Never say never. These are The Beach Boys, after all.

*Like*

Trombone Dixie > Love To Say Da Da > Had To Phone Ya

As for Wonderful/GOK -- no. Easy mistake to make, but mistake none the less. Not at all the same thing.

http://www.voicesofeastanglia.com/2012/05/beach-boys-1966-uk-tour-programme.html

Fair point. But, in terms of impact...?

Syringe your ears, Roger. It's there.

Caught ELO's 'Mr Blue Sky' on the radio the other day while stuck in typically sclerotic south London traffic.

And I was struck -- for the first time (though it may be I'm several dozen Christmases behind the curve) -- by what a gigantic debt it owes to Good Vibrations.

Modular composition; repeated high RH chords against punctuated bass; stacked vocals; triplet eighths; clutchless changes of gear -- I could go on, but you can join these dots as well as I can.

Questions, then, for the good Oracles: (1) Was/is Jeff Lynne a massive BB nut? (2) Anything on record from Brian about 'Mr Blue Sky'?

I could listen to "had to phone ya" through a paper cup and string and it would still sound great

I'll yell a harmony to that. Hear, hear.

Van Dyke considered himself a contracted employee of Brian's for Smile. His loyalty was to Brian. Mike was upset because Brian promised before Pet Sounds that he would write the album after Pet Sounds with Mike. Brian decided to write with Van instead. Mike felt Brian had not kept his promise. I think the whole Van/Mike argument is a straw man issue....Mike's beef was with Brian. Brian knew he had broken his commitment. It is no coincidence that the first single after Heroes was a BW/ML composition, Gettin' Hungry...issued under the name Brian Wilson and Mike Love. It is also no coincidence that nearly all the tunes on Wild Honey are Brian Wilson/ Mike Love songs. Brian felt he had to make his promise good to Mike.

The single best (and, possibly, best informed) perspective I've heard on this issue. Gracias, PR.

AGD -- please cough up. What's the VDP/TSS liner notes story? Come on. Enough bridge/water activity already. There's so much profoundly tedious sh!t-slinging going on round here. A dose of fact would do the world of good. Make it so.

sounds like temple blocks to these auricles

Great find!

So, what do we know?

Good Vibrations was recorded in sections -- and seems to have been the first of such endeavours by Brian.

Then there was Heroes And Villains, which, especiallly if you listen to the demo ('and there's there another section...') seems to have been recorded in the same way.

Were they written in the same way, I wonder? In other words, was a non-complete song (ie a series of fragments) written and later assembled?

I ask because it seems clear that, for instance, Surf's Up was not a fragmentary creative process. And it's clear, from the recording, that Holidays was a complete composition before it hit the studio, as was Our Prayer and Wonderful etc.

So, in the absence of Brian demos, just how big a part did the fragmentary process play, by comparison with the writing-it-from-start-to-finish process, do we think?  (I know it's only speculation, but it'll at least be informed.)  Do You Like Worms, for instance, could reasonably have been built around a finished song structure. Ditto Cabin Essence.

Discuss...

[Landlocked]

On the Landlocked version of this song, is it Brian or Al singing the falsetto on the verses?

I've always wondered why Al took a perfectly good Brian song (Sailplane Song) and turned into this abomination.

1 - as there never was a Landlocked, no Landlocked version.

2 - "Sail Plane Song" is just a rough demo.

3 - The falsetto is Alan.

1.  I know this and called it after the most common bootleg it appears on so people would realise I didn't mean the Endless Harmony version.
2. I also know this - I am comparing them as songs, not recordings.
3. Thankyou.
4. Being a bit pedantic aren't you? 

I call it being accurate.

Only if you refuse to acknowledge the existence of bootlegs, and very well known ones, at that...

Sorry to split hairs, RD0, but the MIX -- plug it into your lugholes again and just soak up the sound. Never mind the construction. Isn't the sound just glorious? Remember, these tapes are 45 years old and have been chucked about like second hand furniture.

