The Smiley Smile Message Board

Okay everyone. The disco version of Here Comes The Night gets a lot of hate because it's disco music. Does anyone here actually like this song. I think it's great. Like those harmonies and that bass, man. It's honestly not bad.

Honestly? I like it...except for the monkeys. They kill it for me. Strings are a bit overdone, but not as big of a problem as those dirty damn apes :lol

I agree. A bit bizarre for a beach boys song.

Maybe I'm just projecting my own feeling on this track more than anything, but I've felt for many years that this song among fans has sort of moved into transcending any real hate and has moved firmly into (relatively) lovingly mocking territory.

I think, in terms of the band's story, the track is another case of a bad decision being more a symptom of problems than a cause.  

The Wild Honey version, the original version is great. As for the disco version. I guess it was just done for the times.

Liked it then; liked it now.

Never liked it.

It sounded like Beach Boy vocals to a generic disco song.

Too bad they couldn't have done a song that was quintessentially Beach Boys which happened to be disco (like "Miss You" was a Stones song through and through and through.

I'm ashamed to admit that I own it. It was my absolute favorite on WH and was an absolute travesty to try to bastardize a great song into a disco format. Disgusting, embarrassing, tacky and a good example of the way Br00th's mind works.

I like Carl's vocal on it.

I've never liked disco and still turn it off or skip it when it comes on the radio or music stream. I love the WH version of HCTN, but have never cared for the disco version.

I really like both versions. I genuinely like the disco version.

It should have been released ONLY as a single,,, can you imagine LA with a couple more Dennis songs and a couple more songs by Brian?

I like the two short versions released as singles...The singing on HCTN is outstanding.. I can find enough BB songs to criticize.. This isnt one of them..

Love it.  Always have, always will.  Edgy, spooky, downright bizarre in spots, amazing vocals, inventive arrangements,great Carl vocal. Love it.

And see for me, I HATE the short version, just like I hate the single version of Cool Cool Water.

lol...spellcheck said "short venison". Oh deer...

Ok, time to play the "What if?" game. Let's say the disco version of HCTN is released a year or two earlier than it actually was. Would it have had any kind of a chance of being a hit? To make it interesting, let's imagine that the song gets played on the radio as a song by a "mystery group", thereby giving it no connection to "The Beach Boys".

How obscure a track was the original version? Would it go unnoticed in some markets in the pre-internet era that this was a BB remake of their own song? I'm not sure that Carl's voice was the most immediately recognizable BB voice to many people either.

Oh deer... That's brilliant!

and funny!

Thanks, I'm here all week, try the veal!

It's veally good. It's Norwegian.

I don't know about that. The monkey noises belong in the category of exotica, an evolutionary dead end in popular music that was a big influence on Brian in his prime, most explicitly on the title track of Pet Sounds.

Why do I like it?  Well, I liked their original version of it, for starters, so the melody still makes me bob my head.  Beyond that it was produced and recorded well, and I can appreciate that, looking back on late-70s technology, methods, and the relative dearth of good production in that stretch of years.

Why do I hate it?  Well, I hate disco as a genre.  So I hate it.  Beyond that though, it was a move by the BBs to create something for the purpose of being popular or relevant- not because of an overarching idea or inspiration in and of itself.  Many of their lowest points come when they try and do sh*t like that, and many of their highest points come when they try and do the complete opposite of that.  (you could say that about many artists, fwiw)

Loved the original, don't care for the disco version.  Carl Wilson's vocal on the disco version is not very good.

Two things I remember. Hearing it for the first time and trying to remember who did the original! Duh! (In my defence it was pre Internet and snail mail for my BBFUN newsletter.) Second was that it was 2-3 years too late. I've said this before but there was room for only one veteran act doing disco IMO. Franklin Valli got there first.

I think it's great. The original version is quite boring and forgottable though. It gets bashed because the most loved Beach Boys sound is the mid-60s sound, and disco is quite far away from it. I've played HCTN to some people that have no personal connection or fandom towards Beach Boys and they've always enjoyed HCTN. The mistake was to put it on the album, but as a single it's fantastic.

Really liked the original...but then again after the utter MESS which accompanied Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains on Smiley Smile maybe ANYTHING would have sounded OK...the disco version was 'ehhhh' for that specific era.  Not really very hip or cool for the club/dance crowd and sort of "what the fucking f***?" for Beach Boys fans.

