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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 agree with your five "holy grails" of lost SMiLE material and would also add the missing vocals for Look (we know they were recorded based on session logs) and the vocals for Wind Chimes' fade (Vosse claims to have heard this in Fusion or Teen Set as I recall) to make it an even 7. For me, if we just had definitive answers of what these 7 pieces were, we could finally complete the SMiLE puzzle in all its glory. (Certainly there's no one way to do it, of course, but the full breadth of material would be there to work with I mean). Is the 5-minute Heroes you mention the same as the two-sided cut that Vosse claims to have heard?

Also, the posters saying that each song doesn't have to directly unambiguously lead into the next are right. Like, the songs on Pet Sounds all chronicle the various stages of teen love (waiting for the girl to be available after a breakup, being together, heartbreak, etc) but they don't go in exact chronological order, they go where they sound good, where the flow is upheld. And even then, Sloop John B doesn't coincide with that overarching theme (but I still love it and prefer it on the album to any other potential replacement I've seen thrown around, like Little Girl I Once Knew or Guess Im Dumb) so it stands to reason the SMiLE tracks might take some unexpected zigs and zags outside of what order makes the most conceptual sense. If you all follow me.

This is a rehash of what I've said many times (to the point of pissing a lot of people off at me back then--sorry) but I'll post it here because, hey, it's relevant, I've been gone for like ten years so some people may not know my take and also for posterity. These are my strongly held opinions based on a preponderance of the evidence:

1) SMiLE was 12 standalone tracks on 2 sides of vinyl built around common themes, with Worms/Heroes/Cabin/Veggies/Painter as the core of an "Americana Movement," & Wonderful/Child/Surf/Vibes/Chimes as the core of a "Cycle of Life/Loss of Innocence Movement." Probably the Elements suite would be on the Life side (Vosse said they'd have a fitness double meaning, Brian connects the elements to individual health in the "Smog" skit) with the Barnyard suite as its equivalent on the Americana side. Nobody can say definitively what the track order would've been beyond that, except probably the singles would kick off each side. Prayer would go at the very beginning (per the sessions tape) or end (per Vosse). So, there's twelve tracks for the zodiac, which featured prominently in Brian's mind and was even printed on the back cover, though I doubt each individual song really had a specific constellation-counterpart. There'd still be individualistic themes in the Americana tracks and national-interest stuff in the Innocence tracks (look at Surf's Up and "columnated ruins domino") but the point is, the songs would be grouped by which theme is more overtly associated with them, plus shared instrumentation.

2) The Elements was a single crossfading track that ultimately fell apart (Veggies became its own thing, Fire was scrapped, Water was Vosse's recordings that never got finalized, Air was maybe Second Day) and probably had a significant role in making Brian lose faith in the music which helped kill the project as much as the Capitol drama, mental illness and any grumblings from the band. I think there'd be vocal "oooo"s during fire, possibly the Water Chant or something like the Undersea Chant during Water, and something like the Breathing chant during Air. ALSO this is a hot take, but I don't think this track would've been that great, honestly. I think that's part of the unspoken reason Brian scrapped it, and the Fire anxiety, while real to a degree, was also a convenient excuse without having to admit he'd bitten off more than he could chew. The same way most people prefer having several distinct tracks instead of one to fill this theme, I think ultimately Brian did too. Still, this development killed the album, at least as it had existed in '66, and Brian's noodling with a possible single in early '67 was both procrastination and possibly trying to "re-find" the new driving force of an elements-less LP. If you listen to the Smog skit, it's clear the elements was perhaps the single most important theme of the whole album, what ties the fitness/individual and America/reform concepts together in his mind.

3) Psychedelic Sounds material would've been used but extremely sparingly, probably just a bit of the Hal Blaine fight and maybe George Fell. Some of those chants were working experiments for BB vocalizations, some were experimenting with audio techniques (tape explosions and echoes in Basketball sounds and Bob Gorden), some were probably just spur of the moment, half-serious "hey let's put this on the album!" recordings like Taxi Cabber and the unrecorded cutlery symphony. It's not like pretty much every other BB album besides Pet Sounds up to this point didn't have goofy spoken word comedy bits, so I never understood why some people are so opposed to the possibility that one or two might've appeared on SMiLE, especially with humor as a key theme. If the album proper and this "humor album" were not one and the same in late '66 when the Psychedelic Sounds were recorded, they certainly were by the time of Smiley Smile.

