Brian has signed off on Smile Sessions......

[buddhahat]

I think it's important to have a sequence though. Something everyone - consumers, critics etc. - can agree is the sequence for the commercially released Smile album as it stands in 2011.

It doesn't have to claim to be what Brian intended in 67. Just a definitve 'best of' the Smile sessions.

[The Shift]

I think it's important to have a sequence though. Something everyone - consumers, critics etc. - can agree is the sequence for the commercially released Smile album as it stands in 2011.

Agree. All that sequence has to achieve is something pleasing on the ear, especially the newbie ear that needs to hear this as a cohesive collection of songs, tunes and snippets – ie, no jarring, clunky jumps from one track to another caused by sudden disharmonious leaps in style from one song to another.

That said, I'll take what I'm given. 

[Dunderhead]

They should just stick with the hand written track list, it's fun to try and make smile into some prog concept album that divided into all these crazy movements, but it'll never be the final word on smile. No matter how much they try and say "this is the final word" there will always be doubts and questions. Van Dyke seems to refuse to explain SMiLE, Brian seems to have "forgotten" and pretty much everyone else had too limited a perspective to fully untangle things. For this set I wish they would just put the tracks in any order, let Dom give his theory as to the sequence in his book, and just be done with it. I would hate to think this release is being delayed in some way due to a track sequencing that is liable to be quite contentious no matter what. It's an archive release.

[Andrew G. Doe]

They should just stick with the hand written track list, it's fun to try and make smile into some prog concept album that divided into all these crazy movements, but it'll never be the final word on smile. No matter how much they try and say "this is the final word" there will always be doubts and questions. Van Dyke seems to refuse to explain SMiLE, Brian seems to have "forgotten" and pretty much everyone else had too limited a perspective to fully untangle things. For this set I wish they would just put the tracks in any order, let Dom give his theory as to the sequence in his book, and just be done with it. I would hate to think this release is being delayed in some way due to a track sequencing that is liable to be quite contentious no matter what. It's an archive release.

Exactly.  It's not going to be called Smile, or even Mark Linett & Alan Boyd present Smile - it's called The Smile Sessions. A sequence is nice for Joe Q. Public to listen to without going "huh ?" too many times... but it's not, never was and never will be, an album as we understand it, more like a publication of [your favoured authors name here] notebooks and working drafts. No-one, unless a working time machine is developed, is ever going to put out Greed - the original version.

[desmondo]

We shouldn't however forget this quote from Mark's interview

Q. But will you attempt to present it as an album in a certain song order?

A. Oh sure, we will present it probably on a single CD

Hmmm - Seems as though there will be a running order in a certain order that will be called The Smile Album by lots of people even if its incomplete which of course it will be because not all the vocals were recorded as far as we know

[Cam Mott]

I agree with using the "tracklist" in that order with whatever they can put together for each song. To me you can't do BWPS any better so why not stay original in a collection of the original? Nobody asked me though, so.......

Either way, we will have the sessions I'm good with whatever.

[buddhahat]

We shouldn't however forget this quote from Mark's interview

Q. But will you attempt to present it as an album in a certain song order?

A. Oh sure, we will present it probably on a single CD

Hmmm - Seems as though there will be a running order in a certain order that will be called The Smile Album by lots of people even if its incomplete which of course it will be because bot all the vocals were recorded as far as we know

But I think it is common sense that a Smile Sessions release has a portion set aside as a playable album. If we also get (relatively) unaltered sessions, I don't see the problem. Both fans (the history buffs and the fanmixers) are catered for.

If this release didn't contain an album, it would never have gotten off the ground.

