What is the origin of Brian's cover of his brother Carl's song, "Heaven"?  When was it recorded and for what project? I seem to recall it might've been a website exclusive or something? I haven't been able to find it on the interwebs, although I know I've heard it many moons ago.

It was a free download from Brian's then-website, recorded, mixed and posted on December 21, 2007, on what Brian says would have been Carl's birthday.  Not issued anywhere else AFAIK.

Here is a Wondermints fact that will blow your minds.  There are YouTube links to both items here.

The second track (billed as the first song) on "Bali" is "Arnaldo Said", a Latin-tinged uptempo piano rocker.  Turns out the piano riff and rhythm are an altered version of the main riff in a song by the Brazilian psychedelic band Os Mutantes, called "Algo Mais", from their 1969 LP "Mutantes." (The entire "Mutantes" album is uploaded on YouTube, the song is technically track 5, about 12 minutes in).

This pastiche was no mistake, music uber-nerd Darian was clearly familiar with Os Mutantes.  The lyric to "Arnaldo Said" contains the line "Mutantes out to get you."  And the Arnaldo in question is the group's guitarist Arnaldo Baptista.  Arnaldo himself opens the Wondermints song in a brief spoken fractured-English intro.

I only discovered this when I picked up a copy of "Mutantes" in a Seattle record store and heard the reference.  

Os Mutantes always had a reputation as a pioneering psychedelic/progressive band, though back in the day their records did not make it to the USA, being sung mostly in Portuguese.  David Byrne helped re-introduce them to US audiences through his Luaka Bop label.  The band reformed some years back and still get around, most recently issuing a CD called "Full Metal Jack."  Much of their back catalog can be found fairly easily.

I join with this consenus and add the following as a garnish:  In making Smile, Brian deliberately created each module such that any one piece could conceivably be pasted with any other piece and the results could be somewhat coherent.  The various edits of H&V and Vegetables show the possibilities of this.  Plus - and I am suprised no BB insider has commented on this - Brian refused to ask for any help from anyone, or to delegate, during this process by which he was supposedly "overwhelmed".  Maybe due to his breakdown state he was stymied, but it wasn't due to the Smile project.  He could have given some dub reels to people and told them to cut them together so he could hear what sequences he liked.  They would do the scut work and he could approve it and take the credit. He didn't; he wouldn't.    Hanging on to his Ego?  Maybe.  Also, maybe, his seemingly offhand remark in 2004's "Beautiful Dreamer" was the honest truth after all: he didn't finish assembling Smile because "I got tired of it."

Granted, the advances in digital editing made this process a lot less arduous in 2003-04 and after, where you could try things out and do new assemblies in a few mouse moves as opposed to a few minutes to get out the razor and splicing tape for each edit.

PS:  Besides Frank Zappa and the musique concrete guys, other musicians using tape editing as a compositional tool were the German band Can (whose stuff sounded like the future in 1969 and still does today), and Miles Davis, with his producer Teo Macero (from "In A Silent Way" through "Bitches Brew" and the "On The Corner" sessions).

Next to Sir Paul I am probably the biggest fan of "God Only Knows", but, gorgeous as it is,  it's not a good wedding song for the second verse as well. Some just hear it as "I can't go on without you"  but the verse assumes that's what's going to happen so life is not worth living!  My wife picked up on that right away when we were choosing our "first song" for our wedding. 

According to Mark Linett himself, it is an HDCD disc, though not advertised as one.  Put it in a player with the decoder chip and the HDCD light comes on.  It is worth having to hear the original mono mix and those particular sessions in that format, the processer gives everything a bit more "oomph" and smoothness   Some of those are replicated of course in different pieces on TSS, the CD's of which are also all HDCD.   Of course YMMV.

I trust it's obvious to everyone that Jasper (and for that matter, Brian on the slide whistle) can't hear the backing track properly?  Which is why he loses his place after the first verse?

First thing popped into my head when I heard this and the Vegetables laughing demo on TSS disc one: "Stay in school kids.  Don't do drugs." 