4) More controversially, I'd say my "hard to shake speculation" that isn't really built on as strong of a foundation is I think the Talking Horns session was a part of the Surf's Up second movement (along with the string overdub session that was canceled) particularly the "wailing" sound being meant for the fade. This wasn't even my idea originally, some other poster on the TSS subforum put it out there and my brain ran with it. It also ties into Priore's "weird combination of horns and strings" description of the lost second movement as well. Otherwise, why was this recorded and logged for SU? What's the purpose? If nothing else, if it just seems too crazy to "ruin" this beloved song with such a seemingly discordant droning of horns, maybe this too was a wild idea Brian later thought better of? Maybe that's why he canceled the other session for the second movement, didn't revisit this concept during the 71 album rerecording, lost faith in himself as a songwriter/producer...he realized one of his ideas just wouldn't work for once?

Here's my hot take of hot takes: I think the LBWL sleeve is actually nicer looking than the SIP one. The latter I've always found busy and tacky, while the former is actually a really nice heartwarming pic of Mike. He may be my least favorite member of the band and a man with a lot to answer for in his personal life, but I look at that pic and can't help but think "aww, he looks like a nice guy, great smile, just wants to share his music with us. I wish him well " That's not to say it's a great cover, but it's maybe the most flattering pic of Mike, especially post-60s, and better than a lot of the other awful sleeves in the band's discography.

LBWL may not be a great album but Im curious why Mike is seemingly so down on it if the previous comments about rejecting a proper reissue are to be believed. Is that because it didn't sell too well, and Mike is a very commercial-oriented musician? Or does he genuinely regret some of the creative decisions he made for it? Did he have a falling out with his collaborators, so there are bad memories associated with its production? I would love to know more. Does he talk about it in his autobiography?

And I agree, it's strange he'd be embarrassed by this when he put out SIP, Pisces Brothers and Santa's Going to Kokomo years later. LBWL, warts and all, is certainly superior to those; it actually feels like a genuine statement with integrity, while the rest are throwaway novelties at best, shameful self parody at worst. Pisces Brothers is especially embarrassing to me because George Harrison doesn't even seemed to have liked Mike, or at least paid him very little mind, and Mike's acting like they were best buds 'cause they happened to be in India at the same time. Like, for Mike "I met the Beatles!" was the highlight of his life, for them it was Tuesday.

I kind of like Paradise Found. There's something weirdly satisfying about "Looking Back with Love," the song, too. Like there's a decent song trying to get out, and not quite making it... but then that smooth 80s production almost makes up for it, but not quite... Be My Baby, on the other hand... I dunno, I know Brian had a hand in it, but unlike some of the other 70s and 80s Specter covers, it just doesn't work for me. It's light years away from the covers on 15 Big Ones... and when you're falling way short of the *covers on 15 Big Ones*, I mean, at that point you're making some pretty bad music......

I completely agree with you on the title track. There's definitely the makings of a good song in there, it just needed another (better) set of hands working with Mike to pull it off. It's like hes just rattling off a series of meandering hooks (and they're catchy as hell, "the stormy seas and sunny skies above" has been stuck in my head for years) but the song never goes anywhere. He needed a Brian to give him a great melody or chord progression to give the song direction, otherwise he's just rattling off quippy rhymes and the song just kinda stumbles along until it ends. Since the rest of the album doesn't really follow up on the "reminiscing about America's turbulent past 20 years" theme the song promises, it also just kinda feels like a false start. Without establishing a motif for the rest of the LP, the song could still work if it made any kind of statement about the random "remember the assassinations? remember the good times?" that are referenced...but it just, doesn't.

Julia, first of all thanks for joining, or re-joining (I don't know) our forum., and thanks for defending my take.
Said that, I fear there is a misunderstanding here.
I meant the "no earworm" as a compliment to Brian, because I hate when great music become "earworms". Just as an example, I think the "Blue Jays"  album by Justin Hayward snd John Lodge, two of the Moody Blues, is a masterpiece. Imho it's the GOAT In its style, romantic/symphonic rock. My only problem with it is that if I listen to it too much, practically every track on it becomes an "earworm". I can't shake them off... they are TOO catchy, too "hooky". The same for most of the music i love most.
Except Brian. From "Surfer Girl" to the tracks of the criminally undervalued "Long Promised Road" soundtrack, never an "earworm" for me. To my ears, Brian 's music far too subtle, too gentle, too nuanced, too ethereal (EVEN WHEN IT ROCKS) to become something as blatant and intrusive as an "earworm".
By the way, I agree with you about Mike's merits (no surprise here, I guess) and can add to said merits that he is remarkably earworm-free, too, for me. Not even "Kokomo", though it's as catchy as they come. Maybe, after co-authoring so many songs, some of Brian's unique magic remained attached to Mike.
I fear that you, like so (too) many people, strongly undervalue Brian's after-1966/1967 work, and in particular his "solo output". I won't try to convince anybody, but it's a pity. There's a motherlode of gems there.

