The Smiley Smile Message Board

In the 'Cabinessence Chant' -thread, Roger Ryan suggests that the 'reconnected telephone'- lyrics  could have been
used underneath the coda. This is an educated guess since that final part, beginning with 'have you seen...' has that
'one-size-fits-all'-quality mentioned also in 'SMiLE 40' under the MEDIA-section, especially the 'Over & over-bit.
(The words in parantheses are added by me) Here goes:

Reconnected telephone*,
direct di-al-LING - diff'rent
color cords to your~exTENsion
Don't forget to mention:

This is a~recording (this
IS a recording: recording)

Even though~the echoes through
MY mind have filtered through~the~pines...

- I came and found my peace
and this is NOT a recording

Doobie doo, doobie doo
OR not doobie (:that's the question)

* = the caption actually says: 'telephonING' (?) If it turns out that these couplets belong elsewhere, at least this ex.
shows how versatile Van Dyke's really are. Who knows where to locate the other quotes other than the start under
one af Frank Holmes' drawings?
See also: SMiLE page 53 (sea of tunes 1999) or Priore's books:
Look listen Vibrate SMiLE page 269 (2001) and
SMiLE page 185 (2005)

I think it belongs exactly where it ended up: trash bin.

Ouch!
I think it's neat to have some Smile discussion again on this board. There are plenty of mysteries left to solve. And Cabin Essence is certainly one of them.
 

I always thought of it as the first chorus companion to Truck Drivin Man

It has always sounded to my ears that there were two lines going on in the background behind the "who ran the iron horse?" and the ascending and descending "ahhhhhhhhh". Truck Driving man and something else. mAybe this is the "something else"?

Seems to me these lyrics fit pretty darn well over "Look" and "Child is Father of the Man". Also it seems that those two tracks are AWFULLY similar, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that "Look" was redone as "Child is Father of the Man" (Both start with similar dark pianos and go into faster driving rhythms and also feature short breaks between sections -- Look has the Rag piece -- CIFOTM) (of course I also wouldn't be surprised to find I was completely wrong)

Here's how I'd graft the lyrics onto CIFOTM:

The "verses" go right over the dark piano (in fact there's more than enough time). Then you have that bass part that you can put the "Doobie doo, doobie doo, or not doobie" over with no problem. And then you're into the chorus!

Anyone else hear it?

Yep bang in the middle of the trash

Why do we keep on insisting that everything recorded for Smile was going to end up on the album???

BW was well into his modular thing which in itself makes it unlikely every fragment lyric was going to be used

Cornucopia being a good example

I've always heard it that way too...they have the same vibe as the truck-drivin-man lyrics (very undecipherable, but catchy) and it fits perfectly, imo.

How many sessions did Brian hold for "Good Vibrations" ? Fifteen that we know of.

How long is the final product ?  ;D

Until somebody else actually have the 'reconnected' lyric recorded (like I did in 2009 for the musicvid - 2 years after my original post) I'm  stuck with that same solution which is that it most likely belongs on the Cabinessence coda and NOT in the trash bin - at least for historical reasons!

How much of the GV sessions didn't end up on the final track - loads

Right! That's exactly what I was thinking.

Good man -  8)

I don't think it's totally fair to judge SMILE lyrics to be "trash bin" material based on a fragment without the context of melody. What if we didn't have a recording of "Surf's Up", and only had the lyrics:

"Carriage across the fog-two-step to
lamplight cellar tune.

The laughs come hard
in Auld Lang Syne.

The glass was raised, the fired-roast.
The fullness of the wine.
A dim last toasting.
While at Port, adieu or die."

There's not an obvious way to sing that and you might say, "oh, those are trash lyrics", because it's not totally clear what they're about, but it turns out they're one of the most beautiful parts of the whole SMILE project.

I certainly agree that more was recorded for SMILE than would have been used, but for those of us trying to reconstruct it, we're in the unique position of needing to reconsider every piece we have.

Now keeping in mind that there's session sheet evidence saying that "Look" and "Child is Father of the Man" had lead vocals put down, the lyrics of which have never turned up, I think it's worth considering the idea that these "extra" "Cabinessence" lyrics that don't thematically fit in with either the "Home on the Range" (A funky cat singing to some chick in the mountains) or "Who Ran the Iron Horse" (A meditation on sweeping industrial changes) sections that comprise it might be those long-lost lyrics.