Yes, Mark and Alan will probably have to add their own ideas, hopefully based on the best evidence they can find. Of course the sequence they come up with (with a little/lot of/no help from Brian) will be marketed as the finished Smile, just as BWPS was. That's just marketing. We can hope liner notes clarify what is guess work and what is based on historical fact, but at the end of the day if I get a bunch of sessions (some possibly new), sounding crisp and clear, and the ultimate Brian endorsed fan mix to boot, I won't be losing much sleep over liberties taken with facts. Unravelling what really happened with Smile is what keeps this board interesting anyway. If it was all laid out for us, what would there be left for us to do with our lives?!!

[desmondo]

We shouldn't however forget this quote from Mark's interview

Q. But will you attempt to present it as an album in a certain song order?

A. Oh sure, we will present it probably on a single CD

Hmmm - Seems as though there will be a running order in a certain order that will be called The Smile Album by lots of people even if its incomplete which of course it will be because bot all the vocals were recorded as far as we know

But I think it is common sense that a Smile Sessions release has a portion set aside as a playable album. If we also get (relatively) unaltered sessions, I don't see the problem. Both fans (the history buffs and the fanmixers) are catered for.

If this release didn't contain an album, it would never have gotten off the ground.

Yes, Mark and Alan will probably have to add their own ideas, hopefully based on the best evidence they can find. Of course the sequence they come up with (with a little/lot of/no help from Brian) will be marketed as the finished Smile, just as BWPS was. That's just marketing. We can hope liner notes clarify what is guess work and what is based on historical fact, but at the end of the day if I get a bunch of sessions (some possibly new), sounding crisp and clear, and the ultimate Brian endorsed fan mix to boot, I won't be losing much sleep over liberties taken with facts. Unravelling what really happened with Smile is what keeps this board interesting anyway. If it was all laid out for us, what would there be left for us to do with our lives?!!

With you all the way on that but I think D1 will be more than a 'playable album'

[drbeachboy]

They should just stick with the hand written track list, it's fun to try and make smile into some prog concept album that divided into all these crazy movements, but it'll never be the final word on smile. No matter how much they try and say "this is the final word" there will always be doubts and questions. Van Dyke seems to refuse to explain SMiLE, Brian seems to have "forgotten" and pretty much everyone else had too limited a perspective to fully untangle things. For this set I wish they would just put the tracks in any order, let Dom give his theory as to the sequence in his book, and just be done with it. I would hate to think this release is being delayed in some way due to a track sequencing that is liable to be quite contentious no matter what. It's an archive release.

Exactly.  It's not going to be called Smile, or even Mark Linett & Alan Boyd present Smile - it's called The Smile Sessions. A sequence is nice for Joe Q. Public to listen to without going "huh ?" too many times... but it's not, never was and never will be, an album as we understand it, more like a publication of [your favoured authors name here] notebooks and working drafts. No-one, unless a working time machine is developed, is ever going to put out Greed - the original version.

Thing is, if you are going to do the "close approximation of an album" approach, then you need to have a track list and sequence. For most of the buying public, Disc 1 is the selling key. Most people like order over chaos. I have no issue with presenting a 2011 track list and sequence on a 2011 album release. It's really the only way it can ever be.

[Roger Ryan]

...No-one, unless a working time machine is developed, is ever going to put out Greed - the original version.

This analogy isn't the best since Stroheim's long version of GREED was actually completed, at least in workprint form. Rick Schmidlin's reconstruction attempt presented an approximation of what the original version was like since, for the most part, we know what scenes were shot and what order they were to appear in. With SMiLE, not only do we not have all the parts that were supposed to be recorded (and we don't have some that were), but nobody knows the proper order of those segments.

Sorry about being pedantic about this! A better film analogy would be Welles' unfinished THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Even though there was a script, Welles filmed huge amounts of improvised footage and intended to create a feature made up of little snippets of film that could be edited together in a myriad of ways. Only Welles knew (or maybe he didn't know) how all the pieces were meant to fit together. Interested parties have been trying for decades to clear legal obstacles to assemble the film, but even if the project came to fruition, most Welles fans believe that any finished version would be inauthentic and not true to Welles' original unattainable vision. Sound famililar?

