Here's my new stereo version of Do You Like Worms? I restored the kick-drum during the second chorus, and I also added in an abandoned piano riff during the third part. The indian chant vocals are also brought out more during the choruses/pre-chorus, they're my favorite part of the song, they're what got me so attached to Smile in the first place. I honestly think it's the best mix I've done so far, it just sounds absolutely amazing! Tell me what you think!

http://www36.zippyshare.com/v/7JZpZhDX/file.html

sounds good!

Very good indeed! Like the way you can hear really clear slide guitar on that Hawaiian third section..

Actually personally I don't like the squeaky slide guitar that loud, it's so unharmonic. But the louder piano on the Hawaiian chant is a vast improvement! How did you do that?

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

Over and over the crow cries and HOVERS THE WHEATFIELD

Over and over the thresher UNCOVERS THE CORNFIELD.....

Makes more sense if you switch em around. Typical VDP wordplay! 

Except it's "hover" and "uncover", not "hovers" and "uncovers"...

Since I got no response in the other thread, I'm hoping it was just lost in the discussion and I'll have better luck here so I'll ask again. Regarding "Wind Chimes", do we know of any vintage, Brian approved edits beyond the ones on the two box sets?  The main one on TSS was made to resemble the BWPS version. Am I correct that no such edit existed in the 60's? Did any others?

Not an "edit", but the structure of the first version of Wind Chimes, not recorded in sections but in one go from beginning to end, was exactly as they did it for BWPS. Only that first version didn't have marimbas for the verses but harpsichord instead.

The 1993 version is based on a tape which has those three sections on it but not properly edited together. Maybe Brian didn't get around to add the following sections to that tape. Maybe he decided to shorten the song to those three sections, junking the following ones.

I think I read $800.

I thought for a long time it was "cotillion", a dance.  Never made any sense grammatically,

Neither does "Over and over the thresher and hover the wheatfield" - VDP doesn't bother with grammatically correct streams of consciousness. So, no use ruminating about it IMHO.

CMan -

Dave Marks, when he was here, claimed (I don't think for the first time, I think this was also in Stebbins' book) that he did the guitar break on "Don't Worry Baby."  His story is that with the band on tour Brian called him in to do the overdub, even though he was out of the band at that point.  The fact that it's on a discrete overdub track on a bounce of the basic (and presumably done at a later date), and that the only other person recording on the bounce overdub reel (presumably around the same time) is Brian, would tend to back up this story.  Any thoughts on this?  Do we have a confirmation that it was Carl and not David?

Would be good to know, since this is (in my opinion), one of the great guitar "solos" in rock 'n' roll history.  

Yes, the guitar intro, solo, and outro are "dropped-in" on the same track as Brian's first lead vocal. Do we know if the band toured without both Brian and David at this time? Either way, although there's no way to know for sure from the session tapes, there's enough circumstantial evidence IMO to warrant identifying David as the possible "lead" guitarist on "DWB".

You know, as I think about it, it's also stylistically not the kind of thing Carl would do on lead guitar.  Brian of course could have specified the part, but I could also visualize Carl balking at just playing two chords over and over as the solo.  Brian may not have wanted to even go there.  Might have been easier all 'round just to have David punch in the part if Carl was gone, rather than wait and possibly have a conflict over the part. 

That "solo" is so basic that Brian could just as well have played it himself had he wanted to.

I posted this in the "Initial Structure" thread but thought I'd throw it in here too. I won't go into full details, considering I already did in other thread, but it's a 9 1/2 minute version of Heroes & Villains and contains Barnyard, IIGS, & OMP along with many other sections...

http://www60.zippyshare.com/v/aCCI5fXq/file.html

Not blaming you for this, but I've long thought that it's funny that 'H&V Intro' doesn't sound good at all as an intro to H&V. Not to me anyway.

Especially as it's basically a variation of the "Who Ran The Iron Horse" section.

