Your SMiLE sequence

[rab2591]

I think ALL THIS PROVES that SMiLE was to be an incredibly deep concept album that told a coherent story through repeated musical/conceptual/lyrical/visual symbolism.   

For example the classic archetype of "Boy meets Girl" in "Good Vibrations" is retold in "Heroes and Villains" and retold in "Wonderful" from the girl's perspective.  Who is this girl?  Mother Nature?  A Flower girl?  Eve?  Pocahontas?   Lady Liberty?  Brian's muse?  She's all of these things!  Who is this boy?  A western outlaw?  A Mayflower Pilgrim?  An Okie heading to California to pick vegetables?  The Old Paster Painter of the great American landscape?  He is all these things...and Brian too!   "Do You Like Worms" is Boy meets Girl retold as "Native American Garden of Eden meets Manifest Destiny".   Imagery and ideas,  particularly (en)light(enment) and air, appear and reappear through out Brian and Van's songs and Frank Holmes art.  It is all one!

To that end I agree that one can hear in those instances how Brian was exploring the musical connections between CIFOTM and Dada.  If Dada is the first word of a baby and represents water the source of all life, it makes sense to connect it with "Child is Father to the Man"  a song about the spiritually rejuvenating properties of nature.  Then, following the cycle of life from baby to child to man who's next?  The Old Master Painter who created this beautiful world.....only he doesn't sing his song.  He sings "you we're my sunshine"....and that's Brian's enlightening message:  That mother nature is in danger but we can change course and get back to the garden.  "Got to keep those good vibrations happening with her" !!!

Here's another theory.  Why did Brian use the Crow's "Gee" in "Heroes and Villains" and also try to interpolate Etta James' "The Wallflower (Roll with Me Henry)" into "Wonderful" ?  Boy meets Girl!

From Wikipedia:  "Gee", released in June 1953 by The Crows, is a song which has been credited as the first rock and roll hit by a rock and roll group.  And what is widely recognized as the first rock and roll hit by a female artist?  You guessed it Etta James'  "The Wallflower".

If you've read this far, THANKS!.....and please allow me to conduct a poll:

My organizing principal for SMiLE has always been that it is literally a chronological history of America told in flashback by the protagonist from Heroes and Villains:  from the Native American Garden of Eden meeting the Pilgrims, thru the Industrial Revolution and Great Western Migration up to the environmentally/spiritually broken war machine Brian and Van were surveying from the sandbox in '66 as Carl's Vietnam draft notice showed up in the mail.  Ahem....

So, the album begins with Prayer, then we meet our first protagonist in Heroes and Villains who quickly flashes back to tell us his story.  Now,  going strictly chronologically I've always put "Wonderful" next to begin in Native America (she belongs there left with her liberty).  Her beautiful final fleeting notes are then rudely crashed in upon by the first British Invasion at Plymouth Rock of "Do You Like Worms". 

But it's dawned on me that for the listener to recognize that the album is specifically about America it might be more immediately understood as such if  "Heroes and Villains" is followed by "Do You Like Worms".  The lyrics are more specifically about America than "Wonderful" and its variant of Brian's message "Heroes and villains just see what you've done to the church of the American Indian" is stated more explicitly.  Followed by "Wonderful" it's as if it sets the stage (from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii) for the story we are about to hear about a boy bumping into a girl......

Well, I can't decide.  They both work on paper, but if you were hearing the Beach Boys new album for the first time in the Spring of 1967 which sequence  do you think would make the America connection most explicit?--

Heroes and Villains Pt. 1/ Wonderful/ Do You Like Worms

or

Heroes and Villains Pt.1/Do You Like Worms/Wonderful

Thanks in advance!!!

Man what a great post. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about putting Wonderful after H&V, but I’m gonna try it. Given that Wonderful has that jangly harpsichord feel that ‘You Still Believe In Me’ (and that song followed up the opener WIBN) i think such a song order would make sense in Smile too.

And perhaps since Smile is a collage of sorts, it would make sense that the story, to a first time listener, isn’t all too clear. They have to piece it together in a way that by the end makes perfect sense. So making Wonderful sandwich in between H&V and Worms would be my vote.

These last few posts here are great reading. Makes me miss the smile talk from 2011!