[Runaways]

They should just stick with the hand written track list, it's fun to try and make smile into some prog concept album that divided into all these crazy movements, but it'll never be the final word on smile. No matter how much they try and say "this is the final word" there will always be doubts and questions. Van Dyke seems to refuse to explain SMiLE, Brian seems to have "forgotten" and pretty much everyone else had too limited a perspective to fully untangle things. For this set I wish they would just put the tracks in any order, let Dom give his theory as to the sequence in his book, and just be done with it. I would hate to think this release is being delayed in some way due to a track sequencing that is liable to be quite contentious no matter what. It's an archive release.

Exactly.  It's not going to be called Smile, or even Mark Linett & Alan Boyd present Smile - it's called The Smile Sessions. A sequence is nice for Joe Q. Public to listen to without going "huh ?" too many times... but it's not, never was and never will be, an album as we understand it, more like a publication of [your favoured authors name here] notebooks and working drafts. No-one, unless a working time machine is developed, is ever going to put out Greed - the original version.

Thing is, if you are going to do the "close approximation of an album" approach, then you need to have a track list and sequence. For most of the buying public, Disc 1 is the selling key. Most people like order over chaos. I have no issue with presenting a 2011 track list and sequence on a 2011 album release. It's really the only way it can ever be.

right.  I'm sure they feel a certain responsibility to release disc 1 as best they can as an album.  It'd be ridiculous if they didn't try for that, i'm sure they are. 

[18thofMay]

They should just stick with the hand written track list, it's fun to try and make smile into some prog concept album that divided into all these crazy movements, but it'll never be the final word on smile. No matter how much they try and say "this is the final word" there will always be doubts and questions. Van Dyke seems to refuse to explain SMiLE, Brian seems to have "forgotten" and pretty much everyone else had too limited a perspective to fully untangle things. For this set I wish they would just put the tracks in any order, let Dom give his theory as to the sequence in his book, and just be done with it. I would hate to think this release is being delayed in some way due to a track sequencing that is liable to be quite contentious no matter what. It's an archive release.

[Andrew G. Doe]

...No-one, unless a working time machine is developed, is ever going to put out Greed - the original version.

This analogy isn't the best since Stroheim's long version of GREED was actually completed, at least in workprint form. Rick Schmidlin's reconstruction attempt presented an approximation of what the original version was like since, for the most part, we know what scenes were shot and what order they were to appear in. With SMiLE, not only do we not have all the parts that were supposed to be recorded (and we don't have some that were), but nobody knows the proper order of those segments.

Sorry about being pedantic about this! A better film analogy would be Welles' unfinished THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Even though there was a script, Welles filmed huge amounts of improvised footage and intended to create a feature made up of little snippets of film that could be edited together in a myriad of ways. Only Welles knew (or maybe he didn't know) how all the pieces were meant to fit together. Interested parties have been trying for decades to clear legal obstacles to assemble the film, but even if the project came to fruition, most Welles fans believe that any finished version would be inauthentic and not true to Welles' original unattainable vision. Sound famililar?

Fair point - I was too lazy to think of a truly incomplete film. Eisenstein's Ivan The Terrible: Part III or ¡Que Viva México! would have been better choices... or von Sternberg's I, Claudius.

[Bill Tobelman]

I like the sequence Brian & Co. came up with for BWPS. The only thing that didn't appeal to me were the composed pieces that began the 3rd movement and joined "Father of the Man" to "Surf's Up."

The BWPS sequence was written with Brian involved using actual SMiLE era sections. That's as good a SMiLE sequence as you're ever going to get and the only way it's going to get better is by using the original recordings from 66-67.

That's what they're doing for the SMiLE Sessions & so, to me, that's great news.

[Bicyclerider]

And I never understood the obsession with Smile tracklists and sequences which led to the dozens of fan mixes through the years.

