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Author Topic: SMiLE was ready in 1967 - discuss  (Read 37237 times)
WillJC
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« Reply #200 on: July 24, 2022, 04:06:25 AM »


Christian Matijas-Mecca. The Words and Music of Brian Wilson p96

““Cool Cool Water” was back under Brian’s hands in January 1970 as a vocal chant that emerged from the May 1967 track “I Love to Say Dada.” When Brian returned to this for Sunflower, he combined the chant from “Da Da” with the core of his original version of “Cool, Cool Water” to create an entirely new work.  On the 1993 Good Vibrations boxed set we had the first official release of “I Love to Say Dada” and the original fragment of “…Water,” and I can hear the relationship of these two works.  The song, as it appears on Sunflower, is a lighthearted, finger-snapping vocal callisthenic.  Its inclusion on the album was the work of Warners A&R manager, Lenny Waronker, who referred to this as representative of the ‘kind’ of work he liked to hear from Brian.


That's just an old assumption that newer research into the tapes and sessions overturned. The "water, water, water, water" droning chant exists on tape in two places - on the reel with the Smiley Smile version of Vegetables where it's marked "FADE FOR COOL COOL WATER", and on a compilation reel of Wild Honey tracks including the main CCW verses from those sessions where it's marked "ENDING". It's not clear which is the second generation copy and which is the original, but either way, the evidence suggests that it was always intended for Cool Water and recorded either at the home studio or Wally Heider's in June or October '67. The opening verses of the Sunflower edit (based on the Da Da progression) were recorded in October '67 during the sessions for Wild Honey, and the last portion was recorded in July 1970.

Brian did say this in 1970: "In 'Cool, Cool Water' there's a chant I wish we hadn't used. It fits all right, but there's just something I don't think is quite right with it."



Vegetables differs from Vega-tables. Vegetables has different lyrics and was completely re-recorded for Smiley Smile.


'Vega-Tables' had already been renamed 'Vegetables' by the time of the April '67 version recorded as a single, which is usually what people mean when they're talking about the 'Smile version'. The original Vega-Tables through most of the lifespan of the project from 1966 is the one that's labelled 'demo' on the Smile Sessions box. Van Dyke's still asserted that all of those revised lyrics were by him.



Good Vibrations was released on 10th October 1966 at a time Smile was being made. Brian did not want Good Vibrations to be included on Smiley Smile.


The only source of that is something David Anderle said in the Crawdaddy piece with Paul Williams, where he was talking about Brian never wanting to put singles on albums but always being obligated to for business reasons. He assumed Good Vibrations appearing on Smiley must've been against Brian's wishes, but he wasn't actually around to know the ins and outs of what happened there. The Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains single masters were sent from the Capitol vault back to the Beach Boys on July 13, a couple of days before the album was finished.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2022, 04:08:24 AM by WillJC » Logged
Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #201 on: July 24, 2022, 05:03:58 AM »

Unfinished Smile is much more similar to Smiley Smile than it is to Pet Sounds.  If Pet Sounds is the culmination of the impulse of Today and SDSN, Smiley is the culmination of the Dumb Angel and Smile material.

Culmination is not the word I would use.  I wouldn't even use resulted since I don't think Smiley Smile was the same 'impulse' as Smile.  Some of the tracks were much reduced in quality and just ended up there.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #202 on: July 24, 2022, 05:26:37 AM »

Quote
do you think I'm that naive about this as to discuss imaginary things instead of what I've been listening to for decades?

I think you like to argue for the sake of arguing so much that you end up arguing about nothing!

Quote
I don't try to state as fact what I think Brian would have done, so no I don't know and I never said I did.

What is your point then?  That Smiley's vocals had more reverb than Pet Sounds and thus Smile had a fixed end date?

Thanks for the clips.  It seems to me that at least Bruce wasn't too bothered by the criticism -- he seems to understand that they needed to expand the stage act a little bit, and regrets their first attempts to do so didn't work out.  They learned from this and did work up a better stage show.  It seems to me that the bands reaction to the criticism was less to give Smile a fixed end date so they could make an album of hypothetically stage-reproducible songs, and more to develop a touring band by gradually hiring sidemen.

