I think that's fair to say.  They sound kind of happy/sad to me.....Laughing through the tears....which is very much the vibe of SMiLE circa 1967....Didn't Brian say that he intended BWPS to be more happy/positive overall and that the original 1967 SMiLE was more of a bummer?  That would lend creedence to the notion that they intentionally left them out from BWPS...

Thanks for the reply!  I think I've saved the recording info well enough in my brain (great mics, great console, great techniques, great band!) that I could part with the book, but I'm kind of loathe to let go of the spatializer.....It makes many records (not just BBoys) larger than life!  Kudos Stephen!

PS:  Sorry for the double post! 

In these no gig/low income times I'm finally putting some records, books, collectibles up on eBay and am considering selling my copy of "Recording the Beach Boys" and the Spatializer....but I have no recollection of what I paid for it.  Does anyone remember what they went for and what a fair current price would be?

I think the 2 sided single would have been revolutionary (more of a mini suite/album than Dylan's necessarily split "Like a Rolling Stone" A/B)....and makes A LOT of sense...

If the "cantina" version was the A side Pt.1 ending "my children were raised.....often wise" then the B side pt. 2 would naturally have the conclusion of the tale":  "My children were raised....wise", "So long to the city....sonny down, snuff, I'm alright"

And what was that tale?  The rest of SMiLE that would have come out a few months later....Imagine if Pt. 1 has also included The Crows "Gee" and faded on the "my only sunshine, how much I love you" version of the H&V pt.1 fade (and Old Master Painter) and Part 2 did indeed include the Bicycle Rider theme  as "Heroes and Villains just see what you've done to the church of the American Indian"

These "easter eggs" would find answer in the SMiLE album....The Crows had begun singing "How I love my girl" and were now crying "Uncover the cornfield"....."You are my sunshine" had become "How could you take my sunshine away"..."Sunny down, snuff"...and the final H&V theme would have been heard as originating in Do You Like Worms as "Bicycle Rider" following the arrival of the British colonizers at Plymouth Rock....

I would strongly recommend the Sail On podcast.  They're about to move on to Smiley Smile but the nine episodes covering SMiLE are gold!

Aren't the pictures in the SMiLE booklet from Boston Harbor and Boston Common?  I wonder where the "backstage" shots are from? 

I've often thought that there are two different types of psychedelic music that were popularized in the 60's.  While both visual, in one the lyrics, arrangements, textures all combine to create a recognizable "sound painting" for the listener to enter, a'la Penny Lane or Amusement Parks USA.  The instruments and textures sound like or are directly from the world the lyrics are describing.....Cabin Essence is a classic example of this...and in the other style of psych (which came to dominate) the instruments and textures themselves create their own unique visual sound world, think Hendrix's guitar panning from speaker to speaker.  So I find quite a bit of the Boys catalog to fall in the former "sound painting" style...and occasionally a song like "All This is That" or "All I Wanna Do" are more the latter "unique sound world".....though it could be argued that the repeating layers of "mantra" of "All This is That" support it's lyric theme......and the fuzz bass and echoed vocals on "All I Wanna Do" do feel like a warm bath....

(I obviously don't know how to use message boards so I'm going to skip another failed attempt at quoting you and just re-post my reply.  Sorry y'all!   Please forgive an old man.)


Thanks for the reply!  What do you make of Brian's "Smog" PSA then?   He states explicitly that he was making SMiLE to present the facts about air pollution and trying to set up a goal for the listener to help get rid of it.  That's an overarching concept right?  The first time I heard it I thought it was a silly joke but looking at the lyrics there are explicit Air references in so many of the songs (GV, IIGS, Cabinessence, Wind Chimes, She's Goin' Bald) and subtle (Wonderful, H&V, DYLW, Surf's Up)  that I started to think this might have been the BIG ONE for an organizing principle.   But I also think it comes off as another of Brian's less than hilarious jokes of the time and perhaps some revisionist history on Brian's part....but of course the first song he cut for SMiLE after GV was Wind Chimes so........I guess I always wonder why "teenage symphony to God" or "music to pray too" to cite two examples get so much attention and the Smog recording is rarely quoted......

