Just some thoughts about this track since I've started tinkering/mixing/etc with Smile for the millionth time a few weeks ago.


So, all 'revelations' put together, what I think is both historically and musically a very satisfying edit of this personal favourite song:

Verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/(half-)chorus/FADE.

Just wanted it to share with some of you who might still be reading these threads.

PS: this 'fade-out' thing made me turn down the volume of the last notes of Wonderful as well. The bass notes are brought forward in the 2011 mix, with echo and all, but  in all seriousness, it would have been a strange ending to the song. In my opinion it would have been a short fade out, just making it to end of the last backing vocals (won-won, won-won...). Much more likely and musically 'logical', I think.

This mix choice is essentially the same as Brian's mono instrumental mix from 1966, except you take out the chorus that starts off the song and you fade rather than have a cold ending.  It's important to note that Brian chose to have a cold ending rather than a fade, but of course we can't know what he would have done with the end after adding vocals and doing the final mix.

 listening to that extraction I could swear I hear the lyrics “rock and Roll” in there rather than load off the road.

That's my channel BTW, thanks to Dylan for finding it! I'm working on uploading the entire album onto YouTube as we speak!

If you have Mike Love, Not War (the 2003 album, not the song from Unleash the Love) I'd love to hear that on youtube!

Country Love - Brand New Start and Rock and Roll Country Bride are listenable - the rest is pretty awful.  Much better stuff on First Love.

For a new record, there has been very limited conversation about this release in any of the usual online BB's places.


I think Mike made his artistic statement with Unleash the Love. The majority of songs on disc one were new songs - at least to fans like me who don't have access to every bootleg or unreleased tape. I bought Unleash the Love, and enjoyed hearing what Mike could come up with this late in the game. I listened to the Christmas album, but I didn't feel I needed to add it to my collection. And the new one, not really interested. Wondering if maybe Mike had a 3 album deal and recorded this one just to get something out? Whatever, I guess it's impressive that he's putting stuff out. I don't see Brian or Al rushing to get anything new out. How long did it take Al to record Postcards? Maybe we can expect a followup when Al's 90. 

There's no doubt Unleash the Love - essentially a reworked "Mike Love Not War" - is Mike's best solo project, with some good self-written songs, even if the production is somewhat sterile.  It's unfortunate it took so long for it to become a reality because his voice was so much better when Mike Love Not War was recorded.  His voice sounded really bad on the Christmas album Reason for the Season but with the magic of autotune and who knows what else actually sounded a little improved on 12 Sides of  Summer.

The only song I found interesting was Keepin the Summer Alive - I never liked the arrangement/performance of the Beach Boys' version and this version shows the song had greater potential than Carl was able to realize on the album - not that Mike's version fulfills all the song's potential either.  The rest seemed just more of the same we've come to expect from Mike.

Girl from Ipanema - not bad but goes on for way too long.

Here Comes the Sun - the slower pace of the song sucks out all the energy in the song.  Performance isn't horrible but pick up the pace!

Do we know for sure that Redwood recorded vocals for Darlin'?  I haven't previously heard anything about wiping Redwood vocals and replacing them with the Beach Boys.  The track we have that was released on Sunshine Tomorrow appears to have been recorded as a Beach Boys track, right?  So Brian might have written the song for Redwood but recorded it only for the Beach Boys? 

That did kinda fly under the radar, didn't it?

They don't officially announce copyright sets (far in advance), right? Same for the Live copyright releases we have gotten in past years. And (completely guessing here) possibly Mark is involved with the new "Long Promised Road" documentary (mastering tunes or mixing Brian's newly recorded songs), but I don't think he would be the one to make any announcements about that...

So, if I had to take a guess:It's a Sunflower boxset. We're right on the cusp of the anniversary of this very special album - while I don't think Sunflower did as well as 20/20 or Friends on the charts, Sunflower has gained cultural popularity over the years...placing itself in Rolling Stone's top 200 albums of all time list, as well as other lists. Musicians/artists talk about how revolutionary a song like "All I Wanna Do" was. There is absolute gold on this album, and it wouldn't take much for a marketing agent at Capitol Records to turn up on the hype to market such a boxset to the public.

That is my best guess. I am probably completely wrong whatever the announcement is, I am sure it will be something pretty special.

It is one of my favorite albums. It came in at number 380 in Rolling Stone's Top 500 albums. But I think it should have made the top 200.

It should have made the top 20!

No doubt because of the amphetamines involved.

The conclusion that this new "evidence" would be enough to overturn Manson's conviction is ridiculous, of course.  So Melcher lied about visiting Manson after the murders - and he and likely others knew perfectly well that he and the Family had done the murders.  sounds like a lot of people, Melcher included, were scared they would be next and didn't want to cross him by giving him up.  But nothing about that changes the facts about the murders.

Interesting article nevertheless.  Is Gregg Jakobsen still alive?  Apparently he was quite close to the Family at the same time as Dennis and he would have some interesting tales to tell.  Maybe the writer contacted him and he didn't want to talk.  No mention of the Manson recording Desper did at Brian's house.

The Japanese Smiley Smile cd has different mixes of some songs.  I recall that Heroes and Villains is missing the wavering sound effect recorded in the swimming pool, and Wonderful is missing some of the group dialog during the instrumental break.  There may be others.  They were fixed by the US release and the AP release.