That first point is unfair and uncalled for, but I'll take it. I've laid out my opinions and examples here and from the first post I made on the May/June 67 time frame, I said the studio versus live sound issue was a factor to consider. Not that it was the main factor, but one to consider alongside everything else. The examples and quotes are listed on these pages, along with my own opinions. If people read them and agree, fine, if they read them and disagree, fine. But to say I'm arguing about nothing is really uncalled for and not cool. Ok?

My point is having a discussion about topics which are still open and unresolved. To try to suggest it comes down to reverb on Smiley's vocals is again ridiculous and uncalled for. But I'll take it in stride and reply accordingly. No, that's not my point...thanks for dismissing everything else I've contributed to the discussion in one comment.

When examples were asked for, they were given. If your opinion is "right" in your own mind, that won't change. But you're not the only person reading, and there have been cases where someone has said "this is fact" when it is not. That includes Keith Badman's book and the dodgy dates too, I suppose.  LOL

Just to say GF, when I posted this thread I had hoped that you would contribute. I value your opinion and your wealth of knowledge very highly as many do here and will continue to read whatever you write with interest.  Not so Joshilyn who along with some others seem to be trying to create a revisionist history, ignoring all the contemporary information by the band, historians, people involved in the production and by Brian himself.
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #203 on: July 24, 2022, 05:38:39 AM »

Liz, with all due respect, you have been posting mounds and mounds of misinformation, accumulated from decades of incorrect assumptions made about Smile before the resources were available. It's required consistent correcting, and when Will and I give information that may be new to you about what sections were recorded when, it comes from AFM contracts, tape boxes, Capitol files, content of actual tapes, and careful scrutiny in comparing all of the above. It isn't "revisionist history" to say Love to Say Da Da wasn't recorded as a section for The Elements, when piles of documentation confirm that's the case, and when that was only ever an assumption made by researchers in an attempt to make the album easier to understand. If the facts do not fit a narrative, it is not the facts that are revisionist and must change.
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Angela Jones
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« Reply #204 on: July 24, 2022, 05:40:05 AM »


[/quote]

Just to say GF, when I posted this thread I had hoped that you would contribute. I value your opinion and your wealth of knowledge very highly as many do here and will continue to read whatever you write with interest.  
[/quote]

Seconded.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2022, 05:41:12 AM by Angela Jones » Logged
Joshilyn Hoisington
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« Reply #205 on: July 24, 2022, 05:59:52 AM »

Look, I love Craig -- I've known him for something like 20+ years since the Smile Shop and I trust him to take care of my first Rickenbacker.  This is not the first time we've disagreed and it won't be the last, and I hope he'll forgive me for my patented autistic lack of tact when debating my special interest.

Revisionist history is necessary when the received history is wrong.  I have no qualms about doing revisionist history. The Beach Boys story is one that is soaked in myth, oral tradition, and years of creeping accretions.  We have a band of primary sources who are all unusually mendacious, confused, or just wrong.

This isn't quite like, "Now after 500 years the Vatican is opening its archives up to researchers" but the fact is that nobody has really been able to put the entire historical record together (meaning documentation, not hearsay) before.  But with a lot of work and digging and networking, actual hard documentation is coming together, and sometimes it tells a different story than the one that's been passed down orally.

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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #206 on: July 24, 2022, 06:19:11 AM »

By the way, how much interest is there in the actual facts regarding dates and documents and when splices were made, etc? I would think that would be right up the alley of every Smile fan on earth, but I've been surprised to see a lot of the info, which has been revealed here for the first time, completely ignored! Brian splicing the Worms verse from Worms (which he'd otherwise just chopped up for Heroes) and planning to use it as an intro for the original Da Da, via notes on the tape box? I thought that would get a big reaction!