Not really, themes and recurring ideas grew organically out of what they wrote but it's not as if Brian and Van Dyke ever sat down discussed some kind of overarching concept for the album (beyond Brian's original "humour -> spiritual enlightenment" MO), or a cohesive narrative. It's a song cycle that reflects two guys' thoughts and feelings at a particular point in time, and some of the things they're exploring overlap across a number of songs. I think what Van Dyke said about belief is the most apt way to draw a connection between the material.

BWPS grouped suites together for aesthetic purposes in a concert performance - two that naturally organised themselves and a third for everything else. A vague elemental notion guided some of the sequencing but I wouldn't read too much into the intention. The 'bicycle rider from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii' logline is... a description of one song. Do You Like Worms, that's all. And a misinterpretation of the lyric at that. Making the last new song about Hawaii seems more informed by fan legend and Brian liking vacations than anything else.

For a long time, VDP wasn't credited on Wonderful and Wind Chimes.  The former was almost certainly his work, but what about the latter?  Nothing about Wind Chimes particularly screams VDP to me.  If someone told me that WC was indeed 100% the work of BW, I wouldn't necessarily consider that unbelievable.  Conversely, I don't think VDP has ever been credited on You're Welcome, but the alliterative, wordplay "Well, come," "Welcome to come" stuff seems like his handiwork.

Thanks for the reply!  What do you make of Brian's "Smog" PSA then?   He states explicitly that he was making SMiLE to present the facts about air pollution and trying to set up a goal for the listener to help get rid of it.  That's an overarching concept right?  The first time I heard it I thought it was a silly joke but looking at the lyrics there are explicit Air references in so many of the songs (GV, IIGS, Cabinessence, Wind Chimes, She's Goin' Bald) and subtle (Wonderful, H&V, DYLW, Surf's Up)  I started to think this might have been the BIG ONE for an organizing principle.   But I also think it's kind of ridiculous and perhaps some revisionist history on Brian's part....but of course the first song he cut for SMiLE after GV was Wind Chimes.....I guess I always wonder why "teenage symphony to God" or "music to pray too" to cite two examples get so much attention and the Smog recording is rarely quoted......

Do people here believe that SMiLE actually had a theme/concept that ran throughout the record?  Or a sequence that is easy to understand/enjoy for a new listener not steeped in the lore?   I love BWPS for many reasons but I've always found the "3 acts" approach somewhat unsatisfying.  I agree that American History/The Cycle of Life/The Elements are very much central themes but the way they've been presented as such distinct/discreet movements makes it appear that there's no overlap.....that Vege-Tables and Cabinessence for example have nothing to do with each other....though looking at the BWPS sequence again maybe I haven't been open to it/discovered it....that viewed/listened as a whole over the course of the album it does "start" at Plymouth Rock and "end" in Hawaii.....I guess I'm asking two questions: 

1.  Do folks here have a "guiding principle" for their SMiLE sequence?

2.  Do you hear BWPS as a three act record or as a unified whole?

I spent about a year trying to argue that "I'm in Great Shape," as included the handwritten tracklist, was clearly - clearly - a placeholder title meant to include all the sections excised from "Heroes and Villains" between Oct 1966 and Jan 1967. In other words, it was put on the back cover as a fairly nebulous "H&V Part II," perhaps to include such passages as "Great Shape" and "Barnyard." (As opposed to the Jan-Mar "Part II" which IMO Cam Mott fairly convincingly argued for.) This all felt very brilliant to me at the time, but reading back was a total guess on my part, with little musical or documented evidence to back it up.

