The Smiley Smile Message Board

What's the deal with this song? I haven't seen much, if any discussion of it. Was it meant to end up on Smile?

It's not a song.  It's a quote from a Hallmark gift book (they used to make cutesy little books to be given like greeting cards).  The artwork including it got used as the back cover of Smiley Smile, with all the color sucked out of it.

I don't recall anyone ever talking about the Hallmark book in a BB thread ever.  I did find a copy at the (deceased) Book Castle in Burbank, and I have that page scanned in full color, if anyone is interested!

Please, do... then I can direct the next person who asks me about it to that page. As opposed to shouting at them, very loudly.  ;D

Didn't the rumor of this song title start in the Timothy White book? Or did it start somewhere else, and he just perpetuated it?

Yeah, please scan  and post it.  I've never heard this story before, and the album does not have any credits for the front or back cover.  Do you know when this Hallmark book was released?  Does it have a copyright date?

On another note, who was Barry Turnbull, who, according to the back cover of the album, came up with the title Smiley Smile?

Said rumor was up and running long before Tim White came along - I recall it from at least 1975.

I don't have the whole book anymore, just the page.

But my recollection of the book was it had a nouveau psychedelic look to it, so I'm guessing it was contemporary--'66, '67.  It was filled with other, similar homilies.

I'll dig up the scan and post it this weekend!

I hope I didn't ruffle any feathers... :(

I take it this subject has been beat to death already. The reason I was asking was because I came across it listed as the track title to an instrumental piece. I've never heard the piece before and have no idea what it was intended for.

Does said intrumental piece feature a kinda plunky guitar/mandolin ?

That's most likely what he's referring to. Although I believe the instrument providing the "guitar solo" in the song is actually a bouzouki.

Ah, right... well, the track in question is a Friends out-take, recorded 3/26/68 and logged as "New Song". I've also seen it referred to as a Smile track "Doves Of Peace".

isn't it on the Smile Project cdrom?

I remember it was listed in Byron Preiss's book.  That was 1978, I believe.

yeah, which is somewhat misleading.

Is Little Red Book from the Smile period too? Someone told me it was also from Friends

Rumor was it was Brian's valentine's present to Marilyn, 2/14/67, but I'm most relaibly informed it's a Friends outtake. And yes, I must change the session date on 10452.  ::)

At long last, here's a scan--the upload box was full, so I had to finagle another way.

Here 'tis:
(http://i43.tinypic.com/11825ad.jpg)

 ;D

Great, thanks onkster.

And if anyone knows more about this gift book, please stand up!

Thanks as always, Andrew  ;D

And that photo's great, onkster!

But that's the only thing that keeps you out of the pool halls!  :lol

When the last remaining shred of Beach Boys Disinformation is stamped out for good, we'll have to get Andrew into an after-school program or something. Idle hands, you know.

*****

The Book Castle in Burbank...geez, do I remember that dusty, yellowed fire hazard.  I even remember the stand with the little Hallmark books up front, near the registers...Happiness Is A Warm Puppy, Second Edition (ninth printing) no dust jacket, as is, $1.19.

It was a big old musty and moldy warehouse with corner entrances, acres and acres of jettisoned and left-behind-forever books with a collective worth in the dozens of dollars.  At the next paper drive.  It always kind of reminded me of the airplane graveyard scene in "The Best Years Of Our Lives", except instead of thousands and thousands of scrapped bombers it was thousands and thousands of cover-stripped Judy Blume novels.  Shudder.

I spent hundreds of hours in there, searching, searching; never buying anything, until finally I had to have a lung removed.  I never made it all the way to the back.  I think from a certain point on it was just a matte painting.

The Indian Wisdom quote - is it Native American or from India?

Well I never....   Gobsmacked.

Learn something new every day on this board.

A million thanks Onskter.

Me thinks, India.

In fact, the Hallmark book from which Indian Wisdom is derived--is indeed from that Hallmark stand at the front of Book Castle.

Much amazing stuff was there--including a signed first edition of "Tropic of Cancer", just sitting in the racks for $20.  I was out of work at the time, but should have gone into hock to get it.  Regrets, regrets...

I always wonder if the Indian Wisdom thing was Brian's idea--following his pattern of lifting odd things from ordinary pop culture--or whether it was a graphic artist's idea.  I'm betting on the former.

That is a really wonderful mid-'60s image and sentiment (even apart from its association with the album-that-wasn't) and a perfect embodiment of the Smile album aesthetic. Gives me goose bumps.  Do you know if those gift books had titles or any other individual identifying data? I would dearly love to find a copy. ???

You know, I was trying so hard to think of any book in the house that came from there for sure, and all I could come up with is another Hallmark book from around the exact same time- Christmas Is Together Time (a "Peanuts" book).  I have it around here somewhere, so it came off that same shelf, probably around the same time. But I know I bought other stuff there. They probably did have some great stuff- awash in a sea of more depressing bad stuff in one place than anywhere else on earth.

Sorry folks, I just can't believe anyone else remembers that store.

I used to enjoy walking the dog down there at night and stopping to read the old newspaper they posted in the corner window every single day, from exactly fifty years to the day before, under a sign that said "Fifty Years Ago Today".  It was always loaded with war news, usually from the Pacific. And the (related) Hollywood store next door was great.

Trivia: did it become the Blockbuster store that the T-Rex attacks in "Jurassic Park 2"?  I watched them film that sequence. If not, it was within a couple doors at most.

That's good stuff. Most of those places are already gone, of course, and the remaining ones hanging by a thread. Reminds me of the late, unlamented MacDonald's bookstore on Turk St. in S.F.'s tenderloin, which called itself, in sharp contrast to an overly gentrified local bookstore, "A Dirty, Poorly Lit Place For Books". :lol  RIP :'(

Book Castle is now a beauticians' school.  Movie World is still a couple doors down, and is more overcrowded and moldy than ever--a lot of BC stuff wound up over there.  Book City--further down the block--is gone.