Little Pad had some differences as well, particularly in the length of the delay between sections;  Wonderful also was missing some of the sound effects overdubs during the verses.  So you have the Japan 2fer, then the Capitol 2fer which fixed most of the problems with the Japan mixes, and then the Analogue Productions which had the same mix as the Capioll but in much improved sound,

I can’t access the clip.

Because we needed another track to add to our top ten list of the worst Beach Boys songs of all time?

Manson wasn't stalking him at that time - or at least not so much that Dennis got freaked out.  He was providing women to Dennis while living in his house.  Dennis arranged a session at the studio in Brina's house, engineered by Stephen, with supposedly no one else in the studio (although apparently Brian was in the house) with the idea of cutting a demo tape to shop to labels.  After pulling a knife on Stephen the session ended, but later Dennis listened to the tape and liked Cease to Exist.

My understanding of the song is that it's about losing your identity to join a group and follow it's leader - give up your world, come and say you love me, etc.

I think it was wrong for Dennis not to give Manson credit, he felt he had given lots of money to Charlie besides letting him live in his house and eat his food and drink his liquor for free, but still . . .

If I was able to do over the track list of 20/20 with the new outtakes & sessions:

Side 1

Do It Again stereo mix from Sessions
I Can Hear Music
Be With Me
All I Want to Do (2nd Dennis vocal version)
Old Folks/Old Man River
Cottonfields (album version)

Side 2

We’re Together Again (Made in California mix)
Never Learn Not to Love
Time to Get Alone
I Went to Sleep
Bluebirds Over the Mountain
Our Prayer
Cabinessence

Lots of inaccuracies - when Brian started dropping LSD, Carl taking over after Smile failed,  Brian working on Love You simultaneously with 15 Big Ones, Brian singing lead on Life is for the Living, Al and Mikes vocals on Love You coming from earlier sessions, Mike’s response to hearing it in the studio for the first time (that’s a story Ove never heard).

Interesting that the article says Bruce “ will be “ cutting the single - meaning the Sunshine Tomorrow/Rarities track Bruce considered a demo, rather than a finished track for the Lei’d in Hawaii album.  Or he thought it would make a good single with a different more polished production so wanted to recut and repurpose the track.

I don't see this song as Psychedelic but more of a Sunshine Pop song with tons of delay and a crunchy keyboard texture. Things on Smile, Smiley Smile, 20/20 and even GV's have more of a classic Psych vibe than All I Wanna Do. It is closer to what the Turtles were doing but with an added production gauze that makes it trippier than the composition really is. Take all that away and Mikes vocal is pretty straight, the song pretty simple. Give Carl credit for pulling together an interesting mix that takes it to an artistic level that is unique in the Beach Boys canon.

Calling this psychedelic is like calling the Kinks' song Lazy Old Sun psychedelic.  It has a soundscape similarly drenched with reverb and delay, but the lyrics and the intent were anything but psychedelic, even though Lazy Old Sun was at least produced in the prime psychedelic time period of 1967.  In fact the only song by the Kinks I would label as psychedelic is Lavender Hill, although Ray has subsequently claimed he was making fun of the hippies with that song (I'm not convinced that was the case).

I'm in Great Shape incorporating a newly discovered fragment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn_cKOJRiXE

Using the new section as the tag seems to work pretty well.  The vocals don't work too well over it because it seems too fast to me - so maybe it was meant to be a tag or transition from Great Shape to My Children were Raised . . .

Apropos of very little, but Jeff Bridges shares a birthday (December 4) with...Dennis Wilson.

And with . . . myself.

My question is, what happens to all the existing material from bands that have missed the deadline for each year? Do they legally still have a claim to the master tapes and material on said tapes? If a band or artist misses a deadline, but still wants to release some kind of collection of material from a specific year anyway, can they? If you can't tell already, I know next to nothing about the legal angle of things such as these. 

Yes, the band, if they had a claim to the master tapes before (more often the label has the claim to the master tapes, but can't release them without the band's approval), still have a claim after 50 years.  And yes, if they miss a deadline they can still release a collection from a previous year, but then it's dicey whether or not someone else could rerelease those and not pay royalties or get permission from the band.  But if someone gets a copy of those master tapes and they are more than 50 years old, they can release them as they are now public domain.  By releasing them before the 50 years the copyright is renewed with the new release is my understanding.

Along with the new "produced by the Beach Boys" credit, the lack of commercial success of the albums Smiley, Wild Honey and Friends also mistakenly led critics and the public to conclude that Brian was less involved with those albums than he was.  Somehow Brian's degree of involvement became linked to sales success, to the point that the Warner/Reprise contract supposedly specifically required Brian to be actively involved and an effort was made with Surf's Up to create the appearance that Brian was more engaged with the project than he was.

Yes Lincoln and Chicago are standouts.

Let me just note how great Bluebirds Over the Mountain is in concert - never was a fan of the 20/20 cut or single but it rocks live!!

The Palladium first show All I Want to Do is killer as well.

For the Live in London release, which songs came from which shows?

The LP consists of an entire single show. The other three shows are now available as part of the download.

So the Lp was the Finsbury Park first show?

For the Live in London release, which songs came from which shows?