The Smiley Smile Message Board

not to play on words, but is there a version of the boys doing this song, and if so could anyone help me out (on getting it).  this question seems dumb, but i dont care

As far as I know, no. Brian and Carl are on Glen's version, though.

I've always thought I heard Mike Love on this. in the meantime, I had heard that the Honeys did the backing vocals.

I recently obtained the session tapes, and I'm pretty sure I can detect Mike Love, Brian and Marilyn on there, but the part that sounds very soft and feminine -- like Marilyn -- could be Brian and/or Carl. Anyway, I'm mostly going by my ear here, and distinguishing individual Beach Boy voices on backing vocals is a challenging pastime. Does anyone out there have any definitive info on exactly who's singing here?

I must say Glen Campbell is sensational on the challenging lead (not double-tracked). Before the take, Glen mumbles something that sounds like "If I make it like I want it, I'll say sh*t!", and Brian says "Glenny that was outta -- outta sight! Come on in..." after the take. The instrumental backing is phenomenal too, and all apparently live. On the level of Pet Sounds imho.

GID sounds to me like a missing Pet Sounds track.

What I wouldn't give to hear a Brian guide vocal for this song, or something like it.

...along with Marilyn Wilson, Diane Rovell, and Ginger Blake, according to Craig Slowinski.

Imagine Today! with a BB version of Guess I'm Dumb in place of Bull Session, and weep.

Wept many a times thinking that... :'(

Same, and same goes for "Sherry". I always found it odd that Brian's guide vocals for several Pet Sounds songs still exist ("Here Today", "Sloop John B", "Hang On To Your Ego", etc.), but he apparently never had the time to put down a guide vocal for an otherwise finished "Sherry". Ugh :\

I assume The Wondermints recording was an attempt to emulate what a BBoys version would have sounded like?

What...A...Recording!!!!  It is an absolute crime that wasn't a massive hit.

I agree.

It's produced exactly the same as the Pet Sound tracks and could have easily fitted into the album. It's an under-rated piece of music.

It refelects Brian's creativity at the time... he was prepared to give this track away because he could write this stuff so easily.

Found this version on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bckSfcW0z3o

Sounds more like Today! era to me. But, yes, it is indeed great.

The recording session date is closer to the Today! sessions than Pet Sounds sessions correct?

October 1964, during the early stages of Today sessions.

October 14th.

It's amazing that this track was done in '64.  The tendency has always been to think of Brian's work from '64 to '66 as a linear progression of "increasing sophistication", but this track suggests that he had really already arrived at 100% sophistication, but was deliberately holding it back from his BBs productions so he could kind of edge them up to it gradually. 

I don't know. When I Grow Up and She Knows Me Too Well had already been released before this session. Two months later, Brian was recording Kiss Me Baby for the band. To me, Guess I'm Dumb fits in perfectly with those kinds of tracks.

Agreed.  Great stuff: "Kiss Me Baby," and "She Knows Me Too Well."

Great songs, but to me they sound almost like a soft-pedalling of the kind of stuff he was already doing on "Guess I'm Dumb".  Structurally and musically, they're a lot more conventional.  Not as close to all the jazzy, diminished chords and crazy modulations that reached full flower on Pet Sounds and are already in evidence on "Guess I'm Dumb". 

Well, with the exception of "She Knows Me Too Well", that's pretty much all the way there. 

Sorry - I don't mean to keep harping on this, but I still think this is quite in keeping with the Today! aesthetic. First - remember that When I Grow Up and She Knows Me Too Well were not"soft-pedalling of the kind of stuff he was already doing on Guess I'm Dumb" since they were both recorded two months before Guess I'm Dumb. Furthermore, Brian was using diminished chords on Beach Boys tracks around the time like All Dressed Up For School (recorded a month before GID) and also, what is to my ears a song more advanced than GID, In The Back of My Mind. To me, GID fits perfectly on the B side of Today! but doesn't have the fullness or the multi-instrumentality of the Pet Sounds songs.

Conventional sells more records. And I think Brian may have been listening to more Bacharach around this time and taking a lot of cues from those song structures and chord progressions. It still amazes me how musically complex and sometimes downright bizarre some of those Bacharach-David-Warwick were which became hit records. And I'd put some of Brian's 64-65 tunes like "Kiss Me Baby" right next to Bacharach in those ways. You could also say Brian had those leanings as early as Catch A Wave, which has a very strange intro/modulation going into a straightforward pop song, and especially Warmth Of The Sun, which has some pretty unusual key changes too. Then again, Guess I'm Dumb didn't sell all that well, and neither did "Little Girl I Once Knew".

