The Smiley Smile Message Board

Apologises if this topic has been discussed previously.

The GV Boxset is of course great, but i felt there were a number of songs that didn't really deserve to be on there, and a healthy portion of ones that certainly did - but weren't.

So 10 (and please stick to 10) tracks that you would've like to have seen included on the boxset, and why they deserved to be there. Here's mine:

1. Lonely Sea (A fantastic, gorgeous early Brian ballad, very under-rated)
2. Don't Talk (One the best Pet Sounds tracks, beautiful song)
3. Mrs O'Leary's Cow (The most legendary of all the SMiLE tracks - perhaps considered a bit too much for the casual listener??)
4. She's Goin' Bald (One of my very favourite Smiley Smile tracks, as usual this album was completely undervalued)
5. Country Air (Why does Wild Honey only get three tracks? It's a superb album, and this is one of it's best tracks)
6. Be Here In The Mornin' (Fantastic cut from Friends. Meant For You is so short, surely there was room for one more from this much-loved album?)
7. Mona Kanua (Great Dennis instrumental from the 20/20 period. More deserving of an official release than the likes of I Just Got My Pay)
8. Slip On Through (It's widely acknoledged Dennis ruled on Sunflower - so why does he only get the single track (Forever)? This amazing opener is probably the best cut on the album, and it's exclusion is a sign of the blatant Brian favourtism that persists even when Brian isn't at the top of his game.
9. Feel Flows (Spectacular track. Absolutely amazing, very ahead of it's time!)
10. My Diane (By some distance the best MIU track - so why Al's lame Come Go With Me?)

I think it's been mentioned recently on the board that it's believed that Gary Usher wrote most of this one.


They included a lot of songs from Pet Sounds to be fair and couldn't really please everyone there.


I may well be wrong but I can't think that Capitol wouldn't have wanted this included. Brian's decision maybe?


They included 3 from that album I think and also the superior versions of several Smile songs. I think that was certainly enough.


Is it? Obviously Forever is considered to be a classic but I don't think Dennis' other contributions are considered to be better than the likes of This Whole World, All I Wanna Do, Cool Cool Water etc. Personally I wouldn't rank Sllip on Through as one of my favourites from that LP.


It was a top-20 hit. Simply as that.

I agree about I Just Got My Pay though.

I feel that The BBs' career has had 4 distinct eras so I would have structured the box set accordingly.

CD 1 - Fun in the sun.
CD 2 - Brian's mature work (Today through to Smile).
CD 3 - The group years.
CD 4 - The wilderness era.

Some of the later stuff that I would have liked to have been there includes It's a Beautiful Day, Where I Belong, Rock and Roll to the Rescue, Morning Christmas, Winter Symphony, Somewhere Near Japan etc. I guess that some of this stuff was unavailable to the label though and some was being saved for Ultimate Christmas and a rarities album (which has never been released to my knowledge).

I refuse to buy it because of the lack of "Wrinkles".

Edit: Okay, come on, if you were gonna edit my post, you could have at least edited out the "lossless" comment, which makes no sense without the following comment and just makes me sound like a bad person.

SMILE-HOLLAND, I'M GOING TO CRACK YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH MY KARATE STICK >: (

1. Back Home (from Surfer Girl era)
2. Kiss Me Baby
3. Aren't You Glad
4. Celebrate the News
5. Keepin' the Summer Alive (live at Knebworth)
6. Child Of Winter
7. Just Once in My Life
8. River Song (with Beach Boys)
9. It's a Beautiful Day
10. Chasin' the Sky

The GV boxset book says Brian specifically vetoed "Let Him Run Wild", and I believe Mark Linett told us Brian also vetoed the Fire music's inclusion.  Had they insisted otherwise over his veto,  all of the Smile session stuff would have gone too.  I think Andrew tells us each surviving BB had the option to veto any track's inclusion.

Agreed!

Correct... which is why "Soulful Old Man Sunshine" wasn't on there: Carl said "no". Same for Alan and "Loop De Loop".

Brian didn't veto the Fire Music, for the excellent reason that it was never on any track listing: David Leaf told me they were pushing for so much Smile stuff anyway, they figured it'd be counter-productive. I was also told (not by DL) that it took a week of gentle persuasion to get Brian to OK any Smile at all.