Harmonically, my uninformed vote would be for "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times."  I say uninformed because I've never learned it myself, but I have learned, by ear, some pretty complex Beach Boys songs.  Having said that, I once had a gander at the chords, being played and scored, and they scared the crap out of me.  

That surprises me, that you've never learned it!

And I think that's it, too.  IJWMFTT.

But really, and I don't expect anybody to pay attention to this, we have to define what complex means or the conversation is meaningless.  

Complexity goes beyond things like key changes.  And many of you are mistaking non-diatonic chord patterns as key changes, anyway.  For instance, Wonderful doesn't change keys.  That's not to say it's not good, exotic stuff, it most certainly is--but key changes alone don't make something complex.  Anybody can do one.  Play a C chord for 3 minutes straight and then play a C-sharp chord for 2.  You've changed keys, but nothing could be further from complex.

Complexity comes from the whole package.  Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Counterpoint, arrangements, etc.  Complexity flows out of a command of all these things and more.  It springs not from genius but from craftsmanship.  A Bach or Handel fugue is complex--but it comes out of hard work.  Isolate the motive of a great fugue, and it's actually pretty simple, usually.  It has to be.  But then you start applying techniques to the motive, you add the responses, and slowly, a complex piece of music is erected, much like a work of carpentry.

So in my opinion, we can't look at isolated elements.  Who cares if there's a diminished chord or two?  Who cares if there's a key change?  Who cares if there's long sequence?  The song has to be looked at in toto.

So here's my analysis of IJWMFTT and why I think it's "the most complex."

1.  Melody:  The melody is pretty chromatic, but more importantly, if you think about it as a graph, it's pretty amazing how Brian manages to draw a series of ascending arcs leading to a very natural climax and denouement.  The melody is almost pure jazz, and could be fitted over all kinds of different chord changes, I think.

2.  Harmony:  As Adam says, the chords are very tricky and as I mentioned just above, they are not especially congenial to the melody.  The inversions of the chords shift from 3rd to 2nd to 1st, which makes it hard to tell the central tonality of the piece.

3.  Arrangement:  In my view, Brian's best, and heaviest arrangement.  The descending tympani, Basses, and Bass Harmonica pose as a strange synth bass patch.  The harpsichord and piano play that distinctive figure which I would love to have witnessed Brian teaching or collaborating with Mike and Don.

4.  Rhythm:  Not much way out there going on here, but the temple blocks are on a somewhat unexpected beat pattern.

Now, even after describing all that, I still feel unsatisfied that I adequately described everything, and I'm not sure that I can explain the synthesis of these parts that actually adds up to the complexity.  Perhaps some sort of Webisode is in order...

Superbly well informed, H.

+1.

Frankly, if nothing else blew the listener's head away, the very first chord (technically I over a II bass) is so bastard inexplicable as to be easily fielding genius. And enormously hard to pull off convincingly, which BW does with disgraceful aplomb. I could go on.

Just drinking down the stereo VT for the umpteenillionth time on headphones. Good sodding grief, it sounds matchless.

Is there a finer mix on the box?

Gentlemen, start your opinions please.

twopennyworth, imported from another thread

----

I'd like to lob this perspective into the mix.

Brian is recording a song he recently wrote in this newly discovered fragment. He's trying to line up the tempo of the backing track, and, with Van sitting (presumably) just behind him in the control room, sings that fragment.

If it weren't the melody he'd written for DYLW, why on earth would he have sung it? There really is no reasonable explanation other than That's How It Goes.

With the BWPS version, it seems feasible to me that he remembered some backing vocals. SMiLE contains the most complex backing vocals the BBs ever recorded (hell, that 10-part combined chord and countermelody backing for the H&V verse is possibly the greatest backing vocal arrangement BW ever committed to tape) -- and his writing had a tendency to pile things on top of each other.

