The Smiley Smile Message Board

My favorite SMiLE section would be 'The Grand Coulee Dam' section at the end of Cabinessence. Something about it is just incredible to me.  And in fact there are some sessions up on Youtube that are even better than what the final product was-they sound even more 'oriental'.

The "bridge" to Child Is Father Of The Man. All the reverb on the bass combined with the piano and trumpet still gives me goosebumps.

Since 'Surf's Up', yes, the 1971 version, is my favourite pop song of all times, the answer is rather simple.

Also high on the list: Cabinessence (yes, Coulee Dam), and In Blue Hawaii and Easy My Child (if these ever were meant for Smile, that is).

...and Wonderful.

I'll go with "Cabinessence", too; the entire song. It is soooooooooo underrated. So many of Brian's songs are well known, written about, and HEARD on a continuous basis. But, "Cabinessence" still remains an underground classic, a hidden gem if you will. It shows as much if not more of Brian's genius than any other song, for me anyway. It's absolutely one of those "how did he write something like that" songs...

My favorite is probably the bridge on Look with the French horn that starts at about 0:50 into the song. One of the most majestic things I've ever heard.

Agreed about Cabinessence, and it is a close second on my list. Very cinematic.

BTW there was a time when I played Cabinessence to friends and acquaintances and I stared intensely at their reaction, hoping that they would have a WOW moment.

Nope. They began to sing the praises of Toto, Kansas, and the Little River Band.

I had to consult a psychologist eventually.

Possibly getting slightly adrift from the intention of the thread, but I'm a fan of the various H&V vocal sections that came out on the GVs box (and which were in a similar but rougher mono mix on the SoT box). Couple them with the various versions of With Me Tonight, and the rest of the H&V, and the Bicyle Rider sections, and you'd have an epic. If only I had the time and patience...

That said, Cabinessence is right up there, along with SU (prefer the '71 version though, on balance, to Brian's solo version).

On a Holiday and Blue Hawaii from BWPS are great.

Yep, gets to me every time.

Can we name more than one? OK...in the "Water Chant", Brian's vocal. What is he doing? Crying, howling, making baby noises, having an orgasm? :o

The infamous 'Fade To Vegetables' is right up there, too.
Isn't it incredible how amazing these little pieces of music are? You could make a cd with a number of little sections just randomly put together, and it would still be good!

Yeah! See the "Your personal SMiLE CD" thread.... :-[

My favorite section  is the entire second suite.  Like the Heartical don, "Surfs Up" is my favorite pop song , but the entire thing is great.  What I find really compelling is the theme of redemption that runs through the entire suite.

"Wonderful" has always cracked me up.  It was written at a time when the slogan was "don't trust anyone over 30" and yet in this song she is always loved by her mother and father.

My favorite moment of the album is the end "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" segueing into "Blue Hawaii.  One is taken from Hell to Heaven in an instant.

It's funny how after Smile collapsed, all Brian could bring himself to record were basically a few complete songs and a whole lot of fragments. Sometimes you have to wonder that even if Brian were able to finish Smile in 1967, would he have gone even further with the "feels" thing and literally recorded a ton of thirty second songs and called it an album? Granted, the albums from Smiley Smile to Friends seem to give the impression that Brian was headed in an extremely fragmented direction, and perhaps that was where he was going once he had reached his zenith with Smile. Going right back to the basics and getting everything he needed to say said in a brief fragment.

Not that I'm saying Brian beat Napalm Death to the whole thirty second song thing.  :lol

I really like the (double?) rest after the first section of "I Love to Say Da-Da."

Song for Children with the child child part . I always thought that was a gorgeous section. It's even cooler on the boots with Hal playing the drum part, the beat is just amazing for me.

The line "columnated ruins domino" in Brian's solo version. Already the A on the first 'do-' syllable is high. Then he hits an F, and chills run down my spine.

All of them.

Speaking of Da Da, there's a fragment that only appears on one of the session takes after the section with the baritone vocals, where basically there's a lot of pounding on the piano and a weird effect on another keyboard as well as some drum fills. Most likely just the take breaking down, but fun to hear anyway.

Geroge Fell Into His French Horn, "Got any hash joints, Denny?",  Mike's sex toy comment.

Tough to answer, as there are so many of them that I love.  But I would have to pick "Grand Coulee Dam" as well.  The chord changes, the group vocals, the arrangement, the lyrics, Mike's vocal, it's all just perfect.  I just don't understand how anybody comes up with something like that.  It totally blows my mind.  

You hit the nail on the head Sheriff, Cabinessence really is one of the most underrated songs in the Beach Boys catalog.  For me, it's every bit as amazing as Good Vibrations.

It's funny, but only after I heard that track did I appreciate the horns in "Surf's Up". Up until that time, all I ever focused on were the piano, vocal, and "keys". Now, when I hear the horns, I think to myself, "There's George Fell Into His French Horn...."

"I had to consult a psychologist eventually."

Change your friends.

Likewise -  for me, the second discordant horn burst in SU suddenly became hilarious, like I was in on an in-joke. Makes you wonder if George... was maybe more than just a goof around at one point...

"George Fell Into His French Horn" was indeed a logged Surf's Up horn overdub session. I highly doubt anything was meant to come of it as far as it being a "track", just an experiment. Perhaps Brian wanted to integrate a sort of "talking horn" in Surf's Up.

One of my favorite parts that hasn't been mentioned is the slower "Do A Lot" chant that was eventually used in the BWPS version of "Vegetables". Was the instrumental for that slowed down after it was recorded, or did they just play it that slow when they recorded it? Interesting that part of the bass line in this section sounds just like part of the Western instrumental used in the BWPS version of "H & V". "Vegetables" borrows a lot from "H & V". A lot of SMiLE seems to revolve around Brian's amazement with his ability to find new ways to present the same melodies in different tempos or with small changes when he was stoned. That's as big of a part of the thematic unity we see musically as any of the intellectual reasons, I think.