Personally, I like that theory and prefer IIGS paired with Barnyard than with I Wanna Be Around.   With that said, who knows?  Maybe Brian had ideas about fleshing IIGS out into a full-length stand-alone song.  Vega-Tables was pretty fragmentary when it made the tracklist, yet by April it was a full-fledged song

For me, I guess the great areas of remaining Smile mystery are:

1. Surf's Up, Part 2 instrumental track
2. CIFOTM, vintage verse lyrics
3. DYLW, vintage verse melody that Brian briefly sings in one of the TSS tracking sessions
4. The Elements (other than Fire)
5. H&V, vintage 5-minute Chuck Britz mix

Of course, there will be fans that tell me that some or all of that doesn't exist, never existed, etc. etc.  There's a certain mindset that is bothered by loose ends and prefer "doesn't exist, never existed" as a way of wrapping the whole thing up, putting a bow on it and moving on.  And I get that, but I'm not of that mindset.  

I've always assumed that IIGS would've been the three sections that mention exercise:  IIGS, Do A Lot and Barnyard.....and of course IWBA  has the previously mentioned AFM entry that includes IIGS....so some combination of those....though in the end Do A Lot went to Vegetables......but lord knows how they would've all gone together.....

I've often wondered if SMiLE wouldn't have been one of those records that had a sticker pasted over the original track listing before it hit the shops.....If you're as old as me you probably have at least one in your collection....the Beatles "Butcher Album" aka Yesterday and Today would've been a fairly SMiLE recent example.......maybe Brian would have chucked some of the songs and maybe OMP was supposed to have parentheses or shouldn't have even been listed!

For the 5 listed above....
1.  I've always loved the album ending w/Brian singing Surf's Up alone at the piano after all the production that proceeded.....he really could make it happen "in the rough" with just his voice and piano.....

2.   Are there vintage lyrics for Child?  I've always assumed that all vintage lyrics got used....

3.  I too wonder what the vintage DYLW melody truly was but just getting these lyrics, which further confirm and illuminate SMiLE's potential political hot button "Native American" slant, was one of the many great gifts of BWPS.

4.  Listening to the wonderful, awesome, add your superlative here  "Sail On" podcast I was introduced to the stimulating idea that The Elements was actually going to be one track!  I had always bought the notion that it was a four part suite but maybe, noting the prominence Fire/Light plays in the album's artworks and lyrics, Mrs. O'leary's Cow would have been the "bed track" for a series of "fly ins" based off of the "psychodelic sounds" reel.....a'la the tape loop fly-ins The Beatles did on "Tomorrow Never Knows".....I don't actually think this is the case, just throwing it out there.....................................................................Ultimately, I no longer feel the need to know which track was which element because EVERY SONG is either about nature/the elements or is told using environmental imagery and metaphor......every single song.....So, when turning someone on to SMiLE for the first time (aka preaching the gospel!) I don't think it makes any less of an impression to use Wind Chimes for Air or  Dada/CCW for Water....I like to make it easy, obvious and intuitive for the first time listener and it blows minds every time!  (For the record I go back and forth for Earth:  Look! has an interpolation of an actual street address (12th Street Rag) and feels like the changes in season to me when it goes from minor to major to minor to section to section (the power of harmony!)....but I prefer Holidays as it could be interpreted as a hip British reference to traveling for vacation or the passings of the calendar year, which of course is based around Earth's trip around the Sun....and Linnet and Boyd already faded it into Wind Chimes for me!)

5.  As a recording engineer I know how subtle details like a little extra saturation, limiting or ambience can effect the overall impact and "hit worthiness" of a record so there very well might have been a Chuck Britz mix that simply jumped out of the speakers like all hit records do.....but I think we have all of the pieces that would have comprised it.  I have given up on the notion of H&V being a radio hit (though Bohemian Rhapsody wasn't gonna be a hit either according to the record label and it sounds quite a bit sounds like H&V to me....albeit 8 "light years" later.....) but I think if a 45 had been released with A Side Heroes and Villains pt.1 (The Crows, 2 verses, Cantina, "My children were often wise", and My Only Sunshine fade out) and B Side Heroes and Villains pt. 2 (H&V dance variations followed by the final 3rd verse farewell and "My children are wise") minds would have been extremely blown.  It might not have been a radio top 10 but sales would have been through the roof and the mystery of the lyrics would have made SMiLE a must have purchase.  What a radical and experimental record.  Talk about a new(old) sound....and what did it all mean, what was the wisdom the children had gained?!?!?  There were so many "easter eggs" you'd discover when SMiLE was released:  what the Crows really had to say, that You Are My Sunshine became You We're My Sunshine, That "Heroes and Villains just look what you've done" started as "Bicylcle Rider just see what you've done"......

