kirkk
Dude/Dudette
Posts: 74
Likes: 84
Favorite Album: Pet Sounds, SMiLE, Sunflower... but I could go on and on...
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Post by kirkk on Jan 12, 2020 3:09:41 GMT -5
I am living vicariously through these wonderful stories, such a great idea for a thread! I’m a bit too young (born in 1983) to have heard anything in the 80s. My first exposure was the late 90s via Anne Wallace’s Smile mix. I had gotten into Pet Sounds and did some reading about what the next album was, whetting my appetite for SMiLE. I hopped onto AOL and found the Anne Wallace site and the rest is history. I fondly remember being a high school kid and part of the SRL list and file share, spending one summer downloading the Unsurpassed Masters set track by track at an excruciatingly slow pace and losing my mind hearing each freshly downloaded track for the first time.
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Post by AGD on Jan 12, 2020 4:14:57 GMT -5
The first time I heard the original "Wonderful", I literally cried.
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gxios
Grommet
Posts: 32
Likes: 43
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Post by gxios on Jan 12, 2020 6:44:27 GMT -5
Like a lot of people, I heard a 20th generation cassette copy circa 1982 ( this was sent to me from Austin, TX). I heard tell of a vinyl boot available. My sister was living in LA at the time and she was able to chase one down, but it was really no better sounding than the cassette. When the revised version was later issued, it was available everywhere and I found one easily. By 1984-85 I had an excellent tape of the Surf's Up session sent to me on reel to reel tape in exchange for a copy of my rare stereo Stones 5 By 5 EP.
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Post by Mikie on Jan 12, 2020 12:37:14 GMT -5
My first exposure was the late 90s via Anne Wallace’s Smile mix. That was a good start! That was the first real good [mono] compilation of all the tracks available up to that point. Very popular amongst Beach Boys fans.
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Post by Mikie on Jan 12, 2020 12:52:36 GMT -5
Notably Coach Bob Hanes, Derek Bill, and Les Chan. Derek and Les (RIP) were two of my primary contacts for records and general info back then. Also, Wayne at Rockaway, Steve Bates, and Mark Plummer, who was always in contact with Peter. Gary Meade was another. And the Capitol Records swap meets in L.A., Blue Meanie in El Cahon, and Music Man Murry in L.A., Goldmine and Discoveries, all pre-internet......those were the days!
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Post by Vale on Jan 12, 2020 12:52:55 GMT -5
My first exposure was the late 90s via Anne Wallace’s Smile mix. That was a good start! That was the first real good [mono] compilation of all the tracks available up to that point. Very popular amongst Beach Boys fans. Yup, then I remember a website called smileshop and the Project SMiLE Cd-Rom
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Post by AGD on Jan 12, 2020 13:15:29 GMT -5
Annie Wallace is an utter and complete legend. At one Beach Boys Britain gathering in, I think, Manchester, the audio-video gubbins wasn't working due to a broken connection and, jokingly, someone said "anyone got a soldering iron with them ?" Annie reaches into her handbag and produces one. She's also a fine actress, currently playing head teacher Sally St Claire in Hollyoaks (and has since 2015).
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petsite
Author/Historian/ Researcher
Posts: 1,970
Likes: 3,229
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Post by petsite on Jan 12, 2020 13:43:17 GMT -5
I know I am repeating myself, but it's great to read all of these stories.
Bob Hanes was such a wonderful person and a giving soul. He opened his collection to a lot of people. He was also one of my best friends. We would talk for hours on the phone. Those $300 phone bills drove my wife nuts. I loved it when I actually had something he hadn't seen or heard before. But he knew everyone.
Another sweet soul was Lori Klobas. She had the inside track on everything. We lost these two way too early.
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Post by Mikie on Jan 12, 2020 14:42:36 GMT -5
Ah, Reverend Bob Hanes from the Church of The Harmonic Overdub. Communicated with him a few times on the Cabinessence board. Funny guy!
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petsite
Author/Historian/ Researcher
Posts: 1,970
Likes: 3,229
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Post by petsite on Jan 12, 2020 20:21:10 GMT -5
Was going thru a backup from an O-L-D computer I had back in 1999. I downloaded the items below from some news group. I thought I would share here.
