Re: A Smile for 99
I don't know why guys feel compelled to pummel another guy's personal SMiLE reconstruction over historical accuracy. I know you are not trying to be historically accurate, no one knows what is historically correct so how could you be. But I'm sitting around waiting on my teenage daughter and bored so I won't pummel (lest be pummeled) but I'll just poke around with a stick.
I'll bet the cantina section would have been left off of a '67 SMiLE album as it was off the Smiley version. Brad has explained why HV Sections (from GV box) were not H&V Part 2 and why H&V Part 2 would not have been the B-side of the SMiLE H&V single. Brian apparently recorded a new instrumental for a section of H&V and the H&V part 2 after the mix of the cantina version of H&V. The press reported that this version of H&V ran 4+ to 5 minutes versus cantina's 3 or so minutes. It was also reported there were 3 or 4 post-cantina versions including a 6-minute version. Being later versions I wonder if one of these wouldn't have ended up on the album, probably the 4+ minute version ballyhooed in the press at the time? Of course it might have included some part of the H&V Sections. Considering that Brian wanted to drop Fire because it started fires, I'll bet Brian dropped the "you're under arrest/in the cantina" section in mid. Feb. '67, shortly after the "cantina" mix, when his Rolls was burglarized and two men were arrested. Just a thought.
Re: A Smile for 99
Well, you knew I couldn't resist a bunch of SMiLE questions…
>>>I don't know why guys feel compelled to pummel another guy's personal SMiLE reconstruction over historical accuracy.
I personally believe it's akin to "hitting a man while he's down" or laughing at another's misfortune. Maybe it's less malicious! :-}
>>>>I'll bet the cantina section would have been left off of a '67 SMiLE album as it was off the Smiley version.
I'll bet so too - because, on the Cantina version, where the HELL is the end of the song??? The "I've been in this town so long, so long to the city" part is so obviously, clearly the end or right at the end of the song, why on earth would he record it and then have the song end on some weird instrumental fade-out? And no, the answer is NOT because it was tacked onto "Part 2". It's not.
>>>>Barnyard was a section of H&V in Fall of '66 but was left out of the only known SMiLE mix of H&V and wasn't on the SMiLE track list. Is there any reason to think it would have been re-instated to the album in '67?
No siree.
>>>>How come the session sheets use the title "My Only Sunshine", Brian calls it "Your Only Sunshine" but in less than a month (maybe even a week) he writes the title as "Old Master Painter"? And why the scratched out parentheses?
I don't have a good answer for this one. Maybe it is, as some have surmised, because the part we have is just a tag for a long, full cover of "Old Master Painter?" Maybe because he chose to stress the "Painter" part over the "Sunshine" part, just for the hell of it?
Anyway, it's fun to track down and listen to a full version on the song, if only for comparison - I have the Sinatra version recorded in the late-'40s and it's great.
>>>Wasn't "Bicycle Rider" only intended as a section of DYLW?
Yes. It was. That thing we have that everyone calls "Bicycle Rider" is just bits and sections of things strung together - by Linnet? It also has the horn part that so clearly (according to the "Endless Harmony" demo) is part of H&V.
What I want to know is - what happened to those lyrics I heard someone quoting the other day for DYLW? And what are the rest of the lyrics??? Frank Holmes, where are you?
>>>>I believe Mark Linnet has said there was a SMiLE mix of "Wonderful", is that it on the GV box? If that is it, is that the whole version with that trailing off baseline?
It can't be - then what are the "vocal insert" thingys that are apparently finally going to rear their head on the Sea of Tunes sets?
>>>I think SMiLE was canceled long before any of the Vegetables sessions, but if it wasn't and Brian was trying to finish SMiLE clear into May why did he change the title of from "Vega-tables" when it had already been printed on 400,000 album jackets and why did he stick in a Mike Love "mama says" section?
Who's to say he did? Who's to say the titles aren't essentially interchangeable in the same way Cabin Essence and Cabinessence were? Here's why I think "Vege-tables" or "VegeTables" as we know it (though perhaps with different instrumental backing) WAS part of SMiLE:
It's listed separately on the sleeve. That means that sometime between when Frank Holmes got the info to draw the pi and November, when Brian was doing the track list for Capitol, it spun off from the elements into its own song. Do we think Brian THEN wrote an entirely DIFFERENT song with the same title, only spelled differently?
Those are Van Dyke lyrics. I don't care if he's given credit for them, I don't care how cute and Brian-y they sound, I'm absolutely convinced those are Van's lyrics. The verses are WAY more non-sequiteur than Brian normally comes up with - he's more concrete.