The criteria for inclusion on the box were as follows:

1 - Top 40 single hits
2 - acknowledged "classic" tracks
3 - available rarities/unreleased tracks
4 - tracks chosen by fans worldwide (either as a tie-breaker or to plug gaps)

The SIP material wasn't ever considered because (aside from the obvious*), it was less than a year old when the box was released. As it happened, if you bought the box via QVC, you got SIP as a freebie.

Two personal insights here - "All This Is That" wouldn't have been included if Mike Grant (longtime UK hardcore collector) hadn't given DL a hard time about it... and I got a call from David, from the Capitol mastering suite, asking me which was the correct version of "Come Go..." to use. Turns out everyone thought the others knew.   ;D

(* - it sucks)

Like which Come Go with Me: on MIU or the intended 15 Big Ones version  (which is far superior in my opinion)

They wanted to know which was the hit single version. They had both tapes.  ;D

You were meant to pick your own ten, not complain about other people's choices. And yeh, Slip on Through's one of the best Sunflower tracks by some distance. It's About Time is also great, though i agree with you re All I Wanna Do, damn good tune! But u aren't really counting Good Vibrations as a 'Smiley Smile track' there are u? I mean, yeh it was on the album, but it wasn't from the SS sessions and Brian, allegedly, didn't even want it on Smiley. The single Heroes & Villians, plus With Me Tonight, do not a fair representation of an album make. And er yeh, there was a lot of Pet Sounds material on there, and I think, in my personal opinion which is what this is, that Don't Talk shoulda been amongst said material.

You know, 'Slip On Through' and 'This Whole World' is a pretty damn good 1-2 punch to start off an album!

Apologies if you were affronted but it is a message board.

I think you would agree that She's Going Bald doesn't fit into any of the criteria that AGD mentioned. Don't Talk would have been a fair enough inclusion but any song from Pet Sounds that was omitted would have been hard done by.

 

Didn't DL state in the liner notes though that he recognized All This is That as being the best song that the band did without Brian? So I guess the only reason he wasn't planning to include it was because Brian didn't write it. The man is a turd on legs.

There wasn't enough Dennis stuff, I think Here Today, Celebrate The News, Slip On Through they all should have been there. I also didn't like when they took stuff out of order like the Holland and So Tough songs.

yeah, what was the deal with that?

Not affronted, just baffled as to how my asking for people to choose their own personal top ten tracks that were excluded from GV instead resulting in a load of nit-picking re my own choices. I was just like Err how does that answer my question?? I'm not neccasarily gonna agree with everyone elses choices either but i wanna hear 'em.
 Yeh i know there was a criteria re what went on and what didn't but my question, entirely hypethetical, was If you could include any ten BB tracks that weren't included which would u pick and why.
(And re the Criteria - well, there's lots of album tracks featured on the boxset that don't fit said criteria. My point, which i think still stands, is that Smiley Smile was, and remains, entirely unrepresented when it comes to compilations, best ofs, boxsets, etc. whioch is ridiculous considering how much it is loved by fans.)

The only criticism of the box I saw in the UK music papers at the time (certainly in "Record Collector" and "Melody Maker" who both carried extensive reviews) was that this set would largely be bought by the kind of hardcore fans who already owned "Pet Sounds" at least once, and were therefore expected to buy a large percentage of it again.

I always wondered what went wrong with "Long Promised Road." The beginning is missing, if memory serves correctly.

I asked back when I was a newbie fan in the far off year of 1995 (!), and was told that it was become it sounded better with SOS as the opener rather than Mess of help.

thats what i thought was the reason

I agree. I think This Whole World, Forever and Add Some Music were musts from Sunflower, but Slip on Through should definitely be ahead of Our Sweet Love. Our Sweet Love is a great Brian tune with a fabulous vocal from Carl, but there are plenty of both on the box sedt. Slip on Through is an uptempo Dennis song with one of his all-time best vocals (second only to Sound of Free in my book), so it would have made a much better choice.

