Info on "Cabinessence" = cannabis is from Frank Holmes?  That's great!  Doesn't really fit with the rest of the song lyrics, but that's okay.

  It's OK? It doesn't fit with the rest of the song lyrics, nor does it fit into the historical time period where at least a large piece of the song is set, with the "working on the railroad" or the whole "home on the range" section which suggests frontier America. Bring in the modern section, with Dennis playing the "truck drivin' man", and consider this: Most truck drivin' men who would choose a drug would be taking some kind of uppers or speed to stay awake rather than smoking weed which would do the opposite. So even taking the literal meaning of a "truck drivin' man", how does cannabis fit into that interpretation?

I'm just pointing some of this out because some of the interpretations being suggested need to be hammered, chiseled, and sculpted a certain way in order to fit a theory, where a song like Cabinessence has a number of interviews suggesting exactly what the song was about, and we're going to brush those aside?

If Frank Holmes says the song is a code for cannabis, how many times did Frank actually meet with Brian Wilson in 1966? It's my understanding Van Dyke was the go-between who took lyrics to Frank and may have played him acetates of the songs so he could illustrate the lyrics...I'm saying this because it's happened where Michael Vosse or David Anderle who were much closer firsthand witnesses to the Smile project in contact with Brian than Frank Holmes, have made statements on the record in the past, naming specific details, and yet their words or memories can't be trusted or are simply wrong according to some. Yet Frank Holmes supposedly says Cabinessence is about pot and that's the way it is? I'm skeptical.

I'll say again just to clarify, a great thing about Smile has been the way the lyrics can be interpreted and re-interpreted several different ways in order to back up a particular theory someone may be trying to put out there about the lyrical content. There will always be a gray area in this pursuit because even when a Brian or a Van Dyke says "This is what *that* was about..." you have people still saying "No it isn't." or "He must be forgetting, he's unreliable sometimes..." etc. And even more frustrating is that Brian can contradict himself from one decade to the next, and as I say all the time Van Dyke speaks in riddles. Ask him how the weather is and he may say "grinning like the grill of a Hudson Terraplane" or something. (I exaggerate of course).

It's a delicate issue to emphatically say "Smile is this and Smile is that" when in the case of vegetables being about drugs there is only speculation and opinion, sometimes in spite of the hard evidence. I'm also thinking of the issues around the lowercase "i" in the Smile album cover, and all of the speculation behind what that meant and how it was a metaphor for this or that when in reality it came from a Capitol artist far-removed from the album who thought it looked good, simple as that and not connected to any concept or symbolism.

For all I know, Van Dyke may come forward in a week and say "vegetables was about dropping acid and smoking reefer..." and everyone will say "ohhh....".

I forgot about "Jazz"! That would be neat, although the pessimist in me says it's more like that section on the Good Vibrations sessions where the musicians are just noodling around with jazz phrases and not making much sense of it. Kind of like an off-night jam session at the Baked Potato.

The neat thing about Smile for years has been the way someone could interpret the lyrics and the "what if?" missing components in many different ways, attaching a certain Smile phrase to a certain hidden meaning or even an obvious reference to an established fact and basing a theory around that attachment. From alchemy, to LSD, to beatnik culture, to drug culture, to the counterculture, there has never been a shortage of theories and that is one of the aspects I really like.

In the case of vegetables as a drug reference, it has been fascinating to read the opinions so far, but in my mind and based on the evidence surrounding the multimedia aspects of Brian's "vegetables" theme, I still hold the opinion that Brian was simply talking about vegetables, and it was part of his healthy food phase.

Note:
- Several photoshoots showing Brian around vegetables, at a vegetable stand, throwing vegetables with Hal Blaine, and shooting a game of pool with vegetables. Just plain old vegetables.

- Paul McCartney visiting the studio while Vegetables was being tracked apparently saw vegetables scattered around for visual effect, not to mention actually chomping on them for sound effects for the tune. Real vegetables.