Thanks, I appreciate the welcome! I dont know how frequently I'll be at it but for the time being, while the group is on my mind again for the first time in many years, it's nice to be back. Sorry to see how slow things have gotten, but I guess with reddit and discord (to say nothing of the ~4 forums we've got now) the community is pretty fractured these days.

Huh, that's interesting you say you don't consider Mike's lyrics earworms because to me they are the very definition. I don't mean that disrespectfully, in fact as my other post was trying to say, I think it's a quality sorely lacking in the later era BB stuff and solo careers. I'm not the biggest Kokomo fan (don't hate it but wouldn't put it on to entertain guests) but "Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya..." has got to be among the catchiest hooks ever written. That's the kind of thing that takes a "pretty song" and turns it into a bona fide HIT and Mike was great at that. (Sometimes it may have come at the expense of the "art" but this is a business and if you're not selling records, you don't get to make anything.)

When it comes to the post-66 stuff, for the record, I have mixed feelings. Smiley Smile is a twisted work of genius whose sole sore spot is the forced inclusion of GV which Brian fought against. Wild Honey, Friends and 20/20 are imperfect but there's some great tracks on there--especially WH itself, Darlin', Busy Doin' Nothing, Little Bird and I Was Made to Love Her. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the best tracks from this era (Been Way Too Long, Cool Cool Water) are not only SMiLE leftovers but remained in the vaults for reasons unknown. I'm not the biggest fan of Sunflower, Surf's Up (imo the most overrated album in their discography) and CATP:ST but they have their moments too. Holland is fantastic and for me that's when they finally found their footing again as a band, like Dark Side of the Moon was for Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett left. Then 15BOs is trash (sorry if others like it, but I dont) and killed the revival they had going. Love You is brilliant, maybe not quite Pet Sounds level but definitely cut from the same cloth, a lot of fun and perhaps the best demonstration of Brian's quirky humor. Mt Vernon is a really charming idea and I wanted to like it more than I did. I think the music, concept and narration are great but the script needed some work and it should've either been tightened up to a song or fleshed out into a whole album; as an EP it's both too long and not enough to tell the story properly, finding a way of being meandering and anticlimactic at the same time.

Everything after that is extremely mediocre for me, with a few exceptions like Pacific Ocean Blue, the Paley Sessions, BWPS, TLOS and TWGMTR. I wanted to like Brian Wilson '88, Imagination, No Pier Pressure and his other stuff but I just don't. I'll try to give it another chance one of these days but I think he was mostly let down by poor collaborators (Landy, Thomas) and just not having the same "juice" in him anymore after all the trauma and damage from medical malpractice. I'm not trying to be harsh and I'm glad if other people can enjoy those albums but I can't. Overall, it just feels like the best stuff stayed unreleased far too often, or they'd find a promising groove (psychedelic production in the PS-SMiLE Eras, Blondie and Ricky, Brian's Back) but abandon it just as it was bearing fruit, and the two best songwriters of the group (Brian, Dennis) weren't supported to the extent they should've been. Pacific Ocean Blue and Dennis' unreleased stuff should've been on proper BB albums. Adult/Child, while I'm not the biggest fan, should've been allowed to come out if that's where Brian's muse was taking him. (After realizing by then they should've supported SMiLE more, and relying on his "return" for commercial clout, they owed him that much. I'm sure Brian felt the same and that's probably why he stopped being a big creative force in the group after that--plus Landy of course).

Imho interviewing Brian was an art nobody ever mastered, or got even near. The same old useless questions. They make a lot of fuss about Brian stating that his fav movie was "Norbit", and even use it to make an argument that his IQ was obviously not so high. But wasting precious time to ask him such a question was pure idiocy. What if Brian had answered "Andrej Rublev"? Would it have mattered in the least?