Others that should have made it (besides Let Him Run Wild) are Girls on the Beach, Kiss Me Baby and Where I Belong.

From Sunflower "All I Wanna Do" definitely should have been on there, or on some comp by now.

And "Kiss Me, Baby" definitely, a highlight of that album.

Among others.

All I Wanna Do should have been manditory.

1) Did Carl say "no" because of that one small gaffe, where he sings "Soulful old man SHUNSHINE?"

2) If so, couldn't he have gone back into the studio and fixed it for the box set?  The way the Who finally fixed that infamous bad edit in "Eminence Front" when they rereleased IT'S HARD on CD in the mid-1990s?

Was "Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again" considered for inclusion in the box set?

Yes. Very, very, very easily. It's why I've never bought the excuse that that flub was the reason the track was never released. I totally understand that such a flub could be a reason for not including it as-is: that makes sense. I can see that if the choices were as-is or not at all, he could have (and apparently did) prefer not to release it. But seriously ... not exactly a tricky thing to fix, especially back at the time, had they wanted to use it.

I totally agree.  I believe the non-inclusion of "Soulful Old Man Sunshine" on the GV box (and honestly, the reason it wasn't ever finished and released in the first place) was really about the group's feeling that it was more a Rick-Henn-production-with-Beach-Boys-vocals than a Beach Boys record.  The "shunshine" just served as an excuse.

Lee

Possibly... but bear in mind that it was Carl personally - and not the band - who vetoed the inclusion. My thinking is that he wasn't too happy with the whole lead (remember, it's not a finished vocal but rather a compilation of work vocals, and there was already one such track on the box) and used "shunsine" as a trojan horse.

Soulful Old Man Sunshine was one of those unreleased songs that those who heard it praised as a hidden masterpiece. Then it comes out and... meh.

But who knows where would it have gone if finished.

And if the no-release reason is that it's a Henn number with BB vocals, I agree because it is. And if the no-release reason is that Carl thought it lacked a proper lead, I agree because it did.

We know that Carl had to fight to get the Dennis tracks on, so the fact that we got any more than "Forever" is really a sign of his input.

Speak for yourself, fiend. >: (

I read somewhere that Carl never liked Soulful Old Man Sunshine, even when he was singing it he thought it was a vegas lounge-style number that didn't suit the Beach Boys.  So I'm not surpised he vetoed it.

As far as then-unreleased songs considered for inclusion on the GV box, we already know that Loop De Loop and Soulful Old Man Sunshine were vetoed by Al and Carl respectively. Of course if any other Smile bits could have been added, they would have, presumably.

What other then-unissued songs were put up for inclusion on the box?

Was Al not ready with Loop De Loop yet? I know he finally "finished it" for the EH soundtrack...but really, the "landlocked" cut is pretty good....Also, couldn't they have put the Sail Plane Song on the GV set? would have been great shoved in between I went To Sleep - Time To get Alone - Breakaway

That may have been from the interview I did with Rick Henn in the June '97 issue of ESQ, or maybe a similar interview with Stephen McParland from the same period.  Rick said that while Carl was attempting the lead vocal, Mike would be dancing a silly "Vegas shuffle" across the floor in front of him, to the point where Carl would crack up and blow the take.  Rick finally got so pissed off at all the hijinx and lack of urgency that he blew up and yelled at the group...and that's the last he ever saw of them in the studio.

Rick also felt that the song never got finished because the Beach Boys didn't like the fact that Murry and Nick Grillo were pushing to have an outsider work with them.  He said he was told that the song was vetoed off of the GV boxed set because the set's content had been reduced by one CD, and there was no room for it -- but that may have just been a political answer to avoid hurt feelings.

Lee

They found "Wouldn't It Be Nice To Live Again" at the time, but I don't think it was seriously considered. 

Sorry if I'm a bit late in the discussion, but I've got a few thoughts on the boxset.

When it first came out, did anyone else find it odd that there were lyrics quoted from the Sunflower version of "Cool Cool Water" in the booklet, yet it was not included among the tracks?  I understand why it wasn't included, when we already had the earlier unreleased version and "I Love to Say Dada" (if you want to count that).  It just makes me wonder if the Sunflower version had ever been considered. 