It's really neat to trace his songwriting and see glimpses of those quirky songwriter traits he'd become known for with Pet Sounds and the like as early as the first album. I guess it was about refining what he already did and liked to do when writing a song.

I think his "outside" productions going back to even The Survivors' After The Game were more sophisticated and experimental than the work he was doing with The Beach Boys. His first true Wrecking Crew productions were his girl-group productions for The Honeys and Sharon Marie. Maybe he saw this type of sound as a more "feminine" trip, ala his beloved Spector works for the Crystals/Ronettes? Guess I'm Dumb falls into this line of creativity and progression, bringing in the male lead vocal, but still with a heavy Honeys presence in the backing.
I think it took Brian a while to feel comfortable bringing in such a soft, sensitive sound to what was essentially the ultimate masculine-image rock band of that era. Of course, he'd already recorded plenty of ballads before with The BB, but these could be seen as fitting into a doo-wop/Earth Angel scheme, and still have essentially stripped-down "rock"/piano backings.

I'm thinking perhaps Brian had enough of a commercial instinct to know what would sell and what wouldn't sell, and if you place his "outside" productions into a sub-category a level or two under the Beach Boys where he was all but obligated to deliver commercial hits, it gave him quite a bit of freedom to stretch out and indulge some of his more experimental, more sophisticated, but less accessible songwriting traits. That's not taking anything at all away from any of the artists he wrote for and produced outside the BB's, but obviously he's going to give his family and the band with his name and image the strongest commercial material.

I'm trying to remember: Wasn't there a specific part in an early contract, somewhere, that gave Brian the ability to work with outside artists as long as he delivered the BB's product for Capitol? It would be the perfect vehicle for him to almost practice and develop his craft and not feel as much pressure for a "hit". And Brian also had his own separate publishing company, in partnership with someone whose name I can't recall, prior to 1965 for these projects, didn't he?

Nope -- it's a modern rendition in a retro-power-pop sort of way. The drums are looped, but the other instruments are live. Very nice rendition with a good Darian vocal. Years ago I OOPSed out the vocal and flew in Glen's just for S's and G's.

I disagree with this line of thinking in terms of "Guess I'm Dumb". It was supposed to be a gift to Glen Campbell. Why would they give him a dud? Brian wanted this song to be a hit.

Go back a bit, I wasn't applying that line of thinking to Guess I'm Dumb specifically, it was a comment about the previous post mentioning Brian's outside productions in general. If you disagree with the post in general I'd suggest listening to some of those non-hit Brian productions for artists other than his Beach Boys, find some of the stranger or more non-commercial elements of his production and songwriting, and see which of those concepts or sonic/song ideas eventually ended up on Beach Boys records, if it's only a handful or a large number. I think it was the process of learning, developing, perfecting, then finally using in a commercial way some of these more complex musical ideas Brian had in his mind.

I doubt anyone goes into making a record with the intention to make a flop, I don't know where you read that in my post, but there *is* considerable freedom to experiment and expand if you're not being pressured for the next hit by your record company. Brian at least until 1967 gave the majority of his most commercial songs and ideas to his family, end of story.

Having another burst of obsession with this song after hearing the instrumental track on MIC.

The instrumental track makes the thing sounds even more 'Pet Sounds'. The horns are incredible, yet this was recorded in October 1964. Brian was ahead of everyone at this point.

Reading between the lines it appears none of the Beach Boys wanted to do the lead vocal, and the track was given to Glen Campbell as a thankyou to him in March 1965.

Glen's vocal is absolutely sublime though. Hair raising.

No lines to read between - this and "Sandy" were written to be given to Glen, they're not just Beach Boys outtakes. If Brian would have wanted it on a Beach Boys record, it would have been.

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You obviously haven't heard any Spector backing tracks from this period. A lot of the Pet Sounds tracks sound like where Spector was at circa '64.

To me, the album absolutely should end with In The Back Of My Mind. That amazing orchestral breakdown at the end! Guess I'm Dumb should have been track 11.

To me it sounds like Dennis, at least on the MIC version of GID. The 'uh-uh-uh-uh-uhhh' bit, very Dennis-sounding.