It's part of the allure to Smile. The ability to fashion any track order you wanted from the bits and pieces available. It's the ultimate do-it-yourself album. And it's going to stay that way, even after the boxset is released. In fact, I think it's a safe bet to say it'll only add fuel to the fire.

People need to realize that BWPS and what Mark & Alan are going to hack up isn't trying to be the definitive, authentic release of what was to come out in January 1967. They aren't trying to be a be all and end all of Smile, and nothing ever will be, not unless someone goes back in time and convinces Brian to finish it. (Actually, I think that subject was vaguely touched on in a fiction book I read a while ago. Gave me quite the pleasant shock.) All they are, is an attempt to carve out some sort of finished product out of what we have now. And that's all they'll ever be.

I agree part of the allure of Smile or ANY album is the sequence.  George Martin sequenced the Beatles' albums and there was an art and a rationale for how he did it - basically, he put most of the good stuff on side one, the weaker stuff in the middle of side two, and finished off side two with a strong track.  But he also paid attention to how each song led into another - he scrapped his original sequence for Pepper and made it better for example.

But for Smile the sequencing never took place because there weren't the finished mixes to work with and try out.  There's only Brian's IDEAS for sequencing we have through session tapes and Vosse - Prayer intro, Surf's Up closer.  That's about it.  Brian usually ended and began sides with singles (Caroline No, god Only Knows, Sloop john B, etc.) so I suspect Good Vibrations and Heroes (and maybe Wonderful) would fall into that category.  But it's not surprising without finished mixes that there would be no sequence.

[desmondo]

I like the sequence Brian & Co. came up with for BWPS. The only thing that didn't appeal to me were the composed pieces that began the 3rd movement and joined "Father of the Man" to "Surf's Up."

The BWPS sequence was written with Brian involved using actual SMiLE era sections. That's as good a SMiLE sequence as you're ever going to get and the only way it's going to get better is by using the original recordings from 66-67.

That's what they're doing for the SMiLE Sessions & so, to me, that's great news.

Nice one

[guitarfool2002]

It's interesting in light of this discussion and others like it to remember there was talk of Don Was and Todd Rundgren being involved in a possible Smile CD-Rom release in the mid-90's which would have collected all the Smile tracks and let fans have a go at sequencing it on their own. It was a very forward-thinking approach which pre-dated a lot of similar projects that put the control in the hands of the fans, but their timing both in the history of the band and Brian and the technology available was a bit too early for anything to happen.

I keep thinking too that a project like that would have avoided the tracklist and sequence issues because the fans would be buying a collection of tracks rather than an "album", and they could do whatever they wanted after owning the disc - that control was a marketing point. The burden was not on the producers to sequence something that "sounded good" versus simply getting the tracks out there.

With this 2011 project, I'd still prefer a chronological approach like some of the box sets and collections I own but it is Smile so I'll be happy to have it either way. But I think BWPS may be the albatross here: The sequencing was excellent on that album, IMO...so how do you avoid comparison to that sequence when it already set the bar so high? Or are some people waiting to pounce on the new sequence because it sounds too close to BWPS? It's going to be hard to separate the two if that is one of the intents of this set.

[Roger Ryan]

I like the sequence Brian & Co. came up with for BWPS. The only thing that didn't appeal to me were the composed pieces that began the 3rd movement and joined "Father of the Man" to "Surf's Up."

For the most part, those pieces still consisted of material written by Brian in '66, but given new arrangements. The 3rd movement opening is the "Cantina" bridge rearranged; (most of) the link between "The Child Is Father Of The Man" and "Surf's Up" is from the "Child" sessions with a little of "Surf's Up" thrown in. Perhaps you're already aware of this and still find it questionable, but I've heard complaints before from folks who thought these musical links were newly written by Darian or Von Mertens.

It's quite possible that some semblance of these links could end up on Disc 1 of THE SMiLE SESSIONS using the vintage recordings.