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Post by jay on Jan 12, 2020 23:59:36 GMT -5
All this is reminding me what an absolutely amazing time the late 70s/early 80s were to be a BB fan. If you got to know the right people and they thought/you proved you were trustworthy, and you were patient enough, wonderful stuff would come your way. Like Fight Club there were rules of course: if they said don't copy, or even talk about what they gave you, you didn't. And you didn't ask after the first, understandable, time, or worse, offer money. It was pretty much an honour system, and for several years it worked well, until a well known name pressed up some boots from tapes that contained trackers and that was him out of the loop in the fan world. In these internet days, it all looks pretty silly but back then it worked. Maybe we could use a return to such values today. Like most golden ages, we didn't realise it until it had passed. Fans today will never experience the thrill of getting a cassette sized package and reading the handwritten label while running to the tape deck. I still recall with huge amusement the day someone sent me the wrong tape, followed swiftly by a panic-stricken phone call at stupid-o-clock in the morning my time imploring me to get in touch with A. N. Other collector and explain their copy would be arriving shortly. And it wasn't just tapes: information flowed freely, even pre-internet at appalling transatlantic phone rates or via snailmail. Ah, my friends, what a time that was ! I miss it more than I can say, and of course those who are no longer with us, notably Coach Bob Hanes, Derek Bill and Les Chan. I would absolutely love to read a book or two on the early years of collecting and being fan. There must be great stories of fans making the mistake of breaking the "code", or not taking it seriously until they found themselves ostracized from the fan community. I've said on a few different boards how I regret being so "late in the game", having only been born in 1985.
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petsite
Author/Historian/ Researcher
Posts: 1,970
Likes: 3,229
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Post by petsite on Jan 13, 2020 0:12:47 GMT -5
Ah, Reverend Bob Hanes from the Church of The Harmonic Overdub. Communicated with him a few times on the Cabinessence board. Funny guy! Bob was so funny. When he would send an email with some ultra secret info, he would say at the top of the email:
PRINT THIS EMAIL-DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY! THEN READ THE PRINTOUT, BURN THE PRINTOUT AND EAT THE ASHES!
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mattbielewicz
Grommet
Mmmmmmm. Mmmmmm, mmmmmmm, mmmmmmmm, mmyyyyaaaaaahhh... Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh...
Posts: 42
Likes: 98
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Post by mattbielewicz on Jan 13, 2020 2:04:40 GMT -5
I came in right at the end of the time Andrew has described, when a package of tapes arriving was the most indescribable thrill. I became a fan in 1995 following the release of the 2-cd Best Of The Beach Boys CD here in the UK. I was hooked by God Only Knows, Good Vibrations and Heroes & Villains on that, and bought the still-just-about available early 90s CDs of Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile/Wild Honey (the twofer) to find out more. I was obsessed with SMiLE almost instantly and went on-line (yep, via my newly acquired bleepy bleepy 28.8k dial-up modem!) to find out more. That led me to the Mike Wheeler Cabinessence board (which had the feel of a place that was ages old, with a load of people who already knew each other, but I guess at the time must actually have been quite recently established?), and from there via email to a guy called David Prokopy, who sent me some stuff on two simply mind-blowing cassettes, and then a few months later, a much-expanded set on several C90s. I owe my deeper interest all to him, but I never found out who he was. I even wondered if his name was an alias, as in he was a fan of copying material, ie. 'pro-copying'...?
Is David still around? Maybe even here under another name...?
Little did I know, all that tape-trading stuff was right at the end of its life. Later in 1996, I got my first CD burner, and it wasn't long after that when people started posting MP3s (at first in truly abysmal quality) on the Internet...
And I must add, that as for Andrew, the emotional impact of hearing some of these tracks was absolutely amazing the first time. The standouts for me were Prayer, the various extra sections of Heroes And Villains that hadn't made it out on the single (Bicycle Rider with the fuzz bass!!), Cabin Essence (The Grand Coulee Dam!!!!!), Child Is Father Of The Man (the bridge with the triplet echoed guitar!!!!!!!!!) and Wonderful (well... all of it really). I remember wondering (no pun intended) how on EARTH someone could have made music this varied and of such high quality... and then not released it. I just knew that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong in the Beach Boys camp from later 1966 to spring 1967.
MattB
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Post by Vale on Jan 13, 2020 8:29:29 GMT -5
Was going thru a backup from an O-L-D computer I had back in 1999. I downloaded the items below from some news group. I thought I would share here.
Ohh newsgroups, I remember a couple of them named "rec.music.artists.beach-boys" or something like that... And how many of you remember the bbmp3 yahoo group?? Great times...
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Post by AGD on Jan 13, 2020 8:44:24 GMT -5
Was going thru a backup from an O-L-D computer I had back in 1999. I downloaded the items below from some news group. I thought I would share here.
The inserts for the 1983 & 1985 vinyl Smile boots.
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Post by Cam Mott on Jan 13, 2020 9:39:12 GMT -5
Is the Pet Sounds Mailing List still going?
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Post by John Manning on Jan 13, 2020 9:40:21 GMT -5
Is the Pet Sounds Mailing List still going? I think so… I have a disused Yahoo email account and I think I still receive mailings but am rarely able to remember the password to access the email account!