Cut the flab off Summer Days(and Summer Nights!) and mentally replace with finished BB versions of Sherry and Guess I'm Dumb and you have a record equal to Today! and Pet Sounds.

What flab?

My two would be I'm Bugged At My Old Man, along with And Your Dream Comes True. Though I do like both of these songs, Sherry & Dumb would make better replacements.

I'd go with I'm Bugged at my Old Man and You're So Good to Me. Both awful songs.

I'd have to choose "Salt Lake City" and "Amusement Parks U.S.A," which is a fine song, but doesn't fit so well.

I did a stereo mix of "Guess I'm Dumb" like a year ago and never posted it, likely because I was in the middle of the second of three moves within the last year and my brain was breaking even more than it already was at the time, but hay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWO1qPCawPI&feature=youtu.be

I doubt I'm the first to do it, and I see that someone else uploaded a stereo mix of it in the meantime, but hay. No idea why they didn't do a stereo mix of the song for MIC instead of just the track and backing vocals, maybe something to do with contracts and other bullshit, but it deserved a spot on there with Glen's lead over the track and backing vocals. Still nice that it's there at all, but yeah.

"Awful"? Jeez!

Is this an actual thing? Source, runnerz?

Shoot, trying to find a source on this, but can't. It's one of those things that folks say around here and elsewhere that's seemingly kind of accepted as common knowledge, but I've never seen in a book or anything. Andrew? Anyone?

Anyway, I guess I should clarify that "Sandy" may not have been written specifically for Glen, but I swear it's been said "Sandy" and "Guess I'm Dumb" were submitted to him, but he only ever did a vocal for the latter for whatever reason. I believe those two songs were the only songs co-written by Brian and Russ Titelman, keep in mind, and it being intended for Glen would explain why there are backing vocals but no lead on "Sandy".

Glad you liked the mix, mikeddonn!

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/Ronettes.jpg)(http://img1.seite3.ch/news/309/292091-walkonby.jpg)

Shoot, trying to find a source on this, but can't. It's one of those things that folks say around here and elsewhere that's seemingly kind of accepted as common knowledge, but I've never seen in a book or anything. Andrew? Anyone?

Anyway, I guess I should clarify that "Sandy" may not have been written specifically for Glen, but I swear it's been said "Sandy" and "Guess I'm Dumb" were submitted to him, but he only ever did a vocal for the latter for whatever reason. I believe those two songs were the only songs co-written by Brian and Russ Titelman, keep in mind, and it being intended for Glen would explain why there are backing vocals but no lead on "Sandy".
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Considering that the existing background vocals for "Sandy" sound like, well, the entire band (including Bruce), I'd be surprised if the intention was to hand it off to Glen...

Never heard that "Sandy" was intended for Glen. Doesn't mean it wasn't, just that I've not heard anything to that effect since summer 1975.  ;D

Thing is, the track for "GID" was recorded just over five months before the first stab at "Sherry".

   

TYha's what I was remembering (not that my memory is considered to be A-rated.)  but I figure the Sherry/Glen statement is a false memory somehow implanted in RDZero's brain. 

One thing that is worth mentioning that I haven't seen said is how the one vocal part of Had to Phone Ya is very much right out of Guess I'm Dumb.  I'm speaking of these two sections to be specific...

Guess I'm Dumb:

I'll give in when I know I should be strong
I still give in even though I know it's wrong, know it's wrong

Had to Phone Ya:

I visualize that you're looking fine
Feels so good when you come on the line

I have no idea what show this is, where this takes place, or who the singer is, but this is great!

Not according to Glen. He stated that Guess I'm Dumb was intended for the Beach Boys but was 'off message' or words to that effect.

If this is true, I want to die more than I already did before reading it. Girl, you know it's true.

Apologies, I feel like I've made an ass of myself in this thread. I swore I'd read these things elsewhere on the board and a quick Googlin' shows people elsewhere on teh interwebz  talking like "Sandy" might've been offered to Glen (while indeed seeming uncertain), so yeah, it's not just me.

I still cannot wrap my head around "Sandy"/"Sherry" being scrapped, being about 95% complete and only needing a lead vocal (inb4 Smile tracks, totally different circumstances), nor could I begin to fathom the idea of "Guess I'm Dumb" possibly almost seeing the same fate.

Melodically very similar - had never noticed this before !