I'm eagerly looking forward to a dissection of your mix. I listen to it daily.
Then today's your lucky day. Or at least part one of your lucky day...
Why AlternateBrianWilson?
At the time, I had a MySpace account (remember when we had those?) to post the various remixes, mashups, etc. that I did under the “PancakeRecords” moniker. I wanted to have a separate place for Beach Boys/Brian Wilson fans to hear the SMiLE mixes as I completed them. So in the interest of getting as many views as possible, I posted them as “AlternateBrianWilson”. Not nearly as cool a handle as “DJ Mic Luv”, but sure to come up under a casual search for the actual artist responsible for these recordings.
Why Stereo?
Why not? If Brian Wilson had completed SMiLE when he originally intended to, he probably would have supervised what I’m sure would have been a stellar mono mix. A stereo mix may have also been completed, but it would probably have been an afterthought. I’m no Brian Wilson, so I figured it was best not to even try to recreate what he might have done. So stereo it was. I found the PurpleChick mix while trolling the interwebs for as many lossless quality SMiLE fan mixes and outtake collections as I could get my hands on. It was, and remains, an inspiration. In fact, in my own iTunes playlist of Beach Boys (and solo) favorites, it is the PurpleChick remix of Good Vibrations (in stereo, with the original lyrics) that I selected. No small compliment, that.
All Beach Boys, All the Time.
Every bit of every recording here is from original Beach Boys recording sessions, although not everything is from the actual SMiLE dates. The earliest bit is from the Beach Boys 1964 version of “Auld Lang Syne” and the most recent is from the Surf’s Up sessions in 1971. But no additional music was recorded for this, and nothing was used from the 2004 re-recording, or from any live performances from that era. This is all classic Beach Boys, with the noteworthy help of the indispensable Wrecking Crew and the inimitable Van Dyke Parks.
SMiLE Promo
Not really a part of the album, this is the teaser I posted for my all-stereo mix. Intentionally over the top, with the narrator’s voice leaping from left to right every time there’s a pause in between words. An interesting little tidbit: the stereo mix of Good Vibrations used as a music bed is an early mix of mine and not the one that eventually made it into the finished product.
AMERICANA:
Our Prayer/Gee
Having decided to use Brian Wilson’s 2004 SMiLE tracklist, I thought it would be fun to start things by lulling the listener into a false sense of security by sticking as close to the opening of that album as I could (after allowing a youthful Mr. Wilson introduce things, of course). Our Prayer is a mix of the original recording as presented (in mono) on the Good Vibrations collection and the isolated overdub recorded for the 20/20 album. Pretty much one in either channel. This, as in BWPS, leads right into an acapella portion of The Crow’s 1953 doo-wop classic “Gee”, which transforms from sounding like it’s playing on a magic transistor radio, to full-fledged stereo beauty. So far, nothing unfamiliar. Until the singing ceases and you hear someone (I’m honestly not sure whether it’s Brian or Carl) say, “That was for you, punk.” Which leads us to…
Heroes & Villains:
By many accounts, the SMiLE version of “Heroes & Villains” was to be epic. The quantity of unused material recorded for it seems to support that opinion. I love the H&V single, as well as the alternate version released on the Smiley Smile CD. But with all of this content at my disposal, it would have been downright irresponsible for me to keep it simple. “Perhaps,” I thought to myself, “I could bookend the main body of the H&V track with short bursts of the various chants recorded for the album. Something evocative but tasteful.”
Then I told myself to get bent and went over the top. Way over. Although believe it or not, several longer early mixes do exist. One of them was so long I split it into two parts with the intention of placing a reprise between “Cycle of Life” and “The Elements”. Instead I cut some bits, moved others around, and decided that one chorus, placed at the very end as a bridge between H&V and “Do You Like Worms”, was enough. The finished product represents everything that SMiLE is to me. It has bits of American folk music, some humorous spoken-word passages, great vocal harmonies, and a brilliant backing track. All-in-all a satisfying 5 minutes and 41 seconds.
