Smiley Smile

[Jason]

I have a vague understanding that smiley smile can never appear in stereo, Vegetables and Heroes and Villains being the two exceptions. It's been discussed many times that Good Vibrations vocal tapes were lost/destroyed. The way i've herd it is that all the vocals were actually done during the final mixdown of the album, meaning there are no vocal tapes for any of the songs. Vegetables being the exception as you can see on agd's site it was the only song recorded anywhere besides Brian's home studio, with vocal sessions being done June 3rd at Sound Recorders.

Even Vegetables and Heroes and Villains in their stereo remixes are missing parts on the original versions. So technically, they're not exactly TRUE stereo.

[drbeachboy]

Even Vegetables and Heroes and Villains in their stereo remixes are missing parts on the original versions. So technically, they're not exactly TRUE stereo.

Can you explain further? Are there just missing overdubs that were done during the mono mix? Or, is part of the mono mix used in the stereo mix similar to WIBN? I think the former would still constitute true stereo, while the latter would be not so true.

[hypehat]

Even Vegetables and Heroes and Villains in their stereo remixes are missing parts on the original versions. So technically, they're not exactly TRUE stereo.

Can you explain further? Are there just missing overdubs that were done during the mono mix?

This. There's a keyboard part missing during the fade of Vegetables, and I can't remember what's missing from H&V.... it certainly sounds all there.

[Jason]

In Vegetables, the vibes part during the end refrain (the Smile bit) is missing, as that was overdubbed during the mono mixdown during the Smiley sessions. In Heroes and Villains, during the "just see what you've done" bit, the organ is missing. And some of the vocals sound heavily Pro-Tool'd, especially during the "la la la la" bit when the vocals seem to flang a bit.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

And some of the vocals sound heavily Pro-Tool'd, especially during the "la la la la" bit when the vocals seem to flang a bit.

So I guess I wasn't crazy thinking I heard pitch correction used.

[hypehat]

Found an original mono pressing of this for £12 today! *dances a happy dance*

[Bleachboy]

Really didn't like it at first when I new what the real SMiLE could have been. Now that I know, I think it's a good companion to TSS. I really like She's Going Bald, much more than He Gives Speeches. Wonderful is also great, exept the little harmonica-like sounds in the back, way out of tune. I really like the female vocals on "Won won wonderful" and I'm thinking about making that little tag the intro of Wonderful in my SMiLE remix (If I Pitch it up a seMi tone or entire tone and if I manage to isolate it with the help of lossless SOT 18?). Wind Chimes is terrifying, completely opposite feeling than the SMiLE version. I like the changing chord on the middle 8 too. Fall Breaks is really great because of the added vocals, the instrumental track really doesn't feel right though.

[wokka]

i just love this album...and yet it took my a while to come around to it..oddly it was my young sons favourite, he loved all the weird .kooky,strange stuff, so it was the one we played the most..and now i just love it..there is no other album by anyone ,at any point that is quite like it..space out, weird,beautiful,psychedelic,waked out...and awesome...

[Jay]

When I first got Smiley Smile I hated it with a passion. I had been listening to the Smile part of the Good Vibrations box set for years, and was in love with Do You Like Worms and the Heroes and Villains outtakes. When I bought Smiley Smile, all I expected to get the best of the Smile "left overs". I wasn't as big of a fan as I am now, and didn't know much about the background of Smile and Smiley Smile. Over the next year or two I let the cd gather dust. Then for some reason I decided to break it out, and listen to this weird Frankenstein's monster of an album all the way through. I'm glad I did, because I now love it, and rate it as one of their best albums ever released.

Smiley Smile is one of the strangest, creepiest, most beautiful albums ever recorded. The beautifully creepy Fall Breaks And Back To Winter. The wonderfully weird version of Wonderful, with the weird organ(or was it piano?), and the almost whispered vocal. The rather off key female voices.  The majestic "nah nah nah" interludes The strange laughing in Little Pad, and the seemingly random hawaiian section. The weird tape streching and sped up voices in Little Pad. The downright evil, sinister sounding Wind Chimes. My all time favorite part of the album is With Me Tonight. Carl's vocal is one of the most beautiful vocals of his career. The "good!" from the control booth is both hilarious and scary at the same time. The quiet section leading to the "ahhh" group vocal that raises and lowers is magical. Smiley Smile is one of the stranges things I've ever heard. The edits are sloppy as hell, and the music at times randomly changes direction. The group seems at times uninterested, and the whole thing sounds like a parody of what an album should sound like. I wouldn't have it any other way. 