Bruce should be whipped for doing THAT.  Then there's Wipeout with the Fat Boys which they were all guilty of to a degree, and especially that gawd-forsaken crucifixion  of 'Surfin' on Summer in Pair of Dice.  Leave the legacy alone 'Love'.  The hatred/disdain/lack of respect/sell out/undermining of the legacy/flippant disregard for accomplishment/attempts to rearrange history incorrectly/LACK OF   A N Y  TALENT is totally evident.  You'd flush your ancestors down the toilet for a minuscule chance at even a far-fetched/next to impossible shot at a tiny stipend of  potential money.  You have no soul.

So that's a 'no' to MC'ing M&B next time? :lol

I always enjoyed it, though I wish they'd put the single version out, it's an easier listen.
As far as an album track, I never thought it meshed we. Everything's so chill and down, and kinda dark, even Shortenin Bread is a little out of place, but I works for a good album ending jam. Here comes the night is kinda abrupt and jarring when I hear it in the sequence of the Light Album.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Been there.  Did that...with the Mike and Bruce 'excanuvious' extravaganza ... once.  And truly...they did a BANG UP show.  Really well done.  Enjoyable for all in attendance...including me.  Scott Totten deserves a ton of credit as do the other guys who really do MOST of what makes it all work.  And you know...after Carl passed I swore I would never go to another Beach Boys concert.  I mean w/o Carl?  How could it even begin to be the Beach Boys?  IMPOSSIBLE.  Can't happen.  Yet...it did...after a fashion. [with a gaping hole in it.]

Of course back when the big Five Oh came along I couldn't get the time off to go travel the 6 1/2 hours to the show nearest me.  The date just didn't work so I missed that one LAST chance to see a WILSON in the Beach Boys.  As a result when the 'facsimile'  arrived, a most convenient and ever-so-easy to travel 25 minutes from my front door, last August I figured 'what the heck'?!?!?   I've seen Brian, et al, LOTS of times.  Figured I better go see Michael and Brice before they faded to black.

It's not Mike on STAGE that is the problem.  He masks his true heart during the shows and he and Bruce have found some people to help them pay RESPECT to the songs.  They do it successfully.  NO question.  BUT...off the stage...at a piano, in a studio, in an interview, or now, in a book...that twit never misses a chance to show his depleting 'talents', and even more unfortunately his actual loathing of the folks who helped him to realize dreams so wild that he truly is one of the LUCKIEST mo'fos on the planet.  He's a waste of my attention.  AND...he has reached the point with his incessant bludgeoning of the 'brand' where I find it difficult to even enjoy the music anymore.  He is SO off-putting that I've lost my yen for the taste.  It took him decades to finish me off.  But he did it.

I wish him triple the karma he's spewed.  May it be a long and expensive limp to his finish line.

I love the HCTN remake! They could have taken the easy wait out and released a disco version of one of their hits, but instead they rescued an old album track from obscurity and turned it ito this epic disco masterpiece! And they were right to pick HCTN, the chorus works perfectly as a dance track. The harmonies on the track are mind-blowing.

In the same way that some songs on 15BO are not given a chance because they're covers, HCTN is rejected because it happens to be of the disco genre. There's bad disco and good disco. This is good disco.

It was produced by the great Curt Boettcher, what more could we want? I think you can even hear him in the high-pitched harmonies at the very end.

Agreed!

I'd say HCTN actually is one of the few songs that attempts to be lively on the entire album.  The other songs, with the exception of Shortenin' Bread, tend to be real snoozers....ok, some of those snoozers I like (the Denny songs, Angel Come Home and Good Timin'), but the Carl songs are mediocre and to me the most wretched moment on the album is the Jesu Joy of Mans Desiring intro to Lady Lynda.  This musical mashup of Lynda and Jesus just never seemed quite, well, appropriate to me.

I do remember the long version of HCTN did in fact chart on Billboard's disco singles club chart or some such denomination, and rather highly at that.  The 45 steamed up the charts rather quickly also, before stalling out in the low forties....I heard the song often on top 40 WHB when it was released.  Also heard "What You Do to Me" (C. Wilson single!) on that station when it was released as well as Mommy and Daddy by the Monkees.

I do wonder sometimes if the HCTN 45 did not stall out mainly because of the musical conservatism of many of the BB's fans of that time period.  (Reportedly there was lots of negative reaction regarding the single from BB's fans and doubtless several of those folks who may have purchased the single but did not hurt the single's progress on the charts).   Kind of hard for a song to be a hit when the group's own fan base is bashing it mercilessly!  Also it seems to me that perhaps its failure tangentially is related to the thread on here about Pet Sounds and racism.  Well, you know I hate to be a downer, but disco music was highly associated with urban gay and black subcultures and it is not something that may have been the cuppa tea of many BB's fans, just as the utter hatred of disco and rap by some whites has been sometimes, rightly or wrongly, attributed to prejudice.