Putting aside the debates regarding contemporary quotes and what they mean re Smile's transition into Smiley Smile, I'm surprised that most of the new information that's being given in this thread from original documents is kind of getting washed over. That's the part that fascinates me the most - the music, and exactly how, when, and where it was made. Through that, Brian's rapidly changing plans can be traced, as can his increasing interesting in minimal tracks, and instruments that are stacked by himself, rather than played by a live ensemble.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #207 on: July 24, 2022, 06:28:46 AM »


Christian Matijas-Mecca. The Words and Music of Brian Wilson p96

““Cool Cool Water” was back under Brian’s hands in January 1970 as a vocal chant that emerged from the May 1967 track “I Love to Say Dada.” When Brian returned to this for Sunflower, he combined the chant from “Da Da” with the core of his original version of “Cool, Cool Water” to create an entirely new work.  On the 1993 Good Vibrations boxed set we had the first official release of “I Love to Say Dada” and the original fragment of “…Water,” and I can hear the relationship of these two works.  The song, as it appears on Sunflower, is a lighthearted, finger-snapping vocal callisthenic.  Its inclusion on the album was the work of Warners A&R manager, Lenny Waronker, who referred to this as representative of the ‘kind’ of work he liked to hear from Brian.


That's just an old assumption that newer research into the tapes and sessions overturned. The "water, water, water, water" droning chant exists on tape in two places - on the reel with the Smiley Smile version of Vegetables where it's marked "FADE FOR COOL COOL WATER", and on a compilation reel of Wild Honey tracks including the main CCW verses from those sessions where it's marked "ENDING". It's not clear which is the second generation copy and which is the original, but either way, the evidence suggests that it was always intended for Cool Water and recorded either at the home studio or Wally Heider's in June or October '67. The opening verses of the Sunflower edit (based on the Da Da progression) were recorded in October '67 during the sessions for Wild Honey, and the last portion was recorded in July 1970.

Brian did say this in 1970: "In 'Cool, Cool Water' there's a chant I wish we hadn't used. It fits all right, but there's just something I don't think is quite right with it."



Vegetables differs from Vega-tables. Vegetables has different lyrics and was completely re-recorded for Smiley Smile.


'Vega-Tables' had already been renamed 'Vegetables' by the time of the April '67 version recorded as a single, which is usually what people mean when they're talking about the 'Smile version'. The original Vega-Tables through most of the lifespan of the project from 1966 is the one that's labelled 'demo' on the Smile Sessions box. Van Dyke's still asserted that all of those revised lyrics were by him.



Good Vibrations was released on 10th October 1966 at a time Smile was being made. Brian did not want Good Vibrations to be included on Smiley Smile.


The only source of that is something David Anderle said in the Crawdaddy piece with Paul Williams, where he was talking about Brian never wanting to put singles on albums but always being obligated to for business reasons. He assumed Good Vibrations appearing on Smiley must've been against Brian's wishes, but he wasn't actually around to know the ins and outs of what happened there. The Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains single masters were sent from the Capitol vault back to the Beach Boys on July 13, a couple of days before the album was finished.

From The Smile Sessions booklet - On December 22, 1966, Wilson recorded two versions of the track, titled "Da Da", at Columbia Studio. One version featured him playing a piano with the strings taped, while the other featured him playing a Fender Rhodes electric piano. No master number was assigned to the tape. 

Brian Wilson says that he wrote Cool Cool Water in March 1967 see my previous post and reference.

Vegetables - so?  It is not Vega-tables.

I got the information from Dominic Priore’s The Story of Brian Wilson’s Masterpiece Smile.  “Brian didn’t want Good Vibrations to appear on Smiley Smile but for the first time he was out voted by the other members of the Beach Boys.  Had this recording been available for Capitol ST-002, the original Smile could have been released on Brother records.”

And from the Beach Boys Post Sounds site (I can’f find the origin of the information but I have read it elsewhere too and will continue to look - it’s nothing to do with Crawdaddy).

