The Smiley Smile Message Board

Just curious-does anyone else find "Cocktails" to be a devastatingly powerful song...It is actually kind of hard to listen to for me.  That song really seems to reveal all the pain and heartache within Dennis.    As people often said about Brian-it shows that Dennis could write music that really gets to you on an emotional level.  By the way-in the middle of the song is he speaking spanish-the singing is incredible-but it is one of those songs where the lyrics are hard to make out at times.

Yes Spanish...Por que no dice?...(why don't you tell me?). The song is also great as an instrumental...a separate mix was prepared but didn't make the Legacy set, you can hear a snippet of it in the Real Beach Boy documentary. I think its one of Dennis' best songs, Sinatra could have covered it. The lyrics are killer...If love had its way, I'd build you a smile...If I was a waterfall, I'd fall... and flow into you. The vocals are hard for some people to handle because he was so rough at that point, but to me its about as classic Dennis as you can get.

yep, amazing song, real standout find for me along with "love remember me" and "holy man" from the legacy release. plus finally hearing a clean version of "he's a bum"

Cocktails is an amazing song in every way. Dennis sounds a bit like Elvis Costello on that track, if you ask me. (or should it be the other way around?)

In fact, is it just me, or does Dennis just sound awesome on Bambu? I mean his voice itself. I love how he sounds on POB, but for my money his vocals are much stronger on the Bambu stuff. I mean, timbre-wise/technically. Does anyone know if he cleaned up/stopped smoking/was coached by Carl or anything specific? His voice is just a lot more richer/full of detail on the Bambu tracks...... At least to me.

It's probably just the way it's mixed...he was in MUCH worse shape by then, and his voice is nearly shot on many of those songs ("Cocktails" included).  Jon?

Yes cocktails is one of my favourite Dennis songs. I had totally ignored the Bambu disc until the recent BBC4 documentary, and Cocktails just grabbed me whilst watching that. I thought, 'what is that amazing song?', and subsequently delved in to Bambu and found there's some great stuff on there. I agree it seems to convey a huge sorrow in a very beautiful way.

I'm not quite sure when All Alone was recorded but I think his vocals are very strong there too.

June 1978, possibly the 2nd.

There's a whole bunch of session info (and more gig info than any sane person whose surname isn't either Rusten or Doe could possibly want) here:

Vhttp://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs.html (http://Vhttp://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs.html)

Andrew's session link had a "v" in front of it, so it didn't work.  Try it now. 

http://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs.html

Dennis is an amazing artist! That's why I worked as hard as I did to get "Mexico" on the new ESQ CD.

And if you want enough info on the Bambu project to make your head spin, try http://www.beachboysarchives.com/page12.

But sit down first, with a good drink and a plate of cookies - that's serious hard-core stuff... and absolutely great.  ;D