SMiLE opinions that are hard to shake

[Very Extremely Dan]

Do people here believe that SMiLE actually had a theme/concept that ran throughout the record?  Or a sequence that is easy to understand/enjoy for a new listener not steeped in the lore?   I love BWPS for many reasons but I've always found the "3 acts" approach somewhat unsatisfying.  I agree that American History/The Cycle of Life/The Elements are very much central themes but the way they've been presented as such distinct/discreet movements makes it appear that there's no overlap.....that Vege-Tables and Cabinessence for example have nothing to do with each other....though looking at the BWPS sequence again maybe I haven't been open to it/discovered it....that viewed/listened as a whole over the course of the album it does "start" at Plymouth Rock and "end" in Hawaii.....I guess I'm asking two questions: 

1.  Do folks here have a "guiding principle" for their SMiLE sequence?

2.  Do you hear BWPS as a three act record or as a unified whole?

[WillJC]

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[Very Extremely Dan]

Not really, themes and recurring ideas grew organically out of what they wrote but it's not as if Brian and Van Dyke ever sat down discussed some kind of overarching concept for the album (beyond Brian's original "humour -> spiritual enlightenment" MO), or a cohesive narrative. It's a song cycle that reflects two guys' thoughts and feelings at a particular point in time, and some of the things they're exploring overlap across a number of songs. I think what Van Dyke said about belief is the most apt way to draw a connection between the material.

BWPS grouped suites together for aesthetic purposes in a concert performance - two that naturally organised themselves and a third for everything else. A vague elemental notion guided some of the sequencing but I wouldn't read too much into the intention. The 'bicycle rider from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii' logline is... a description of one song. Do You Like Worms, that's all. And a misinterpretation of the lyric at that. Making the last new song about Hawaii seems more informed by fan legend and Brian liking vacations than anything else.

For a long time, VDP wasn't credited on Wonderful and Wind Chimes.  The former was almost certainly his work, but what about the latter?  Nothing about Wind Chimes particularly screams VDP to me.  If someone told me that WC was indeed 100% the work of BW, I wouldn't necessarily consider that unbelievable.  Conversely, I don't think VDP has ever been credited on You're Welcome, but the alliterative, wordplay "Well, come," "Welcome to come" stuff seems like his handiwork.

Thanks for the reply!  What do you make of Brian's "Smog" PSA then?   He states explicitly that he was making SMiLE to present the facts about air pollution and trying to set up a goal for the listener to help get rid of it.  That's an overarching concept right?  The first time I heard it I thought it was a silly joke but looking at the lyrics there are explicit Air references in so many of the songs (GV, IIGS, Cabinessence, Wind Chimes, She's Goin' Bald) and subtle (Wonderful, H&V, DYLW, Surf's Up)  I started to think this might have been the BIG ONE for an organizing principle.   But I also think it's kind of ridiculous and perhaps some revisionist history on Brian's part....but of course the first song he cut for SMiLE after GV was Wind Chimes.....I guess I always wonder why "teenage symphony to God" or "music to pray too" to cite two examples get so much attention and the Smog recording is rarely quoted......

[Very Extremely Dan]

(I obviously don't know how to use message boards so I'm going to skip another failed attempt at quoting you and just re-post my reply.  Sorry y'all!   Please forgive an old man.)


Thanks for the reply!  What do you make of Brian's "Smog" PSA then?   He states explicitly that he was making SMiLE to present the facts about air pollution and trying to set up a goal for the listener to help get rid of it.  That's an overarching concept right?  The first time I heard it I thought it was a silly joke but looking at the lyrics there are explicit Air references in so many of the songs (GV, IIGS, Cabinessence, Wind Chimes, She's Goin' Bald) and subtle (Wonderful, H&V, DYLW, Surf's Up)  that I started to think this might have been the BIG ONE for an organizing principle.   But I also think it comes off as another of Brian's less than hilarious jokes of the time and perhaps some revisionist history on Brian's part....but of course the first song he cut for SMiLE after GV was Wind Chimes so........I guess I always wonder why "teenage symphony to God" or "music to pray too" to cite two examples get so much attention and the Smog recording is rarely quoted......

