Workshop/Great Shape - has this been tried before?

[The_Holy_Bee]

Ever since the news of TSS reawakened my SMiLE obsession, I've been thinking of how my personal mix is going to be improved by the resources on the box (a bit unhappy about being stuck with fold down mono, but seriously that's an extremely small quibble). Being an academic sort of guy, that's provoked a whole lot of re-reading of articles, posts, conjecture etc and re-thinking my goals for the mix.

Being a disciple of the original Smile Shop - back in the dark days before I got editing software, Messers Lane and Hunts' edits were far and away my go-to mix - I've always tried to bear in mind the requirements of a 60s pop LP, the fact that covers were printed with twelve discrete titles, and all other contemporary bits and pieces of info available. Knowing (or being pretty confident with the available evidence) that

* H&V originally included "Great Shape"/"Open Country Song" and Barnyard
* That these were moved out of the song at the very latest by February (to make room for Cantina and presumably the barnshine fade)
* There was a song on the December tracklist called "Great Shape"

It's easy enough to conjecture, as many have done, that the IIGS verse with tape explosion and Barnyard stayed together when being expelled from H&V. There is also talk of an "H&V" part two, of course, so I took a stab in the dark and decided, in the absence of clearer evidence, that "Great Shape" was basically that part two (as well as the famous Barnyard suite): excised sections of the original H&V structure, with a few other Heroes pieces and the clip-clop fade as an outro (which, as a happy coincidence, leads into my side one closer Cabin Essence delightfully).

All this done mainly for my own aesthetic reasons, of course, and like most of us to try and use as many of the finished pieces (ie. with vocals) as possible to get the most completed sound for the album.

But recently, re-reading the Fusion piece and particularly Vosse's recollection of OMP/YAMS being extended into a barnyard section with animal noises, and further connecting "Wanna Be Around/Friday Night" with that sequence, I started messing about with some other sequencing for my versions of H&V and Great Shape.

One thing that occurred to me is not only does "Wanna Be Around" - which frankly I've never had much time for before - come in beautifully after OMP/YAMS/Barnshine, but its (unrecorded) lyrics, "I wanna be around/ to pick up the pieces/when somebody breaks your heart" are perfect following Dennis' past tense "Only Sunshine". And while listening to the piano track on Friday Night, something else occurred to me - its tempo and pattern is very close to that in the Open Country verse backing track we have (though far less so the Humble Harv demo version). So I did a quick edit of "Workshop" cutting into the IIGS backing.

I put that rough edit of the sequence on rapidshare, but I wasn't sure about such things so I wanted to check whether providing a link would be okay before doing so. Otherwise anyone keen to hear it, please PM me. As I said, it's obviously very rough, but like Wonderful/Look on BWPS, the movement of one into the other does seem like it could have been planned. (Of course, like Wonderful/Look it'd need some tweaking which may not have been possible in '66). What's more, it lends more credence to the importance of the bracketed (Great Shape) notation on the session log/tape box.

Not sure what you'll all think - as I said, it's a very crude edit -  but I thought it was worth finding out what people thought and if, as I suspect is the case, it had been suggested before.