The Smiley Smile Message Board

These samples are different to the ones at www.pacificoceanblue.net, as they all are just the first 30 seconds of each track, but here are 30 second samples of every track from the forthcoming POB Legacy Edition:

http://www.sundazed.com/product_info.php?products_id=960

Great (!!!!) stuff ! Thank you !
I wonder why there was no update on the official site....

I have to believe it's b/c of Friday being the start of a 3-day holiday weekend here in the States, and whoever is in charge of this being out-of-town or something.  Or maybe they've been in the theatre, watching "Indiana Jones" over and over and over again...

These are fantastic, but only making me yearn for more....................Love Remember Me........is Dennis singing harmony with someone else or is that his voice "doubled"??? HELP

Donna

NEW SAMPLES are up:  Common, Are You Real, He's A Bum.

Heartbreakingly beautiful, even in 30-second sample form.  I think that this will be the most emotionally impacting CD release for me since 2000's Like A Brother.

He's A Bum is such a cool song. great to hear it properly

That's definitely Dennis singing with Dennis. Those opening harmonies were "molted" on a single track making it impossible to separate or mix them...they certainly have a distinct quality.

Hi Jon,
How much do you know of the technical aspects of the mixing of Bambu and the bonus tracks?
I guess it was all probably done on Pro Tools which is fine, but do you know if any modern effects (reverb, echo etc...) were employed? Was there an attempt to replicate late 70s style effects or was a lot of it already "printed" onto the tracks so that all it took was adjusting levels?
Basically how much artistic license was taken when mixing the album?

I attended probably 90% of the mixing sessions for the new Bambu and bonus tracks, and everything was done with keeping it as Dennis as possible. A vintage Neve console was used by John Hanlon for the mixing. A lot of the effects were imprinted in the multi-tracks. John employed the usual outboard gear, compression, reverb, delays that type of thing...real tape delay or slap was used on some of the vocal tracks...no digital triggering and very minimal pro-tools was used. Some of the editing was made easier by pro-tools technology of course, and a few things were repaired that way, but for the most part it was assembling and mixing that brought Bambu into a releasable form. And the question at every turn along the way was...how would Dennis have wanted this to sound? Obviously not an easy one to answer with 100% accuracy, but when you hear it... it sounds like a Dennis Wilson record.

Fantastic. That's the perfect response.

Thanks!

Jon, Ed Roach mentioned he had some tapes of Dennis' own mixes of certain songs. Do Dennis' mixes still exist?

There are some alternate mixes of POB tracks, don't really know if these are Dennis' own mixes...maybe Alan Boyd could illuminate the specifics. I know Ed has some ancient reference cassettes which contain alternate mixes. There's a lot of alternate takes and other material in the can. Perhaps a sessions type of release will happen some day.

Jon, He's A Bum on the reissue....is this the same recording as the circulating version with a better mix, or is it a different session? I believe the version going around was Dennis' rough demo version, the one David Leaf talked about in one of his articles as having performed on at Dennis' invitation.

Its the same version as the orig. version that was booted, the same one Leaf talked about...however, its about a half-dozen generations cleaner than the boot, and yes it has a proper mix...the difference is huge. There is a second version of the song recorded later...we called it the Jimmy Buffet version because it has that kind of pseudo Caribbean vibe...Guercio and Hanlon much preferred the original and I have to agree its superior.

Yeah, I know the other version you're referring to. It's quite weird. Some boots have the two versions laid on top of each other.

... and 3 more samples on www.pacificoceanblue.net : Cocktails, I Love You, Constant Companion

3 more:
Time For Bed (thus far only heard as "New Orleans" without Dennis leadvocal...)
Album Tag Song
All Alone (the version known from the Endless Harmony soundtrack album)

All Alone is a re-mix from the multi-tracks...don't know why they haven't listed it that way.

Jon, is it much different? And in particular, did they fix up the intro where Denny's voice kicks in? It sounds kind of strange on the Endless Harmony version.

I don't recall the voice being "fixed" in any way...perhaps you'll be able to A - B very soon to see, sorry i'm too lazy to try that now. I can tell you that John Hanlon didn't use the EH version as a reference...he just mixed it to his liking. That said, the two versions have similarities, just a slightly altered balance and placement of instruments within in the mix.

You can hear the opening of the new "All Alone" mix on the Sundazed website...the over-sibilance on "If" is still there to at least some degree.  It may have been impossible to completely fix.

You know, I did have my doubts when I heard the sample, but I assumed that maybe the mix would sound differently when you hear it on the internet. Interesting to know it indeed is a re-mix.

Was the "second version" of All Alone found in the tape research? It's the one with an electric piano and a considerably rougher vocal. It's from '79 I believe.

A rough mix was found, I don't think a multi-track was.

If you're talking about the one with an incomplete vocal & no sax solo, that was on the bootlegs before "Endless Harmony" came out - I'm under the impression that was the earlier version (from '78) and the one on "Endless Harmony" and now "Bambu" is the later one, from Tom Murphy's studio, in '79.