I used the stereo single mix for the basis of the track, along with stereo mixes of the chanting sections. Where a stereo mix was unavailable for a part that I wanted to use, I created one using multiple takes. Like nearly everything on the album, I re-eq’d pretty much every second of this track, as well as occasionally adding a bit of reverb or delay where it seemed appropriate. I couldn’t find a stereo mix of the “at three score and five” section, so I did a somewhat clumsy mix of the mono version of that track with an instrumental stereo version of an entirely different take. The tempo gets a bit wobbly, but since the original recordings were made using only the natural sense of time provided by the musicians involved, I tried to stay away from any type of digital time manipulation whenever I could. The result is sloppy, but hopefully more human.
You may notice that throughout this album, I have tried to shoehorn the voice of Van Dyke Parks (or references to him by others) in as often as possible. I make no apologies for this. Before I had ever heard a second of the SMiLE sessions – even before I had ever listened to “Pet Sounds” in its entirety, I was a fan of “Song Cycle”. Brian Wilson is quick to give credit to VDP for his contribution to SMiLE, and making his presence known here is my way of paying homage to him. The first example of this occurs here.
Do You Like Worms?
The H&V chorus gives way to the tribal timpani of DYLW. Not much to discuss here, really. I assembled the stereo “Bicycle Rider” sections from various takes so I could get the mix I heard in my head, with the ooga-chaga’s way up front, where they belong. Since no verse vocal was recorded (at least not one that has ever surfaced) I tried to make each of the verse sections at least slightly different to keep things interesting. I double tracked Brian’s vocal during the Hawaiian section and used the guttural grunting “Swedish” section underneath the solo piano towards the end.
He Gives Speeches
The only song here that didn’t make BWPS (unless you count the bits and pieces of other Beach Boys tracks I’ve used here and there), “Speeches” was the predecessor to “She’s Going Bald” from Smiley Smile. Whenever I though I was getting too bizarre during this project I would step back and listen to that track and “Little Pad” from the same album and think, “They got way weirder than I have”. This gave me the license to take things further, so I put together this mashup of “He Gives Speeches” and “She’s Going Bald”. I pieced together the backing track from various overdub sessions, and put the original vocal at the beginning and end. For the middle I used the “vocals only” version of “Bald”, which I double tracked. In order to get them both in the same key, I did have to manipulate the vocal track’s time and pitch a little bit, but not so much you’d notice immediately.
Side note – I love the Smiley Smile album. It is twisted and odd and occasionally downright creepy. So several snippets from that album appear here.
Barnyard
This section begins with a full length stereo mix of what is now referred to in SMiLE-lore as “False Barnyard”. Other than some eq, I pretty much left that section alone. Following some “woo-woo’s” from the H&V sessions comes PurpleChick’s sync of Brian Wilson’ solo performance of the song and the backing track. I sliced and diced it a bit and added some vocals, but this is essentially PurpleChicks baby with some makeup slapped on it.
The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine
As “Barnyard” fades you can hear Brian Wilson reciting the lyrics to “The Old Master Painter” to the assembled musicians. I did my best to sync the one line he sings (far away hills) to the appropriate musical passage. I also chose to use an earlier take of the track which includes a percussion part that was quickly abandoned. This segues into a sync of the stereo backing track to “You Are My Sunshine” with the mono vocal take (I’ve yet to come across a stereo one). I first heard this executed (masterfully, I might add) on MoK’s SMiLE (which he was gracious enough to send me years ago before I had the ability to download gigantic FLAC files).
Cabin Essence
This is one of those tracks on the album where the arrangement is pretty much etched in stone, at least to my ears. Unlike H&V, CIFOtM, etc., there wasn’t a ton of different parts recorded for this song. Just the verse, the iron horse bit, and the Grand Coulee Dam ending. So it was very tempting to just slap the officially released version on here. But that would have been taking the easy way out. Instead I gave it a complete eq overall, just to make it sound different (since I knew it wasn’t going to sound better). I also played with the second “Iron Horse” section in an attempt to bring Dennis Wilson’s “Truck Drivin’ Man” vocal to the fore a little bit. I then extended the end section using outtakes from the original instrumental session. Finally, as a tribute to Brian Wilson’s love of getting people to sing “Shortnin’ Bread” and/or “Row, Row, Row The Boat” in rounds, I added another vocal “echoing” Mike’s “over & over” part.
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