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Smiley Smile Stuff => General On Topic Discussions => Topic started by: Spoonito on December 11, 2017, 02:46:24 PM



Title: Smile - Cantina Sketches Fan Mix
Post by: Spoonito on December 11, 2017, 02:46:24 PM
After having so much fun reassembling Heroes and Villains, I decided to keep going and add another fan mix to the growing collection. Mine is a conceptual reconstruction of Smile as cabaret revue set in an old-timey western saloon / cantina. I Imagine The Beach Boys set up at a rickety piano (in character, a la The Beatles in Sgt. Peppers). I was inspired by an interview with Brian Wilson in 1966 about the direction he was headed: “I'm using some new production techniques that I think will surprise everyone. The album will include lots of humor - some musical and some spoken. It won't be like a comedy LP - there won't be any spoken tracks as such - but someone might say something in between verses.” I embraced snippets and short songs based on another interview that hinted at their plans to keep things from getting boring (“When you’re stoned, 30 seconds feels like 2 hours”)-- not sure when he said that though. I tried putting things together in similar keys or instrumentation, embracing the idea that Heroes and Villains would make thematic appearances throughout the Album. My thinking was, if Heroes and Villains was derived by condensing Smile, then it might be cool to expand Heroes and Villains and integrate it with Smile. (In making this I also really came to appreciate the inrony that Heroes and Villains lived up to the duality of its name-- cobbling it into a hit single was Brian’s only shot at buying himself the time he needed to finish Smile, but doing so meant cannibalizing so many musical ideas that Smile was left unfinishable!) Once again, thanks to all the brilliant fan mixers who did the hard work before me-- your stuff is amazing and all over this mix! Especially Seltaeb, Daniele Catalucci, Soniclovenoize, IheartMikeLove, and Summertime Blooz.

Smile (Cantina Sketches Fan Mix) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwYY3SbK1J0

0:00 Intro - Our Prayer
1:17 Good Vibrations
3:36 Good Vibrations Jam
4:03 Gee
4:50 Heroes and Villains 1st Verse
4:33 I'm in Great Shape
5:50 Heroes and Villains 2nd Verse
6:34 Barnyard 
7:06 I’m In Great Shape/Barnyard comedy skit
7:22 Old Master Painter
7:37 You Are My Sunshine
8:21 With Me Tonight / Vega-tables Mashup
9:14 Vega-tables
11:50 Heroes and Villains Chant (Vegatables Fade)
12:40 Heroes and Villains Reprise (w/ Rehearsal takes into Cantina Section)
15:32 Fire / Intro Chimes as police chase
15:54 I Wanna Be Around / Water chant
16:16 Three Blind Mice / Cantina as a fade out
16:47 Do You Like Worms?
18:28 He Gives Speeches
19:22 Sunshine Fade Out
19:58 Back to the Cantina (Smile Party, Brian: “Back the tape up Will ya, put on another tape!”)
20:11 Cabin Essence
23:34 I Don’t Know
24:01Cool, Cool Water
25:20 Wind Chimes
27:35 Wind chimes piano coda
28:27 Piano Medley (HV Verse, All Day, Part 2, Part 3, 4)
29:54  Heroes and Villains (Children Were Raised)
30:48 Heroes and Villains Chant / Piano bridge
31:30 Wonderful
33:30 Look
33:40 Good Vibrations
33:50 Child is the Father of The Man
36:45 Heroes and Villains Chant/ Darien's lead in to...
37:20 Surf's Up
41:23 Brian Falls into a Piano / HV Fade
41:42 You’re Welcome
42:08 Tune X


Title: Re: Smile - Cantina Sketches Fan Mix
Post by: Spoonito on December 12, 2017, 09:11:08 AM
To elaborate, it's basically a “Best Of” mashup of my favorite Smile Fan Mixes and Mashups, featuring unused bits like Three Blind Mice, Tune X, I Don't Know, He Gives Speeches, etc. Here's a pretty specific breakdown of what's there...

Good Vibrations – from a youtube mix that rebuilds in stereo,  but before it I wanted to set the stage in a Cantina so I combined some Heroes and Villains piano parts with Brian's Smile Party recording and some Our Prayer dialogue like the BBs are warming up, then went into Our Prayer as an intro. GV is left unfinished as I segue into a Western Session Jam into…

Heroes and Villains – preceeded by Gee, then into an extended  Heroes and Villains mashup with Great Shape (Sataeb’s mashup!), Barnyard (soniclovenoize’s mix combined with my own), a comedy mashup of the two (my own mix), OMP/sunshine (Summertime Blooz), before seguing into Saltaeb’s mashup of With Me Tonight/Vegetables, before going into a personal mix of Vegatables. Saltaebs mashup of the Vegatables Fade/Heroes leads to a stripped-down reprise of HV with acoustic rehearsal chorus from 1967 Sunshine tomorrow. In the Cantina section, after “you’re under arrest,” I go into a mashup of Fire/chimes (got the idea from the Smiley forum!), then into nedstuff’s mashup of Underwater Chant /I Wanna Be Around

Three Blind Mice is used as tag after I Wanna Be Around, segueing via Bridge to Indians into BWPS’s verse for Do You Like Worms into Soniclovenoize’s pre-chorus and chorus. He Gives Speeches fits after Do You Like Worms seguing into the sunshine fade to close out the Heroes and Villains suite.