Which brings me to the SMiLE idea that I can't let go of...... That SMiLE truly was a linear concept album.  That Brian actually told us on tape exactly why he was making SMiLE and what he intended it to accomplish..... to present the facts about Native America's environmental pollution caused by the growing industry demands and to set up a goal in the listener's mind to get rid of it.......That between Heroes and Villains pt. 1 and it's conclusion in pt. 2 there is an American fable with an environmental message full of anthropomorphization about anthropization from crying crows and whispering winds to  "Fresh clean air around my head" to "a tear rolls down my cheek".

A client of my recording studio asked me to turn them on to SMiLE.....which I of course obliged.....and after explaining modular, tape-edit based composition, Arthur Koestler and "bisociation", 400,000+ album covers, etc.   I thought it'd be easier to be easier to explain to them SMiLE's themes through a fictional conversation between Brian and Van at the outset of SMiLE.  Was fun to do and thought some folks on the board might get a kick out of it.....

 Van Dyke Parks:  So, Brian, new album, what are you thinking?

Brian Wilson:  Well Van, I really believe in the power of music to help people and make mental connections for people and I want to use it as a force of good.  So, I'm really concerned about the smog problem in LA and the general poor treatment of the native environment at the hands of big business so I want to make an album to try and get that point across to people and help make the change for a healthier environment and future.

VDP:  Cool!  Well, how about writing a fable?

BW:  Whaddya mean?

VDP:  Well, a fable is a fictional story that features animals, plants, inanimate objects and/or forces of nature that are given human qualities such as the ability to speak, that illustrates a moral lesson which is usually added at the end explicitly as a maxim.

BW:  Well, that's cool because I'm already thinking about writing a song for each element to get people thinking about the environment.  I've got one called "Wind Chimes".  I started writing it about how peaceful it is to cool out to wind chimes but by the second verse it turned into a bad trip the more I thought about how bad the air quality has gotten in LA.

VDP:  Wow!   Do you have any other tracks going?

BW:  Well, I've got one song that Mike and I wrote during "Pet Sounds" called "Good Vibrations" but it doesn't really have much to do with what we're talking about, you could write new lyrics for it if you want....(plays the song)...

VDP:  Brian, I love it!  And I love those lyrics!  It's Boy meets Girl.....That's the most universal, symbolism rich, blank canvas in the world for our fable. So who is this girl?  What is she a symbol of ? What is she a metaphor for? 

BW:  Ummm....

VDP:  Well, if you're talking about air....e.e. Cummings "The Wind is a Lady With" comes to mind....Or if you're talking about the environment as a whole--Mother Nature.  Or since you' are THE American artist singing about the air pollution in California how about Lady Liberty?  Or how about the effect this business of Manifest Destiny has had on Native America.....Pocahontas?  Or heading west, Sacagawea?  Or since people are calling you a leader of this new youth movement maybe she's a flower child, or a soul sister, or a surfer girl....Anyway, you get the idea.....The girl in "Good Vibrations" is a stand in for all these female archetypes that we want to keep the love happening with....starting with Mother Earth!  And look, right away in the first verse you're describing her in elemental terms:  "I, I love the colorful clothes she wears/and the way THE SUNLIGHT plays upon her hair/ I hear the sound of a gentle word on THE WIND that lifts her perfume through THE AIR" 

Brian:  Wow!  So when we write a song about how I love my girl using light and air and "blossom world" imagery we'll also be writing about Mother Nature?

