The Smiley Smile Message Board

Very interested in hearing your opinions on the differences between these songs..the smile sessions versions and smiley smile versions...and which one you prefered over the other and why?

Heroes and Villains (Smile Sessions)  vs.  Heroes and Villains (Smiley Smile) ? ? ?

Vega-Tables (Smile Sessions)  vs. Vegetables(Smiley Smile) ? ? ?

Elements (Fire) vs. Fall Breaks and Back to Winter ? ? ?

He Gives Speeches (Smile Sessions) vs. She's Goin Bald (Smiley Smile) ? ? ?

Love To Say Da Da (Smile Sessions) vs. Little Pad (Smiley Smile) ? ? ? (I'm guessing they are both water songs.)

Good Vibrations (Smile Sessions)  vs. Good Vibrations (Smiley Smile) ? ? ?

Wonderful (Smile Sessions) vs. Wonderful (Smiley Smile) ? ? ?

Wind Chimes (Smile Sessions) vs. Wind Chimes (Smiley Smile) ? ? ?

Everyone's going to go for the Smile versions except for maybe "Wonderful".

no fair :/...the wonderful version on smiley smile is way more interesting and i find myself listening to it much more than the smile sessions version of it.

I love Wonderful and Wind Chimes from SS. And I always hated He Gives Speeches, but I kinda like She's Going Bald. I like the vocals from Fall Breaks, that's why I love TSS version.

u hate "he gives speeches" but kinda like "she's going bald"...the sped up part is just creepy and not listenable :p lol
but i'm glad i'm not the only one that loves wonderful and wind chimes from smiley smile.
critics refer to this album as a "cult classic" does that means only us die hard beach boys fans like it?  ???

Cool topic! The smiley smile sessions are available on the Unsurpassed Masters boots, very cool to hear how they built up Smiley Smile, I reckon that the tag to windchimes on SS is much better than the Smile version. But then again I do not treat SS as a downtuned diluted version of Smile but something completely independent of it, not worse just different. Smiley Smile is truly a great album and one of their top 5 albums. never before or since has band broken so completly from their original sound. I admire them for it. But one must  wonder why they didnt to like The Who did with the Lifehouse sessions and turned it into the 'Who's Next' album. This could also have been done in 1967 with smile, they coulda used the smile sessions as they wanted and filled the gaps without brian's input and still have had a great album with which to compete with The Beatles, it would prob gone top 5 US and nr 1 in UK and many other places. But it would never have been Brian and Van Dyke's Smile.                                                                                                                                       

The SS Wind Chimes is amazing. Wonderful, not so much.

I'm so pleased things worked out as they did... we would not have had SS had S come out originally. And now we have both and what an unsurpassed (no pun intended) incredibly creative body of work from the band!!!

Great way to look at it.  I find people who hate Smiley Smile do so because it's not Smile, as opposed to hating Smiley Smile for what it is.  It's easy for a lot of fans to talk about Brian Wilson's "genius" until that "genius" creates something they don't understand.  As a fan, I'm grateful I have two great albums of roughly the same material.  That's a very novel approach to music and says way more to me about Brian's skills and artistic attitude than lists of session musicians or waxing technical about the intro to "California Girls" or some bit on "Pet Sounds."

My picks:

Are they?

Smiley Smile Wind Chimes is the greatest thing ever recorded by anyone, ever, in the universe.

IMO

I like the Cantina version best. Unpredictable and zany. Finished single not zany enough.



Like 'em both. Smiley closer to initial attempt, but Smile version got the run alot do alot and a fine vocal from Al. I vote Smile.


I like the vide of Fall Breaks. Fire is cool, but Fall Breaks is food poisoning and seasonal affective disorder.


Speeches isn’t really a song. It’s just a fragment. Bald is the completion of said fragment. So I guess I’d rather have the finished product than a scrap of idea. So Bald wins.

Unrelated songs, but I’d still take Little Pad over Dada and day of the week.

I’ve never heard a version of Wonderful I didn’t like (although Rock With Me Hendry  comes close). That said, I like pretty harpsichord yodel version best. My second favorite Beach Boys song.

I like the Smiley version a lot better. Like the vibe. The vocals. And the tag is heaven, of course.

you're right they created lifehouse..shelved it and created who's next which is a masterpiece :)..

On Smiley the mix of H&V is better for the trombone and the snare.... wwaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy better.

Smiley's Wind Chimes is an incredible track. I'm reminded of a quote by Dennis from Byron Preiss's book:

"Smiley Smile...when we put that one out we almost double-dared anyone else to try and record anything like that. Take "Wind Chimes." People just don't sing like that."