There are a few threads on this, which go into some detail, even beyond Bugliosi's book on Manson.  One guy with a great story is Stephen Desper (who recorded at least one of Manson's sessions).  Desper tells it best but - Short version:  Desper impressed Manson by showing he knew how to handle a switchblade properly, so Manson backed off the crazy and did what he was asked.  The material was only fair and Manson was too out-there to do retakes or fixes.

I have always dug the sound of this track, big fat and distorted, and yes it is a big left turn for the Boys sonically.  In the CD book Brian still insists he doesn't like it.

Lyrically it isn't as paranoid as "For What It's Worth" or as cynical as "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag"*, but then I was never expecting sociopolitical polemics from Mike or anyone else in this band, so the lyrics go right by me.  Having Mike sing through a megaphone is the genius touch.  Cool ride-out, too.  I actually like the sirens and noise, that is what some of those collegiate protest dins sounded like.  Mr. Desper's note explains much.  Though he said he's saving how he got that fuzzed-out guitar sound for his new book (after telling me I was wrong to assume they just plugged the fuzzboxes directly into the soundboard, which is what 10cc did to copy this effect).

*Little known fact: Country Joe WAS/is a Vietnam vet.  He was stationed there earlier in the 60s, before the big escalation. So he knows whereof he sings.  He wears his own fatigues ("McDonald") performing at Woodstock.

(Meant to post in this thread, sorry)

There was a good laserdisc version of this a few years back, with a Frankenheimer commentary (the movie is clearly a favorite of his).  Rock Hudson thought this was his best acting performance.  I presume Criterion will be using the  restored "European version" which contains a lot of nudity for the time, all cut from the US version just before the ratings system was launched (everyone getting naked to stomp grapes at a love-in-type party).  Frankenheimer knew Hudson would only do it once so he had a bunch of cameras shoot the action, then wild-tracked in dialogue as needed.

Given how unsettling this movie is, even  45 years later (like Night of the Hunter or Psycho), the enduring mystery is who would have recommended this movie to Brian, or what motivated him to go see it, especially in light of his reaction to it.

There was a good laserdisc version of this a few years back, with a Frankenheimer commentary (the movie is clearly a favorite of his).  Rock Hudson thought this was his best acting performance.  I presume Criterion will be using the  restored "European version" which contains a lot of nudity for the time, all cut from the US version just before the ratings system was launched (everyone getting naked to stomp grapes at a love-in-type party).  Frankenheimer knew Hudson would only do it once so he had a bunch of cameras shoot the action, then wild-tracked in dialogue as needed.

Given how unsettling this movie is, even  45 years later (like Night of the Hunter or Psycho), the enduring mystery is who would have recommended this movie to Brian, or what motivated him to go see it, especially in light of his reaction to it.

That doesn't make AGD wrong in his assessment.  Over the years many audiophiles/musicians develop a malady I call "studio ears", where you can actally pick out mix moves, tape edits, pitch corrections, and live-performance melds.  Much as I marvel at studio miracles like GV, now that Mr. Desper and others have explained how it was assembled, I can hear every tape splice and every duplicated module.  It is incurable, you will always hear these things, and frankly the better the sound system the worse it can get.  A good sensitive mix makes thse things harder to spot on a first listen but with repeated listenings you can begin to spot the pigeons.  I know I suffer from this malady, and I wouldn't be surprised if AGD has it too.

It;s no secret that some artists made their living this way:  Frank Zappa would happily graft a basic track from Milan, cut it into a Berlin performance, then overdub a solo from an entirely different live track from Berlin.  I think he called it xenocronicity or something.  But the "fixing" of so-called live performances in the manner AGD describes goes back to the beginning of the multi-track era.  A favorite example of mine from the 1960's is the Ventures' live album: the Japanese cheering from the concert in "Tokyo" is clearly a tape loop being repeated over and over, and the performances sound clean enough to have been studio "live" recordings with audience dubbed in.  