I agree 100%, it's a problem with a lot of insipid press junkets but especially infuriating when the subject at hand is this seminal lost work that could've changed everything (or so we'd like to believe) where there's so many unanswered questions and time's running out. But everyone feels the need to ask "so what was the album about?" and "so why didn't it get finished?" like that hasn't been covered ad nauseum. I think generic questions like that also start the interview off on a bad foot especially for someone like Brian, who probably starts thinking "oh boy this again, if they cared so much, you'd think they'd do a bit of research first before wasting my time!" I think someone could've gotten a lot further with Brian by asking more pointed, less emotionally charged questions like play him that new melody line of DYLW from the sessions and say "so was this the main melody, or a background vocal or what?" or "would you mind sitting at the piano and playing this air piece you mentioned at XYZ interview?" Hell, even back in the day someone could've asked "would you mind singing the 'ribbon of concrete' chorus?" and then we'd have that to use in our mixes.

In any case, you'd think somebody in charge of these endeavors would, for the sake of their viewers and the subjects being questioned, stop and think "ok, these guys have already been interviewed 1000 times, what haven't they been asked already?" But it's like they don't really care, the interviewer in at least half the cases probably doesn't listen to the Beach Boys anyway, so they just ask the usual "oh what's your favorite song?" / "how did you start making music?" / "what goes through your head when you're performing?" typical bland time-wasters. They do it to athletes at the Olympics too, and actors who have to promote their upcoming film.

In this case though, the guy being questioned is not famous (except to super-fans) and is there solely due to his knowledge of this one topic, being interviewed by supposedly passionate fans as desperate for answers as we are. I don't understand how you don't come prepared with a list of 30~ questions (just anything you can think of, scribbled on a notepad) and furiously write notes as he speaks about what to follow up on. It feels like they were just winging it and too blown away to think clearly in the moment. But alas. If anyone does have Dominic or Darian's contact info I implore you to show them this clip and ask them about this supposed tracklist. Or give it to me and I'll do it (very respectfully of course).

Random anecdote I'll probably never get the chance to throw out again: I think Brian would've liked this Italian movie I discovered recently called "I Dolci Inganni" from 1960. He seems the type to enjoy simplicity and he had a perpetually naive admiration for young women. (I'm basing that assessment on Tony Asher's words, the fact that he still wrote about teen romance into his old age, etc). Plus the film, to me, is the perfect visual companion piece to "Wonderful" and its message of a girl venturing out of her comfort zone and losing her innocence. I really think he would've appreciated watching it, with or without subtitles, just because the subject matter seemed so dear to him (and Catherine Spaak is so adorable and charming). If I could've spent an hour or two with Brian, I'd like to just watch that together and ask him what he thinks of the soundtrack by Piero Piccioni.

Added the new dates to the top post.

Record the gigs for a live album, Al!

YES, PLEASE, AL!

Superb as usual. The second genius in the Beach Boys.

One true SMiLE... it's a fractal. Zoom into it and you will have different landscapes every time.

Imho interviewing Brian was an art nobody ever mastered, or got even near. The same old useless questions. They make a lot of fuss about Brian stating that his fav movie was "Norbit", and even use it to make an argument that his IQ was obviously not so high. But wasting precious time to ask him such a question was pure idiocy. What if Brian had answered "Andrej Rublev"? Would it have mattered in the least?

Julia, first of all thanks for joining, or re-joining (I don't know) our forum., and thanks for defending my take.
Said that, I fear there is a misunderstanding here.
I meant the "no earworm" as a compliment to Brian, because I hate when great music become "earworms". Just as an example, I think the "Blue Jays"  album by Justin Hayward snd John Lodge, two of the Moody Blues, is a masterpiece. Imho it's the GOAT In its style, romantic/symphonic rock. My only problem with it is that if I listen to it too much, practically every track on it becomes an "earworm". I can't shake them off... they are TOO catchy, too "hooky". The same for most of the music i love most.
Except Brian. From "Surfer Girl" to the tracks of the criminally undervalued "Long Promised Road" soundtrack, never an "earworm" for me. To my ears, Brian 's music far too subtle, too gentle, too nuanced, too ethereal (EVEN WHEN IT ROCKS) to become something as blatant and intrusive as an "earworm".
By the way, I agree with you about Mike's merits (no surprise here, I guess) and can add to said merits that he is remarkably earworm-free, too, for me. Not even "Kokomo", though it's as catchy as they come. Maybe, after co-authoring so many songs, some of Brian's unique magic remained attached to Mike.
I fear that you, like so (too) many people, strongly undervalue Brian's after-1966/1967 work, and in particular his "solo output". I won't try to convince anybody, but it's a pity. There's a motherlode of gems there.