doesn't offer that to us either.

Yeah, but you know what he means. There is no isolated Truck Drivin' Man - nothing in the vocal montage segment or anywhere else.


That's a good question. There aren't very many vocal sessions on the box set outside of Heroes and Villains (and even for that it's mostly the chanting - no vocal sessions for the verses), and Vegetables. But no vocal sessions for Wind Chimes, Wonderful, Cabin Essence, Do You Like Worms, Barnyard, etc.

Well, I'm talking about the isolated TDM section being included on the set. I'm fully aware that it's on Cabinessence in the Smile box. I've had that isolated part on a cassette tape since around 1976. It was done by oops'ing, believe it or not. There's still a lot of bleed over on that one, but the words are clear. I also have it on a bootleg from recent years - unknown who did it or where it came from. It is superior (and I assume the YouTube version came from the same source).  There's hardly any bleed and the vocal is clear as a bell.    

Not arguing with ya, and you're right about the lack of Cabinessence sessions in the Smile box, but this Dennis thing woulda been cool. Can't have everything though, I guess. I'm very happy with how the Sessions box turned out!

I always thought the reason for this is why there are no vocal sessions on the Pet Sounds Sessions - they would wipe over the previous take each time.

Yes, you're right about that. I forgot. I think I was temporarily confused because of those vocals-only tracks on Pet Sounds that we didn't quite get in the same way on this box.

It would've been cool to have it as a "hidden" track... still it is readily available so if anyone wants to insert into their mp3 rips of TSS it's easy to do.

That does seem to be true a lot of the time, but not always. With TSS, it seems like the multiple takes survive when there is a limited backing track or no track at all. Without a backing track, the boys would have no reason to rewind the tape and record over a previous take.

Regarding the "Truck Drivin' Man" chant: I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. I agree that it's really cool to hear electronically isolated, but it would have sounded inferior next to the properly isolated vocals...and I believe this is the main reason for it not to appear that way. If it was up to me, I would have definitely included it as a hidden bonus track at the end of one of the discs...perhaps in place of that odd organ track!

That organ track is severe nerdbait, mind - it's the previously-thought-to-be-lost organ overdub for the SS version of H&V's chorus.

And I've always disliked that organ track  ;D (again, something not actually recorded during the SMiLE period)

If I recall correctly, the 1968 multitrack tape for Cabinessence has been lost.  All there is, is the mixdown from the 20/20 album.  Hence, no isolation of the Truck Drivin' Man part is available, except for fan isolations.

Please don't make snide, superior comments if you're not then going to respond when other posts ask you to elaborate, thanks.

Not... exactly.

What... exactly?