Look Listen Vibrate Smile! Track list?

[PetSmile]

Does anyone have the most up-to-date version of this book? If so, I’d really like to know the Smile tracklist as per Domenic Priore. If you have a scan of it that’d be ideal. Thanks!

[Robbie Mac]

[PetSmile]

Extraordinary! Apparently this is the culmination of a lot of research on Domenic's part, so much appreciated. Will probably have to rejig my Smile mix in light of this. Thanks!

[Robbie Mac]

Extraordinary! Apparently this is the culmination of a lot of research on Domenic's part, so much appreciated. Will probably have to rejig my Smile mix in light of this. Thanks!

A lot of his research had been done with Darian Sahanaja and Probyn Gregory as well.

[guitarfool2002]

This is cool! I only have the old copy I bought back in '92 at Tower Records in Boston, none of the revisions or additions. Looks like I'll have to get a more current one.

BTW Domenic did a great live interview Tuesday night, I wish there was more time to really get into the Smile issues with him, I mean the real deep-dive stuff. But he has a new website coming soon which should be interesting.

[DSalter]

Here is a link to the interview:

https://youtu.be/UrKdM6Igyjk?t=4647

[juggler]

Seems funny to be talking about Dom's 1995 edition as "the more current one," but that's exactly what it is.

I remember when the "Last Gasp" edition came out, i.e., May 1995, because I spent a weekend reading the damned book cover to cover instead of studying for a big examination.    

[rab2591]

I think I have the latest version (in a box currently). But man I remember getting this book and being blown away by it. I still am - literally everything having to do with SMiLE - I don't know if such a book of this calibre has ever existed for another album. Like do books like this exist for Sgt. Pepper?

The amount of ads, newspaper clippings, etc about this album - it is just astounding. In the top 3 of my favorite books in my Beach Boys collection.

[guitarfool2002]

I was obsessed with that book too. Spent many, many hours poring over LLVS instead of my textbooks and other things I should have been doing (and still do!). But I'm thankful for every minute. The only qualm I have with it, which came years later, was that a few very important quotes and clippings had no context or publishing date, and with Smile minutiae those things can be crucial.

And I wish they had included (at least in the original print copy I have) the Michael Vosse "Fusion" article. That article alongside the Anderle/Williams interviews in the book would have blown minds and changed opinions had it been in the book originally.

Just to have access to all of that period material without having to travel to a California library and scroll through microfiche reels to read this stuff is still one of the greatest gifts fans of this music ever received in the pre-internet world. It was like getting a copy of the coolest scrapbook a Smile fan could want.

[mellowlight]

Here is a link to the interview:

https://youtu.be/UrKdM6Igyjk?t=4647

In this interview he mentions that he and Darien came up with a definitive track list true to Brian’s original vision, seemingly somewhere around the Smile Sessions release period. He even said he had the cd right there but the interviewers didn’t ask about it

[Mitchell]

Note "She's Going Bald" rather than "He Gives Speeches"...

I also have very fond memories of this book, though I got it in the early 2000s. It's a time capsule/artifact in its own right - I think the SMiLE story benefits from it capturing the mystery in a way that a normal retelling of history cannot.

[Angela Jones]

Some time ago, I was given a track list of the original SMiLE. There is no proof of its veracity but it seems to comply with the LLVS list shown above. Except the list I have shows 'Prayer' not 'Our Prayer' but I understand that was the original title.

[zosobird]

Here is a link to the interview:

https://youtu.be/UrKdM6Igyjk?t=4647

In this interview he mentions that he and Darien came up with a definitive track list true to Brian’s original vision, seemingly somewhere around the Smile Sessions release period. He even said he had the cd right there but the interviewers didn’t ask about it

Does anyone have this tracklist or know Domenic Priore and could ask?
Thanks for posting that video interview, wish they wouldnt talked more SMiLE.

[Julia]

It's really nice to hear Priore say unambiguously what I had always advocated back when I was super-obsessed with SMiLE and in a mindset where I felt I had to convince everyone of my theories, IE that the '03 concert tracklist was not vintage and not intended to be etched in stone as the "definitive/official" SMiLE. To me this is just self-evident but back then (and perhaps now, I'm not sure how the discourse has evolved these past 10 years) it was seen as disrespectful to say so, at least by some.

This interview gives me a lot more respect for Priore and his take on the material. While I'd always been grateful to him for compiling LLVS, I used to think he was responsible for the album and its sequence being misinterpreted through the years. Hearing him go on about using only what's written on the tape boxes makes me realize I didn't give him enough credit.