- The vegetable chants, aka where "I've got a big bag of vegetables..." came from on the Hawthorne set. They're chanting about vegetables, and making it up as they go along. Nothing about drugs, no references, nothing where Brian encourages them to say anything other than vegetable names. Innocuous stuff.

- The vegetables skit with Hal Blaine and Michael Vosse. It's a long track, sure, but listen for any drug references throughout. Like the chanting, it seems to be more about vegetables than anything. Hal steals the show. But throughout I don't hear any suggestions they add drug references to the skit.

- An early 70's television appearance had the Beach Boys holding and handing out actual vegetables to the crowd as they played the song, a visual stunt which Brian did again when he played the song live in 2004 and had band members waving vegetables in the air. Innocuous fun, again, and more silly humor which is what he was about. Is waving vegetables around a symbol for drug use?

It's not to say any opinion is wrong or one is less right than another, but I tend to believe after seeing and hearing things like this that the song was about vegetables, and that's it. Brian was obviously on a healthy eating kick at the time, and part of that health obsession was to manifest itself in Brother Records projects, including a health album according to some, and it did show up when Brian opened the "Radiant Radish" health food store.

That's just my *opinion*, and I'll say again I enjoy very much reading what others take from the lyrics.

It appears some people haven't seen the handwriting from the discussion on the old Smile Shop some years ago, or even the more recent ones linked a few posts ago. I've compiled some of the examples from earlier amateur sleuthing and handwriting analysis attempts. You'll see period examples of Brian, Carl, and Diane and examples to match them up with other samples.

The first one is the moneymaker: It would appear the same person who wrote the Smile tracklist wrote "I'd Love Just Once To See You" in black ink on the Wild Honey memo...


The next are a handful to compare and contrast Brian, Carl, and Diane:

Again, since he was researching and writing about Smile well before BWPS, and has an intimate knowledge of it, I'd be interested in a few opinions and perhaps some perspective from someone like Darian who got interested in Smile as a young man before Smile was "mainstream" and eventually became directly involved in getting some of that music to the general public. It's a pretty amazing story.

  That would explain it, I have not seen the film Groundhog Day! Thanks for pointing that out, I was seriously scratching my head trying to figure out what Punxatawney had to do with this (I'm from Pennsylvania but hours from Punxatawney... )

Sad to hear this, very sad. Thought it appropriate to post a photo of Stan at the Gold Star board which created all those glorious records, since he's one of the behind-the-scenes folks essential to 60's popular music who isn't seen nearly as much as his name is listed in album credits.

Take a few minutes to listen to something as obvious as "I Got You Babe", focus in on the sounds of each instrument and the overall texture of that record, and realize just how good this man was at his job.

So Stan wakes up at 6 AM every day now in snowy Punxatawney?

I'm sorry, I'm not getting the reference. Please fill me in!

[Those feeds certainly wouldn't have been recorded, at least not at that time]

That TV monitor feed was what I asked both Dale Manquen and Alan Boyd about some years ago, if I recall...so the suggestion is that the TV feed shown being watched by the band in at least one clip still exists? Would it be on a 2" videotape if it did? I've never heard of anything like that possibly surviving, so this is very exciting news!

 Now, see, this is a primo example of why I sometimes get really annoyed - you're not reading the original post properly. Here's what it says, my emphasis added in the hope that this time you'll read the salient sentence:

"As for the video feed, that has to have been a B&W closed circuit feed set up so that the audio engineer could have some idea visually what was going on onstage - since he was backstage or off to the side, he'd have no other way of seeing what was happening. That's a common practice on mobile recording set-ups.

Those feeds certainly wouldn't have been recorded, at least not at that time."

So, it couldn't have survived... because it never existed.