[Summertime Blooz]

Do people here believe that SMiLE actually had a theme/concept that ran throughout the record?  Or a sequence that is easy to understand/enjoy for a new listener not steeped in the lore?   I love BWPS for many reasons but I've always found the "3 acts" approach somewhat unsatisfying.  I agree that American History/The Cycle of Life/The Elements are very much central themes but the way they've been presented as such distinct/discreet movements makes it appear that there's no overlap.....that Vege-Tables and Cabinessence for example have nothing to do with each other....though looking at the BWPS sequence again maybe I haven't been open to it/discovered it....that viewed/listened as a whole over the course of the album it does "start" at Plymouth Rock and "end" in Hawaii.....I guess I'm asking two questions: 

1.  Do folks here have a "guiding principle" for their SMiLE sequence?

2.  Do you hear BWPS as a three act record or as a unified whole?

The reason it all fell apart, I think, was the lack of a cohesive concept that would tie all the disparate pieces together. A lack of focus. The best way I think of it is a trip through the past that could help inform the present and present a better way forward for the future. With humor.

[The_Holy_Bee]

Been away from the boards for a coupla days so have a lot to catch up on, it seems! A few stray observations - apologies if anyone/anything gets missed.

1. CFOTM lyrics.

'I got a sneak preview of one of the tracks the previous night when Dennis played me a piano version of one track, Child is Father of the Man, a cowboy song, and then gave me the throwaway line of the year – "And this is a prayer I'm working on for it!"'

Why does the author say "Child is Father of the Man, a cowboy song"?   If Denny was just banging out the titular chorus, no one could possibly interpret that as having anything to do with cowboys.  Now, I've seen it hypothesized that the "cowboy song" was one of the other Smile songs (perhaps H&V, Cabin, Sunshine etc.) and maybe Denny segued into that other song and the author was none the wiser.  And that hypothesis is certainly plausible, but is it certainty?

Definitely not a certainty, but consider Vosse's comments about Cabin Essence in Fusion:

'"Cabinessence," for example, started out as a wholly different trip - Dennis was going to sing it by himself and sound like a funky cat up in the mountains somewhere singing to a chick by a fireplace: very simple - and that's all there was to it.'

The hook of the CE verses being "Home on the range/Home on the grange" - which sounds pretty "Cowboy song" to me - and knowing that at one point Dennis was slated to sing it solo, this seems a possible contender for what Dennis actually played to the reporter. Now, if he'd pounded out the chorus to "Child" just before or after that rendition, it's easy to see how these sections could have been confused.

Interestingly, also, in the transcription of the full Oppenheimer/Inside Pop tape reels which were posted on this Board back in the day, a (probably partial) solo performance of "Child" by Brian is described. No mention is given of any lyrics apart from the "Child - Child" chorus we know and love, while other songs - "I'm in Great Shape" springs to mind - have verse lyrics included. The transcription also includes descriptions of specific backing vocals for "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up" (the "session which went very badly," according to Siegel, just prior to the solo "Surf's Up" recordings).

No definite conclusions can be drawn, of course, but I'd say by inference this tends to support Van Dyke's comments about not writing CFOTM lyrics in '66.

On the other hand, just to hedge my bets, Salty makes an extremely good point in saying:

On the subject of "lost Smile lyrics," it's almost certain that there were some.  If the Great Shape lyrics didn't exist on the Humble Harv demo, would we even know about them?  I can't remember if there's any other evidence of their existence. I don't think so.  Jules Siegel transcribed some of Barnyard, but I think the Humble Harv thing is it in terms of Great Shape lyrical evidence.  And, of course, certain Worms and Cabin lyrics were preserved by Frank Holmes and we'd likely have zero knowledge of them if Frank hadn't retained them.  

Although the "Open country" lyrics at least from IIGS are mentioned in the Inside Pop logs, it's certainly true that most of what we do have from Barnyard and IIGS are from "Humble Harv" - plus the extra sections from CE and Worms Salty refers to above provided by Holmes.