Couple notes: actually Andy Warhol DID earn his producer credit for VU and Nico, in a very real sense: he ran interference for the band while they recorded what they wanted.  When the engineers wanted something changed or questioned the band Warhol just said "no, no, I like what they're doing" (the VU that is).

So in that sense of being The Guy Who Had The Final Yes, Brian could be credited as (chief) producer.

I have yet to come across an EU copy of TLOS but from what AGD says about the bad shrill sound he encountered, it probably WAS remastered badly by someone else over there who thought they could do better.   (You wouldn't think they'd bother, it's easiest to just do an FTP* of the US master to the EU pressing plant).  The US versions of the CD and the vinyl seem OK.  And yes a bad mastering job can make a good record sound like sh*t, as is often the case with most brickwall-mastered songs these days.   And books can be written on the mastering practices of US record plants vs. those in England, Europe and Japan, and how different the masterings can be, most obviously the Beatles catalog, but tons and tons of others as well.

*file transfer protocol, as in, upload it via the webz.

Bringing this back to the OP's question: YES THERE WERE. social critics of the Boys - mostly from the with-it hippie-types back then.*

After Smile failed and Rolling Stone dissed the BB as has-beens, many rock critics and writers fell right into line to echo that idea.  Underground press-types liked to say: The BB were over the hill, reactionary.  Too white.  Or at least white-bread.  No soul (obviously never heard "Wild Homey").  We were all told that the Hip Kidz were rebelling against school, while the BB sang about "be true to your school", cars 'n' girls, how quaint, how old-timey, how un-socialist workers party,  buncha football hero jocks, etc. etc.

This was years BEFORE Mike joined the GOP, BTW.  We are talking "Smiley"/"Friends" era for this kind of talk, which only stopped when the Boys reinvented themselves for the early 70s.

To be fair some perceptive journos never gave up on the Boys during this critical drubbing, like Lester Bangs.


*(I resemble that remark)

Shannon was also the name of Henry Gross's dog.  She got a barking credit name check on his prior A&M album.

Or to paraphrase Casey Kasem: a song "about a f*cking dog dying!"

Not a chart single but anyone remember "There's No Surf In Cleveland" by the Euclid Beach Band?  A goof track produced by Eric Carmen.  (Maybe it's one of the YouTube videos above, didn't look)

I could see Trent Reznor's "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"  winning for best "visual media" score (movie soundtrack).  It is a good listen if you like his more atmospheric "Ghosts" side.  But yeah, I don't see why it's in  for best box set, other than being 3 CD's worth of stuff, weird.  And the exclusion of TSS from the best box set category there is very odd considering the assembly of "Smile" on disc 1 (and most of the other 4 CD's) was never heard in that form before -- unlike Ram or Some Girls.

Thanks for all this detective work.  Much is explained.  Like how some of the early reviewers were hating on this stereo mix, I am now surmising because of the errors in the Japanese CD version.  Now fixed in the US.  And the US is  the only stereo version I have, which is why I was scratching my head at some of the complaints about things I couldn't hear because they were already fixed.

I'd always liked this LP for what it was because I didn't know the backstory when I bought it in 67.  Just thought it was ultra-psychedelic in a lo-fi "Virgin Fugs" kind of way, with the big band numbers to give it heft.  Didn't they mean it to sound like that in the first place?  Well didn't they?

Once I heard it with more open ears, on better gear, I still loved it but I could hear something that left me cold, maybe Brian's couldn't care less approach.

But now we have the new mono/stereo remaster, which is why I'm back.  Maybe it was my older player, but the new HDCD mono master sounds fine, quite lush, not as cold and distant (as does the prior two-fer; maybe it's the same mono remastering).

But the stereo (with the exception noted below) is an absolute eye- and ear-opener for me.  I know a lot of the cognoscenti including Ian hate it.  But I like like like it in stereo.  I love things like "Vegetables", "With Me Tonight"  and "Little Pad" all spread out, with all the detail.  The greatest revelation is "Fall Breaks", which intrigues me again as a piece of music and not just a "Fire" rewrite.  I love the little cross-channel ping-pong stuff Mark throws in throughout; though done in 2012 it makes the whole thing sound even more like the summer of 1967. Warm and clean.  I will be playing this one a lot.  The fake stereo GV I can ignore if I don't play it with headphones.   Well they gave it a shot I guess. I do NOT hear the bad edits some claim, and I have A/B'ed the stereo and mono versions, and checked the LP too.