“With unrest surrounding their latest as-yet unreleased SMiLE recordings, The Beach Boys’ new LP, Smiley Smile, is released in the U.S. on September 18th, 1967 and worldwide by November 1967. Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson tells the US press: “It was not as ambitious an album as Pet Sounds was. But [Smiley Smile is] the most fun thing we ever did. I listened to it in a jungle in Africa and it sounded great. Cut largely at Brian Wilson’s new home studio, Smiley Smile cobbles together inferior-quality versions of songs originally intended for SMiLE and hastily recorded new material. Only “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes & Villains” appear in their original versions. “Good Vibrations” is here to help bolster sales, even though Brian is strongly against it’s inclusion. But he is outvoted by the other Beach Boys, the first time that the entire group has overruled him. Clearly, as he had feared, it is the end of an era.”
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #208 on: July 24, 2022, 06:43:17 AM »

More and more mounds of misinfo.

The Da Da tracks were likely recorded during the Brian solo sessions on December 27 & 28 - they were done onto the 8-track Prayer reel, which Brian had just removed the DYLW verse onto.

Brian says he wrote CCW in March of 1967... great, but in May he was recording LTSDD, which is that song with different lyrics. It was recorded as CCW for the first time a few weeks later. I think we can trust the dates of what was actually recorded in favor of Brian remembering off hand when he wrote something. He also once said Smile was recorded in 1965, but I am trusting the actual dates on all of the documents over that memory.

Vega-Tables is the title of the track Brian was working with in 1966, which is mislabeled as a "demo" on the Smile Sessions box set. Vegetables is the title he was using from April-June, and that includes the "Smile version" I presume you are talking about, the Smiley version, and everything in between. To refuse to use the titles Brian himself was using across all documentation in favor of something more familiar is to create confusion and miscommunications.

Ah yes, that good old Priore book. Lots of "info", very few sources. Lots of what he's said in that book has been debunked by the documentation, which has slowly revealed itself to fans over the years, and some of what's said in that book, as has been determined by real data, was entirely invented by Domenic Priore. I'm surprised people are still going to that book for Smile information, but I guess that truly shows how big the need is for something actually backed up by the tapes and the music.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #209 on: July 24, 2022, 06:43:34 AM »

Craig, I'm dismissing your arguments on their merits because they are not very good arguments -- it's not personal, although I do think that you just enjoy being argumentative.  Which is OK.  I went to law school, there are lots of people like you that will subtly change a subject just to keep the joy of arguing going.  I understand the thrill of the adrenaline and all that.

There is the statement of the original post:

There was a "Smile" that was more or less close to being releasable in 1967.

That position was superseded by this assertion:

That there was one Smile and that it officially stopped being worked on at a fixed date.  After that date, there was a totally different project started from scratch.

Justification for this assertion has been put forward:

Smiley was started as a new project because the band had to be able to sound like their records onstage.
Smiley involved a totally different method of working
Smiley was less involved musically / had simpler production / had markedly different production techniques

But the historical record does not back any of that up.

The band did not perform any song from Smiley Smile regularly onstage, other than the two most complicated recordings, and never had any intention of doing so.
It was a gradual and subtle shift in working methods from the Pet Sounds style of music and production, easily traceable by looking at personnel, track use, and Brian's roughs.
Smiley was demonstrably not simpler musically, and in fact was in some ways more advanced in it's production techniques that earlier material, despite any perception of unusual simplicity.


Don, I appreciate your more subtle approach to the question.  I think you're probably right that there were circumstances that forced things along more urgently that was ideal.  And obviously, making the decision to do the home studio was a huge event.  But I don't think we can know for certain whether the home studio's limitations and the time pressure affected Brian's aesthetic sensibilities.  It's very possible that they did and that he made internal adjustments and concessions because of it.  But that's speculation, whereas the tape and contemporary materials are not, and the those things show pretty objectively that Smile and Smiley Smile are part of the same artistic impulse by any metric.



Just to single this out:

There is the statement of the original post:

There was a "Smile" that was more or less close to being releasable in 1967.