Now this is why I sometimes get annoyed too, especially the overall tone which I definitely don't appreciate:

FIRST: That re-posted information was a direct answer to my very own question asked to Alan Boyd years ago (2005?) after writing numerous long posts on Hawaii in various forums and trying to research the Hawaii concerts, and finding those few frames of film that showed the concert being shown on a TV monitor as they were mixing the show, as best as I could see from that film. I've spent hours and many emails and other communications trying to figure out what exactly was going on in Hawaii from many angles, in this case the film itself (Mr. Boyd) and the actual nuts-and-bolts engineering of the show (Mr. Manquen). Short of Bill Halverson and Ed Roach who has already chimed in, those sources are pretty much the go-to guys for info about the recording and film.

NEXT: This is the quote I was referring to, from Ed Roach, posted above:

And yeah, it's a shame that there isn't footage from the video feed.  There's a similar sequence where The Boys are gathered in the control room watching themselves, and fortunately that tv stuff exists. 

To emphasize: "that tv stuff exists".

My response to that: Hooray! And *what* tv stuff is Ed Roach talking about? Sounds like something from one of the Hawaii films. I was excited to hear any TV stuff exists, which was my question about the 2" tape because that was how TV video was preserved in 1967. Just curious what's out there and excited about the possibility of what it may be.

I'd suggest if the post about the "existing" TV stuff is somehow annoying, Mr. Roach is the guy to ask for clarification. 

Since Darian has been involved with and researching Smile for decades, not to mention the fact he was smack-dab in the middle of the creation of the 2004 project alongside the two creators, I'd think he'd absolutely be one to get involved somehow. I'm assuming his musical role with BWPS might have overshadowed his work years before with the likes of Rev. Bob Hanes and others who helped spread the word to a larger audience before the Web scene took over.

Sad to hear this, very sad. Thought it appropriate to post a photo of Stan at the Gold Star board which created all those glorious records, since he's one of the behind-the-scenes folks essential to 60's popular music who isn't seen nearly as much as his name is listed in album credits.

Take a few minutes to listen to something as obvious as "I Got You Babe", focus in on the sounds of each instrument and the overall texture of that record, and realize just how good this man was at his job.

Again, I have to question the quote about the "unfinished piano piece". Seems really suspect to me. Just a vague rumor that's been floating around for years. When was that quote from, what interview was it in? Who was talking to him? I could be totally wrong, but I have the vague notion that the information was told to a fan over the telephone or something, so to me, it's just very questionable how accurate the statement is.

If "Unfinished Air Instrumental" shows up on the SMiLE box I'll eat my hat. I just don't think it's real, and was just some off hand comment Brian made without really thinking about it to appease some fan who was asking him questions.

I wanted to answer this first - This quote appeared in the Byron Preiss BB's book from 1978. Brian was interviewed by those doing research for that book when the BB's were studying and working at the Maharishi University (MIU album) in the latter half of the 70's, and I asked one of the people who did that research when he used to post on an earlier board about that very quote. It's Brian being kind of cryptic and vague, and he could be talking about any number of piano pieces, who knows -  but the quote is legit from Preiss' research and it was asked by one of the book's researchers in an official capacity, not as a random fan.

The context of that discussion on the older board was also about how Preiss scattered quotes throughout the book, and while it is overall very informative there wasn't much of a sense of context for the quotes, or where and when they may have come from originally. Hence the confusion over quotes like the "Air" comment in question.

Maybe that person reads this board and can chime in!

It always amazes me how much new information there is to learn about Leid In Hawaii, and this after questioning several people who have been quoted above. Thank you to Ed Roach and everyone for all the great stuff in this thread!

That TV monitor feed was what I asked both Dale Manquen and Alan Boyd about some years ago, if I recall...so the suggestion is that the TV feed shown being watched by the band in at least one clip still exists? Would it be on a 2" videotape if it did? I've never heard of anything like that possibly surviving, so this is very exciting news!

I'll have something more on this very soon...

(EDIT) I thought I could post a few photos from the film but I don't have the formats lined up to make it work...will hopefully have them soon.