Among other things, there are some direct references to Edgar Allan Poe - Brian and VDP were both fans.  "The Pit and the Pendulum" obviously, and "columnated ruins domino" refers to the Fall of the House of Usher.  In which, at the end, the mansion collapses, and the columns fall like dominoes.  (See! It all makes sense!)

Aha!  Thanks for the heads-up, will be on the lookout for the new book when it's ready.

So here is a follow-up question for you about one of the tricks you described in the Brian's Home Studio thread.  I figured I would ask it again here.  I will take my answer "off the air", as talk-show callers say.   The second example was:

"Use one Pultec to overdrive a second Pultec. An early form of "fuzz guitar" sound. Give body, by driving the low end into harmonic distortion. Only possible with tubes. "

Is this how you got the whopping guitar sound on Student Demonstration Time?  I have always loved the sound of that track - though I know Brian didn't as he says in the Surf's Up CD booklet - and 10cc stole that guitar sound for their first two albums for Jonathan King's UK label.
                             

So a follow-up question for Mr. Desper on one of the tricks described above:

"Use one Pultec to overdrive a second Pultec. An early form of "fuzz guitar" sound. Give body, by driving the low end into harmonic distortion. Only possible with tubes. "

Is this how you got the whopping guitar sound on Student Demonstration Time?  I have always loved the sound of that track - though I know Brian didn't as he says in the Surf's Up CD booklet - and 10cc stole that guitar sound for their first two albums for Jonathan King.

I for one am very much liking the new stereo Smiley Smile.  I think it really is stunning all spread out.  Love the little details off to the sides.  "Fall Breaks" now intrigues me again, no longer sounding like just a "Fire" rewrite.  I like a lot how Mark Linnett psychedelicizes it with the odd bit of cross-channel ping-ponging.  I agree the "stereo extraction" of Good Vibrations is a bit strange though, it doesn't offend but you can hear the artificiality of it.

Sorry Ian.  Two men say they're Jesus, one of 'em must be wrong...

I've seen extraction protocols (also called "spectrum analysis") advertised for Sound Forge and Pro Tools, there are no doubt others.  Originally developed by the mash-up guys like Mark Vidler, the Who Boys and Chris Shaw to do things like paste the Paperback Writer vocals over the Pleasant Valley Sunday music track, among hundreds of others.

Ian is simply summarizing what many, including Peter Carlin, have reported over the years.  The "strangeness" is not the band, they can come and go at will, like Zappa's stable of musicians.  It's the entourage(s) each has, who don't get along or just don't bother to communicate with each other.  Some people there could be the closest buds one week, but this week be persona non grata - David Leaf, anyone?   Nor is this a fault unique to the BB; see, e.g., the Eagles, CS&N over the years, etc.

This pigheaded refusal amongst the entourages (encouraged by the main guys. to be sure) to keep the lines open has caused the current kerfluffle, which is all  it really is.  A few phone calls among the principals (or a meetup at a favorite steak house) would sort it out in an hour or two.  But that's up to them.  I would be very surprised if it came to some kind of boardroom showdown.  But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Indeed, after all these years I am now convinced that Mike's ill-advised 2004 court case could have been avoided if certain of the designated "people" would have just TALKED to each other.  There might not have been a group hug about BWPS but maybe the Wings-of-Egos "boil" could have been reduced to a low "simmer".

Well as long as we're doing crazy talk, supposin' the initial "more funky" complete take of GV made the Pet Sounds LP, then Brian decided to tinker with it and make the separate "single version" we know now, a la "Help Me Rhonda?"

(returns to tinkering with vastly better running order for Sunflower which don'cha know is far far better than anything the group coulda done and that's why I'm so rich and famous)