That position was superseded by this assertion:

That there was one Smile and that it officially stopped being worked on at a fixed date.  After that date, there was a totally different project started from scratch.

Justification for this assertion has been put forward:

Smiley was started as a new project because the band had to be able to sound like their records onstage.
Smiley involved a totally different method of working
Smiley was less involved musically / had simpler production / had markedly different production techniques

But the historical record does not back any of that up.


What historical record are you referring to, because it was Carl who said they started from scratch, various band members who said they went into the Smiley sessions with a different mindset, including Brian, and that it had simpler production, a definite choice that was made. The first one is my opinion, I've covered that already. The other two are found in quotes and comments coming from the band members themselves, and not just the October 1967 Carl interview I reposted earlier from the LA Times.

I was stating and reposting here what the band said, on the historical record, about Smiley Smile, and the quotes are available from many sources. So is the issue you have more with them and what they have said rather than my opinions, which compared to the band's own words are just one fan's opinions?


Why does the second statement supersede the first?

Smile was OFFICIALLY not worked on after a fixed date.

There was another project started after that date.  None of the recorded material for the first project was used on the second.  Capitol was still discussing the cover for a release AFTER Smiley Smile.

The band complained about the complexities of Smile.  Brian supplied a simpler album. We do not know the content of the discussions but likely the stage performances featured as justification to go back to something simpler to play and likely more approachable to their audience (who in my humble opinion they vastly under rated).
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #210 on: July 24, 2022, 06:48:56 AM »

Once again, what is that date? What documentation suggests certain material is recorded for Smile, and then not Smile? The dates you previously provided were without source, and there was about a week of recorded Beach Boys music between them - how on earth do you explain that not being a part of either project if there is such a clear divide?

And once again, sections that were recorded in October 1966, February 1967, and April 1967 were all used on Smiley Smile. This is all without Good Vibrations. You are repeating misunderstandings that I have attempted to correct many times.

If we're going to continue with the narrative that Smiley Smile was made simpler for the stage band... please address my last post on page 7, and explain how every point makes the music "easier." No one has replied to it and I'm thinking that those making this assertion have not listened to Smiley Smile in a long, long time.
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Joshilyn Hoisington
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« Reply #211 on: July 24, 2022, 06:52:11 AM »

I think a main block to mutual understanding in this matter is that there is a tendency to privilege the oral tradition, because it is much more accessible.  But there is a problem with doing history that way -- basically, everybody lies.  Or, more generously, everybody perceives the same events differently.  And there's also the telephone game effect; Brian says something to a journalist, who reports it using different verbiage, and then a book author uses the reporters words 40 years later and puts their own interpretation on that already once-removed context.

And I know it's a little unfair to keep saying that the documentation and physical evidence tell a different story, because it's just a lot harder to compile that stuff, and it's not something that can be easily consulted in a book or googled.  But it really is better history to base our analysis on what Brian and the Beach Boys actually did than what they said they did.  What they said they did is important, in its own way, and shouldn't be thrown away.  But what they actually did is, well, what they actually did.

Tracing what they actually did has been close to impossible because access to the original sources has been spotty.  But thanks to really persistent people, access is getting less and less spotty, and it has yielded some surprises.  Nobody has to give up their opinions on all this, but I do ask for some patience and a willingness to revisit the record -- a record which has been lost and is in the process of being found.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #212 on: July 24, 2022, 07:00:29 AM »

More and more mounds of misinfo.

The Da Da tracks were likely recorded during the Brian solo sessions on December 27 & 28 - they were done onto the 8-track Prayer reel, which Brian had just removed the DYLW verse onto.

Brian says he wrote CCW in March of 1967... great, but in May he was recording LTSDD, which is that song with different lyrics. It was recorded as CCW for the first time a few weeks later. I think we can trust the dates of what was actually recorded in favor of Brian remembering off hand when he wrote something. He also once said Smile was recorded in 1965, but I am trusting the actual dates on all of the documents over that memory.

