Well, forgive me the stupid question, I am not at home... is it? And what difference does it make? Is the HDCD encoding still 'viable', i.e. is it in common use?

It is in HDCD, as are most of Mark Linett's recent productions, but he is one of the few producers I can think of that still uses this format at all.  My Blu-Ray player is compatible with HDCD, so I've listened to TSS that way quite a bit and it sounds nice, though it's not a huge difference like you might hear with other hi-rez formats (SACD, DVD-A).  YMMV.

This seems like kind of a futile argument to me.  Would you still enjoy the art of Brian Wilson if he were a completely different person?  If it were somehow possible to remove the deep scars from his childhood that helped to fuel both his genius and his madness, the pain that drove him to self medicate, what are we left with?  Would we even be talking about him now?  Great artists are often unstable, self destructive people, but you can't just wish away their flaws. 

BR in SMiLE H&V and the intro to H&V Part 2 [there is no fire intro] were for the b side of the single, not the album.

Do we know for a fact that Brian planned to make H&V a two part single like this all along?  I know it's been theorized that Part 2 would have been the repository for the dizzying array of various bits that didn't fit into the song proper, but how much hard evidence is there to support this theory?  Even if this were the case, I don't think Part 2 could have comfortably housed all of the different experiments that Brian attempted in January and February, intriguing though they may have been.  I mean, Bag of Tricks?  Was there really any chance that this 'intro' was going to make the cut?  You can argue "Well, Brian knew exactly what he was doing, but he just didn't like the results, so he chucked it", but when an artist keeps trying different ideas and discarding them, to me, that does not suggest that he always had a clear idea of what he was searching for in the first place.

Short answer: No.

Right.  Obviously, Brian has admitted to writing many of the songs from the Pet Sounds/SMiLE era while high and he's claimed that he used those substances to help 'up his game' creatively.  This is certainly not to say that he couldn't have evolved artistically without drugs.   By comparison, look at the Zombies who were able to produce a psychedelic masterpiece (Odyssey & Oracle), though they were largely straight, AFAIK.  Brian may still have written many of same songs or melodic lines but perhaps without some of the more outlandish arrangements.  I certainly don't think that the SMiLE sessions would have happened without the psychedelic influence.

Also, I know there are very big egos at play, here, but I don't get all the confusion/delays/struggling/complexities. If you want to reunite, reunite. If you hate each other but still want to reunite one last time, finish an album in separate studios and do about 5-10 worldwide dates and be done with it, already. If you hate each other and don't want to reunite, then don't.

I have to agree.  If they really want to go for it, more power to them, but I can't shake the feeling that Brian's heart really isn't into the idea of a reunion and several of the comments he's made this year seem to support that.  Last night's non-event seemed to confirm the instability of this concept.  What's the point here?  Another greatest hits tour/cash grab?  A Brian Wilson solo album featuring the Beach Boys on vocals (which is rather my impression of this latest Joe Thomas project)?  What would people want from such a reunion, best case scenario?  

[The Beatles]

Honestly the band that should really consider doing this is The Beatles.  Paul McCartney recently put up an archive of sorts but according to the Sulpy boards it's not going to be for the public's consumption. 

Seriously though if The Beatles ever made their entire archives available for download they'd make a killing.  Something to consider though, in these politically correct times there would be certain studio banter and outtakes encompassing all bands that would be better off under lock and key.  So any band attempting to set up an archival site of any type of magnitude would probably have to go through their archives with a fine toothed comb eliminating any potential buzz/taboo words or phrases that they wouldn't want out there.

It would be nice if they did this for the Beatles, but one of the great things about that band was that they generally knew when a given take was a winner and released most of their best material on albums/singles at the time.  I know that there are still some missing gems circulating among the faithful, particularly from the White Album/Let It Be phase, but I don't think there's that much essential material left (The Anthology series covered a lot of that stuff, though they made some questionable decisions there...). 