On a related note, in the Beautiful Dreamer doc Brian and Darian S speak about calling VDP to decipher a couple of lines from Worms. This call is, according to all three players in the documentary, what got him back involved with the project. Old-timers might be able to remind me, but did we have the Worms verse lyrics before SMiLE '04? I'm pretty sure the missing/deleted "east or west Indies" passage was already circulating in the Priore days, but if so then presumably the rest of the words were as well?

In which case, why did Brian need to call Van to double check an "indecipherable" lyric? We know Darian was a fairly well-versed (pun intended) SMiLE scholar prior to beginning the 2004 restoration. Was he not aware of the typed-out lyrics available online, if indeed they were?

Either way, the wording in Beautiful Dreamer suggests that either Brian and Darian were working from a handwritten lyric sheet provided by someone like Frank Holmes, or that Brian had some sort of archive of his own. None of which is directly related to CFOTM, of course, but now I've thought of all this it bugs me we can't easily straighten this particular matter out!

TO BE CONTINUED, I'm afraid.

[WillJC]

On the other hand, just to hedge my bets, Salty makes an extremely good point in saying:

It wasn't me who said that

Reporter confusing Cabin Essence for Child if Dennis played or mentioned both sounds plausible to me, that's the way I've always read it. Of course the "this is the prayer I'm working on for it" comment is just bizarre without context in either scenario.

I believe those Worms lyrics were known about in some capacity from a 1997 issue of ESQ, if not even earlier. I don't think they were fully transcribed. As far as I know they had access to Frank's original lyric sheets, handwritten by himself and Van, which only included the songs he did illustrations for - Heroes and Villains, Surf's Up, Do You Like Worms, Cabin Essence. "My vega-tables" - The Elements came from a conversation with Van Dyke about the concept rather than anything written down.

There ain't much in the Inside Pop reel notes to support anything about Child lyrics, it just says:

1. hands to face     CR  angle
     can't see hands  pan to hands in dark
   child Is the Father of man  

2.  Heroes & Villains plays
        Vandyke Parks has been working on lyrics
        sings open country song

Not that it matters, but the group vocals it describes them working on appear to be the Wonderful yodelling, the Cabin Essence verse doings and re-recording the 'iron horse' chant, no Surf's Up 'til Brian does it alone.

[The_Holy_Bee]

Hey Salty - thanks for the clarification on a bunch of points, and apologies for misattributing a quote to you!

Re: the Worms lyrics. I first got into SMiLE around '97, so that'd be the time period I'm remembering. I've just been futilely attempting to use Waybackmachine to find a site from pre-2004 which might clarify what Worms words we had access to back then.

Re: CFOTM, glad you had those transcripts to hand and apologies for not getting things right. I used to rail about slack scholarship on this site and here I am perpetrating similar errors! Glad I did at least recall the basics fairly correctly: a "child Is the Father of man" chorus being the only lyrics quoted for that tune, the words "Open Country (song)" for IIGS, and the Wonderful backing vox. Just found my notes, and of course you're absolutely right it was CE, not Surf's Up, for which the other backing vocals were noted.

Much appreciated!

[The_Holy_Bee]

Also: "My vega-tables" - The Elements came from a conversation with Van Dyke about the concept rather than anything written down" is fascinating. Is this from a convo you had with the man himself, or from the original ESQ article? If that's okay to ask

[WillJC]

apologies for not getting things right.

Don't worry! We're not all suffering from terminal Smile Brain!

Also: "My vega-tables" - The Elements came from a conversation with Van Dyke about the concept rather than anything written down" is fascinating. Is this from a convo you had with the man himself, or another text? If that's okay to ask

That's from Cam Mott talking to the Frank over the phone years ago, hope he won't mind me sharing what he wrote down:

Frank was supplied with lyrics of the songs-in-progress one at a time. Sometimes Van Dyke gave him the lyrics over the phone and sometimes they were handwritten, once on the back of sheet music for one Van’s brother Carson’s song ("Cab Driver"? He didn't say or I didn't note it.) In the case of “ ‘My Vega-tables’ the Elements”, Frank was not really given lyrics but Van Dyke discussed what they were trying to achieve conceptually with an emphasis on natural and healthy food, the “snapshot” is of a body of water.

[The_Holy_Bee]

My dear Salty, us long term Terminal Smile Brain sufferers prefer the acronym "TSB." As it happens, I consider myself in a current - if possibly temporary - state of relapse.