Van Dyke:  Exactly!  I can think of lots of songs and poems we can draw inspiration from:  Wordsworth's "My Heart Leaps Up" aka "Child is the Father of the Man" about how time spent in nature keeps you young.  Or how about "You are My Sunshine"?  Or the "Old Master Painter" about seeing God in the sunset:  "Then came his masterpiece/ and when he was through/ He SMiLED down from heaven and he gave me you/ What a beautiful job on that WONDERFUL day/ The old master painter from the hills faraway"  You even say "softly SMiLE" in the 2nd verse of "Good Vibrations"; might be a cool connection.....

Brian:  Totally!  That might be a good name for the album!  SMiLE!  Because that's what I want to happen for the listener.  I was thinking about "Dumb Angel" because Capitol's classical label is called Angel Records and I want to write a teenage symphony to God....but Pet Sounds was too serious and down.  With this album, I want to talk about some heavy stuff but in the end I want to give them hope because we're going to make a change and make this world a healthier place.  You know, world history, American history, it's filled with war and destruction and dark sh*t but it's also incredible and beautiful. 

VDP:  Exactly, the fire of enlightenment is the Mother of Invention--it can burn you, but for all it's dangers we must not let it go out!

Brian:   Let's write it!

I agree that "Surf's Up" hardly registers as political when compared to Lennon, Dylan, Airplane, etc. but remember that Surf's Up had been performed by Brian on national TV on April 25th 1967 for Leonard Bernstein's "Inside Pop"....the word had gotten out....and as Brian explained at the time in "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God" (though it wasn't published until October '67), "columnated ruins domino" meant "Empires, ideas, lives, institutions—everything has to fall, tumbling like dominoes." 

I know it's far fetched but if Carl's CO had put the Beach Boys on the FBI's radar and next thing they know they're monitoring THESE lyrics on national TV they might want to investigate.  Open up a file......who know's maybe they we're bugging Brian's swimming pool :-)   

Actually, I just looked it up,  the FBI arrested Carl on April 26th '67, the day after "Inside Pop" aired!  The link just says he was arrested in NY where the Beach Boys were playing but if Carl was arrested at a gig I could see how that violation of their turf would freak them all out, especially Brian considering other rockers were going to jail or the psych ward for 2 jointsand he had $2000 bucks of hash stashed back at the ranch.....

Anyway, I thought it was interesting to note chronologically how much this saga lined up with the second half of the SMiLE sessions.  Brian might have had more of a reason to be paranoid than we realize. 

I believe Carl's status was offered as a reason why they pulled out of Monterey Pop but I haven't seem much about it's effect on SMiLE and it seemed worth exploring.....

Sure.  To clarify, I'm saying Brian's 1967 creative confusion and cancellation of SMiLE, not SMiLE's lyrics/themes, were a reaction to Carl getting drafted.  I think the vast majority of the lyrics were written before Carl got drafted or at least before he chose not to report to the draft  in January of '67. 

Brian was deeply concerned about the effect industry and "progress" was having on the environment and Van expanded that to encompass manifest destiny, Native American rights. capitalism, etc. 

So perhaps Brian already wasn't entirely on board with how political SMiLE's subject matter had become and when Carl found himself in a VERY political situation Brian might've found it easier to cancel the project than if he had written the lyrics entirely himself. 

If SMiLE was released and heard as a political statement it would be a political statement by The Beach Boys (not just lyricist Van Dyke Parks) and thus might have made Carl's situation even more fraught.....

I'm under the impression that the versions of "Vega-Tables" and "Love to Say Dada" that are largely (though debatably) considered SMiLE tracks were recorded in May of 1967 and that the record wasn't announced as canceled until May as well.

The timing of Carl's refusal to report/indictment/arrest was January through April of 1967 which coincides exactly with long bouts of inactivity, canceled sessions and the fraying of Van and Brian's relationship just as SMiLE was supposed to be in the home stretch. 