Indeed, I think the inherent musical conservatisim of the BB's core audience may in fact be what sunk the group when they attempted to progress after (and during Pet Sounds).  I think I feel this way since I, as a then hard core BBs fan, loved Smiley Smile, loved Friends, Wild Honey, 20/20, etc.  I could only attribute their relative failures to the inability of the group's fan base in general to accept the new sounds and the change in the group's appearance.  At least where I lived, in conservative outstate Missouri, the big top forty stations in the state, WHB in KC and KXOK in St. Louis always played their singles up through Breakaway, at least upon release.  One can only surmise that while the records were played at least some, and in the stores, BB fans were not flocking to buy them.  Maybe the fault was not in the stars, but in the fan base itself, in large part.

I also remember running into a guy in college who had seen the "integrated" Blondie/Rickey BBs and commenting that while it was a very good show, he did not know why they had to add those black guys to the group!  In not perhaps such genteel lingo, if you get my drift.

Bruce himself thought the song should win "some sort of Grammy for vocal arrangements" in an interview in the Time Barrier Express at the time.  I think the background vocals are pretty amazing, though as others have mentioned, the Carl vocal not one of his best and the disco arrangement rather leaden.

But maybe the fan base had simply drifted away to other sounds....I remembered arguing with a kid in high school who was cooler, Grand Funk or the Boys?  Sadly the prevailing opinion at my h.s. was that the Funk were way cooler than the fading rock group revival.  Though now I appreciate Grand Funk also!

Sad, but I think this is probably largely true. I am not a huge fan of this song (despite being a HUGE fan of other disco songs by bands like The Bee Gees, ABBA, etc), but it's not the worst disco song in the world or anything.

I wonder if it had been a really, really good disco song, if it could have been a hit, or if it might have suffered the same fate - possibly in part due to the probable reasons you described above.

Sometimes a group or artist goes in a musical direction that is ...unexpected. While quite well done, it is so far from what people want to hear from them that many fans may "reject" the music.

I love Linda Ronstadt and think she has the best voice ever - but have no interest in her singing Mexican folk songs. I do not want to listen to Pat Benatar sing the blues. I do not want to hear Steven Tyler sing country songs. Once the curiosity factor wears off, the songs hold little interest to me, regardless of how good they may (or may not) be and they will never be played again, so the CD sits on the shelf.

What the Beach Boys did with disco was actually quite smart. One long song on one album as opposed to changing their musical direction for an entire album. Maybe if they just hinted at disco a bit and tested the waters it would have worked better. But you never go "full disco".

I'm sorry what are you saying Smiley Smile is bad?
HERESY

I didn't say it was "bad".  You must have misunderstood.  What I will say is that it is one of the 3 worst l.p.s they ever released and that it put nails in the coffin of their recording career.  What a gigantic disappointment it was [and is] in the fall of 1967.  Pet Sounds...Good Vibrations...Heroes and Villains and then THAT?!?!?!?!?

Guess you had to be there.  Sorry I was.  After that?  Most people weren't.

Sorry to derail the topic.  I was responding, previously, to a direct comment.  Back to it...HCTN was better originally.  The 'newer' version SINGLE release was a little easier to take than the elongated L.P. travesty.  The ONLY thing which would have made that Johnston imagined mega crap worse would have been Mike Love proclaiming throughout the disdainful disco diatribe that he wanted "to be your knight in shining armor."   No one could be THAT stupid.

I am quite fond of the dj reservice 3'18" version. Had Caribou released it, it might have done better chartwise.

Never had a problem with it. Both versions are good. I'll listen to the LA version a dozen times before I'd ever listen to something like Funky Pretty or any of the non-GV/H&V SS tracks.

<<I am quite fond of the dj reservice 3'18" version. Had Caribou released it, it might have done better chartwise.>>

Has this surfaced anywhere?  I really love the 4:30 version and I've been told this edit is even better.

From a technical or performance perspective, this recording is an extremely impressive accomplishment. You must remember this was recorded back in the analog days, before all the digital manipulation that is so prevalent today could be done to make the vocals perfect. They had to actually sing each part perfectly! And this isn't exactly a simple vocal arrangement.

I don't get hung up on styles. If it's done well, I can appreciate the skill and talent that went into it. And these guys sang their asses off on this! Not only are the vocals amazing, check out some of those bass lines - especially during the sax solo. That guy was a bad ass.

Don't get me wrong. I don't just appreciate the technical aspect of the recording, I loved it when it came out in 1979 and I still love it.