Smiley Smile June 3rd 1967

[Wild Honey Pie]

41 years ago Brian began cancelling SMiLE sessions due to 'bad vibes'. June 3rd 1967 marked the beginning of Smiley Smile sessions at Hollywood Sound Recorders studio in Los Angeles, just as the world was rejoicing to the breathtaking sounds of the Sgt. Pepper album. On June 3rd the band recorded new vocals for Vegetables.

Even though Smiley is not even close to SMiLE I still love the album. Can we hear it for Smiley Smile?

[c-man]

OK...here, here!

[John]

I prefer Smiley's Wind Chimes and Vegetables to SMiLE's.

[Goin’Bald]

Yeah, I loved the album from day 1! I knew back then that SMiLE would have been something completely different, but that didn't matter. Wind Chimes was an instant favorite. And yes, I would love to have this album in full stereo. Imagine the vocals on the outro of Wind Chimes. They will drive you mad, as I once listened to a home-made simulated stereo version of the song.

[Alan Boyd]

Write or email EMI and tell them you'd like to see a special collector's release along the lines of "The Beach Boys 1967" with stereo remixes of "Smiley Smile," "Wild Honey" and the best of the live (and pseudo-live) recordings from that year!

[gsmile]

Write or email EMI and tell them you'd like to see a special collector's release along the lines of "The Beach Boys 1967" with stereo remixes of "Smiley Smile," "Wild Honey" and the best of the live (and pseudo-live) recordings from that year!

I searched everywhere for an e-mail on about five different EMI pages.  Got one handy?

[Alan Boyd]

Lemme see what I can find....

[Alan Boyd]

I've been in touch with our folks at the tower... and they don't really have a forum or contact for that sort of thing.

So I'll tell ya what:

Send a message to EMI to me through my mailbox here, and I'll forward it to the catalog A&R people....

Alan Boyd

[Vega-Table Man]

Thanks Alan ... I've just sent you my note.

Smiley Smile has grown in stature over the past several years for me to become one of my favorite albums, not just by the Beach Boys, but by anyone. It is incredibly distinctive and haunting and beautiful, with some of the loveliest group singing the band ever did. (Special note, of course, should be taken of the barely audible tag to "Wind Chimes.")

I think I'll give it a spin tonight! ...

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Here's an open letter (totally off the top of my head):

To Whom it may concern @ EMI:

In this era, catalog record releases are a unique device.  I can try to appeal to you as a fan--from an emotional point of view, or I can try to appeal to the bottom line.  Archival releases, and specifically pertaining to this letter Beach Boys archival releases, can be a very special force; on one hand nostalgia provides appeal to the record buying public and on the other, I would imagine, archival releases could be resistant to the excitement-deflating file-sharing epidemic that has altered the landscape of hotly-anticipated new record release procedure.

The music that you, EMI, have control over has the potential to make people feel good.  The Beach Boys in particular seem to evoke a very visceral response from their fans.  I can't attest to anybody else, but any time EMI has put out a new Beach Boys CD, it has enriched my life.

Still, I know that the end goal of business is not to make people happy, it's to make money, that's no secret.  How can you make money off of 50 year old music?

 I think you've got half of the equation right.  The success of the Summer-Themed "Best of" Beach Boys compilations shows that there are plenty of people willing to buy that stuff.  Even year after year.

But the other half of the equation has been missing.  While there may not be huge numbers of "hard-core" Beach Boys fans, there is a large "constituency" of fans that feel like they're being ignored.

I'm not necessarily one of those people, but I understand their frustration when they learn that a new Beach Boys CD is coming out but they already have every song on it five times over.

A few years ago, a couple of Beach Boys CDs came out with largely new unreleased material from the vaults, Endless Harmony and the Hawthorne double album.  These are now perceived to be the touchstone Beach Boys archival CDs.


From my perspective as a fan, it seems to me that the best way to continue pleasing these hard-core fans (and thus keeping them loyal customers) would be to offer the best of both worlds.

The Beach Boys hits are so fantastic and undeniable that a "best of" comp would probably sell forever.  And that makes an excellent vehicle to both satisfy the Beach Boys nerds and also entice casual fans into nerd-dom (and entice them to buy the entire Beach Boys back-catalog.)

There's a lot of great unreleased material in the Beach Boys vault (especially live recordings, which there really seems to be a demand for), but also Mark Linett has done a fantastic job "modernizing" the catalog by remixing tracks so they can be heard in a new way.

So, and forgive me for presuming to prescribe a way to do things, why not exploit the vast riches the Beach Boys have in their catalog?  There are lots of ways to do it.

There are still (more or less) four Beach Boys albums available only in monaural sound.  While Brian Wilson's original mixes are brilliant, many fans find the mono mixes muddy and don't listen to them as much.  Mr. Linett has already remixed many tracks from these albums, and of course the Pet Sounds remixes were brilliant and illuminating from a musical point of view.

Stereo remixes of the Today!, Summer Days, Smiley Smile, and Wild Honey LPs would present the old albums in a new way and certainly inspire a lot of people who already own those albums to buy them again.  And new fans would learn of the remixes through the cross-promotion with the Compilations.

Perhaps releasing each album as a "special edition collector's item" with the original mono mix, a new stereo presentation, sessions and outtakes would be a good idea.  If you make them seem special, people will take note.

And of course, lots of fans have been clamoring to hear the Beach Boys many stellar live recordings.  Special Edition concert CDs could be big sellers.

Another interesting thing to consider would be remix contests.  While that sounds kind of cheesy, there are many amateur recording enthusiasts in the Beach Boys world, many of which have done unsanctioned remixes of their own from bootleg sources.  If you offered the multitrack files from a Beach Boys song for, 99 cents each, and offered a small prize to the person who could most creatively arrange the tracks or add to them, you'd get a lot of business, as Radiohead recently showed when they did exactly what I've described.

Anyway, those are just the thoughts of a fan...and ultimately my motivation is to be able to hear more Beach Boys music.  Because it's a buzz, you know?  And you have the power to give a lot of people a little buzz, with the gift of music.  Corny, perhaps, but true.

Thanks for reading,

Josh Hoisington

[wiggbuggie]

yea smiley smile is great i love the album cover too. I think the album adds more humour than smile actually. like other ppl said the sound is very dry  at times and also very interesting and bueatiful like the hummings and singing in little pad or wistle in great closing track.

[phirnis]

It's a shame that Smiley Smile will probably never lose its predominant image of being a failure. Being a huge fan of experimental and avantgarde music, the album strikes me as one of the most adventurous musical creations of the sixties. Also, it features some of the group's most powerful singing ever. While I'm as much a fan of BW's multi-layered backing tracks circa Pet Sounds as anyone, I first came to really appreciate the voices of each individual band member when I heard the stripped-down Smiley Smile. (Next came Friends, which blew my mind even more, especially in terms of the lead vocals.)