When the subtle metaphors of SMiLE are viewed through certain lenses it can be seen as a VERY political album with distinct opinions about Native American Rights, the degradation of the environment, drugs, and the generational changes/conflicts about to sweep the world in 1967/68.  VERY hot button issues in 1967.  How couldn't Uncle Sam calling Carl up to go to war not affect Brian's creativity?  He was asking us to roll plymouth rock over and dig the worms that the American exceptionalism narrative would prefer stay covered and just as Brian was about to release this concerned State of the Union for 1967 Uncle Sam told his brother he now had to be prepared to die for the country.  I can very easily see Brian saying, "Never mind, I don't want to cause any trouble for my brother" and Van being very pissed that Brian lost his nerve.......

Googled "Carl Wilson draft" and found this:  https://reasonabledoubt.org/criminallawblog/entry/january-3-1967-beach-boy-carl-wilson-becomes-draft-dodger-today-in-crime-history

Carl Wilson was drafted in 1966 and refused to report for duty on January 3rd 1967.  By April 5th he was indicted and on April 26th he was arrested by the FBI. 

At the very moment that The Beach Boys were going to finish and release Brian and Van's celebration/indictment of America one of The Beach Boys was in open violation of the American government.

Got me thinking that this situation might have more to do with Brian's canceling of SMiLE than the usual suspects:  drugs, lack of support, loss of artistic faith, etc.....

SMiLE was full steam ahead in the Fall of 1966 but began to falter just as Carl's draft situation took a turn for the worse in January of 1967.  Did SMiLE stall out as Carl's draft situation worsened?   Did Brian finally cancel SMiLE to avoid making Carl's issues with the US government less difficult? 

A very understandable choice considering the Vietnam draft was very much a life and death situation.....

I think ALL THIS PROVES that SMiLE was to be an incredibly deep concept album that told a coherent story through repeated musical/conceptual/lyrical/visual symbolism.   

For example the classic archetype of "Boy meets Girl" in "Good Vibrations" is retold in "Heroes and Villains" and retold in "Wonderful" from the girl's perspective.  Who is this girl?  Mother Nature?  A Flower girl?  Eve?  Pocahontas?   Lady Liberty?  Brian's muse?  She's all of these things!  Who is this boy?  A western outlaw?  A Mayflower Pilgrim?  An Okie heading to California to pick vegetables?  The Old Paster Painter of the great American landscape?  He is all these things...and Brian too!   "Do You Like Worms" is Boy meets Girl retold as "Native American Garden of Eden meets Manifest Destiny".   Imagery and ideas,  particularly (en)light(enment) and air, appear and reappear through out Brian and Van's songs and Frank Holmes art.  It is all one!

To that end I agree that one can hear in those instances how Brian was exploring the musical connections between CIFOTM and Dada.  If Dada is the first word of a baby and represents water the source of all life, it makes sense to connect it with "Child is Father to the Man"  a song about the spiritually rejuvenating properties of nature.  Then, following the cycle of life from baby to child to man who's next?  The Old Master Painter who created this beautiful world.....only he doesn't sing his song.  He sings "you we're my sunshine"....and that's Brian's enlightening message:  That mother nature is in danger but we can change course and get back to the garden.  "Got to keep those good vibrations happening with her" !!!

Here's another theory.  Why did Brian use the Crow's "Gee" in "Heroes and Villains" and also try to interpolate Etta James' "The Wallflower (Roll with Me Henry)" into "Wonderful" ?  Boy meets Girl!

From Wikipedia:  "Gee", released in June 1953 by The Crows, is a song which has been credited as the first rock and roll hit by a rock and roll group.  And what is widely recognized as the first rock and roll hit by a female artist?  You guessed it Etta James'  "The Wallflower".