That's interesting that you should mention trains. For a very long time I've envisioned 'H&V Intro' as the soundtrack for Our Hero (or is it Our Villain?) being chased by a group of ridiculous  Keystone Cops. There's a chase through the city streets into the nearby train station. Police whistles blow telling the fugitive to "Stop!". Slapstick ensues as the bumbling cops, clumsily falling down or bumping into each other, search for the fugitive while the train whistle urgently signals that it's ready to leave. At the last moment, Our Hero manages to leap to the back of the caboose in true Charlie Chaplin style, waving behind to the inept cops as the train leaves the station, accompanied by a final fading blow of the  train whistle. And so, Our Hero has fled the city, never able to return lest he be arrested to stand trial for his crime. This sets the stage for the lyrics of Heroes and Villains. For a number of years Our Hero (or Villain) has escaped to the Southwest frontier and lived life peacefully. Assuming a new identity, he fell in a love with a girl and had children. Inevitably, his past catches up with him when he hears "You're under arrest!". Maybe there's some gun play, and his true love is killed in the crossfire. He's thrown into the hoosegow and faces being hung for his past crimes.

Not with that amount of detail, but basically that's how I interpret the "H&V intro" too.

Herein lies one of the problems with the modular recording. A basically good idea just doesn't necessarily work that well when edited together as this intro and the song proper.

If there ever a stand-alone track called "Heroes And Villains, part 2" was planned, I don't think it was the second half of one whole song, but related to "Heroes And Villains" in the same way as "Shut Down, part 2" is related to "Shut Down". The A-side wouldn't have been "Heroes And Villains, part 1" but plain "Heroes And Villains" proper, the whole of it as it was supposed to be, and the B-side "Heroes And Villains, part 2" joyful fooling around with the intention to avoid using a track from Pet Sounds nor from SMiLE as a B-side. Brian is quoted with not wanting to use an album track, maybe just recording himself with a piano for the B-side, but not having decided yet.

Here is a quote from Brian himself in February 18th, 1967:

“I’m doing the final mix on the A-side tonight, but I can’t decide what to do on the other side. The easiest thing would be to pull something off ‘Pet Sounds’, but I feel that that would be cheating the record-buyer. On the other hand, I want to keep as much of ‘Smile’ a surprise as possible. I may end up just recording me and a piano-I tried it last night in the studio. It would be an interesting contrast, anyway.”

Thank you, that's the quote I was thinking of but was too lazy to find and type. Was Feb 18 the date it was published or the day of the interview?

10/10 with the 2 good guesses.

OK, must be me, then... but when I click on the link, there's no quiz on the page I'm taken to. So what am I doing wrong ?

I know the answer, but you'll have to find it by yourself. I found out the answer to my Surfin' Safari question myself, too, btw.

I posted this in the "Initial Structure" thread but thought I'd throw it in here too. I won't go into full details, considering I already did in other thread, but it's a 9 1/2 minute version of Heroes & Villains and contains Barnyard, IIGS, & OMP along with many other sections...

http://www60.zippyshare.com/v/aCCI5fXq/file.html

Not blaming you for this, but I've long thought that it's funny that 'H&V Intro' doesn't sound good at all as an intro to H&V. Not to me anyway.

Especially as it's basically a variation of the "Who Ran The Iron Horse" section.

Sickening at best. The "Turd" in the group and always will be.

Not nearly as sickening as you are.

The second iteration is written by Brian and Van Dyke Parks, beginning sometime in May (and possibly completed, in compositional terms, that same month). By October 1966, at the latest, it includes sections entitled ‘I’m in Great Shape’ and ‘Barnyard’. Combining the ‘Humble Harv’ demo of November 4th ('Miller is excited: “That is going to be the greatest record anybody's ever heard"' - Teen Set) and the the ‘Durrie Parks’ assembly of three sections of the song, we have a possible sequence for [some of] this version as follows:

[from 'Humble Harv':] Verse - I've been in this town so long/Verse - Once at night, Cotillion squared the fight/Flutter-horn transition/IIGS - Fresh Clean-Zen Air/[from DP acetate:] My children were born, they suddenly rise/Verse - At three score and five/[from 'Humble Harv', ‘here’s another section now’:] Barnyard.

The problem is that the My Children section wasn't recorded until 1/27/67.

True, but that goes only for the Cantina mix that survives. The lyric "My children.. 3 score&5 ...survive with the H&V" could have existed before, and just be sung over the verse track, as it's really a third verse lyrically/metrically/melodically.

It's funny, I've been wondering the same thing. I've been reading up on Brian Wilson lately, including old and recent topics on this board, and find it curious how little mental illness comes into the discussion. If BW was hearing voices, thought his music was causing fires, people were bugging his house and a witch was putting thoughts in his mind via ESP, then I would suggest trying to establish logical reasons for abandoning certain tracks or altering production credits is fairly pointless. I would guess his thought processes were often irrational and difficult to understand.

Pretty good point.