[The Old Master Painter]

These posts, and this thread in general, revive an aspect of nostalgia that drew me deeply toward the music of The Beach Boys. I started frequenting this message board at the mere age of twelve, being fascinated by the music of 'Pet Sounds,' and the incomplete work of 'Smile.' I'm fifteen now, so the mystique surrounding the fabled 'Smile' project for me was a large part of growing up. I cannot hold a grudge against anyone or thing that contributed to what ultimately became 'Smiley Smile.' I have no basis to do so, but I surely regret the existence of 'Smiley Smile' in September 1967 over the 'Smile' album that was once being proudly advertised in January 1967, even if it means that The Beatles would have been so overwhelmed to the point of not even conceiving or completing the 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' that we all know and love today. Even though 'Smiley Smile' is underrated in its own right (in my opinion), 'Smile,' as incomplete or fractured as it exists, still sounds complete due to its sometimes inadvertently skeletal nature, and, in my opinion, largely better than 'Smiley Smile.' Creating these hypothetical track sequences to document or retell the unfinished concept that was once conceived in 1966 through the music itself was (and sort of is) a ritual of mine that I partake in when approaching this work since the music; specifically the modular composition standpoint, lends itself to fans heavily forming new narratives or concepts primarily based on the music, that results in still maintaining the music's relevancy.

[rab2591]

These posts, and this thread in general, revive an aspect of nostalgia that drew me deeply toward the music of The Beach Boys. I started frequenting this message board at the mere age of twelve, being fascinated by the music of 'Pet Sounds,' and the incomplete work of 'Smile.' I'm fifteen now, so the mystique surrounding the fabled 'Smile' project for me was a large part of growing up. I cannot hold a grudge against anyone or thing that contributed to what ultimately became 'Smiley Smile.' I have no basis to do so, but I surely regret the existence of 'Smiley Smile' in September 1967 over the 'Smile' album that was once being proudly advertised in January 1967, even if it means that The Beatles would have been so overwhelmed to the point of not even conceiving or completing the 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' that we all know and love today. Even though 'Smiley Smile' is underrated in its own right (in my opinion), 'Smile,' as incomplete or fractured as it exists, still sounds complete due to its sometimes inadvertently skeletal nature, and, in my opinion, largely better than 'Smiley Smile.' Creating these hypothetical track sequences to document or retell the unfinished concept that was once conceived in 1966 through the music itself was (and sort of is) a ritual of mine that I partake in when approaching this work since the music; specifically the modular composition standpoint, lends itself to fans heavily forming new narratives or concepts primarily based on the music, that results in still maintaining the music's relevancy.

I think that’s the best thing about this album. It’s so open to revision and becoming involved yourself. What other album in history allows you to mash together your own mix with so much freedom and room for being completely unique?

And my favorite part is that Brian has since released what he considers the finished SMiLE album and it’s fantastic. But yet we’re also able to roll our own. People have even successfully mashed together vocals from BWPS with the vintage instrumentals....making it clear that nearly anything is possible when it comes to these tracks.

Anyways, glad to see Smile talk still alive and well here.

[Julia]

How about this for Americana, w/ no regard to LP limitations:

(Prayer) Worms / Heroes (IIGS verse tape explosion ending) / OMP (no fade) / Fire / IWBA-WS-Barnyard / Veggies / Wonderful (Barnshine fade w/ He Gives Speeches lyrics) / Cabin Essence

[BJL]

How about this for Americana, w/ no regard to LP limitations:

(Prayer) Worms / Heroes (IIGS verse tape explosion ending) / OMP (no fade) / Fire / IWBA-WS-Barnyard / Veggies / Wonderful (Barnshine fade w/ He Gives Speeches lyrics) / Cabin Essence

I can't remember which thread you were talking about this at greater length, but the idea that Heroes belongs before Worms I feel like was just so deep in my mind from so many years of seeing mixes organized that way... But now after reading your other comment and this, I think Worms makes just as much if not more sense as an opener! I also love this whole sequence of yours, which I feel like has such an odd intuitive logic to it.

[Julia]

How about this for Americana, w/ no regard to LP limitations:

(Prayer) Worms / Heroes (IIGS verse tape explosion ending) / OMP (no fade) / Fire / IWBA-WS-Barnyard / Veggies / Wonderful (Barnshine fade w/ He Gives Speeches lyrics) / Cabin Essence

I can't remember which thread you were talking about this at greater length, but the idea that Heroes belongs before Worms I feel like was just so deep in my mind from so many years of seeing mixes organized that way... But now after reading your other comment and this, I think Worms makes just as much if not more sense as an opener! I also love this whole sequence of yours, which I feel like has such an odd intuitive logic to it.

Thank you!

I credit Sheriff John Stone, one of my favorite posters from back in the day (though he later changed his mind and started advocating for Heroes as the opener again!). He gave me the idea that Worms was originally first. Learning that Brian apparently never expected to use singles off the album until the BRI shenanigans demanded it solidified this view.