The Smiley Smile Message Board

WOW!  That song gets me every time....it's so freakin sad.  How bout you?

Rieley's lyrics are pretty heartfelt albeit rather clumsily worded in the usual Jack tradition. Dennis's music is beautiful. (Who plays that organ - him or Daryl? From the shaky sound I suppose it's him.)   Carl's vocal is so fragile and moving it's darn near unbelievable, so far removed from his usual strong tone. 

Daniel Johnston has been mentioned around here lately - if Carl had used this voice to record an album of Johnston's songs, I'd have bought it. (For one thing, it would have been sung on key and in tune unlike most of the Johnston oeuvre).  I guess ole Dan'l comes to mind because the instrumentation on 4th is kind of like that wheezy organ on the early Johnston recordings.

Funny thing....last week on the 4th I was looking for this song on YouTube and it wasn't there. It was put up four days later.  YT has a lot of defects as a tool to instruct those unlettered in the BBs's work about the band's achievements - but few are more striking than the fact that before July 8, it lacked 4th of July but offered two different versions of Smart Girls.

This song really should have been on "Surf's Up" and it's a shame it wasn't.

 :listening

so My Diane, I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, It's Over Now, I'm So Lonely, Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder), TIL I DIE, Angel Come Home, Livin' With a Heartache, Tears in the Morning, Summer's Gone, etc, are all less sad to you than Sloop John B?

I'm glad someone else brought this song up, I absolutely freaking love this song, easily in my top 10 Beach Boys songs. For me it was the highlight of getting the Good Vibrations box set (I got it after I had heard BWPS so the Smile material wasn't as interesting to me at the time), Carl's lead is brilliant and it's only a scratch vocal! The backing track is a work of art, dense and yet sparse, the beautiful shimmering strings and the forlorn flute at the end are just audio bliss to me.

It is such a shame that Dennis and Carl's disagreement over the sequencing of Surf's Up led to 4th Of July and Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again being pulled from the album, those two songs in place of Take A Load Off Your Feet and Student Demonstration Time would've made Surf's Up a stone-cold classic.

I'm curious about "Wouldn't It Be Nice to Live Again."  I've seen people rave about it numerous times on this board yet I've never heard it and I have no idea where I can hear it.

You can't hear it. It's never been booted. Supposedly it was due for inclusion on Warmth Of The Sun, but then it was left off, for what possible reason it's truely hard to fathom. So we could hear Forever again? Bizarre. Hopefully WIBNTLA will finally appear on one of the upcoming releases later in the year, but i'm not holding my breath... As for 4th of July - it's utterly tremendous! Beautiful, beautiful song.

It has never been released officially or otherwise and I'd guess that less than 50 people have heard the original version. The version that many people have heard is the excellent cover done by Adam Marsland's Chaos Band (Adam posts on here as Adamghost) on the tribute CD 'Long Promised Road: Songs of Dennis & Carl Wilson Live'.

Holy crap, finally someone uploaded to youtube! amazing song, beautiful vocals by Carl, really huge shame it didn't made the album

Hmmm...I made a video for that and put it up over a year ago, now it's telling me I can't watch it because it's blocked in my country! lol.

Funny thing is, the booklet of the GV box set states it was produced by Brian. Which I really really doubt considering the facts that
a) by 1971 Brian didn't really produce anything on his own for the Beach Boys,
b) it sounds very much like a Dennis production.
So, what do you think, is it a typo, or is 4th of July a Brian production indeed?

Produced by Brian, written by Dennis, sung by Carl - was slated to be the first collaboration of this manner between the brothers

Not produced by Brian - the track was recorded during the sessions for Dennis' first solo album in 1970/71 (as "Old Movie"). DCW production.