[smile-holland]

Something totally else; I accidentally stumbled on this record last weekend at the Utrecht Record Fair:

http://www.cduniverse.com/images.asp?pid=7083179&style=music&image=front&title=Osibisa+%2D+Osibirock+CD

Apart from the cover art no similarities with the BB at all, but I found it funny to see that there were more artists that were fond of Hinri Rousseau's paintings. They even mention him on the back of the sleeve (according to the sleeve-info the painting is called "Negro attacked by a Jaguar" - apologies for the use of the N-word, folks).

[Newguy562]

smiley smile is better than love you

[Newguy562]

i love smiley smile, but i can certainly see why some people don't.  i think it's very understated, and of course far removed from pet sounds (and i'm sure at least a little bit of a disappointment for those expecting SMiLE).  nevertheless, i find it to be a very charming record.  i like the stripped down, unfinished feel of it.  when i first heard it i was fascinated.  this probably sounds stupid, but it really made me appreciate the beach boys vocal harmonies more than ever.  until i heard smiley smile all i'd listened to was pet sounds and friends/20/20 - but on smiley smile, many of the songs are just vocals accompanied by one or two instruments and they basically hold the songs together.  maybe this doesn't make sense, i don't know. 

the only song on smiley smile i can't listen to all the way through is 'wind chimes'.  i actually really like the style of it, but it's just a bit too out of tune/'experimental' for me (not forgetting the evil/scary chord in the middle of it that makes me jump out of my skin every time i hear it).

the only song i can't listen to on there is "she's goin bald"

[Newguy562]

Smiley Smile is best appreciated when it's listened to in the dark. Seriously. Try it.

yes it's best in the dark and high.
pet sounds is best played in the morning with the curtains open.

[hapman]

Smiley was the second BB album I heard (the first being Pet Sounds of course) paired with Wild Honey (1990 2 fer). I really loved Pet Sounds but Smiley Smile was the real beginning of my BW obsession, that was the first time I heard something I didn't expect at all from a mainstream 60s pop group. I found the whole thing kinda eerie, with lots of magical & weird wtf moments (Fall Breaks, the bridge of Wonderful, the scary noises in Wind Chimes, the sped up voices in She's Goin' Bald) - all this eerie madness and the unusually lo-fi production work affected me deeply - I felt like someone put my own emotional state on tape 13 years before I was born - I was quite young & naive back then you see. I read Leaf's notes in the booklet and that was when I learned about this thing called SMiLE. Then a few months later I bought the GV box set with all the original SMiLE tracks on it, and that was it - I was completely lost in a never ending BW obsession, started collecting bootlegs, making SMiLE mixes etc etc. Smiley Smile was my first really deep encounter with the wonderful world of Beach Boy music, so I have very fond memories of listening to it in my room in complete darkness. Oh, and I know that better versions/mixes of H&V have surfaced/been created since then, but for me nothing can beat the Smiley version with that massive Baldwin overdub on top of the whole thing. 5/5 definitely.

[Disney Boy (1985)]

5.

Smiley got me into the Beach Boys. So it's not Smile... doesn't bother me. I love it! I actually prefer She's Goin' Bald to He Gives Speeches. The Smile version of H&V doesn't have that terrific prominent 'dee-dee-dee-diddly-dee' hook at the end of each verse that the Smiley/single version does. The 'wind, whispering wind' chant at the fade of Windchimes likewise sounds better to my ears here. In fact, I love the Smiley takes on Wonderful and Windchimes just as much as i do the Smile versions (my favourite moment on the album is the first 'one-one-wonderful', when it sounds as if the band have all been inhaling helium). My only complaint is, funnily enough, Good Vibrations, which is just clearly out of place here.

[Disney Boy (1985)]

"In Fort Worth, Texas there is a drug clinic which takes people off the streets and helps them get over bad LSD trips. They don't use any traditional medical treatment whatsoever. All they do is play the patient our Smiley Smile album and apparently this acts as a soothing remedy which relaxes them and helps them to recover completely from their trip." – Carl Wilson, (1970)

[Newguy562]

"In Fort Worth, Texas there is a drug clinic which takes people off the streets and helps them get over bad LSD trips. They don't use any traditional medical treatment whatsoever. All they do is play the patient our Smiley Smile album and apparently this acts as a soothing remedy which relaxes them and helps them to recover completely from their trip." – Carl Wilson, (1970)

he was joking right?

[Disney Boy (1985)]

Dunno. presumably they had to skip passed GV and Gettin' Hungry...

[Menace Wilson]

This album is straight up Lovecraftian.