Huge thanks for the Cam quote. VDP refers to "Vega-Tables" as the only part of "The Elements" he worked on in the SMiLE '04 tour booklet, and I had a few regrettable exchanges with other posters about whether that was true a few years back. Nice to have some supporting evidence, however belated.

Incidentally, I hope Cam is still around these parts, though it seems not. As a 16 year old when I first started posting on the Smile Shop, and later, he was always very responsive to my posts and full of interesting info.

 

[c-man]

Incidentally, I hope Cam is still around these parts, though it seems not. As a 16 year old when I first started posting on the Smile Shop, and later, he was always very responsive to my posts and full of interesting info.

 

Cam's still around, though not necessarily "these" parts...if you catch my drift...

[The_Holy_Bee]

Double post somehow.

[The_Holy_Bee]

Thanks c-man!

On a more esoteric note, in reply to Very Extremely Dan:

1.  Do folks here have a "guiding principle" for their SMiLE sequence?

2.  Do you hear BWPS as a three act record or as a unified whole?

1. Yeah, but it's pretty subjective and I can't really justify it historically. My original intent, back in the early 2010's, was to create a version of SMiLE which included a) only '66 musical sections which Brian used in rough assemblies/dubbed cuts and b) nothing which was recorded during the less album-orientated "hit single" rush of Jan-April 1967. So what I came around to was fairly organic, and the thematic connections were more musical than lyrical or conceptual.

I'll give you an example: BWPS made a connection between "Child", "Look" and "Surf's Up," forming the "second suite." In terms of key signatures, the connection is absolutely valid and made for a fantastic medley in performance and on record. But it's hard to see how these three pieces - as recorded in 1966 - were ever meant to join up in such a way. They're all distinct recordings with clear endings. New VDP lyrics for "Child" and the use of its chorus on "Look (or, Song for Children)" covered the join a bit, but nothing from '66 infers any such sequencing.

And yet, we have vintage edits and boots of "Wonderful" and "Child" - both songs with vintage vocals about having children/being a child/child being father to the man - which end with the same three note bass riff. Sure enough, run the first into the second and you have two discrete songs with a very satisfying musical connection. Use a SMiLE-era hard edit from that riff at the end of "Child" into "The Old Master Painter" - which Brian referred to as "[the] grand finale" - and which, with its past tense lyrics, speaks of the loss of a partner and implies an ending, you suddenly have a fairly convincing "grand finale" indeed. (In my mix, at the end of a 17 minute "side one." Side two's about fifteen mins long.)

Now, I grant you this is complete conjecture on my part as a fan-mixer. But I have always believed the driving force behind the album, as with GV, was musical - perhaps ideological also - rather than strictly lyrical. If I recall correctly, David Anderle makes the observation in his multi-part Crawdaddy! interview with Paul Williams that the big factors in SMiLE's collapse were both Brian's conflict with the rest of the Boys and also a deep difficulty over Van's lyrics/some kind of power struggle over what the project was really about. Ie: that Van's final departure in Jan/Feb '67 really marked the final end of the project as originally conceived. (Actually, this could be Vosse from the Fusion piece - my notes are all over the place.)  "They kind of passed each other" is the quote that resonates.

Anyway, my feeling is, as with Pet Sounds, the songs really stand alone. Articulating their collective power is beyond my ken at least.

[guitarfool2002]

To Holy Bee:

The key signature aspect of this is one I agree with, and as it lines up with a majority of the songs or even short segments of songs on tape as of May '67, it always seemed valid in terms of sequencing. I wrote a whole long thing about it on the Smile Shop, it had to be 2003 or 04 but before BWPS, and although the BWPS presentation presented it in three parts, the keys of the pieces lined up for at least two sides or "themes", one being Heroes and all that and the other being the Child/Surf's Up themes.

And all of this based on what existed as of '67, nothing new, no connecting fragments from '04, etc. It seemed valid then and as you discuss it here in late 2020 it still seems valid. If I find that old piece I wrote I can laugh at my former ramblings 

But bottom line, when so many of the Smile "themes" surround a certain key or related keys and others are in different related keys, it hardly seems accidental by design.