These interviewers are frustrating for not asking more follow-up questions and specifics. That seems to be a common theme with a lot of people who've had access to those "in the know" through the decades. Seriously, you have one of the world's top authorities on this material, a guy who's rubbed elbows with Mark Linnet, Alan Boyd, Brian and Darian, telling you they figured out the sequence to this famously oblique album, the holy grail of SMiLE info finally solved...and you ask about "He Gives Speeches" of all things??? It's like if Priore said he had the complete sheet music for the second half of Surf's Up and you ask what color shirt Brian was wearing when he wrote it. Gahh.

But whatever. Over the years I've mellowed out on trying to find the "one true SMiLE" and convincing everyone to see it the way I do. Now I'm just content to pick and choose from the music we have, what works for me. Kinda like Christians and Bible passages.

[Zenobi]

Imho interviewing Brian was an art nobody ever mastered, or got even near. The same old useless questions. They make a lot of fuss about Brian stating that his fav movie was "Norbit", and even use it to make an argument that his IQ was obviously not so high. But wasting precious time to ask him such a question was pure idiocy. What if Brian had answered "Andrej Rublev"? Would it have mattered in the least?

[Zenobi]

One true SMiLE... it's a fractal. Zoom into it and you will have different landscapes every time.

[Julia]

Imho interviewing Brian was an art nobody ever mastered, or got even near. The same old useless questions. They make a lot of fuss about Brian stating that his fav movie was "Norbit", and even use it to make an argument that his IQ was obviously not so high. But wasting precious time to ask him such a question was pure idiocy. What if Brian had answered "Andrej Rublev"? Would it have mattered in the least?

I agree 100%, it's a problem with a lot of insipid press junkets but especially infuriating when the subject at hand is this seminal lost work that could've changed everything (or so we'd like to believe) where there's so many unanswered questions and time's running out. But everyone feels the need to ask "so what was the album about?" and "so why didn't it get finished?" like that hasn't been covered ad nauseum. I think generic questions like that also start the interview off on a bad foot especially for someone like Brian, who probably starts thinking "oh boy this again, if they cared so much, you'd think they'd do a bit of research first before wasting my time!" I think someone could've gotten a lot further with Brian by asking more pointed, less emotionally charged questions like play him that new melody line of DYLW from the sessions and say "so was this the main melody, or a background vocal or what?" or "would you mind sitting at the piano and playing this air piece you mentioned at XYZ interview?" Hell, even back in the day someone could've asked "would you mind singing the 'ribbon of concrete' chorus?" and then we'd have that to use in our mixes.

In any case, you'd think somebody in charge of these endeavors would, for the sake of their viewers and the subjects being questioned, stop and think "ok, these guys have already been interviewed 1000 times, what haven't they been asked already?" But it's like they don't really care, the interviewer in at least half the cases probably doesn't listen to the Beach Boys anyway, so they just ask the usual "oh what's your favorite song?" / "how did you start making music?" / "what goes through your head when you're performing?" typical bland time-wasters. They do it to athletes at the Olympics too, and actors who have to promote their upcoming film.

In this case though, the guy being questioned is not famous (except to super-fans) and is there solely due to his knowledge of this one topic, being interviewed by supposedly passionate fans as desperate for answers as we are. I don't understand how you don't come prepared with a list of 30~ questions (just anything you can think of, scribbled on a notepad) and furiously write notes as he speaks about what to follow up on. It feels like they were just winging it and too blown away to think clearly in the moment. But alas. If anyone does have Dominic or Darian's contact info I implore you to show them this clip and ask them about this supposed tracklist. Or give it to me and I'll do it (very respectfully of course).

Random anecdote I'll probably never get the chance to throw out again: I think Brian would've liked this Italian movie I discovered recently called "I Dolci Inganni" from 1960. He seems the type to enjoy simplicity and he had a perpetually naive admiration for young women. (I'm basing that assessment on Tony Asher's words, the fact that he still wrote about teen romance into his old age, etc). Plus the film, to me, is the perfect visual companion piece to "Wonderful" and its message of a girl venturing out of her comfort zone and losing her innocence. I really think he would've appreciated watching it, with or without subtitles, just because the subject matter seemed so dear to him (and Catherine Spaak is so adorable and charming). If I could've spent an hour or two with Brian, I'd like to just watch that together and ask him what he thinks of the soundtrack by Piero Piccioni.