Our Prayer - simply the best a capella vocals ever recorded anywhere by anyone ever. EVER.

Absolutely. And Brian WROTE something like that. I never get tired of it. I'm starting to agree with Cam's post; they're ALL my favorites!

Yeah I've heard that. Interesting but it's probably just the track breaking down.

Personally, I've always loved the xylophone(?), drums, and piano "up tempo" version of the "Eat a lot, sleep a lot...." Vega-Tables section.

"Who Ran The Iron Horse?" pops up for me first. I don't think I have yet heard a SMiLE section that didn't make my jaw drop upon first listening.

I don't know about jaws dropping, but the first time I heard that high violin note in Child Is Father Of The Man, it nearly caused an...um...."emission".  ;D

That happened to me the first time I really listened to "God Only Knows"!

The "I wanna cry" part in You Still Believe In Me does it to me every time.  :)

Okay. The whole of "Don't Talk" does it for me. Just don't tell anybody.

It's always funny to me to hear people single out these "moments", and they're never the same as mine or the next guy's.  That's a funny thing about real wired-into-the-DNA Beach Boys fanatics that I think is close to being unique.

I remember having a conversation like this with a guy years ago, way before the 'net, and he singled out- I think it was- an a cappella  bit in "The Man With All The Toys".  Just flat did it for him, every time. Totally floored me, because it was something I never would have thought of, but I instantly knew from that that he was a real-deal fan like us. No one else would have come up with that.  A casual fan names "Good Vibrations" or "God Only Knows", but that one...and I had something just as off-road as that in the same conversation- can't remember what. 

My theory is that every real fanatic has something like that somewhere deep in the catalogue, that no one else would have picked out or even thought of, but if he mentions it, the other guy will say "oh, yeaaaaaahhhh...." Then you hear it differently, and get into it just a little more next time because someone sanctified it like that.  I don't know if Who fans or Rolling Stone fans do that.

How about when Wind Chimes bursts to life at 1:16 and slowly breaks back down?

Ha. That really sums it up. I don't know a single person who really knows anything about The Beach Boys. I've run into hipsters in college that would laud Pet Sounds, but then you launch into how Friends is the real masterpiece and they have no idea.

Edit: I'm now listening to Man With All the Toys and I'm really enjoying it, but I went so long without giving it a second thought.

I did, seriously. And musical taste had something to do with it, although not everything, of course.

It's a bit like this. These guys were 1st, 2nd year fellow students. It wasn't about longterm friendships yet. Tastes were hugely different. Later in those years, it turned out that we had less in common than we initially thought. Is natural. We liked different movies, different music, different books (some did not read anything much at all). I think liking the BBs is part of what I am. As is liking 'film noir', good comedy, Melville, Twain, Hawthorne.

Friendship can endure quite different predilections. But the sum total of all one's tastes has too little in common with that of another person, then a friendship will wither away. It can be quite a painful process, by the way. To make it known that you can't 'go along' too much anymore.

The end of cabin-essence for sure. I used to take the inst. version with me to stores when checking out new stereos, just to make sure they could reproduce it correctly!
Besides that I really enjoy all of the music in Wind Chimes, Surf's Up and oh sh*t, I guess just about all the rest too.

in BWPS, the last minute of Heroes and Villains.  that moment when it transitions to the strings. ugh. just one of my fav music moments ever

When it comes to Smile (or anything really) I like hearing the relatively complete fragments more then the session tapes. Heroes and Villians is really great, but the original 45 isn't my favorite version. For instance I like how Heroes was arranged in 2004 but enjoy the 1966-67 recordings of those various parts far more. Maybe it was best when performed in the early seventies live.

I'm in the same boat, to a degree.  The older recordings of Heroes sound infinitely better to my ears, but I've never been a fan of the mix that they released (the chorus is awful, in my opinion, and the "la la la" part seems like filler).  I think the Cantina version is just about perfect, although I like the ending sections of the single mix too..."my children were raised" right up until the chorus starts again. 

Interesting, I love the single mix. Whereas the cantina mix makes me think of a trippy Western movie, the single mix makes me think of an old black & white Disney cartoon. One day, I'll make those "Heroes and Villains" and "A Day in the Life of a Tree"theatrical plays I've always been dreaming of.

i love all versions of Heroes and Villains in some way. 

but i really really love the 04 one for that last minute.  and that bass harmonica.  and that cello in the chorus.  I still might take the PC one as my fav cause of the vocals.  relaly tough.

i have trouble picking my fav songs from smile cause i love parts from the originals, then parts from BWPS.  and i really need both.  Admittedly BWPS smile didn't do much for me till i heard the PC version. (i'm young, it went over my head in 04).  those voices back then brought out the melodies.  but then the instrumentation on BWPS is so good. and i prefer the wonderful from then. sigh. whatevs.

The magic bits for me are:

In the Cantina
The horn break in Look, and the recovered clarinet melody in BWPS Look too.
The slow bit in Child - mind blowing
Barnyard
The keen a wok a poo la bit from worms.
Fade to vegetables
And Grand coulee section of course is just phenomenal.

Also I love the Tag to Heroes part one, which sounds like Do A Lot. It just sounds so smile and I wish they'd incorporated it into BWPS. It really continues that bicycle rider thing (even if 'Bicycle Rider'  is just supposed to refer to a deck of cards or whatever - it definitely sounds like a bicycle to me)