[Bicyclerider]

Agree with Holy Bee that the "cowboy song" Dennis sang was most likely Home on the Range, which was originally intended for Dennis to sing, and either Dennis or the writer got the name wrong.  And the "prayer" he was working on for it - Truck Driving Man?

As for the chants, Brian was obsessed with chants during the Smile and post Smile period - there's the dinner chant he made everyone participate in with cutlery percussion, there's the elements chants in Psycodelic sounds, there's You're Welcome, there's "On and on she goes dum de doo dah" there's Mama Says, there's Water Water Water wada.  So not surprising he went back to a water chant idea for Wild Honey.

As for Dada being Water, the Preiss book from 1979 states that (although the piece described is actually the water chant) and in 72 when Carl talked about finishing and releasing Smile, on of the tracks he mentioned was Love to Say Dada (incorporating Cool Cool Water).  So you can see how the two have somehow been considered linked ever since, despite the fact I think Dada has nothing to do with water (or air for that matter).

[WillJC]

To Carl and anyone other than Brian reviewing the Dada tapes in the 70s, that's just Cool Cool Water with 'Love to Say Dada' written on the box. Only three weeks later when the group were introduced to it it'd actually already turned into Cool Cool Water. That's probably why that myth started.

The "truck driving man" lyrics are definitely Van Dyke Parks - whatever the prayer comment's all about, it's not Dennis writing something for Cabin Essence.

I think there are some really interesting implications in the April '67 Wonderful. The signs all point to that reworked Child section being briefly intended as its bridge, which would mean at different times Brian thought to recycle material from Child into both Wonderful and Surf's Up, and in some way made a connection between those things in his head all the way back then (even if suites with transitions was far off in the future).

BWPS didn't exactly find natural key links though, it had to add modulations or invent new material to make those songs segue together. Wonderful into Look is the exception, and that's only if you're playing it through in an altered way, not trying to do something with the original recordings.

[juggler]

Thesis: If the complete Inside Pop audio reels and raw footage were to ever surface, some bits of "Smile conventional wisdom" would have to be re-considered... and our minds would probably be blown.

[Bicyclerider]

Well Dennis says he's working on a prayer, not writing the prayer.  But yeah, it's a stretch to conclude that was Truck Drivin' Man - just a thought that popped into my head.

[Dove Nested Towers]

2.   Are there vintage lyrics for Child?  I've always assumed that all vintage lyrics got used....

As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on this.  On the one hand by the time BWPS rolled around, the vintage lyrics, if they ever existed, had been lost.   And, of course, they have yet to turn up on any extant tape or acetate.  For some, that's enough to say they never existed.... end of story... move on.

.... And yet it's not necessarily as simple as that.  Dial back to the 1966 NME piece in which the author states:

'I got a sneak preview of one of the tracks the previous night when Dennis played me a piano version of one track, Child is Father of the Man, a cowboy song, and then gave me the throwaway line of the year – "And this is a prayer I'm working on for it!"'

Why does the author say "Child is Father of the Man, a cowboy song"?   If Denny was just banging out the titular chorus, no one could possibly interpret that as having anything to do with cowboys.  Now, I've seen it hypothesized that the "cowboy song" was one of the other Smile songs (perhaps H&V, Cabin, Sunshine etc.) and maybe Denny segued into that other song and the author was none the wiser.  And that hypothesis is certainly plausible, but is it certainty?  Would you bet your life savings on that?   Is it significantly more likely than the other possibility that the report was more or less accurate?   The author certainly thought he was hearing a rendition of just one song, not two, as he even says that twice in the same sentence! ("one of the tracks" and "one track"), but sure it's possible that Denny's segue was so seamless that the author didn't know the difference.  But, hold on... why is Denny demo-ing CIFOTM at all?  Out of all the possible Smile songs to be offering a reporter a piano-rendition sneak preview of, he picks fragmentary, incomplete, chorus-only CIFOTM?  Does that seem likely?    What if... at that point there was verse melody... and some other verse lyrics that Denny knew which perhaps had never been recorded?  And said verse melody and lyrics were later discarded and/or lost and/or forgotten?