Obviously, bands like the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones have a lot more great unreleased material, so releasing it online like this makes a lot of sense.  I hope that the Beach Boys run with this concept.

PopMatters has listed SMiLE Sessions as #1 of the 25 best "reissues" of all time!
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/151768-the-25-best-re-issues-of-2011/

I agree.

Sorry, that list is just 2011, but it's still nice to see it on top.  I kept waiting for PopMatters to give TSS a proper review.  They had plenty of room for Achtung Baby!

Noel has never really got beyond the whole "The Beatles are the best band of all time" crap the UK music media still spouts to this day. It colours every critical and creative thought that passes through his skull.

As opposed to the American music media?   We willingly surrendered to the British Invasion and crowned the Beatles kings, to a large extent.  It's also worth remembering that the British taste makers have been very favorable towards a lot of Brian's work over the years, often more so than their American counterparts.

Just so I know we're talking about the same thing ... the "Da Da" fly-ins I'm talking about are the "da-da-da-da-da-da"s from "Cool Cool Water." Is that what you thought sounded artificial?

Yeah, Carl's riffing there, though with the pitch change, I almost thought it was a woman singing at first!

The end of "Holidays" is a disaster. Not because Mark and Alan did a poor job of it, it's just not something that can be done well given the two very different keys of their sources. The "Da Da" fly-ins aren't much better - they just sound strange and distracting.

Monicker was pretty spot on with what he said. Less would've been a whole lot more, in cases like this. A handful of the editing choices seem too gimmicky, and the idea of there being regrets over a few of the decisions made considering this goes down as the official Smile album release by the Beach Boys (no matter what they name it) seems likely enough. A lot of well done stuff on here, do not get me wrong, but the previously named issues, the timing being off on several spots on the vocal of what I feel is the key track of the album ("Surf's Up"), etc. just won't do this material justice in the long-term.

For all a lot of these people know, this is how this stuff was meant to sound. They're listening to a comically slowed down vocal bit with timing issues and thinking, "Better than Sgt.Peppers my ass! This guy really did lose it after my precious, precious Pet Sounds was released."

I think that this is the issue that a lot of longtime SMiLE fans have been grappling with on the 'approximation' piece here.  I know that I went back and forth between acceptance and more of a purist line in the lead up to 11/1/11.  At the end of the day, acceptance won out because I'm just too happy to finally get an official release and for me, there was more good than bad overall, but of course, this is a highly subjective response and it will be interesting to see how this is all viewed years from now.  In an ideal world, I would have preferred a more restrained, natural approach to this material, but I can only imagine the kind of pressure Mark and Alan were up against here.  Will this stuff sour potential new fans?  I doubt it.  Anyone who has it in them to love this music will hear its brilliance despite a few odd effects and will seek it out further.

I'm still holding out hope for SMiLE. . . Naked somewhere down the road though.  

Not denying that. I mean, we're not having vehement message board discussions about Ocean Colour Scene, right? They're a successful pop band.

However, one thing I dislike about the group is the fact they've pretty much destroyed 'rock' music for smart or 'feeling' people. Whilst the blame does not lie solely at their door by any means, the cult that surrounded Oasis and the subsequent wave of blokish, self consciously stupid British rock has made it so unattractive to be a rock group. I think that sort of reductive approach that Oasis, and the surrounding britpop scene, used - even if you like to approach it as a 'postmodern' move of appropriating other art into your own, it's a fairly depressing move for what had been up until the nineties a constantly evolving medium like pop - really sent pop musicians into exploring other avenues, and now we have rock being essentially dead in the marketplace. It's great, really, but if you're invested in the idea of rock, not so much. Most British 'rock' post-britpop has been invested in the idea of thuggish boorism and musical exclusion, which makes it hard to try and attempt 'rock' if you happen to want to write songs that aren't either vague cliches strung together or about ''aving it', and I think Oasis and britpop are to blame.