Just wanted to chime in on "Fall Breaks...". It's not Fire, instead there was even a rumored piece of tape where Brian says something about walking through the snow while recording "Fall Breaks". Plus, a mid-90's interview where he talks about the track, if I could find it I think he mentions the changing seasons (or I could be remembering it wrong...).

About those shows - it's my understanding one is mixed down in some form to mono, as if it were being readied for something, while the other is more raw. I dont believe either show was fully mastered, except whatever tracks trickled out on Rarities and two-fer "official" releases, but I could be wrong.

Read through the Dale Manquen and Bill Halverson stories about recording those shows, in the link I posted above, and consider how the group was spending an exorbitant amount of money to record those shows. The remote recording technology they were using was about as state-of-the-art as you could be in 1967.

It tells me there might be multitrack masters of those shows in the BB vaults, rather than the mixdowns. I could be wrong. Those would be an interesting find.

I disagree on "tedious", but I could listen to Smile sessions for hours on end and not get tired of it. I'm far from the norm, though, I've come to accept that...

The interesting point is how to shave off hours of material (at least a dozen discs' worth, perhaps)  to present a few discs' worth of listenable material - I think Pet Sounds Sessions had a nice balance, while the Beatles' Anthology, specifically how they combined takes, worked in some cases but didn't feel right overall. In these cases we knew a chunk of what they had to work with, so the end results were easy to compare to the raw stuff.

"Anthology 2" in particular with the reconstructions of "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane" and "A Day In The Life" was a particular abortion.  I didn't dig the ANTHOLOGY project that much at all.  Perhaps the only thing worse is what Springsteen does to his archival sets and that is basically re-record his unreleased material.  I refuse to pick up his "Promise" cd.  I'd much rather listen to the "Darkness Sessions" on bootleg as they sounded in the seventies.  

I'm glad that The Beach Boys seem to be one of the few bands that get the archival release thing right by presenting the material as it exists on the original tapes.  When they are edits made they are tasteful (such as the work done on the PSS) and not heavy-handed (like the other archival releases I just detailed).

I agree, I think I'm more hopeful in this case because Pet Sounds Sessions struck a nice balance and handled the edits very well. I like having some of the super-rare Beatles material on the set, but for me the worst was "Anthology 1" when they crossfaded interviews and spoken word clips into the actual songs, which I thought was a horrible choice and one which they abandoned after volume 1, thankfully. Why they wouldn't just present the full tracks without a Paul McCartney interview snippet at the front, who the hell knows what they were thinking.

And re-recording or placing "new" overdubs on an archival track - blasphemy, plain and simple. It's blurring the line between a new release and a historical release, and there should be a definite line before fans cough up the big money to buy these historical sets.

I disagree on "tedious", but I could listen to Smile sessions for hours on end and not get tired of it. I'm far from the norm, though, I've come to accept that...

The interesting point is how to shave off hours of material (at least a dozen discs' worth, perhaps)  to present a few discs' worth of listenable material - I think Pet Sounds Sessions had a nice balance, while the Beatles' Anthology, specifically how they combined takes, worked in some cases but didn't feel right overall. In these cases we knew a chunk of what they had to work with, so the end results were easy to compare to the raw stuff.

Here is a great piece from 2005 that tells of the '67 Hawaii mobile recordings in great detail, as much detail as anything perhaps...and also includes a few questions I had posted to the author back then and had forgotten about. I also forgot Bill Halverson was the lead engineer in Hawaii...and notice the mention of "Diamondhead" which would soon be the title of a rather awesome instrumental on Friends.

http://wallyheider.com/wordpress/2005/03/recording-the-beach-boys-in-hawaii/

This is an older link I'm reposting here, it has some great info!

but that man's handiwork was at least partially responsible for some amazing music.

Undeniably true, as is the fact that he was responsible for a lot of deaths, unhappiness and inmates of psychiatric institutions.