The other thing, and I don't have it in front of me, so this isn't an exact quote, is in the Anderle/Williams interview from '68.  Anderle says something along the lines that he's heard that CIFOTM is coming out on their next album.  And, of course, a snippet of it DID come out on Friends in the form of Little Bird.  But isn't the fact that Anderle mentions it all somewhat interesting?  Sure, it's a nice instrumental track and with a memorable chorus, but why was Denny showcasing it in late '66 and Anderle still talking about a year and a half later if what we have now is all there ever was to it?  My gut feeling is that CIFOTM was once something more than what survived to the present day.

The "cowboy song" quote is very interesting, but maybe just off-the-cuff humor, since it doesn't remotely resemble that remark. What I'm curious about are the lyrics added to Look and CIFOTM on BWPS. They sound vintage to my ears, and if not, they are a really inspired effort by Van Dyke to re-create the original vibe. The added lyrics on DYLW are definitely original as we all know, and those for Holidays and Da Da on BWPS are not. I once encountered Van Dyke alone at the bar at a reception for Frank Holmes newly unearthed Smile booklet art in S.F., but didn't get to ask him about it because he left soon thereafter and joined some others.

[juggler]

Was that the event at Enrico's in 2005?   Really wanted to attend that but wasn't able to make it.
Personally, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the CIFOTM verse lyrics on BWPS.  For me the "cowboy song, what if" really is a Smile opinion I just can't (don't want to) shake.  I mean, I get that the chorus is Wordsworth, not Zane Grey.  But I guess in the Smile album of my imagination there is a cowboy song in which the CIFOTM chorus makes a sort of bizarre sense or perhaps makes a sort of "cannabis sense" (of I which I continue to believe "cabin essence" was a pun on; say it fast).

I know that the BWPS Holidays lyrics aren't vintage, but for me that's one of the few 2004 additions that I can't shake.  I  can no longer hear the '66 track without the "lazy mister moon" lyrics playing in my head.  I know that a few fans complained the "we will party" bit was anachronistic and took them out of the moment as they believed that party wasn't used as a verb in the '60s.  I initially took their word for it, as I wasn't around in the '60s, but then lo' and behold I was watching some or another pre-1967 TV show or movie, I heard a character use party as a verb and I thought, huh, those claims of anachronism were off base.

[Julia]

This is a rehash of what I've said many times (to the point of pissing a lot of people off at me back then--sorry) but I'll post it here because, hey, it's relevant, I've been gone for like ten years so some people may not know my take and also for posterity. These are my strongly held opinions based on a preponderance of the evidence:

1) SMiLE was 12 standalone tracks on 2 sides of vinyl built around common themes, with Worms/Heroes/Cabin/Veggies/Painter as the core of an "Americana Movement," & Wonderful/Child/Surf/Vibes/Chimes as the core of a "Cycle of Life/Loss of Innocence Movement." Probably the Elements suite would be on the Life side (Vosse said they'd have a fitness double meaning, Brian connects the elements to individual health in the "Smog" skit) with the Barnyard suite as its equivalent on the Americana side. Nobody can say definitively what the track order would've been beyond that, except probably the singles would kick off each side. Prayer would go at the very beginning (per the sessions tape) or end (per Vosse). So, there's twelve tracks for the zodiac, which featured prominently in Brian's mind and was even printed on the back cover, though I doubt each individual song really had a specific constellation-counterpart. There'd still be individualistic themes in the Americana tracks and national-interest stuff in the Innocence tracks (look at Surf's Up and "columnated ruins domino") but the point is, the songs would be grouped by which theme is more overtly associated with them, plus shared instrumentation.

2) The Elements was a single crossfading track that ultimately fell apart (Veggies became its own thing, Fire was scrapped, Water was Vosse's recordings that never got finalized, Air was maybe Second Day) and probably had a significant role in making Brian lose faith in the music which helped kill the project as much as the Capitol drama, mental illness and any grumblings from the band. I think there'd be vocal "oooo"s during fire, possibly the Water Chant or something like the Undersea Chant during Water, and something like the Breathing chant during Air. ALSO this is a hot take, but I don't think this track would've been that great, honestly. I think that's part of the unspoken reason Brian scrapped it, and the Fire anxiety, while real to a degree, was also a convenient excuse without having to admit he'd bitten off more than he could chew. The same way most people prefer having several distinct tracks instead of one to fill this theme, I think ultimately Brian did too. Still, this development killed the album, at least as it had existed in '66, and Brian's noodling with a possible single in early '67 was both procrastination and possibly trying to "re-find" the new driving force of an elements-less LP. If you listen to the Smog skit, it's clear the elements was perhaps the single most important theme of the whole album, what ties the fitness/individual and America/reform concepts together in his mind.