Vega-Tables is the title of the track Brian was working with in 1966, which is mislabeled as a "demo" on the Smile Sessions box set. Vegetables is the title he was using from April-June, and that includes the "Smile version" I presume you are talking about, the Smiley version, and everything in between. To refuse to use the titles Brian himself was using across all documentation in favor of something more familiar is to create confusion and miscommunications.

Ah yes, that good old Priore book. Lots of "info", very few sources. Lots of what he's said in that book has been debunked by the documentation, which has slowly revealed itself to fans over the years, and some of what's said in that book, as has been determined by real data, was entirely invented by Domenic Priore. I'm surprised people are still going to that book for Smile information, but I guess that truly shows how big the need is for something actually backed up by the tapes and the music.

Where exactly did you date the date of the recording - mine came from the horses mouth.  But in any case it would be pretty difficult to record it before he'd written it and clearly Brian thought they were different compositions even if you don't.  Don't gaslight Brian.  I don't especially care what it was recorded on nor does it make any difference to the discussion.

The original Vega-tables had different more esoteric lyrics.  He was asked to change them I believe for Vegetables.

So we're down to making unproven assertions and ad hominem attacks on Priore now. But Dominic's book was not the only source and the other source had other additional information on the subject.  I will continue to research it.  What does "I guess that truly shows how big the need is for something actually backed up by the tapes and music mean"?  It makes no sense.  The tapes and music cannot prove if Brian didn't want GV included on Smiley Smile in the same way that they don't include today's weather forecast - its outside of the data contained within them.  
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #213 on: July 24, 2022, 07:05:48 AM »

I also highly recommend we be more specific with our assertions, especially the big ones that are presented objectively. We can all say "Smile was OFFICIALLY not worked on after a fixed date" and anyone reading this might think, "Ok cool, so it's documented somewhere that each recording is for an album called Smile, until a certain date, and then all the documents said Smiley Smile."

But that isn't true. None of the documentation gives the name of the project, and there is no change in how tape boxes, AFM contracts, or anything else is written after a certain date, and certainly not in the post-Derek Taylor article time frame that people are giving here.

So, before we continue to spread more misinfo, let's be careful with what we're saying here, and know where things come from.
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« Reply #214 on: July 24, 2022, 07:10:39 AM »

If you are listening to what's on the Smile Sessions disc 1, track 14, you are listening to Vegetables, not Vega-Tables. I again recommend that if you want to classify different recordings by different titles, you go by what Brian was using, or you confuse people. Those lyrics are different to what Brian had for Vega-Tables (which is track 23 on the same disc) but he was not asked by someone else to change them. It was just another Wilson/Parks rewrite.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #215 on: July 24, 2022, 07:14:17 AM »

Liz, with all due respect, you have been posting mounds and mounds of misinformation, accumulated from decades of incorrect assumptions made about Smile before the resources were available. It's required consistent correcting, and when Will and I give information that may be new to you about what sections were recorded when, it comes from AFM contracts, tape boxes, Capitol files, content of actual tapes, and careful scrutiny in comparing all of the above. It isn't "revisionist history" to say Love to Say Da Da wasn't recorded as a section for The Elements, when piles of documentation confirm that's the case, and when that was only ever an assumption made by researchers in an attempt to make the album easier to understand. If the facts do not fit a narrative, it is not the facts that are revisionist and must change.

With respect, you and WilJC need to prove that my information is misinformation.  I won't just take your word for it. What documentation proves that Da Da wasn't in The Elements? As I have said already I have a track list produced before BWPS where Da Da is listed as Water.   And there is nothing remotely simple or easy to understand about the concept of Blue Hawaii where the rebirth cries like a child in Hawaiian in a chant about a prolonged, intense ritual.

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« Reply #216 on: July 24, 2022, 07:15:13 AM »

I dated the recording by comparing the different handwritings on the front of the tape box, and comparing that to the engineers that were working at Columbia during each session of 1966. It was first determined to be recorded directly after the Worms vocals, but newer research shows that this happened about a week later, when that section happened to be removed to the same tape. They weren't recorded back to back as previously thought - just intentionally placed back to back on the same reel.