You can't rate it or any individual song except Good Vibrations with proper numbers that only have one value. You'd need some kind of non-euclidian compound meta-variables or some merda to put a rating on it. I heard this AFTER BWPS and even after SMiLE sessions and mixes so I'm familiar with all the sounds first. Holy merda, it's the thing that should not be. It's beautiful and messy and sh*tty and deliberately self sabatoging, decrepit, angellic, hilarious, evil, creepy, unpleasant thing. Everything you can say makes it good equally makes it bad. It's nothing at all. You can't listen to it without getting it. If you can't get it, which may not be your fault, it may be Brian's for being intentionally awful and alienating, if you can't get it it's clearly horrible, and legitimately so. If you can get it it's the most amazing thing. I wonder what it owuld have been like back in the days if you had heard Pet Sound, didn't follow the news and didn't know much ro anything about Smile, and then heard this.

It can't be evaluated because it's some formless ever shifting formless nameless thing.

I don't get how anyone can call this album half baked, because the mixing board was f*cking high by the time they were done.

  I love this post.

[Newguy562]

This album is straight up Lovecraftian.

You can't rate it or any individual song except Good Vibrations with proper numbers that only have one value. You'd need some kind of non-euclidian compound meta-variables or some merda to put a rating on it. I heard this AFTER BWPS and even after SMiLE sessions and mixes so I'm familiar with all the sounds first. Holy merda, it's the thing that should not be. It's beautiful and messy and sh*tty and deliberately self sabatoging, decrepit, angellic, hilarious, evil, creepy, unpleasant thing. Everything you can say makes it good equally makes it bad. It's nothing at all. You can't listen to it without getting it. If you can't get it, which may not be your fault, it may be Brian's for being intentionally awful and alienating, if you can't get it it's clearly horrible, and legitimately so. If you can get it it's the most amazing thing. I wonder what it owuld have been like back in the days if you had heard Pet Sound, didn't follow the news and didn't know much ro anything about Smile, and then heard this.

It can't be evaluated because it's some formless ever shifting formless nameless thing.

I don't get how anyone can call this album half baked, because the mixing board was f*cking high by the time they were done.

  I love this post.

the crazy thing is i heard pet sounds then heard of smiley smile i had no idead of smile :/..it scared the sh*t out of me but eventually grew on me now i love it ...it has it's own place in their catalog

[CanaanDavis]

Smiley Smile is wonderfully dark.  It has a special place in my heart.

[rab2591]

I fall in and out of this album.

Somewhere on this thread/forum is a post where I praise Smiley Smile up and down......Sometimes I find it fascinating and beautiful - but other times it really does scare the hell out of me haha.

So I really don't know what to think of this album: which is why it is brilliant to me.

[Ovi]

Sorry, but I really can't get into this one.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm sort of a 'new' Beach Boys fan, in terms that by the time I got a chance to explore their albums beyond 'Pet Sonds', the 2011 new and completed 'SMiLE' came out. Thing is, I don't ever see myself wanting to hear this instead of the actual 'SMiLE'. I like 'Wonderful', 'Wind Chimes' and 'Vegetables' a lot (the Smiley versions), but that's about it. We've got inferior 'Good Vibrations' and 'Heroes & Villains' versions and some decent songs with good moments here and there.

Now, I won't vote it a 1 or a 2 or a 3 because that would be ignorant from me (seeing that most people here tend to vote it a 4 or 5). I will give it a few more listens, but eventually I will shelve it and come back to vote it.

[Lowbacca]

Sorry, but I really can't get into this one.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm sort of a 'new' Beach Boys fan, in terms that by the time I got a chance to explore their albums beyond 'Pet Sonds', the 2011 new and completed 'SMiLE' came out. Thing is, I don't ever see myself wanting to hear this instead of the actual 'SMiLE'. I like 'Wonderful', 'Wind Chimes' and 'Vegetables' a lot (the Smiley versions), but that's about it. We've got inferior 'Good Vibrations' and 'Heroes & Villains' versions and some decent songs with good moments here and there.

Now, I won't vote it a 1 or a 2 or a 3 because that would be ignorant from me (seeing that most people here tend to vote it a 4 or 5). I will give it a few more listens, but eventually I will shelve it and come back to vote it.

The SMiLE Sessions are not a "completed SMiLE" or even the "actual SMiLE". There won't ever be either.

[Ovi]

The SMiLE Sessions are not a "completed SMiLE" or even the "actual SMiLE". There won't ever be either.

You're right. The point was that whenever I convince myself to give 'Smiley Smile' a try, I end up listending to the 'SMiLE Sessions'.