Well of course, this point could be made about whiskey and heroin and every substance in between which has been cited as a creative catalyst by musicians through the years. This line could also open a debate about blaming the people who make Jack Daniels if the use of Jack Daniels leads to a tragedy of some kind.

Notice I didn't editorialize in that post, only to say the music that came out of this scene was in some cases amazing. Because the fad of "dosing" people without their knowledge, a practice which Owsley and various members of the Dead's entourage would engage in at one time, was dangerous and irresponsible beyond belief.

The fruits of this practice can be viewed for posterity in a video clip of "Playboy After Dark" featuring The Dead which shows the effects of this on camera. One of the few people not feeling the effects was Hugh Hefner who took extra precautions not to drink anything open after hearing "Bear" would be trying to spike his drink throughout the taping. There is nothing fun or funny about dosing someone without their knowledge or consent. I think they got Geraldo Rivera in the 70's too.

Am I wrong in remembering that there are/were several Heroes sessions where the track about to be recorded is slated in the control room as "part 2" or something similar? As I wrote above there seems to have been a part 2 at least in the concept stage.

Wouldn't have pegged him to go in a car crash, in Australia of all places. Just last year his name showed up when someone had claimed to have found the leather satchel John Lennon buried in his yard after "quitting" acid to take up TM in India, that lost satchel a legend for years since it was rumored to contain Owsley's product from summer 1967.

It is a controversial statement to make, but that man's handiwork was at least partially responsible for some amazing music.

After writing about "Inside Pop" and Cabinessence, yet again the thought of how amazing the missing/unused CBS footage really was to have captured the Smile scenes in full color...it's overwhelming if you're a fan of Smile to think "what if?" in this case.

Damn, I wish something would break with that case.

Brian had the concept in mind, with the tracks actually being slated in the control room as "part 2" or whatever, but I think the notion of a finished "part 2" may have fallen victim to Brian's 1967 tinkering and re-making/re-recording, after that brilliant burst of work energy in late '66 which saw a lot more of his more complete musical ideas realized. It seems the focus and energy shifted to repetitive short passages and unnecessary re-makes. Not saying there were not some brilliant moments...

Finding a new archived test edit of anything connected to "part 2" would be quite a holy grail of a find, if said test edit exists.

There was also a push for a three CD set called "The Smile Era" in 1995, a year BEFORE the Pet Sounds box was announced.  The 1995 project, which was mentioned in the Billboard piece on Friday, was written about in a lengthy article in Billboard around February 1995.  And, in fact, Billboard even later listed a release date: September 26, 1995.

I believe that this was the project for which Frank Holmes did additional drawings for several songs (e.g., Wonderful, Good Vibrations, Mrs. O'Leary's Cow and CIFOTM)

I remember reading about  this box set too - not in Billboard but I think in "Pulse" magazine - and going wild over the news. I think it was mentioned alongside the proposed Pet Sounds Sessions, and I got the impression the two were like a matching pair. So it's taken, what, 16 years for the other shoe to drop?

Pulse magazine in the Brian/Van Dyke cover story had a sidebar with Don Was, circa Fall '95, where it mentioned Was and Todd Rundgren asking Brian to consider putting the Smile material on CD-ROM, to make it an interactive experience for the fans.

The CD-ROM aspect seems to be missing from the current project - am I missing something or is it just technology that is no longer relevant to a reissue project?

Cabin Essence should keep Carl's lead, unless they've uncovered a Dennis or Brian lead from the actual sessions.
but i hope there's a version with just the "doing-doing-doing's" too! when were those recorded?

The "Doing Doing Doing" bits were Brian's last work on "Cabinessence" during the "Smile" sessions.

This specific section appears in David Oppenheim's notes from the "Inside Pop" filming, suggesting he and CBS News had filmed a vocal session where the "doyn doyn" vocals (or Doin Doin, I forget how the notes spelled it...) were being attempted, placing at least the attempt to record that part to 1966.