Not saying it's right, just worth considering.

My thought has always been that they were intended for another section of Cabinessence that Brian either never recorded, or recorded and later junked.  They don't fit anywhere else, and putting them over the first chorus in the same manner as the "truck drivin' man" part in the second chorus would lessen the latter's impact (even if you could somehow work it out rhythmically).  That part is more effective because it's only used once - use it again and it becomes a lot less interesting.

Don't think anyone indicating they were trash (bad) lyrics - they just weren't needed for whatever reason

The Smile-O-Philes here never did answer my question concerning the "Truck drivin' man" lyrics.  Were they up front and clearly audible in the mix from day one or was that line buried in the mix when Desper and Carl worked on it later for release on 20/20? Anybody know?

Or, as Chris Brown said, they were "never recorded" - I don't think it's right to say they belong in the trash unless there is hard-evidence that indicated they were never to be used.

Van Dyke has said in an Interview from 2004 that he wrote lyrics to fit snippets of music already written by Brian. So where do these lyrics fit, or was there additional music we have yet to hear?

 :-\

Boring! How do you know for sure that these lyrics wouldn't end up on Smile? No one here is insisting that everything recorded would be on the album. It's just fun to speculate!

I didn't think they were recorded until they worked on it for 20/20. I always assumed (perhaps wrongly) that Dennis did his vocals when Carl did the lead. I though the only 'vintage' vocals were the 'Boing Boing' and 'Who Ran The Iron Horse' vocals.

That's something I've never been entirely sure of either - as you say, most of the vocals on the finished 20/20 version are of '66 vintage - the "doing doing" part in the verses, all the chorus vocals and the entire tag.  All that wasn't done was Carl's lead.  Based purely on conjecture, I would guess Dennis' part was vintage as well - how else would the group have known to put that there?  Given that Brian most likely didn't participate in the effort to finish the song for 20/20, I find it hard to believe that the others came up with that on their own.  I think it's a lot more likely that Brian put it in there in '66.

First time I read about the Truck Drivin' Man lyrics; I think it was Leaf's book in 1978 or somewhere after. I thought, Wow, that part is on Cabinessence?? I heard it kind of weave in and out of the mix underneath "Who ran the iron horse". Years later I heard that part completely isolated and wondered why it wasn't mixed UP a little bit, to be more audible. What a waste. But maybe Carl wanted it mixed down as it may have conflicted with the droning "iron horse" lines in the middle part of the song. I gotta think it was there in 1966, possibly even a a separate fragment that was edited in originally. Or maybe not. I don't know.

I remember hearing an out of phase bootleg tape of Beach Boys songs in the mid-70's. Cabinessence had the "boing boing" intact - in fact it sounded isolated, but it was right there on the Cabinessence oop'sng tape.

But upon further evaluation, I think 'Cornucopia' may have been considered for the song. It was recorded. Some consider that alternate part to be a demo, but I think it may have been seriously considered by Brian to be included on Vegetables. I forgot - was that recorded before or after the lyrics were finalized for Vegetables?

Good Point. You can't exactly tell that the 'Truck Drivin' Man' lyrics are supposed to go there. The one thing I've also always wondered about was Vosse's explanation of how CabinEssence was supposed to be sung by Dennis-like a funky mountain cat up in the mountains singing to some chick. Maybe at one point the vocal really was right up front, and Brian wanted Dennis to sing it a number of different ways. There could have been 2 or 3 different versions of Dennis singing those vocals-which would be awesome.

Actually that is exactly what I was indicating when I said it, way back whenever this thread began. I look again, and lo and behold ... I still think the same thing.

Question regarding 'Truck-Drivin' Man': Dennis seems to just ramble on through those almost un-incomprehensible lyrics (in meaning and in sound) that are buried beneath the chorus mix - had this been done before in pop music?

I know Brian did a similar approach with IJWMFTT - but that was more singing - whereas 'Truck-Drivin' Man' is closer to rapping than singing, imo.

Yeah cool - me too - thinking the same that is

The rejected text belongs on the new Smile Sessions set in a newly discovered Cabinessence musical segment with vocals by Dennis!