Wow. That section goes back that far. Interesting. Since Mark followed Brian's '66 rough mix for the first box, do we know if Brian ever made a contemporary mix of "Wind Chimes" with that section also included or was the decision to include it more of a 2004 idea?

I would say that ending tag remake from 10/5/66 was dropped and the original "chorus reprises" from 8/3/66 were reinstated in 2004 to  make an exciting performance. 

And a good decision too! I remember how disappointed I was with the 1993 version, like, that's... it? I would have replaced the piano tinkering of the 8/3/66 version with excerpts from the so-called "tag" for the finished version, though. In fact I did for my own pleasure.

5-Doesnt understand why Brian chose to credit the Production of Smiley to the BBs. Says Brian was in control even during that time.

IMO... Either Brian was prepping to hand over the reigns to the other Boys in the near future (as he in actuality did) and thought this credit would be a step in that direction, or SS on purpose was an underproduced effort (an intentional attempt to make it sloppy and not very good) as a "gift" to the band in the form of a passive-aggressive swipe for lack of band support for the SMiLE tracks. Or perhaps the decision was a drug-hazed combination of both ideas.

I think it's very unlikely that neither of those ideas had an iota to do with the credit.

I disagree. I think the reason was the alienation between Brian and the rest of the group that had developed since Brian quit the road, both in human relations and artistically, and the fact that in the media coverage the other BBs were reduced to a little appendix to Brian. That production credit was to signify, "We're a group, not a king and his servants", and directed not so much at the public, but at the touring Beach Boys.


Surf's Up... I'm not happy with the arrangement the way it turned out for posterity either. In the first movement, the clinky-clanky percussion destroys the beauty of the melody, the harmonic elements are way too low, and it is still too fast IMHO. Too bad he didn't have the time to try another arrangement, and that we didn't get to hear the results of the January 1967 string overdub attempt. I like the horns arrangement though -  and that's mixed too low again in the TSS version. A real loss that it wasn't mastered in 1967 and never received the majestic soundscape of GOK or IJWMFTT.

The worst lyrics on the album are Wind Chimes,

Personally think DYLW is the worst lyrics, but I agree with you that they should have kept the cornucopia verse, my favorite VDP lyric along with the verses to Cabin Essence.

With all this fighting about the lyrics going on back then, I think whether the album would have been a success or not was more or less all down to the music, not the lyrics. As somebody pointed out many moons ago, in non-English language countries at the time the lyrics to, say, Sloop John B. (#1 in Germany) were just as obscure to the general public as the lyrics to Heroes & Villains (#34) or Do It Again (#4).

They speak english in germany. Unless your point is the folk song SJB is based on, the idea of cowboys, etc would be foreign to them.

My point is: In the 1960s, knowledge of the English language amongst German teenagers (my parents among them) was still very poor. They wouldn't have understood the lyrics of neither of the songs I quoted, wouldn't have been able to tell that the lyrical style of VDP was different from Mike Love's or folk songs' lyrics.

"They speak English in Germany" - we're much better in doing it now, but - not - really. Usually we speak German...

If there ever a stand-alone track called "Heroes And Villains, part 2" was planned, I don't think it was the second half of one whole song, but related to "Heroes And Villains" in the same way as "Shut Down, part 2" is related to "Shut Down". The A-side wouldn't have been "Heroes And Villains, part 1" but plain "Heroes And Villains" proper, the whole of it as it was supposed to be, and the B-side "Heroes And Villains, part 2" joyful fooling around with the intention to avoid using a track from Pet Sounds nor from SMiLE as a B-side. Brian is quoted with not wanting to use an album track, maybe just recording himself with a piano for the B-side, but not having decided yet.

I agree. I dont believe in the idea of a sampler of the album using reworked pieces that would actually appear there (presumably) like Barnshine fade and things like that, but I think Side 2 would probably be some of the leftovers that didnt make the cut for Side 1.

No, not leftovers - stuff recorded intentionally for using it as the B-side. Maybe - probably - the chants.