Observing that Love to Say Da Da and Cool Cool Water share the same exact chord progression, and that one is a rewrite of the other, is not "gaslighting Brian." It is a basic observation that can be made by anyone who has the ability recognize a chord pattern.
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« Reply #217 on: July 24, 2022, 07:18:33 AM »

Liz, with all due respect, you have been posting mounds and mounds of misinformation, accumulated from decades of incorrect assumptions made about Smile before the resources were available. It's required consistent correcting, and when Will and I give information that may be new to you about what sections were recorded when, it comes from AFM contracts, tape boxes, Capitol files, content of actual tapes, and careful scrutiny in comparing all of the above. It isn't "revisionist history" to say Love to Say Da Da wasn't recorded as a section for The Elements, when piles of documentation confirm that's the case, and when that was only ever an assumption made by researchers in an attempt to make the album easier to understand. If the facts do not fit a narrative, it is not the facts that are revisionist and must change.

With respect, you and WilJC need to prove that my information is misinformation.  I won't just take your word for it. What documentation proves that Da Da wasn't in The Elements? As I have said already I have a track list produced before BWPS where Da Da is listed as Water.   And there is nothing remotely simple or easy to understand about the concept of Blue Hawaii where the rebirth cries like a child in Hawaiian in a chant about a prolonged, intense ritual.



I direct you to my earlier post in which I compiled all contemporary documentary references to a song called The Elements, and show that it no longer existed as a concept by the time Love to Say Da Da was written. But Love to Say Da Da is its own song, with its own title, recorded in several sections. I don't have any evidence that Good Vibrations wasn't recorded to be a section of You Still Believe In Me... but they are two different songs recorded at different sessions with their own distinct titles. You can hear Larry Levine slate The Elements (Part 1) as "The Elements (Part 1)" and you can hear Jimmy Hilton slate Love to Say Da Da as "Love to Say Da Da." Fanmix tracklists are not sources of Brian's original intentions, and neither are his new writings with Van in 2003.
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #218 on: July 24, 2022, 07:26:55 AM »

"Love to Say Da Da is Water" was an assumption made due to the similarities between that track and a later track about water. This got repeated for decades, because, to be honest, it made a lot of sense. But there is no evidence that this was the case, and we should not be repeating that assumption. A quick glance at a timeline of Brian's productions shows that the 2 songs were miles away from each other, and never conceived as even part of the same project, let alone the same song.
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Joshilyn Hoisington
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« Reply #219 on: July 24, 2022, 07:27:15 AM »

Quote
and you can hear Jimmy Hilton slate Love to Say Da Da as "Love to Say Da Da."

I think you mean you can hear him slate it as "LOOVE to say DAH-DAH".
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #220 on: July 24, 2022, 07:29:17 AM »

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and you can hear Jimmy Hilton slate Love to Say Da Da as "Love to Say Da Da."

I think you mean you can hear him slate it as "LOOVE to say DAH-DAH".

 Grin
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #221 on: July 24, 2022, 10:30:28 AM »

I think a main block to mutual understanding in this matter is that there is a tendency to privilege the oral tradition, because it is much more accessible.  But there is a problem with doing history that way -- basically, everybody lies.  Or, more generously, everybody perceives the same events differently.  And there's also the telephone game effect; Brian says something to a journalist, who reports it using different verbiage, and then a book author uses the reporters words 40 years later and puts their own interpretation on that already once-removed context.

And I know it's a little unfair to keep saying that the documentation and physical evidence tell a different story, because it's just a lot harder to compile that stuff, and it's not something that can be easily consulted in a book or googled.  But it really is better history to base our analysis on what Brian and the Beach Boys actually did than what they said they did.  What they said they did is important, in its own way, and shouldn't be thrown away.  But what they actually did is, well, what they actually did.

Tracing what they actually did has been close to impossible because access to the original sources has been spotty.  But thanks to really persistent people, access is getting less and less spotty, and it has yielded some surprises.  Nobody has to give up their opinions on all this, but I do ask for some patience and a willingness to revisit the record -- a record which has been lost and is in the process of being found.