It ain't concrete proof, but I think all that work in May -- at least two totally separate, different backing trac and harmony trax - was heading towards SOMETHING. I'm with you - "Dada" is not SMiLE. BUT -- Vegetables is. Has to be.
>>>If Fire was one of four sections of The Elements and Friday Night was the rebuilding after the Fire how was Friday Night going to fit in the album, if it was? As a tag to the Fire section? A separate track (why wasn't it on the track list)? As an intro or section to a listed track?
It's a tag if it's anything. I don't think it is. Anything, I mean. And anyway, we all know that after December there was NO work done on "The Elements" to speak of and Brian would have theoretically replaced "Fire" with something else, probably something he didn't get around to recording.
SMiLE questions and comments
I agree on two points and then I have a couple of questions. First off I agree that we haven't seen a version of H&V that would have appeared either on the album or as the single. It would have been longer than the mix that's on the box set, if only because the ending of that version is junk and I think Brian's mix ended with the train part of the song, and the music afterward was throne on in '88. But I don't think there would have been a Part II, yes the song would have been long (probably 4-5 minutes like Cam said) I think that part two was made up by Priore (I don't see anything in his book that leads me to believe there would have been a part II). Also, I totally agree that "Da-da" isn't a SMiLE track, as far as I'm concerned in April when Van Dyke left SMiLE ended. Lots of people seem to overlook Van Dyke as a creator of this music. Brian has always spoke highly of Van Dyke and I believe he played a much bigger role in the jigsaw puzzle that is SMiLE (or at least the deified piece of art is has become) than people give him credit for. "Da-Da" was recorded in May of '67 after Van Dyke which means something else has to be water (I lean toward holidays for sonic reasons). I have a couple of questions also. 1st, besides "H&V" of the good vibes box set are there any final mixes of SMiLE tracks that were made before April '67 that anyone has heard. I am under the impression that all of the other tracks (except Surf's Up) are from '88. Also, what date were the vocals for the version of "Vega-tables" on the box set recorded? If they are from after April '67 then (and it hurts me to say this because I love that song) it can't be part of SMiLE, or at least in the form we know it. And lastly has anyone heard the track called "Inspiration"? It was record at the beginning of the sessions and unless I've missed something I never hear anyone mention it. Thanks for any response (Van Dyke and Brian included).
Oh, wouldn't it be rad if right before "Prayer" Brian got on and said: "me and this other cat are going to straighten you out and then we'll get into, ya know, world peace"
SMILE LINE UP?
Smile Mystery Board
Interesting. But conversely your idea of "lack of structure" as being purposeful then still implies a sense of purpose - despite the façade of no structure! Methinks I've stepped into a Zen riddle; let me check my shoe…
Also I think VDP's lack of communication about SMILE has less to do with respecting Brian's wish to be illusive, but rather (I think) it's got more to do with the fact that it's difficult to constantly discuss an aborted project!
It'd be like constantly asking the Beatles about what the LET IT BE (or GET BACK) project *should have been*. And as hindsight increases, they get further & further away from the origin, and it becomes less definable.
A Few SMiLE Questions…
When I've tried compiling SMiLE tapes I put H&V on first, as to my mind it can function as an overture, telling the 'story' of the album in miniature, before the album proper starts with Our Prayer.
…………
That line-up happens to be mine (I think) and it is a total loud of baloney, as is Dom Priore's or anyone else's. As far as I have ever seen, neither Brian nor Van have ever said anything to suggest what the sequence would be or what the unifying concept was or whether there ever was a unifying concept. Some, including me, see "child is father of the man" as a recurring theme. If you are new to the board, you just missed Stan Shantar's excellent series on this idea.
As far as the stage of life of H&V, I think at the time I saw it as a transition from wild youth to settled adulthood, but you're right it doesn't fit too well. Re. Holidays/Tones, no one knows if it would have been a part of SMiLE.
That continuos theory is probably baloney too, I don't think even Priore claims it was Brian's intention, it was just his suggestion for compiling a personal SMiLE tape. Brian was the product of a 45 rpm single centered music industry and no one has any evidence that SMiLE was to be anything but a conventionally mastered album with 12 separated individual tracks.
I think you'll find that baloney is high on the list of ingredients in SMiLology, some of it ground by me.
SMILE LINE UPS?
Re: SMiLE Deliberately Illogical
If you have any comments on this topic, psychedelismile@yahoo.com and I will try to promptly post any interesting replies.