Actually, if it were down to adding (or substituting) a Sunflower track, my vote would have been for "All I Wanna Do".  The boxset was my introduction to Sunflower (among other things), and although the included songs piqued my interest somewhat, they took a while to grow on me.  I think AIWD would've sealed the deal for me, and I would have seeked out Sunflower much sooner than just a few years ago.

Another thought....is there absolutely no love for the song "Still Cruisin'" (hey I just made an unintentional pun, but I'll go with it!)?  I gotta admit, I'm starting to get a little burned out on "Kokomo".  I know SC wasn't the runaway hit that "Kokomo" was, but it was a single and it did appear briefly in the background in one of the "Lethal Weapon" movies (I think it was 2.

Well, as far as Cool Cool Water, they already had the Wild Honey "master" on the box. But at the same time, they also had Brian's piano/vocal Surf's Up as well as the first movement backing track, along with the version on the Surf's Up LP. Consistency issues for sure, but who knows?

Still Cruisin' is a cool song. Of course, it's totally derivative of better things and at times it feels like a car song version of Getcha Back, but it's a fun tune.

It would have been nice if the Wild Honey outtakes on the Rarities album would have been reissued on the box, but I suppose they were either never considered due to the album's questionable legal status at the time or just left off in place of better rare material.

Btw, how did Leaf get involved? Was it through Brian? I know most of the band hates him anyway. I always found it funny that Brian went out of his way to thank Paley in the liners. Like he had all that much to do with the boxset  ;D

1. Lonely Sea (instead of Punchline, which could have been saved for a later comp)
2. Your Summer Dream (instead of The Surfer Moon...a baffling inclusion)
3. Car Crazy Cutie (instead of Spirit Of America)
4. Kiss Me Baby (Instead of Things We Did Last Summer...a nice track, but totally sounded out of place on Disc 1)
5. Here Today (instead of Ruby Baby and all the "oink oinks")
6. Little Pad (Instead of With Me Tonight)
7. Wake The World (Instead of Busy Doin' Nothin)
8. Soulful Old Man Sunshine (instead of HELP Is on the way)
9. Feel Flows (instead of I Went To Sleep)
10. Roller Skating Child (instead of That Same Song)

I also think that the later years could have been represented better...here are some songs I would have included, if space had allowed:
Keepin The Summer Alive, Full Sail, Still Cruisin, California Dreamin, Lady Lynda (an international hit).

I also would have included the single versions of California Saga, Rock And Roll Music, and It's OK, instead of the inferior album versions.

'Roller skating child'? Seriously? Nice tune but those lyrics!! Creepy in the extreme. I'd say Johnny Carson shoulda been on. It represents Love You better than any other track - very weird; crazy lyrics; catchy tune.

Re earlier posts: Agreed, All I Wanna Do is an amazing track. I'd like to have seen Sunflower represented thus: Slip on through, This whole world, All I wanna do, Forever, Cool cool water. Although i realise Add some music... couldn't really be missed off (although personally i agree with the author of 'Dumb Angel' that it sounds 'like a Coke commercial').

Wouldn't it be nice to live again should've been on for sure (surely its more worthy of an audience and more appealing to fans than I just got my pay (aka a rehashed Dressed up for school) or HELP is on its way. Also, Carry Me Home would've been very welcome indeed, though i'm sure Mike would've vetoed its inclusion immediately (left-wing AND by Dennis!).

I think that the importance of Add Some Music To Your Day has been highly inflated over the years...beautiful harmonies, but the lyrics sound forced to my ears.

Excellent thoughts and choices. I agree with all - except one. I'd keep "With Me Tonight" instead of "Little Pad". But, actually, I wouldn't of picked "With Me Tonight" in the first place. :police:

I'm sorry, I really don't want to appear anal, but it is wouldn't HAVE. Not OF.

And I can't support the exclusion of "Busy Doin' Nothin"

Ironically, Cool, Cool Water (one of my favorites btw) was actually supposed to be used for a Coke commercial. "It's the real thing, Coca-Cola," apparently is how it went. Both Bruce and Al sing snippets of it on the Warmth of the Sun podcasts.