If you'd never heard the H&V melody, say, but heard that isolated backing vocal track (as on the original single), you'd be blown away, and would have trouble working out where another mleody could have fitted across it. And a glance at the lyric sheet would have got you nowhere. Likewise, if you'd heard one of the three combined countermelodies of the GOK fade, you'd have had trouble imagining either of the other two, and would have thought the job was a good 'un. Similarly, the GV chorus is made of three stacked melodies: Mike's one, following the bass line, the stacked 'good bup bup', and then the stacked high line. Each would be enough on its own if you didn't know the other two existed.

For my money, this was the melody BW wrote for DYLW, and he had stacks of bvs sloshing around with it. I've always thought, for such a supreme melodist as BW, that the BWPS 'melody' for DYLW/RPR is nothing of the sort -- it's practically static; something quite uncharacteristic for BW, especially at this period in his writing, when his melodies were prone to doing extraordinary things -- big reaches (Surf's Up, Cabinessence), difficult and very satisfying leaps (Wonderful), twists and switchbacks (Heroes And Villains, this DYLW melody, Vega-Tables).

I've often wondered whether BW recorded demos. F*** knows how you memorise Surf's Up or Wonderful without committing to either tape or paper. Astonishing writing.

If only, if only...

Anyone got a copy or a transcript?

Before we get wobbly about this -- what's chapter and verse on the DYLW lyrics? What do we have, from when?

I'd like to lob this perspective into the mix.

Brian is recording a song he recently wrote in this newly discovered fragment. He's trying to line up the tempo of the backing track, and, with Van sitting (presumably) just behind him in the control room, sings that fragment.

If it weren't the melody he'd written for DYLW, why on earth would he have sung it? There really is no reasonable explanation other than That's How It Goes.

With the BWPS version, it seems feasible to me that he remembered some backing vocals. SMiLE contains the most complex backing vocals the BBs ever recorded (hell, that 10-part combined chord and countermelody backing for the H&V verse is possibly the greatest backing vocal arrangement BW ever committed to tape) -- and his writing had a tendency to pile things on top of each other.

If you'd never heard the H&V melody, say, but heard that isolated backing vocal track (as on the original single), you'd be blown away, and would have trouble working out where another mleody could have fitted across it. And a glance at the lyric sheet would have got you nowhere. Likewise, if you'd heard one of the three combined countermelodies of the GOK fade, you'd have had trouble imagining either of the other two, and would have thought the job was a good 'un. Similarly, the GV chorus is made of three stacked melodies: Mike's one, following the bass line, the stacked 'good bup bup', and then the stacked high line. Each would be enough on its own if you didn't know the other two existed.

For my money, this was the melody BW wrote for DYLW, and he had stacks of bvs sloshing around with it. I've always thought, for such a supreme melodist as BW, that the BWPS 'melody' for DYLW/RPR is nothing of the sort -- it's practically static; something quite uncharacteristic for BW, especially at this period in his writing, when his melodies were prone to doing extraordinary things -- big reaches (Surf's Up, Cabinessence), difficult and very satisfying leaps (Wonderful), twists and switchbacks (Heroes And Villains, this DYLW melody, Vega-Tables).

I've often wondered whether BW recorded demos. F*** knows how you memorise Surf's Up or Wonderful without committing to either tape or paper. Astonishing writing.

If only, if only...

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,10016.1750.html

here -- under Surf's Up discussion?

Correct link - http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/2/20/800088//holidaysvocaldemonstration.mp3

Praise? Condemnation? Whatever it may be, you heard it here first.

Praise, no diggety. Likewise Bubblegum -- excellent (and not at all unreasonable) leap into the unknown.

Now, Holy Bee -- where's that Holidays demo from? If it's the box set, I'm ready to be embarrassed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oatQnIJrq0U

beautiful gift, man. gracias.

If I am reading Brian's lips correctly on the Hal Blaine snippet, he is counting in 3/4 beat.

I'd say definitely not. It's a straight four-beat that both Brian and Hal are grooving to. Pretty clearly.

Could it be Larry Knechtel?

magnificent work, gf2002.