I don't disagree with your assessment of Oasis at all--always thought those guys were derivative, overrated and unreasonably arrogant for band who cribbed their hits from their idols--but I think you're painting with too broad of a brush here.  I've always found their main 'britpop' rivals, Blur, to be far more enjoyable and inventive, continuing to develop their sound with each release, even when their experiments occasionally went awry.  (Damon Albarn may be arrogant too, but at least he has the talent to back it up.)  Other peers like Pulp and Supergrass delivered some high quality songwriting as well.  It could be argued that rock music has essentially been eating its own tail since the 70's, but some of the British bands at least injected some fresh new energy into the scene, and they certainly weren't the only ones to appropriate the ideas of their forerunners.

That's interesting, because I thought the fly-ins on "Da Da" were the best of them all -- seamless, sounded great, and filled out the song a little more. The only ones my ears really reject are the "whispering winds" vocals at the end of "Holidays" -- too fast, too unnatural, and too bad -- because I love how it worked on the BWPS version. All the other ones I either love or have accepted -- even the ones in "Look." When I first heard them I thought they were totally pointless -- they made an incomplete song somehow MORE incomplete by adding them -- but after a few listens my brain was already inserting them when I listened to the sessions track, so I just got over it. The "Great Shape" fly-in is in a different category, because it JUST DIDN'T WORK; the "Barnyard" one, though, didn't bother me, and it's even better now after Bruiteur's excellent work. When the box first came out, I (and others) wondered by Mark Linett didn't use spectral imaging software (or something else) to remove the piano from the Humble Harv fly-ins, and a certain Beach Boys scholar and Phil Cohen nemesis scolded all of us for presuming that it could have been done any better. And then, like, two days later ... it was done better. 

Interesting.  To me, the Dada fly-in, while it may make sense on paper, sounded totally artificial and didn't really add much to the song, but somehow I was O.K. with the 'whispering winds' on Holidays, even though the pitch seemed off.  I think the Fall Breaks fly-in on Mrs. O'Leary's Cow was easily the most seamless and successful of these experiments.

I agree that Bruiteur's work on Barnyard was brilliant, but somehow I've really gotten used to that piano line on IIGS and it sounds a little bit naked without it.

Personally, I prefer to remember Carol Kaye as I heard her on the session tapes from all those years ago:  funny, polite, and one hell of a musician, one who added many colors to Brian's SMiLE palette (acoustic guitar, banjo, 12-string electric, Fender & Dano basses, even the sound of a board dropping).

Sure, but given what you know of her, will you be able to?
I know I can't: and I know a lot less than you, AGD and many others that have studied this in-depth

Well, nobody ever said that the musicians who created the music we love so much were saints.  We pour over the details of their personal lives on sites like this and sometimes it can be disillusioning (I can think of a few anecdotes about BW that I would rather forget!), but in the end, all that really matters is their music.  This is certainly not to excuse CK's distortions and vicious attacks, but I still enjoy what she brought to the sessions back then.

I'd like to know what it is that you find so objectionable.

Do you like worms?  I think you just opened a can of them.   

They messed up, but the that show was a cultural wasteland where the people wouldn't of cared about this "old geezer band" very much.

Absolutely.  I suspect that the Beach Boys would have appeared very out of place among the latest plastic flavors of the month being showcased there.  I'm not sure what would be the best way to launch a possible Beach Boys reunion, but that wasn't the place.  Honestly, I'm amazed that any self respecting music fans place much stock in that soulless pageant to begin with--and more amazed still that I actually sat through it (usually with volume down) just for possible word of a Beach Boys reunion!

(and coughing fits)

Must have been the hash joints.  I like this take on it and unlike Barnyard, I actually prefer it when they leave the piano in here. 

I enjoy the new version here pretty well, particularly with the new vocals, but it feels a little bit choppy and rushed to me.  I wish they would have taken it at a more leisurely pace.  If they were going to include that bit at the beginning, I wish they would have followed the Sea of Tunes model, including that ascending/descending bass line bit before going into the piano and horn part.  We'll see what the fanmixers come up with now. . .

while we're on the subject, here's a new mix i made which combines the demo and the track, but keeps them mostly separate. I quite prefer it this way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUeSFjzpFJ0

Nice.  I think that's the best way to approach this one.