If you've read this far, THANKS!.....and please allow me to conduct a poll:

My organizing principal for SMiLE has always been that it is literally a chronological history of America told in flashback by the protagonist from Heroes and Villains:  from the Native American Garden of Eden meeting the Pilgrims, thru the Industrial Revolution and Great Western Migration up to the environmentally/spiritually broken war machine Brian and Van were surveying from the sandbox in '66 as Carl's Vietnam draft notice showed up in the mail.  Ahem....

So, the album begins with Prayer, then we meet our first protagonist in Heroes and Villains who quickly flashes back to tell us his story.  Now,  going strictly chronologically I've always put "Wonderful" next to begin in Native America (she belongs there left with her liberty).  Her beautiful final fleeting notes are then rudely crashed in upon by the first British Invasion at Plymouth Rock of "Do You Like Worms". 

But it's dawned on me that for the listener to recognize that the album is specifically about America it might be more immediately understood as such if  "Heroes and Villains" is followed by "Do You Like Worms".  The lyrics are more specifically about America than "Wonderful" and its variant of Brian's message "Heroes and villains just see what you've done to the church of the American Indian" is stated more explicitly.  Followed by "Wonderful" it's as if it sets the stage (from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii) for the story we are about to hear about a boy bumping into a girl......

Well, I can't decide.  They both work on paper, but if you were hearing the Beach Boys new album for the first time in the Spring of 1967 which sequence  do you think would make the America connection most explicit?--

Heroes and Villains Pt. 1/ Wonderful/ Do You Like Worms

or

Heroes and Villains Pt.1/Do You Like Worms/Wonderful

Thanks in advance!!!

Can we all agree that there is a possibility that “Our Prayer” was once meant to precede “Good Vibrations” during the early development of the project? After all, “Good Vibrations” is plastered all over the SMiLE album-sleeve.

Yeah, I'm 100% converted to that. I think Prayer may have been moved to the closer after Surf's Up by as soon as even the October dinner party, but I'm totally on board with Prayer > GV being the original intended start of the album that got derailed when Heroes and Villains became the all-important new single. Everything out there points to it.

I need to revisit the boxset for the dates but I'm remembering that they cut "Prayer" twice.  One was in C# and the second version was in D#.  (Though maybe the D# version was just the C# version sped up a whole tone a'la "Caroline, No"?!?!?!)  Not to get too muso but the C# version would "set up" H&V and the D# version would "set up" Good Vibrations or "Gee".....

Whichever version was cut second would suggest which song it was intended to pre-ceed....though D# could mean either....shoot!

 

Thanks a lot!

Maybe it was a strictly harmonic decision to change "often wise" to "wise" but the effect of each is so different they seem purpose written.  The former is glaringly unresolved and the latter is perfectly resolved. 

After reading Brian's "Smog" explanation for SMiLE I got it in my head that it was supposed to be a very simple/not hard to grasp presentation of the facts...so what would be obvious/logical?

I put dada/child/father/old master together based on simple chronology but found that there was a deeper meaning created by doing so. 

Love to Say Dada.  Who says that?  A baby.  What is water?  The essential element for life.  What would come next after a baby?  A child which becomes a man.  And learning about the W.Wordsworth poem and it's celebration of nature it made sense following The Elements.   And what would follow a baby/child/man.....the old master painter....and yet the lyrics celebrating God and nature AREN'T sung.  He DIDN"T present his masterpiece and SMiLE down from heaven on that WONDERFUL day.  Instead he sang "You we're my sunshine".  Are you getting Brian's message? 

Isn't there a quote somewhere where Brian says that in the 66/67 version of SMiLE  OMP was the grand finale?

Can we all agree that there is a possibility that “Our Prayer” was once meant to precede “Good Vibrations” during the early development of the project? After all, “Good Vibrations” is plastered all over the SMiLE album-sleeve.