[pixletwin]

I'm curious to find out if they will close with You're Welcome.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

The BWPS sequence was written with Brian involved using actual SMiLE era sections. That's as good a SMiLE sequence as you're ever going to get and the only way it's going to get better is by using the original recordings from 66-67.

That's what they're doing for the SMiLE Sessions

Says who?

[desmondo]

I like the sequence Brian & Co. came up with for BWPS. The only thing that didn't appeal to me were the composed pieces that began the 3rd movement and joined "Father of the Man" to "Surf's Up."

For the most part, those pieces still consisted of material written by Brian in '66, but given new arrangements. The 3rd movement opening is the "Cantina" bridge rearranged; (most of) the link between "The Child Is Father Of The Man" and "Surf's Up" is from the "Child" sessions with a little of "Surf's Up" thrown in. Perhaps you're already aware of this and still find it questionable, but I've heard complaints before from folks who thought these musical links were newly written by Darian or Von Mertens.

It's quite possible that some semblance of these links could end on Disc 1 of THE SMiLE SESSIONS using the vintage recordings.

Interesting - I wasn't aware of that - thanks

[Cam Mott]

With this 2011 project, I'd still prefer a chronological approach like some of the box sets and collections I own but it is Smile so I'll be happy to have it either way. But I think BWPS may be the albatross here: The sequencing was excellent on that album, IMO...so how do you avoid comparison to that sequence when it already set the bar so high? Or are some people waiting to pounce on the new sequence because it sounds too close to BWPS? It's going to be hard to separate the two if that is one of the intents of this set.

I agree, I've always thought a comp of all the SMiLE recordings sequenced chronologically as recorded/mixed might be instructive but I've always been too lazy to do it.

[drbeachboy]

I like the sequence Brian & Co. came up with for BWPS. The only thing that didn't appeal to me were the composed pieces that began the 3rd movement and joined "Father of the Man" to "Surf's Up."

For the most part, those pieces still consisted of material written by Brian in '66, but given new arrangements. The 3rd movement opening is the "Cantina" bridge rearranged; (most of) the link between "The Child Is Father Of The Man" and "Surf's Up" is from the "Child" sessions with a little of "Surf's Up" thrown in. Perhaps you're already aware of this and still find it questionable, but I've heard complaints before from folks who thought these musical links were newly written by Darian or Von Mertens.

It's quite possible that some semblance of these links could end on Disc 1 of THE SMiLE SESSIONS using the vintage recordings.

The music and sequencing of Movement 2 on BWPS is absolutely beautiful and breathtaking. I remember being floored the first time I heard the RFH Premier show. It will be hard to improve upon it this time around.

[pixletwin]

The BWPS sequence was written with Brian involved using actual SMiLE era sections. That's as good a SMiLE sequence as you're ever going to get and the only way it's going to get better is by using the original recordings from 66-67.

That's what they're doing for the SMiLE Sessions

Says who?

There is a scene on the BWPS DVD showing Brian and Darian going over a Pro Tools session file where Darian has taken recordings of the original SMiLE as a blue print for sequencing.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

The BWPS sequence was written with Brian involved using actual SMiLE era sections. That's as good a SMiLE sequence as you're ever going to get and the only way it's going to get better is by using the original recordings from 66-67.

That's what they're doing for the SMiLE Sessions

Says who?

There is a scene on the BWPS DVD showing Brian and Darian going over a Pro Tools session file where Darian has taken recordings of the original SMiLE as a blue print for sequencing.

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm questioning the assertion that they are going to use the BWPS sequence with the original tracks on the upcoming Box Set.

I recall that scene from the DVD but I don't think they ever suggested that the original Smile provided "a blue print for sequencing". Rather, it provided music and then Darian and Brian sequenced it. And, in many ways, they sequenced it based on a fairly long history of the tracks being sequenced elsewhere, like GV Box Set and canonical fan mixes. That being said, they did manage to come up with a sequence that, I think, was unique and entirely logical.