I agree with the idea of side A being the single and self-contained.
As for pt 2, but the more I listen to the part 2 vocals variations, the more I hear this so-called ''sampler'' of the album.
Just listen to the music underneath the different sections:

Gee/HV variation 1- Im' In Great Shape 
HV var 2 - Cabin Essence (Who Ran The Iron Horse)
HV var 3 - Vega-Tables (Fade)
HV var 4 - Wind Chimes
Fade - The Old Master Painter

var 3: DYLW, rather. The V-T fade was made later and IMHO wasn't planned at that time

If there ever a stand-alone track called "Heroes And Villains, part 2" was planned, I don't think it was the second half of one whole song, but related to "Heroes And Villains" in the same way as "Shut Down, part 2" is related to "Shut Down". The A-side wouldn't have been "Heroes And Villains, part 1" but plain "Heroes And Villains" proper, the whole of it as it was supposed to be, and the B-side "Heroes And Villains, part 2" joyful fooling around with the intention to avoid using a track from Pet Sounds nor from SMiLE as a B-side. Brian is quoted with not wanting to use an album track, maybe just recording himself with a piano for the B-side, but not having decided yet.

This also all but confirms then that Wind Chimes isnt Air for the same reasons as well as the lack of a Frank Holmes esque bit of evidence. Same with the idea of Surfs Up as Water. In fact, I think Anderle's testimony is further evidence against any kind of elements suite of standalone songs.

Who was claiming Wind Chimes was air in 1966? I must have ocerlooked that. They decided to use WC as air for BWPS to make a suite of standalone songs, a wise decision given the material they had, and that's what Brian seemingly wasn't able to back then: making final decisions. Until he decided to scrap it.

The worst lyrics on the album are Wind Chimes,

Personally think DYLW is the worst lyrics, but I agree with you that they should have kept the cornucopia verse, my favorite VDP lyric along with the verses to Cabin Essence.

With all this fighting about the lyrics going on back then, I think whether the album would have been a success or not was more or less all down to the music, not the lyrics. As somebody pointed out many moons ago, in non-English language countries at the time the lyrics to, say, Sloop John B. (#1 in Germany) were just as obscure to the general public as the lyrics to Heroes & Villains (#34) or Do It Again (#4).

Oh dear, I switched around the words "being" and "constantly" - very bad quoting!

Micha - your English is excellent.  Don't be so hard on yourself.

I usually am, but this time I was only kidding. Hence the Smiley.

What is this "willing to be subordinate?" I get that Brian was "patiently exacting" in the studio, but I am impressed that he worked collaboratively with fellow creators and not a dominator, running out ideas and concepts. Artists often disagree and it is part of the process. That is a given.

Is it in the Jules Siegel piece where it is said that VDP grew tired of "constantly being dominated by Brian"? It's somewhere in LLVS, anyway.

YES

Here's the "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God" article
https://read.atavist.com/goodbye-surfing-hello-god?no-overlay&preview

"Van Dyke Parks had left and come back and would leave again, tired of being constantly dominated by Brian."

Oh dear, I switched around the words "being" and "constantly" - very bad quoting!

What is this "willing to be subordinate?" I get that Brian was "patiently exacting" in the studio, but I am impressed that he worked collaboratively with fellow creators and not a dominator, running out ideas and concepts. Artists often disagree and it is part of the process. That is a given.

Is it in the Jules Siegel piece where it is said that VDP grew tired of "constantly being dominated by Brian"? It's somewhere in LLVS, anyway.

Micha  - my context which I may have explained poorly, was the "BRI band member" context. 

I'd never have guessed that, as holy bee used the phrase "willing to subordinate" in context with Brian's lyricist.

What is this "willing to be subordinate?" I get that Brian was "patiently exacting" in the studio, but I am impressed that he worked collaboratively with fellow creators and not a dominator, running out ideas and concepts. Artists often disagree and it is part of the process. That is a given.

Is it in the Jules Siegel piece where it is said that VDP grew tired of "constantly being dominated by Brian"? It's somewhere in LLVS, anyway.

I'm not arguing that Mike's attitude doesn't rub a lot of people up the wrong way. Just that there are a group of people for whom hating Mike seemingly overrides everything else, and it seems to distort the whole culture of Beach Boys fandom in unpleasant ways. Saying "I think Mike is overly defensive and unwilling to admit mistakes" is a reasonable position which one can agree with, disagree with, or ignore (for my own part, I think that's probably true, but I also don't really care -- as I said, I don't have much invested in the band members' personalities). The screaming rages some people seem to go into are a different matter though.

I agree with all this. One can criticize and defend Mike, but some people are really offended if somebody dares to say something positive about him. Then you have an agenda or are paid by him or are part of his online face saving crew and whatnot. Nobody says Mike is a saint or a genius. (Unless someone does in that magazine article I haven't read.)