My own mix uses mostly stereo with a few tracks in mono due to believing stuff like "Good Vibrations" should be approached with a "leave well enough alone" approach. In the past, some stuff was only available in stereo in incomplete form, but I don't think this is really the case anymore.

Yeah, I really like what they've done with OMP/YAMS/Barnshine now too, so I'd probably want to just leave that one in mono too.

For me, the bigger point is that I would like to be able to get a full stereo version of SMiLE now.  Most of these tracks should be doable in stereo or have already been mixed that way, but there are a few hold outs, including GV, maybe OMP/YAMS and maybe Child.  Are there any others?  In some cases, you might be able to draft in alternate versions, like the instrumental take on GV.  If worse came to worse, I suppose you could resort to mono in a few cases.

I think the point is, there's not enough money to be made on stuff like this to interest a major record label -- or even a band like the BBs -- in making it available. Any expense in putting it up is too much if you don't have guaranteed sales.  The whole back catalog is already in iTunes as it is.

Well, it isn't going to happen overnight (though I was caught off guard by the speed of that Stones announcement--boom, it was just available on Friday morning).  Think about all of the other rare/unreleased Beach Boys tracks that fans have sought over the years.  There may not be enough demand to merit a fancy physical release like Smile, but in the wake of that, there may be more fresh interest than before and the interwebs might be a more efficient outlet. 

Wishful thinking?  Probably, but a guy can dream. . .   

That being said more and more artists are coming to the realization that this is where music is going.  What started with bands like DMB and Counting Crows has now expanded well beyond those shores and with the emergence of itunes and online distribution of music moving to the forefront as far as distribution goes, how long can it be until groups like The Beach Boys are motivated to making archival tracks available to download by their fans?  The fact that Linett and Boyd are plugged in enough to realize that there is a demand for this type of outlet is a huge step in hopefully one day making it come to fruition.  

The Rolling Stones just recently made their famous Brussels concert available on Google's music site, with plans for more archival material in the pipeline.  The delivery models are still in development, but it's coming as old fashioned physical media declines.  Alan and Mark didn't seem too hot on the idea--it was actually my question there, but I bet it's not the first time they've gotten it.  I imagine they could find a way to make additional archival material available via iTunes, Amazon or some other site if they felt the interest was strong enough.

Sheesh, does every thread about this track end up stuck on those lines?   

I'm still trying to figure out what Brian had in mind for IIGS.  It was included on the back cover track listing, so surely, there had to be more to it than just the short bit we've heard.  Would "eggs & grits" have recurred, possibly played against "do a lot" as a chorus?  Or would it have been part of some kind of suite with Barnyard and maybe even IWBA/WS?  Vosse mentioned hearing something like this back then in one article and even Brian referred to a 'Barnyard Suite' at one point in the 70's, didn't he?  Or is that more apocryphal? 

Is it just me or do you get the impression that a lot of the questions that hardcore fans obsess over just seem rather bizarre to them?  I don't imagine that some of the purists will be satisfied with their response regarding vintage Brian edits...

There was much less pressure, sure, having the Boys be a self-contained band. But it's still hard to understand the way he did it so drastically and suddenly, where not only the Wrecking Crew was dismissed but also the notion of recording in a professional environment with professional equipment flew out the window in favor of recording with half-baked, Frankenstein-like studio gear.

Could this be viewed as an extreme reaction to the increasingly frustrating sessions he went through in the first part of 1967?  Maybe when he finally made the decision to pull the plug on SMiLE, he felt a strong urge to start fresh with a whole new approach to the material, abandoning the seemingly fruitless quest for perfection and fully embracing a more rough hewn aesthetic.  Even when he was being half arsed, he went at it whole hog!