I agree!  If I'm not mistaken "Good Vibrations" was the first song whose writing was finished for SMiLE.....the message and imagery representing her (Mother Nature/Eve/Lady Liberty/Pocahontas/Flower Girl/etc.) can be found throughout the following album.  ."I love the colorful clothes she wears/and the way the SUNSHINE plays upon her HAIR/I hear the sound of a gentle WORD/on the WIND that lifts her perfume through the AIR".   Not to mention the album title in verse 2 "Softly SMiLE/I know she must be kind"

Brian was deeply concerned about Mother Earth and wanted to "keep those lovin' good vibrations happening with her"..........

I agree that  the change from "often wise" to simply "wise" is obvious but that was Brian's intent for SMiLE.  If you listened and followed the story told between H&V pt.1 and H&V pt.2 you'd become wise.  You'd be enlightened by Brian's vision of the past.  And like many fables the moral of the story is stated explicitly at the end.  Surf's Up, SMiLE summed up in one song.  One man's enlightenment caused by visions of the past.

Here's the Wiki definition of a fable:  "Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized (given human qualities, such as the ability to speak human language) and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a pithy maxim."

Of course I agree that there will never be a FINAL  ABSOLUTE version of SMiLE circa 1967, but if you are looking for a simple/logical way to put the songs together in a manner that will make sense to a neophyte this sequence works wonders.  I get so tired of reading non-believers saying Brian lost the plot and it's a bunch of half finished acid alliteration.  I think this sequence gives the lie to that untruth.  It works extremely well sequenced as a simple US history/literature/music class taught with a lot of love and mercy.

I came up with this sequence after hearing Brian's "Smog" recording when he states his intention for SMiLE: 

"The way we can help is to make a record, and more or less present the facts in some interesting manner, not boring but in some way that people can retain these facts, and to sort of set up in their minds a goal to get rid of this sh*t!" 

With that in mind i found SMiLE to come together easily as a textbook American fable about the environment and the wave of change being called for by Brian and Van (and soon many others) in 1967.  Would love to know people's thoughts!

Prayer
Good Vibrations (I HEAR the sound of a gentle WORD)
Heroes and VIllains Pt.1 (OFTEN WISE.......you ARE my sunshine)
Wonderful
Do You Like Worms
I'm In Great Shape
Cabin Essence
Vega-Tables

Holidays
Wind Chimes
Mrs. O'leary's Cow
Love to Say Dada
Child is Father of the Man
The Old Master Painter (you WERE my sunshine)
Heroes and Villains Pt.2 (ARE WISE)
Surf's Up (I HEARD the WORD)

I was always under the impression that Love to Say Dada was considered the final session for SMiLE.  The boxset refers to it as such. 

Does anyone know if Brian's "Smog" recording was made during the Dada sessions?  The Keith Badman book, referring to May 1967, states, "Some time during this month Brian records a spoken commentary regarding his thoughts on smog."

Amazing stuff Bill!  What a list!!!  Seems right up Brian's  '66/'67 alley.  The "I know you'll feel better when you send us in your letter....." lyric/section of "Vega-Tables" has always seemed to me like a line from a snake oil salesman/game show host....

And the notion that Brian wanted to keep the purpose behind SMiLE a secret instantly makes me think of Brian's "Smog" recording.  Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think it was recorded during the "Love to Say Dada" sessions and thus the final sessions for SMiLE..... 

“Air pollution is something that has become increasingly more of a threat to all of us over the last ten years, especially in the last five years since the growing industry demands……and when I hear things like that it makes me want to get involved in this thing in some way, do my best. Ok. We, the way we can help is to make a record, and more or less present the facts in some interesting manner, not boring but in some way that people can retain these facts, and to sort of set up in their minds a goal to get rid of this sh*t!"

It seems like at that moment, in light of THe Magic of Believing, he was either confident that SMiLE was finished and could finally share his goal for it or, more likely, SMiLE was "finished", Brian was throwing in the towel, giving up on The Magic of Believing and thus free to reveal SMiLE's purpose during it's last sessions, knowing he was going to put it away on a shelf in a tape vault where he expected no one would ever hear the music or his goal for it.