The Smiley Smile Message Board

(http://intothemusic.ca/images/uploads/covers/Beach_Boys_-_Smiley_Smile.jpg)

Who did it?

Anyone got any high quality scans?

I don't use a record player but this is one of the albums I feel I MUST own on vinyl. I don't know sh*t about finding records - is there a particular print or whatever to look for with this album?

I've never seen the back of the LP - anyone got a picture?

Interestingly - I think the Frank Holmes artwork for the SMiLE front cover works well for the intended music - and the lush, green cover for Smiley Smile works perfectly for its music too. Brian's organ tones on Smiley sound green and pure to me. And the vocal harmonies are like warm sun on green leaves.

This is, perhaps, my favorite Beach Boys album, too.
So let's discuss the album as a whole (again) as well, please!

Has Brian ever spoken about it?

The stereo mix of "Heroes and Villains" on Hawthorne, CA is the Smiley version pure-and-pure, right? Why the hell aren't they working on doing the whole album in stereo? I like the mono mix quite a lot but... you know this line of thought.

 :)  ;D

Never seen the back of the LP ? How come ?  Which CD of it do you have ?  The back cover is included in all the CD reissues I know of.

Erm, long and strange story.

I have a strange memory - I have the double CD, Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, but none of my CDs are with me at the moment and I haven't seen that particular one in a few years. So it's like I haven't seen it, really, since I have no memory of it.

I have a good friend who is really into music, and I've been playing him a new Beach Boys album (two, actually) each week.  I played him a smile mix and he wasn't particularly impressed, sunflower didn't really do it for him either, but he really liked smiley smile.  I told him it was the record that more or less killed their career and he looked at me like I was crazy :-)  Really, I think it's aged better than most music from the sixties...it sounds very 90s indie, to me.  (Which makes sense, since a lot of 90s indie amounts to essentially a bunch of kids trying to recreate pet sounds lo-fi in their bedrooms) 

As for the cover, it's pretty clearly a riff on Henri Rousseau, who was a sort of primitivist french artist, but I always thought it was weird that the creator of such an involved album cover wouldn't get a credit.  I really wonder the story on that one...did Brian choose the cover?  It's a wonderful cover, though, one of my favorites. 

I don't have any of the info you really wanna know, though...

I have a 180-gram pressing of Smiley Smile ("Simply Vinyl", UK, SVLP219). It sounds good. I have no way of comparing it to other pressings, but I don't think there are better ones.


...And I really, really hate the "Hawthorne, CA" version of Heroes & Villains. To me, it's the worst stereo mix ever of a Beach Boys song, hands down.  :(



Edit: more info about the Smiley Smile cover (front & back): http://www.pipeline-operaglass.moonfruit.com/#/smileysmile/4517812507 (http://www.pipeline-operaglass.moonfruit.com/#/smileysmile/4517812507)

I have that too. Great sound indeed ! I was pleasantly surprised

There was a thread about this a while ago... Why do you think this is the worst strereo mix of the Boyz? IMO, the verse sounds weird but the chorus and My Children Were Raised sound great. In the verse it seems that the snare is way too low in the mix as well as everything else besides the vox.


As for the Smiley Smile album cover, it rules. Smiley Smile rules. Fall Breaks and Back to Winter rules. It is my favorite track from this album.

First of all, I should mention that the chorus (heroes and villains, just see what you've done, done) is one of my favorite "BB-moments", mainly because of the Baldwin organ....

...Which disappeared on the "Hawthorne, CA" version. The choruses lost some of their "darkness" in the process... I kind of like the bass line that replaced the organ, but not nearly as much as the organ part. Besides, both the bass line and the various "metallic percussive sounds" are way too loud.

I have to admit the "my children were raised..." part sounds gorgeous in stereo, but to me that doesn't make up for the slaughter of the chorus.  :-\

I know what yer saying...I feel the opposite though. I like the metallic percussive sounds and bassline up in the mix. However, because it does lose much of it's darkness, as you said, I keep the original mix on my mp3 as well. In fact I don't think I have ever come across the perfect (IMO) H&V mix yet. I have more versions of this song than of any other on my mp3 and am still not 100% satisfied one particular mix. I may like one part from one version and then another from that version, but it never works out to my satisfaction in any one version. On Hawthorne though, I wish the snare and trombone were higher in the verse mix.

The Theremin right before the "my children"-part (I believe) sounds also different in the stereomix iirc. Haven't listened to it for a while

That link - I can't seem to enlarge the page. When I try it just moves over to the left, the font remaining the same size. I can't read it without putting my eyes right up to the screen.

As for Hawthorne's stereo H&V: this is what I meant with my question about the mix. You mention the baldwin organ - is that in the Hawthorne mix? Listening right now, I can't tell. If it is it's very low. And I agree about the organ, I love how it feels on the Smiley version. I feel it in my chest area like a deep vibration.

My guess, and it's only a guess, is that Brian did have some input in the Smiley Smile cover.

For me, the strangest thing about the Smiley Smile cover is the little house.   Why tack elements of Frank Holmes' Smile shop on to a bungalow in a forest?  Specifically, what are the windows of a storefront doing on a home?   Is there any significance to the fact that Frank's golden, "open" door has been replaced by a door that's dark and obviously closed?   