So I got up this morning and had a cup of coffee but it didn't happen because it was not documented?  If we limited history to official documents all you would know would be limited to birth and death certificates and what people bought in the supermarket.  Masses of history is testimony.  History is a list of differing records.  There are 2 famous records of the same person dying twice in totally different circumstances and at different times and that is documented.  And of course 'history is written by the victor'.  All you can tell from the documentation is what someone chose to document and there is no way of confirming if it is correct.  Just because it is on a piece of paper doesn't make it right and it limits the extent of knowledge to the minutiae.
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #222 on: July 24, 2022, 10:46:51 AM »

Of course contemporary quotes need to be considered alongside documented evidence, in order to paint the full picture of what happened. It's all very useful! There's just no need to speculate on Carl saying they "recorded from scratch" and what it could mean while ignoring the actual music on the tapes. We can definitively say things like:

-Wind Chimes and Wonderful were recorded in the home studio from scratch
-Little Pad was recorded from scratch in the home studio, and possibly written then
-Heroes and Villains uses the October 20 verse backing track, although the vocals and organ were overdubbed in the home studio, and the bridges were recorded anew
-Vegetables is a home studio recording for the first 2/3 of the song, but there's a splice into the April 14 "ballad insert" recording, and a splice into the original April verse as the fade, with a keyboard that was overdubbed at Sound Recorders on June 3.

All of these things can be considered at once, and we don't need to ignore what's on tape in order to make sense of what the band and others said at the time. We have these resources available.
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Joshilyn Hoisington
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« Reply #223 on: July 24, 2022, 10:53:30 AM »

Obviously history is an imperfect discipline.  The best we can do is follow time-tested methodologies.  

As I said, we are slowly uncovering more and more documentation from more and more sources.  And in many cases it is quite easy to determine if it's correct.  If an AFM turns up for a track called "Love to Say Dada," and the date matches a tape that is stored in a tape box that is labeled "Love to Say Dada," and then the contents of the tape involve the people listed on the AFM talking about a song called "Love to Say Dada" -- that's all really good evidence that a song called Love to Say Dada was recorded on that date.

Now, of course, it's not always that easy, but the point is, we are rebuilding the Beach Boys studio narrative by consulting as many resources as we can.  That includes contemporary comments by the band, of course, but also lots of other types of sources.  Have you seen all the tape boxes?  Have you seen the Capitol worksheets?  Do you know when a piece of tape was physically removed from the place it was originally recorded and spliced into a new tape?  Without that kind of information, the story is incomplete.

The nice thing about tape is it can't lie.  What is on the tape is on the tape.  What is in the tape box is in the tape box.  It doesn't matter what the AFM says, or the Capitol documentation says, or what Bruce or Al or even what Brian says -- what's on the tape is on the tape.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #224 on: July 24, 2022, 10:54:17 AM »

I also highly recommend we be more specific with our assertions, especially the big ones that are presented objectively. We can all say "Smile was OFFICIALLY not worked on after a fixed date" and anyone reading this might think, "Ok cool, so it's documented somewhere that each recording is for an album called Smile, until a certain date, and then all the documents said Smiley Smile."

But that isn't true. None of the documentation gives the name of the project, and there is no change in how tape boxes, AFM contracts, or anything else is written after a certain date, and certainly not in the post-Derek Taylor article time frame that people are giving here.

So, before we continue to spread more misinfo, let's be careful with what we're saying here, and know where things come from.

For the record I didn't ever say that.  And I suggested that Smile could have continued to be worked on even when Smiley Smile was being recorded and no one would know because of the lack of recorded detail.  But working on 2 projects simultaneously is possible without them being the same.

We are not writing the definitive history.  This is a message board where we can explore ideas.  Everything we discuss does not have to be set in stone.  And as Pilot once said "what is truth" and did not stay for an answer.  Or perhaps better for this forum 'to know is to know that to know is not to know'
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