Generally speaking, I love the f*** out of both versions/variations, but for very different reasons. Impossible for me to choose.

I have always enjoyed Smiley Smile.  It's as fun a 1967 stoner album as there is, and "Good Vibrations", "Wind Chimes", "Wonderful", and "Heroes And Villains" are pop masterpieces no matter how they're presented. 

That said, there's one thing that Smiley Smile can't give us--and that's a "Surf's Up".  And the world of music would be much poorer without it.

And I think of other SMiLE Sessions moments that have long been dear to my heart, such as the "Child Is Father Of The Man" sessions, "Holidays", "Look", "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow"--and I must admit that I always thought "Fall Breaks And Back To Winter" was too much of a good little riff, and got boring about mid-way through.  That never happened with the original piece from which it descended.

"She's Goin' Bald" is funny as hell, and I have always loved it.  "He Gives Speeches" is more intriguing, though, and I love it about equally nowadays.

The middle section of "Wonderful" on Smiley is disturbing because of the chatter.  It has a sick, high school locker-room tone to it that is not at all appropriate for the song into which it intrudes.  That's one of the hardest things for me to take about Smiley Smile.  And yet, even that did not keep me from recognizing the greatness of the song when I first heard it.

Depending on my mood, I can find the Smiley version of "Wind Chimes" just as moving or even moreso than the original SMiLE version (which I also greatly love).  My first exposure to all of the SMiLE songs on SS was through SS itself, and the SS version of "Wind Chimes" is perhaps the albums's finest moment, in my estimation.  A true work of art.

My favorite version of "Heroes And Villains" doesn't exist except on a fan mix I made!  Nothing compares to it. 

I really like the original "Good Vibrations".  I think Brian made good choices all the way around--including the short outro.  But I don't mind the SMiLE Sessions version at all.  And there are some fan mix versions that I think are really cooking.

"Little Pad"--not special to me at all.

I'm sentimental about the Smiley version of "Vegetables", but to me nothing compares to the just-released "SMiLE Album Assembly" version.  It is far and away the best blending of all of the best elements of the recordings that has ever been put together.  I consider it the new "definitive" version.  Totally blown away with it.

wow :) i'm speechless..u totally went track 2 track details..i like that
but u forgot to speak on "gettin hungry" :/

Oh no, I didn't forget... :p

Actually, with each one of  those comparisons, I prefer the Smiley Smile song, although I definitely enjoy both.  Lately, I've been listening to the Smiley Smile sessions (Unsurpassed Masters), and I have to say that I actually enjoy that more than the Smile Sessions...there's just a more relaxing fun vibe to the sessions and the album. 

Keep in mind that this is just a matter of taste...my favorite BB or BB-related albums are Friends and Orange Crate Art.

wow how did you get your hands on the smiley smile sessions? have you ever heard a song by them named "sandy"?

This is an easy one. 

SMiLE versions on every single one, and not just because it's SMiLE.  The versions are just better and more inspired across the board.  I've tried to like SS Wonderful and Wind Chimes, but they remind me too much of drunk karaoke. 

I really don't understand this (recent) dislike for SMiLE Wonderful around here.

It's weird. I think that the Smile Sessions versions of all those songs are way, way better than the Smiley Smile versions. But as a whole, both albums work very well for me but on a different level. I have mixed emotions when I listen to The Smile Sessions. It's all brilliant and beautiful music, but it's so complex, so bizarre, so insane and trying so hard that it's also a bit painful to listen to. Smiley Smile isn't. Smiley Smile is always a joy. I love the mood of that album.

I find them to be like your children, made by the same people and different as all get out but equally lovable in their own right.

I believe that is the entire point of the interlude. It presents the "locker-room tone" that symbolizes the band itself. The high voice takes the part of the voices inside Brain's head. Both intruding right into the middle of a song that perhaps best exemplifies Brian's fragile SMiLE art-world. That Smiley trashing of Wonderful is Brian's own commentary on the end of the SMiLE project, whether subconscious or not.

You may well be right on that.  Brian was doing a lot of truly brutal self-parody at that point, such as the scathing critique of "Heroes and Villains" that he put into the mouth of Mike Love during the Leid In Hawaii sessions.  But that makes the whole matter even more disturbing for me, to be honest.

Oh yes, absolutely it is disturbing. But I don't think music, and specifically, the music of The Beach Boys, should never be disturbing. Much of their 1966-1971 output is, in varying degrees, and I think it gives their music and image a welcome three-dimensional quality. That is what brought me into the fold as a fan, anyway, and many fans I have met along the way.