3) Psychedelic Sounds material would've been used but extremely sparingly, probably just a bit of the Hal Blaine fight and maybe George Fell. Some of those chants were working experiments for BB vocalizations, some were experimenting with audio techniques (tape explosions and echoes in Basketball sounds and Bob Gorden), some were probably just spur of the moment, half-serious "hey let's put this on the album!" recordings like Taxi Cabber and the unrecorded cutlery symphony. It's not like pretty much every other BB album besides Pet Sounds up to this point didn't have goofy spoken word comedy bits, so I never understood why some people are so opposed to the possibility that one or two might've appeared on SMiLE, especially with humor as a key theme. If the album proper and this "humor album" were not one and the same in late '66 when the Psychedelic Sounds were recorded, they certainly were by the time of Smiley Smile.

4) More controversially, I'd say my "hard to shake speculation" that isn't really built on as strong of a foundation is I think the Talking Horns session was a part of the Surf's Up second movement (along with the string overdub session that was canceled) particularly the "wailing" sound being meant for the fade. This wasn't even my idea originally, some other poster on the TSS subforum put it out there and my brain ran with it. It also ties into Priore's "weird combination of horns and strings" description of the lost second movement as well. Otherwise, why was this recorded and logged for SU? What's the purpose? If nothing else, if it just seems too crazy to "ruin" this beloved song with such a seemingly discordant droning of horns, maybe this too was a wild idea Brian later thought better of? Maybe that's why he canceled the other session for the second movement, didn't revisit this concept during the 71 album rerecording, lost faith in himself as a songwriter/producer...he realized one of his ideas just wouldn't work for once?

[Julia]

Personally, I like that theory and prefer IIGS paired with Barnyard than with I Wanna Be Around.   With that said, who knows?  Maybe Brian had ideas about fleshing IIGS out into a full-length stand-alone song.  Vega-Tables was pretty fragmentary when it made the tracklist, yet by April it was a full-fledged song

For me, I guess the great areas of remaining Smile mystery are:

1. Surf's Up, Part 2 instrumental track
2. CIFOTM, vintage verse lyrics
3. DYLW, vintage verse melody that Brian briefly sings in one of the TSS tracking sessions
4. The Elements (other than Fire)
5. H&V, vintage 5-minute Chuck Britz mix

Of course, there will be fans that tell me that some or all of that doesn't exist, never existed, etc. etc.  There's a certain mindset that is bothered by loose ends and prefer "doesn't exist, never existed" as a way of wrapping the whole thing up, putting a bow on it and moving on.  And I get that, but I'm not of that mindset.  

I agree with your five "holy grails" of lost SMiLE material and would also add the missing vocals for Look (we know they were recorded based on session logs) and the vocals for Wind Chimes' fade (Vosse claims to have heard this in Fusion or Teen Set as I recall) to make it an even 7. For me, if we just had definitive answers of what these 7 pieces were, we could finally complete the SMiLE puzzle in all its glory. (Certainly there's no one way to do it, of course, but the full breadth of material would be there to work with I mean). Is the 5-minute Heroes you mention the same as the two-sided cut that Vosse claims to have heard?

Also, the posters saying that each song doesn't have to directly unambiguously lead into the next are right. Like, the songs on Pet Sounds all chronicle the various stages of teen love (waiting for the girl to be available after a breakup, being together, heartbreak, etc) but they don't go in exact chronological order, they go where they sound good, where the flow is upheld. And even then, Sloop John B doesn't coincide with that overarching theme (but I still love it and prefer it on the album to any other potential replacement I've seen thrown around, like Little Girl I Once Knew or Guess Im Dumb) so it stands to reason the SMiLE tracks might take some unexpected zigs and zags outside of what order makes the most conceptual sense. If you all follow me.