It's simply bizarre to parody elements of an album cover that was never actually released.    I'm not sure exactly what point they were trying to make, but the whole thing is too odd to have been dreamed up by some anonymous bloke in Capitol's art department.

Of course, I've always figured that the title 'Smiley Smile' was a signal that the album was not a replacement for the 'Smile' album but rather a parody or send-up of it.   This was Brian making fun of himself and his failed project.

 

I always thought it an odd title, confusing and not in the least bit appealing from a commercial standpoint.

... which is exactly what Smiley Smile is, musically.

I feel like a total idiot, but I never noticed the SMiLiNG lips on the cottage. What sprung to mind when
I flashed on it was a metaphor of the SMiLE shop and ambitious, pressure-packed concept being laid to rest and buried, or at least altered to a more relaxing form behind the comforting forest foliage.

It was kind of eerie to notice those lips for the first time, after all these years. :o

Yes, knowingly grinning at you for all these years.  >:D

There's a lot of Henri Rousseau influence in that cover....

See for yourself:
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/%7Epex/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/rousseaudream.jpg

The best sounding pressing of this album is the green label Capitol reissue.  The most collectible is the original press.  Since you don't have a record player, maybe you'd prefer the latter.

I don't get the joke. ???

Actually I think the 1994 vinyl issue with the original Brother label is the rarest. It sounds as good as the green label to me.
I don't have the Simply Vinyl but they did great stuff. I miss that label.

Thanks - I never realised it was such a flagrant rip off of a specific Rousseau painting.

I love the Smiley cover. The LP sits behind my computer in my office so I frequently see those groovy little animals peeking through the foliage at me.

I scanned the front & back high res but can't work out to post images here, so if anyone can clue me up as to how to do that, I'll put them up. Otherwise if you PM me with your email address I can send the images to anyone who wants to peruse closer.

Of course, the best place for BB album art info is a certain website I know (www.pipeline-operaglass.moonfruit.com) ALL the relevant info you could need ... and very well compiled aswell  ;)

Neat, thanks!


I'm not really a collecting type but Smiley Smile just has a special place in my ole' heart so I'd try and find both. Would obviously need to get a good record player too...

Back in the mid-70s, when I was just starting to obsessively collect Beach Boys stuff, I remember there being some controversy regarding the Smiley Smile cover. The scuttlebutt was that there were two versions: one with the little red worm at the bottom and one without. Some wise collector settled the issue when he pointed out that the presence of the worm varied depending on whether the cover was centered and pasted to show the "Duophonic" label at the top or the "Mono" label at the bottom. (I may have those reversed, but I'm going on 35+ year-old memory, so cut me some slack). It was a happy day for me when I finally located a copy of the LP, in those days before everything got reissued. I had spent much time poring over the BB discography, trying to even IMAGINE what a song called "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter" might sound like. When I finally heard it and Wind Chimes and Little Pad and Wonderful...it was an epiphany, probably the first time I realized how far from surfing and cars the road had traveled.

Great story! Care to share more about that first experience of Smiley Smile?

I love me some Smiley Smile.  It is the strangest album you'll ever come across.  Such a crazy back story.  An odd, do-it-your-self recording quality mixed with some pretty radical new approaches to pop music song structure/recording.  The home-spun recording quality reminds me of Paul McCartney's first solo record (the cherries in the bowl cover).  Smiley Smile also has the same feeling of coming back down to earth from something really massive, for McCartney the Beatles, for the BB's the whole Smile era.  Paul Williams compared Smiley with Dylan's John Wesley Harding and I think that is apt.  Not because of the sound of the two records, but because they are both a kind of back to basics, stripped down kind of albums.  The BB's kind of went back to the garage (or in their case the rec room or what ever), but they took their 1967 selves with them, and the result was Smiley Smile.  The biggest let down ever, a great achievement, strange, beautiful, haunting.  What a record.

Great info on the Rousseau comparison. I remember a few years back, Cam Mott suggested that Capitol art director George Osaki might know more about the cover art, but I think he had passed away by that time. I wonder if anyone ever followed up with looking into Capitol paperwork?

Reading this I started wondering how SS was seen in the years after it's release. We know about the first reactions (though I haven't read that many reviews) but the few people who still listened to the BBs must have changed their opinion when the Beatles (including the solo stuff) and Dylan also recorded "simpler" records I guess. Nowadays I don't hear that many people saying that SS is a disappointment. When did that view change?

Oh, I disagree there.  Even on this board there are a number of folks (including myself) who really don't care for it.  They either love it or hate it.  Now, what I don't ever hear is anyone saying that it's okay, or something equivalent to average.

Instant remedy: sit the naysayers down in front of a giant stereo system - load up Smiley Smile - turn the volume UP - [optional although recommended: give the naysayers marijuana, psilocybin or LSD or all three at once] - set it going - sit back and groove.

That's how you initiate a person into the Smiley Smile album. By the time WIND CHIMES is in mid-stride they're believers.