Smiley Smile is a train wreck pure and simple. A year's worth of brilliant music/vocals/arrangements during TSS and then they put this out and people to this day wonder what caused the Beach Boys to fall off of the music scene in popularity overnight?

Brian was done when he did not finish Smile. Anyone who listens to Smiley and does not reach that conclusion is delusional.

I would add to Carl's statement about Smiley being "a bunt instead of a grand slam" and say that it was a bunt that ended in a double play instead of advancing the runner. Brian and the Boys were both out.

I love Smiley. You're getting pure Brian Wilson, think Well Tempered Clavier. In a lot of ways I prefer it to SMiLE. I love both.  And sorry, if you say Brain was done after SMiLE then you're delusional. Wild Honey? Friends?

There are a lot of different opinions on this board. Try to respect this. Calling people delusional for not thinking the same as you is highly confrontational. You wouldn't want to get labelled as a troll or anything after just 4 posts!

Let me just say this: LITTLE PAD ROCKS!!  And to respond to Newguy a few posts back, I think a majority of us veteran fans have heard Sandy/Sherry/She Says She Needs Me. Summer Days outtake, worked on in 15BO era, revamped for Imagination. AGD`s website would have more detailed info.

No, I wouldn't. Would you want to be labeled as condescending and easily offended after 751 posts? I would argue implying I'm a troll is confrontational.

Getting back to my point, "pure Brian" is the guy in the background telling dozens of people what to do during TSS in my opinion. The guy who took astonishingly brilliant pieces of music and complex vocals and stripped them down to nonsense like Smiley's Wonderful and Vegetables is a guy who was pretty much done. Again, I guess I should clarify IMO.

For the record, I saw the Beach Boys live about 18 times between 1975 and 1997. I've seen Brian live 5 times since Imagination was released. I own almost all of their regular released albums on both vinyl and CD. I have been posting under the same user name as I use here on the SD board for a few years and have been reading over there for more than ten. Due to the Smile release I've since been reading a ton over here.

So no I'm not a troll. I just happen to be another person in agreement with those that feel albums like Smiley and Love You are not very good.

Brian's work on wild honey, friends, 20/20 and sunflower show a man far from washed up musically. The limited work he did on Surf's up, CATP, and Holland were great as well. Granted, the lyrics on love you are rough sometimes, but the backing tracks are as great as ever even with Brian getting a different sound from instruments like the moog. 

Brilliant analysis!

thank you :) but do any of you have the song?

I really liked Smiley Smile, despite its numerous flaws, until I heard The Smiley Sessions. Then it became obsolete.

The real question is The Smile Sessions vs BWPS.

Smiley Smile is a great album, however you have to let it grow on you. My introduction to the SMiLE music was BWPS and my introduction to the BB versions was the Good Vibrations box set. I had never heard SS so I went into it thinking that it would simply be slightly different versions of the Smile songs. What I heard of course wasn't that at all. With the exception of Good Vibrations and maybe Heroes and Villains all songs were stripped down to their bare minimum. My initial reaction was that it was a piece of crap. That opinion of course has changed. While I don't feel it's by any means a masterpiece on par with Pet Sounds and Smile. It is a great little album. The kind to just relax to.

That's cool, a far different post from "anyone who disagrees with me is delusional" That more than warranted a condescending reply. Maybe I should develop a thicker skin, but....no, I like the way I see things.

You're obviously more a production man. Fair enough. I tend to listen more to the actual written music. In those terms, Smiley is equally as brilliant as SMiLE.

Different strokes.

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That's cool, a far different post from "anyone who disagrees with me is delusional" That more than warranted a condescending reply. Maybe I should develop a thicker skin, but....no, I like the way I see things.

You're obviously more a production man. Fair enough. I tend to listen more to the actual written music. In those terms, Smiley is equally as brilliant as SMiLE.

Different strokes.


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Agreed. In hindsight I guess delusional was too strong of a word. Sorry.

My whole thing that has me fascinated since receiving the boxset started with Brian's '67 Surf's Up solo that blew me away. The fact that he was still the Smile Brian (the Brian that made him and the BB's who they were up to then) on that and it was recorded after Smiley really has me puzzled. From Smiley on, IMO, the released albums to me reek of Brian not caring and holding back. Not just the fact that he was no longer the main production man, but because of the very way he sings and everything else.

And I will agree that Smiley is unlike anything else, and some parts are hauntingly bizarre and get into your head after a few listens which can make it appealing to some people. What gets me is that Brian shelved his masterpiece, one long held excuse from Brian himself being it was "inappropriate or ahead of it's time" and yet he released Smiley.

I'm in agreement with those who believe shelving Smile was Brian's and the Beach Boys demise.