I Don’t Know fits great as a tag to Cabinessence, with an extended Grand Coulee Dam section by combining soniclovenoize’s mix with Saltaeb’s vocal mashup. After IDK, I go into Cool Cool Water and another Smile Party Tape comedy bit.

Wind Chimes combines summertime blooz’s mix (the syncopated bass section) and the Piano Tag, which segues into a medley of every unused piano part I could find from the smile sessions… Heroes and Villains piano lines, some piano from Vegatables and All Day… inspired by Rhapsody in Blue. Leads into My Children Were Raised, then a Heroes and Villains chant into...

Wonderful, made from Summertime Blooz’s mix into Saltaeb’s Look, which I extended by going into Good Vibrations for a bit before coming back into Child is the Father of the Man (itself a combination of BPWS, Daniele’s, Summertime Blooz’s, and Saltaeb’s) then a final Heroes and Villains chant mashed-up over Darien’s bridge into

Surf’s up... mix of Summertime Blooz’s into Daniele Catalucci’s comedy outro with Brian Falls into a Piano.

Tune X makes an appearance after the outro, which fades out back to the bar sounds where this all started. WHEW!!!

Sources:

Smile Sessions Box Set
1967 Sunshine Tomorrow
Good Vibrations – 30 years
Made in California
Hawthorne, CA
Vegitone 110, 111
Brian Wilson Presents Smile
Brian's Psychodelic Smile Party

nedstuff's Alt Smile
http://www.amirapress.com/video/t_z1568pVdl-Q

Seltaeb’s Smile A.D. Stereo 4.0 and Smile MiniMix vol 1 and 2
http://beachboyssmilead.blogspot.com/2012/01/beach-boys-smile-ad-40-stereo-vocal-mix.html

Daniele Catalucci’s Personal Smile Reconstruction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwCdeF0RzSI

Soniclovenoize’s incredible Smile Mixes
http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-beach-boys-smile-2004.html

Good Vibrations stereo mix by IheartMikeLove
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfX-5Ok5pzo

Smile – The Americana Trip Slideshow by Summertime Blooz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doOws3284PQ&list=PLptIp1kEl6BWNpXyJ_mb20W4ZqJ14-Hgg


Title: Re: Smile - Cantina Sketches Fan Mix
Post by: JK on December 12, 2017, 10:52:16 AM
Great! I've got it bookmarked.

I must check out Soniclovenoize's mixes soon. Mujan has also done some brilliant ones.


Title: Re: Smile - Cantina Sketches Fan Mix
Post by: Spoonito on December 14, 2017, 12:13:02 PM
When Brian set out to make his ‘Pocket Symphony,’ he didn’t just envision new kinds of songs... but an entirely new approach to the album as musical experience. After his breakdown and ensuing mental health issues that went along with Smile's notorious incompletion, much of his vision and on-the-record statements of intent at the time were written off as unfocused and unhinged over-ambition at best, madness at worst. Even BWPS and the official Smile Sessions release focused on organizing the material as discreet songs (albeit with recurring themes), essentially collecting non-conventional material in a very conventional way.

This mix finally applies the strange logic of the songs to the album itself, reimagining it not as a collection of songs but as a single, psychedelic experience--with jokes, skits, studio tricks, and meandering interludes all becoming part of the architecture. For me it was like hearing Smile for the first time. All of Brian’s previously “nonsensical” ideas suddenly seem perfectly understandable, like stepping back to see a bunch of dots become a pointillist painting.


Title: Re: Smile - Cantina Sketches Fan Mix
Post by: MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm on December 15, 2017, 01:23:33 PM
Great stuff, thanks! 


Title: Re: Smile - Cantina Sketches Fan Mix
Post by: Spoonito on March 12, 2018, 10:36:49 AM
I know it's somewhat gauche to bump my own thread, but I just wanted to highlight a couple of moments that stand out as interesting in the assembly. Would love to hear your thoughts...!

Windchimes Piano Coda -> Smile Piano Medley
(I combined as much of Brian's piano noodling as I could, inspired by his love of Rhapsody in Blue and its improvised piano bridge).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwYY3SbK1J0&t=27m25s

Cabin Essence Over and Over Coda -> I Don't Know -> Cool Cool Water
(I loved finding musical similarities in these seemingly disparate tracks!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwYY3SbK1J0&t=22m41s