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Post by dauber on Jan 13, 2020 12:12:14 GMT -5
Wow, I'm a relative newbie compared to most people here. My first real exposure to Smile was disc 2 of Good Vibrations. And to be 100% honest: I wasn't impressed. The music sounded unfinished at best (e.g. "Love To Say Da Da"), music from a very disturbed man at worst (e.g. the "bicycle rider' chorus of "Do You Like Worms"). I did love the string of "Heroes and Villains" fragments, though; I thought those were effing brilliant.
Having said that, though, my curiosity piqued. Shortly after I got the GV boxin 1993, I found out about Ethan Jones' "surf's up" mailing list (which evolved into the still-[sorta] active Pet Sounds Mailing List over the years), so I joined. And I saw that there was this Dave Prokopy chap out of Indiana selling cassettes of various sets he compiled from bootleg CDs he invested a ton of money in -- Pet Sounds, Smile, some Beatles stuff...and I saw that "Fire" was on the Smile set, and I REALLY wanted to hear that. So I told Dave "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY." This was when the Smile set was two 90-minute tapes - I believe it later became a 3-tape set. It was a hot August afternoon, very sunny out...and...."Fire" / "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" scared the HELL out of me. Yeah, I could totally see why Brian didn't want it out.
Truth be told, I never really was a big fan of the Smile stuff...again, because it just sounded so fragmented, unfinished, unsure. (Heck, my favorite of all the Sea of Tunes boot sets was the Party! set.) When Brian finally finished it in 2004, though...wow. Just wow.
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Post by Mikie on Jan 13, 2020 13:43:51 GMT -5
Truth be told, I never really was a big fan of the Smile stuff...again, because it just sounded so fragmented, unfinished, unsure.
That's surprising, as your alternate alias is kinduva tribute to SMiLE, ain't it Daub?
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Post by dauber on Jan 13, 2020 21:31:21 GMT -5
Meh, 'twas more to keep with a theme than anything else.
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Post by jiggy22 on Jan 14, 2020 14:17:29 GMT -5
I guess at 22, I'm the youngest person here to share their experience of first hearing Smile material! In September 2014, I first came across the wikipedia article for Smile one day while lazily browsing the internet. Earlier in the year, I had tried getting into Pet Sounds, but it just wasn't doing it for me. I was looking for something more psychedelic, something along the lines of Sgt. Pepper's. So I read this wikipedia page, and I come across the list of intended songs for the project (the 12 tracks listed on the intended back cover). Immediately, the first song title to grab my interest is "Do You Like Worms". God, I still think that's a fantastic title, "Roll Plymouth Rock" just pales in comparison! The wikipedia article for that song had an audio sample, so I downloaded that and opened it up in audacity. Hearing those Indian chanting vocals for the first time was an experience I'll never quite forget. I knew then it was the start of something special. I immediately began looking for more Smile material, and came across one fan-mix that is now long-gone from YouTube unfortunately. "Heroes and Villains," "Surf's Up," and the backing vocals on the chorus of "Wind Chimes" are what drew me in even further to the project. Eventually I was able to revist Pet Sounds under a new mindset, and now, two youtube channels and a blogspot page later, here I am today! I guess I was lucky to already have pretty much every Smile snippet already available to me by the time I first came across the project, but I sometimes wish I was around to experience the mystery of the album like many of you older members were able to...
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Bill M
Grommet
Posts: 36
Likes: 64
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Post by Bill M on Jan 14, 2020 17:11:42 GMT -5
Lovin' this thread. My story isn't quite so interesting, but here goes: In 1983, me & a friend were hanging out in my apartment. He was a fellow music fan, but not at all into the Beach Boys. I was constantly telling him about Smile, based on what I'd read in the BBFUN (later Pet Sounds) & Friends of the Beach Boys newsletters. When he left my apartment, he pulled over to a phone booth (remember those?) to alert me that local free form radio station, WFMU, in northern New Jersey, where I was living at the time, was playing Smile over the air! My friend was a part time show host on the station. I immediately turned on my tuner & rolled a cassette. The host was playing the boot that contained the Miles Davis track. He played almost the entire album. I was on cloud 9! I think I still have that cassette some where. I played the hell out of it.
Fast forward to the late 90's - the early days of the internet. I was surfing the net one day & stumbled on Eric's set list archive. He had a links page that had a link to the BBMP3 Yahoo group. That group later changed it's name to something else, mentioned above. Once I joined, I became a downloading fool!
