Article blames fans for losing SMiLE tapes!

[The Shift]

Not the worst interview in recent months:
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/entertainment/index.ssf?/base/living-1/13023
21918239821.xml

Gotta love this bit though:

"This year will also see the long-awaited, completed release of 'Smile'. The album was originally intended to be the follow-up to 'Pet Sounds' but it was abandoned and shelved due to Brian Wilson's declining mental health at the time.

"'Smile' will contain two discs of completed Beach Boys material that was thought to be lost by fans (although many of the completed tracks have circulated as bootlegs)."

[Don_Zabu]

I think they meant that in the sense of "the fans thought it was lost", not "we think the fans lost it"

[18thofMay]

I wonder what Fishmonk's take is on this??

[The Shift]

I think they meant that in the sense of "the fans thought it was lost", not "we think the fans lost it"

Aye, as in:
"'Smile' will contain two discs of completed Beach Boys material which fans thought had been lost (although many of the completed tracks have circulated as bootlegs)."

I was merely being pedantic!     Until there's any fresh SMiLE news, we're going to be getting more and more picky over trivia! 

For example, if the fans thought it had been lost, then among who was the material being "circulated as bootlegs"?

Fishmonk will no doubt give us his opinion when his current trip's over! 

[Jason]

Technically, some of the tapes that ended up on SOT 17 were never "recovered", so maybe "fans" are to blame for a few missing tapes...

[The Shift]

Technically, some of the tapes that ended up on SOT 17 were never "recovered", so maybe "fans" are to blame for a few missing tapes...

Didn't SOT get busted and tapes recovered? Or am I thinking of VigoTone?

[Jon Stebbins]

Not the worst interview in recent months:
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/entertainment/index.ssf?/base/living-1/13023
21918239821.xml

Gotta love this bit though:

"This year will also see the long-awaited, completed release of 'Smile'. The album was originally intended to be the follow-up to 'Pet Sounds' but it was abandoned and shelved due to Brian Wilson's declining mental health at the time.

"'Smile' will contain two discs of completed Beach Boys material that was thought to be lost by fans (although many of the completed tracks have circulated as bootlegs)."

I thought this was a funny post Wee.

[Mikie]

Didn't SOT get busted and tapes recovered? Or am I thinking of VigoTone?

Vigotone. And I think Midnight got popped too.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Didn't SOT get busted and tapes recovered? Or am I thinking of VigoTone?

Vigotone. And I think Midnight got popped too.

I seem to recall few tears being shed about Midnight going under. 

[PhilCohen]

Technically, some of the tapes that ended up on SOT 17 were never "recovered", so maybe "fans" are to blame for a few missing tapes...

Didn't SOT get busted and tapes recovered? Or am I thinking of VigoTone?

Vigotone's founder was busted. He was never sentenced to any prison time. The authorities were content to shut him down and confiscate his tapes and equipment. Fans have wondered what would have been included in Vigotone's planned "Smile" box set.

[PhilCohen]

Didn't SOT get busted and tapes recovered? Or am I thinking of VigoTone?

Vigotone. And I think Midnight got popped too.

I seem to recall few tears being shed about Midnight going under. 

But, I suspect that "Midnight Beat" & "Sea of Tunes" were one and the same. Later, another bootlegger used the "Sea of Tunes" name for discs such as "All This is That" & "In The Beginning".

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

This just goes to show why the passive voice is often best avoided.  Or should I say, this is why one should avoid the passive voice...

[adamghost]

"You can't look too long at a radioactive cloud..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JrIYR8jArk

[Dunderhead]

so what I still don't understand,
if Carl made copies of all the smile material in 1971, does that mean all the material that's currently missing was unaccounted for in 1971? Or have some of Carl's copies gone missing since?

It seems if all the SMiLE material that's missing disappeared between 1967 and 1970 it wouldn't be that hard to track down. How many people had access to the tapes back then? How many people back then even knew enough about smile to know what to steal?

[bgas]

so what I still don't understand,
if Carl made copies of all the smile material in 1971, does that mean all the material that's currently missing was unaccounted for in 1971? Or have some of Carl's copies gone missing since?

It seems if all the SMiLE material that's missing disappeared between 1967 and 1970 it wouldn't be that hard to track down. How many people had access to the tapes back then? How many people back then even knew enough about smile to know what to steal?

Tho, of course, how many people that were directly involved back then, are still around to contact?  Gonna be hard to track down people that "might" have had access, when there's less people now to define who had access. And whether there was any record keeping done, as to when somebody checked on the tapes...

[Dunderhead]

so what I still don't understand,
if Carl made copies of all the smile material in 1971, does that mean all the material that's currently missing was unaccounted for in 1971? Or have some of Carl's copies gone missing since?

It seems if all the SMiLE material that's missing disappeared between 1967 and 1970 it wouldn't be that hard to track down. How many people had access to the tapes back then? How many people back then even knew enough about smile to know what to steal?

Tho, of course, how many people that were directly involved back then, are still around to contact?  Gonna be hard to track down people that "might" have had access, when there's less people now to define who had access. And whether there was any record keeping done, as to when somebody checked on the tapes...

I think that narrows it down a lot though.
I also think it suggests that Brian did in fact destroy some of the material. Prevailing wisdom has suggested that was always a myth. But there was a post by Alan Boyd a while back where he lamented how much material was missing, he wondered if there was some truth to that story. If the missing SMiLE material went missing before 1970, before much about SMiLE was even known among fans, and none of this material has ever been heard on bootlegs or by fans, that says something doesn't it.

[BJL]

I think that narrows it down a lot though.
I also think it suggests that Brian did in fact destroy some of the material. Prevailing wisdom has suggested that was always a myth. But there was a post by Alan Boyd a while back where he lamented how much material was missing, he wondered if there was some truth to that story. If the missing SMiLE material went missing before 1970, before much about SMiLE was even known among fans, and none of this material has ever been heard on bootlegs or by fans, that says something doesn't it.

This is pure speculation, but perhaps Brian "destroyed" tapes not by actively burning them or whatever, but by negligence.  It is clear that in the mid 60s tapes in general were in no way sacred, that studios threw out old tapes all the time, etc.  If Brian had been running the show for so long, and then suddenly he has disengaged, he might not bother to have tapes properly labeled, accounted for, picked up from studios, or whatever, allowing them to disappear?

[Bill M]

This is something up with which I will not put.

[PhilCohen]

Let's put it this way: As for complete or partly-completed selections(I.E. not including breakdown takes & session chat),The forthcoming "Smile" box won't have anything less than what is already in our hands, but it will certainly contain more that what we've already got. How much more, we don't know. Mark Linett has certainly found a few new things.

It's a thing worth thinking about: Why, at this specific moment in time, have Mark Linett & The Beach Boys decided to create a "Smile" box? Has there been some breakthrough, some discovery of lost reels, or is it simply, that, at this point , Mark Linett is satisfied, that leaving no stone unturned(no vaults left to explore), that nothing more can be found?

We're in no danger of losing all the "Smile" material that we're holding at this very moment, and we'll undoubtedly get some new stuff from Capitol at some point in the next 8 months. And who knows: If the bootleggers have any "Smile" material that they haven't already released, they'll undoubtedly release it, before it is too late.