[Don Malcolm]

Julia, thanks for returning and resurrecting some stlll-useful threads, as well as revealing some of your wide-ranging interests (Alberto Lattuada is a name one wouldn't expect to see in a Beach Boys forum, but as another inveterate explorer of rare foreign films from the past, it was a blast to see him referenced. Catherine Spaak was quite the rage in the sixties; she was the daughter of one of France's greatest screenwriters and she's also striking in a slightly later Italian film called Il Sorpasso opposite Vittorio Gassman.)

I remain unconvinced by Priore's reconstruction, but it's clear that it percolated its way into BWPS; Brian and the band made it work as an "opera/oratorio."  Given what he went through both back in the day and during 2003-04 to bring it up from the ocean floor, I think it was appropriate for folks to defer to BWPS during the (thankfully lengthy) time that Brian was still with us; but I continue to enjoy the various fan mixes and consider SMiLE fair game for continuing reconstruction. In the future I think it would be just fine if folks made their own SMiLE along the lines of the various orchestras and ensembles that record their divergent versions of classical and early music. I don't think Brian would mind.

And, Julia, I don't think anyone here would be unhappy if you decided to stick around!

[Julia]

Julia, thanks for returning and resurrecting some stlll-useful threads, as well as revealing some of your wide-ranging interests (Alberto Lattuada is a name one wouldn't expect to see in a Beach Boys forum, but as another inveterate explorer of rare foreign films from the past, it was a blast to see him referenced. Catherine Spaak was quite the rage in the sixties; she was the daughter of one of France's greatest screenwriters and she's also striking in a slightly later Italian film called Il Sorpasso opposite Vittorio Gassman.)

I remain unconvinced by Priore's reconstruction, but it's clear that it percolated its way into BWPS; Brian and the band made it work as an "opera/oratorio."  Given what he went through both back in the day and during 2003-04 to bring it up from the ocean floor, I think it was appropriate for folks to defer to BWPS during the (thankfully lengthy) time that Brian was still with us; but I continue to enjoy the various fan mixes and consider SMiLE fair game for continuing reconstruction. In the future I think it would be just fine if folks made their own SMiLE along the lines of the various orchestras and ensembles that record their divergent versions of classical and early music. I don't think Brian would mind.

And, Julia, I don't think anyone here would be unhappy if you decided to stick around!

Thank you very much, I do appreciate it! I think, for me, with ten years to mature (and the unambiguous troublemakers congregating at EH) with the permission of the mods there's no reason for me not to stick around. Can't promise I'll post too frequently once I weigh in on all the particularly interesting threads I've missed since 17~18, but it'd be nice to stop in every other week or so. I actually wrote out a mea culpa I was going to post for this very thread but then I thought better of it--rehashing old drama was one of the things that got me in trouble back in the day and there's seemingly no need. I do want to say I think I was too hard on Daro and got in the way of everyone else's chance to learn from him (we could've parsed out his truths from his BS later) but what's done is done.

It's great to see another lover of Italian cinema on here! Since I put the Beach Boys aside (until Brian's death) that's been my new obsession the past few years. It started when a particularly great youtube playlist recommended "Mary's theme" from Femina Ridens, which led me down the rabbit hole to its sister-film (in the US, where both were distributed by Radley Metzger and novelized in English) La Matriarca. It's corny to admit to, but goshdarn if I wasn't absolutely blown away by how beautiful Catherine Spaak is in that movie! Without a doubt the most enchanting woman I've ever seen, on or off the screen. Seeking out the rest of her filmography is how I found Dolci Inganni which is currently my favorite movie. (Not the "best" or "most innovative/important" you understand, but my favorite.) If you have any particular recommendations of other Lattuada films or anything else from 50s through 70s Italian cinema, I'm all ears! Besides Spaak and late '60s erotica I was particularly impressed with Valerio Zurlini's filmography and La Notte Brava (1959) among too many others to name.

I gotta say, even though this board is pretty quiet now, it is nice to be able to share my opinions without having randos take personal potshots for no discernible reason. It seems like things have finally mellowed out.