Educate me on Smile from The Beach Boys

This is so beautiful.

I like the original Beach Boys Smile sessions and would recommend the 2 cd box which is a really nice package.

I enjoy the fact that it’s unfinished, slightly unhinged and reaches to the heavens.

 

I recommend the smile sessions or good vibrations box set disc 2 that's the real deal .. im still suprised some boast about Brian's version 2004 it's a propped up auto-tuned brian with a good cover band nothing to see here. Nice try but too late

 

Part of 101 is always use the
stylized SMiLE

 

Twenty-some years ago, simultaneous with the emergence of Napster, I got into my own "fascinated with Smile" phase. Via Napster etc. I acquired some of the fan versions and boots (and of course, burned them to CD, in full upscaled 128Kbps quality!). After that, I wanted the whole story, and if you want the whole story, this (out of print) book is the one to have:

Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! by Domenic Priore

 

Here's how I look at it: the original '66-'67 Beach Boys recordings were left unfinished, but they're brilliant pieces that are fun to listen to and imagine what "might have been". The 2004 "Brian Wilson Band" version (with the newly-added VDP lyrics and "mature" Brian voicings) amounts to a retelling of the story from a much older man, one who's been through things in life that his younger self could never have foretold or imagined, reaching back into his past and re-examining this unfinished work through those much-older eyes, and laying to rest a demon that had nagged him for decades. That's the only way it makes sense.

 

I remember that! Has anyone attempted to record vocals over the backing track?

 

Not to my knowledge, but they should get Al Jardine, who still has his young man’s voice, to sing the lyrics to the real melody, and mix it into the DYLW vintage instrumental track. Then you’d have a finished, historically accurate song.

 

Or rather, don’t! But I’ve ranted about the unhistorical stylization of the « Smile » title as SMiLE in too many other threads…

 

I wouldn’t start with the 5CD box set (as much as I love it). It’s for the hardcores after you already get sucked in.

To be honest, I rarely listen to the “assembled” album on disc 1. I can’t stand all the fly ins and piano demo vocals on top of unfinished backing tracks… it’s chaos. I mostly listen to the main “songs” from various sources and then BWPS when I want the full blown album experience (with all the little interludes and what not, which I don’t think would have been part of the original album)

The original Smile would have been a 12 track single LP, which you can easily assemble as a playlist with readily available tracks on Spotify or Apple Music. The sessions “album” gets rid of the spookiness the album would have had IMO. And the album should end with Surf’s Up!!

My “Smile” is the following…

Side 1:
Our Prayer (GV Box)
H&V (GV Box alternate version)
Do You Like Worms (GV Box)
Cabin Essence (Smile Sessions)
Vega-Tables (GV Box)
Good Vibrations (Smile Sessions)

Side 2:
Wonderful (GV Box)
Wind Chimes (GV Box)
The Elements: Fire (Smile Sessions)
I Love To Say Da Da (GV Box)
Child Is Father Of The Man (Wake the World Sessions 1966 Track Mix)
Surf’s Up (Smile Sessions)

Brian Wilson heaven.

 

I relistened to BWPS.

Roll plymouth rock is good.
Song for Children is ok.
The new Child is Father of the Man, Holiday and Blue Hawaii... not for me.

 

It’s not an either/or …. get and listen to both.

 

Listen to every piece of SMiLE you can get your hands on.

There are many fantastic versions but the best one will always be the one in your mind.

It’s my favorite thing ever. Changed me from not giving a whit about The Beach Boys to being a lifelong fan.

 

Definitely Wind Chimes and Vegetables from the GV box, the Sessions versions are all screwed up. Chimes repeats certain identical sections too many times in the second half through clumsy editing, and Vegetables omits that gorgeous whistling part towards the end

I'm still trying to find my version of "Child Is..." without that annoying harmonica, I know I've heard it somewhere that way before...

Can you elaborate on what parts are the fly ins on Sessions?

 

I think the Good Vibrations version of "Wind Chimes" is too short and I'm fine with the Sessions one, though I prefer the GV ending. I think both songs work great in stereo and the Made In California stereo versions are my favorite. I think they have the magic.

I prefer Soniclovenoize's fly-in free stereo version of "Child Is Father of the Man", and I prefer the one from his BWPS mix, as the Smile Sessions starts weird. What harmonica is on CIFOTM? You mean the trumpet? (admittedly I haven't heard it in a while.)

 

For me, BWPS is the definitive finished version, signed off by both original creators Brian and Van Dyke Parks. I respect their final decisions on the music as artists.

Darian Sahanaja enabled Brian in 2003 to review all the pieces in their alternative versions from the original unfinished sessions, so that Brian could finally piece it together definitively (which appeared to be the main thing which bedevilled him in 1967).

While the 1966/67 session tracks and assembled 2011 album have their own spooky magic and are essential to hear what might have been, I respect the artists final signed off 2004 version. Brian is in good voice for his older self, adding a layer of lived experience which the 60s tracks can never have.

It was the completed 2004 version which blew my mind when I first heard it on release.

That said, I have since created my own personal three disc edition of the album, consisting of -

1. The 2011 Smile sessions album version plus some key session tracks
2. Tracks from Smiley Smile plus the rest of my own cream of the Smile sessions tracks
3. The completed 2004 album

It’s a unique, weird beautiful hall of mirrors of a triple album.

 

Id say neither. The best we have are four or five complete songs and bits and pieces....and our imaginations.

And I think that is what SMiLE is...

.imagination.

 

That was me in late 80s I bought this book the day it came out I was a smile fanatic when it was still a big mystery and only the boots existed and it still scared the daylights out of people good stuff

 

As a mildly obsessive BB/Smile type, could one of you kind souls please point me in the direction of which track on which disc of the five CD set contains the snippet of the DYLW proposed vocal melody?

So far, I've only listened to the set in the car and I suspect it got lost under the noise of the engine!

Btw, Whispering Winds is the sound of heaven.

 

Disc 3, one of the first few tracks.

It's pretty quiet, if I recall correctly, so yeah, might get lost in the car.

I think Brian's out on the floor with Carl, Carol, and Lyle, and Hal and he's directing the rhythm and he briefly sings a bit "Once upon the da da da da" . The melody is a lot like the xylophone melody of "Holidays.", It's really brief, only a line.

 

My God this thread has got me hankering for some SMiLE action.

I bet I'm not the only one here who's breaking out the own-rolled.

 

Yeah the next thing I'm going to go is go down the rabbit hole of fan versions on YouTube

 

Personally, I find BWPS (2004) a far more pleasant listening experience than the 2011 Smile Sessions. But that could be because I heard BWPS before becoming familiar with the Beach Boys (other than Pet Sounds.) So fortunately or unfortunately, BWPS became cemented in my mind as to how Smile should sound.

Few on this discussion board would agree with me on that, but I say get both... because they ARE very different, particularly in mood. Someone earlier mentioned the "spook" of the original sessions, and I agree that they ARE spooky... which didn't sit well with me after endlessly playing BWPS for years.

 

Thank you. As I'm sure you know, even one line takes us another step closer to the holy grail!

 

Actually now that I think about it the melody isn't like the xylophone melody of "holidays"-- it's like the vocal melody of "On A Holiday" from Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE.

 

I agree - but I would add that it's worth having both if you feel like indulging yourself. There are slight but discernible differences, notably on "Child Is Father of the Man".