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petsite
Author/Historian/ Researcher
Posts: 1,970
Likes: 3,229
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Post by petsite on Jan 14, 2020 20:25:28 GMT -5
I guess at 22, I'm the youngest person here to share their experience of first hearing Smile material! In September 2014, I first came across the wikipedia article for Smile one day while lazily browsing the internet. Earlier in the year, I had tried getting into Pet Sounds, but it just wasn't doing it for me. I was looking for something more psychedelic, something along the lines of Sgt. Pepper's. So I read this wikipedia page, and I come across the list of intended songs for the project (the 12 tracks listed on the intended back cover). Immediately, the first song title to grab my interest is "Do You Like Worms". God, I still think that's a fantastic title, "Roll Plymouth Rock" just pales in comparison! The wikipedia article for that song had an audio sample, so I downloaded that and opened it up in audacity. Hearing those Indian chanting vocals for the first time was an experience I'll never quite forget. I knew then it was the start of something special. I immediately began looking for more Smile material, and came across one fan-mix that is now long-gone from YouTube unfortunately. "Heroes and Villains," "Surf's Up," and the backing vocals on the chorus of "Wind Chimes" are what drew me in even further to the project. Eventually I was able to revist Pet Sounds under a new mindset, and now, two youtube channels and a blogspot page later, here I am today! I guess I was lucky to already have pretty much every Smile snippet already available to me by the time I first came across the project, but I sometimes wish I was around to experience the mystery of the album like many of you older members were able to... WOW, that is a great story. Being that young and hearing this stuff for the first time is awesome. I was 21 when I first heard SMILE in the story I related at the start of this thread. It really took me awhile to REALLY appreciate everything in the music.
I have to say too, I remember being 16, on a STORMY evening in 1976, trying to listen to THE BEST SUMMERS OF OUR LIVES radio program with my 8-track recorder rolling. The lightening kept causing interference with the GOOD VIBRATIONS section and I wound up with not much that was listenable. I had friends at the station and never put 2 + 2 together to have them run me a copy on cassette after the broadcast. I was able to get a copy of that portion of the show from someone who DID have the people at the station run a copy of the show for them. Dumb me. But I was so thrilled at those outtakes on that show. In the 1990s, I was working for a company doing IT SYSTEMS ENGINEERING and one of the new girls working there mentioned that he husband LOVED the Beach Boys and especially SMILE. I told her I had the Good Vibrations section of the BSOOL special if her husband would like a copy. She almost fainted, no kidding. He had heard umpteenth generations dubs. He came in to work with her on Monday, I played the cassette and he hugged me. That was cool!
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Post by Mikie on Jan 14, 2020 23:03:02 GMT -5
I guess at 22, I'm the youngest person here to share their experience of first hearing Smile material! I guess I was lucky to already have pretty much every Smile snippet already available to me by the time I first came across the project, but I sometimes wish I was around to experience the mystery of the album like many of you older members were able to... That's neat, Jiggy! When I was 22, SMiLE was just a rumor. Then with the release of Leaf's book in 1978, and Preiss's in 1979, and Brad Elliott's book in 1982, the rumors intensified.* When the first SMiLE tape came out, it was a revelation. Then the first vinyl copy; that was really something. The bootleg vinyl copies of SMiLE seemed to legitimize the compilation of tracks as a full album - parked in the record collection between Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile. The first SMiLE bootlegs had a few of the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey/20/20/Sunflower/Surf's Up versions of the songs mixed in as that's all there was available to fill the gaps to make a complete SMiLE "album" at that early stage. Then over the years, slowly but Shirley, more and more unheard tracks and fragments of music trickled out, mostly on bootlegs. For guys like you, Jiggy, it was all there already for you to discover and enjoy. No waiting. 'Cept for maybe the Durrie Parks stuff or the original vocals to Child Is Father To The Man. * And don't forget Dom Priore's first Dumb Angel Gazette book in 1988 to add more fuel to the Fire.
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kirkk
Dude/Dudette
Posts: 74
Likes: 84
Favorite Album: Pet Sounds, SMiLE, Sunflower... but I could go on and on...
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Post by kirkk on Jan 15, 2020 0:51:18 GMT -5
I have fond memories of spending middle school/high school summers pouring through Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMiLE! as if there’d be some clue everyone else had missed that would crack things wide open. After reading Glimpses too many times, I regularly had dreams where I’d be bin diving for records and come across SMiLE. Not a bootleg, but the actual, finished album, as if they had made one copy and then destroyed everything. Then I’d wake up before listening to it, dang it!
In hindsight, the more far-fetched part of that dream isn’t a finished version of the album with full artwork, it’s that someone would sell it to some random shop in Louisville, KY for a few bucks where it would languish between copies of Endless Summer and zillions of other greatest hits packages until teenage me stumbled upon it.
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