M.I.U. Fan
Kahuna
God's Lonely Man
Posts: 100
Likes: 187
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Post by M.I.U. Fan on May 17, 2020 20:37:24 GMT -5
I first heard Smile stuffs in mid-80s when VH1 (a relatively new channel at the time) showed "An American Band". I was about 10 or 11.
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philip
Grommet
Posts: 39
Likes: 34
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Post by philip on May 18, 2020 9:33:52 GMT -5
Sometime in the early 1990s on the American Band VHS, but late 90s when I "acquired" a Smile bootleg and some Unsurpassed Masters stuff from a message group run by a lady in the States, can't remember her name or the groups name, only that it took ages to download, about 15 minutes a track on dial up
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childisfather
Grommet
Posts: 23
Likes: 18
Favorite Album: Pet Sounds
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Post by childisfather on Jul 7, 2020 17:59:57 GMT -5
I really don't wanna make this into a competition, but I'm sorry to say jiggy22, you've been beat haha. In 10 days I will be turning 17. I only got into SMiLE around 2017/18. I started out as a huge Pet Sounds buff in 2017 and that's when I first stumbled upon the world of unreleased Beach Boys material. My introduction to that stuff was the discovery of the Unsurpassed Masters series. I had spent months trying to find any way to listen to those sets, specifically the Pet Sounds sets and I eventually acquired some adequate mp3s from PirateBay. At that point, I started watching a lot of Beach Boys documentaries on YouTube and they were constantly mentioning SMiLE and how there was all this legend to it and how amazing it would be if it was to be released. I was kind of slowing down on the Pet Sounds train by then so I figured it was the perfect time to get on the SMiLE train. I listened to the 2011 SMiLE Sessions Disc 1 and the Good Vibrations sessions from Disc 5 all on iTunes. I already had a small Beach Boys vinyl collection going so I planned on buying the standard 2011 double vinyl initially. But then I thought to myself, "There's all this extra stuff that's supposed to go with it, so why not get all of the addons too?!" And so I eventually got my hands on the 2011 deluxe set. I remember one day I spent hours in my room listening to all 5 discs in their entirety in just one sitting. At the end, I was left speechless. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" kinda hit me in a weird spot and so I got sucked into that whole wormhole and read all the stories about Brian and the fires near the studio. Now, my appetite for SMiLE recordings was at its peak and my curiosity regarding "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" led me to forum discussions about the Byron Preiss and "Fire Music" tapes. I had found one "Preiss Tape" on SoulSeek with 22 tracks. I had now set a new goal to track down original incarnations of SMiLE with no digital treatments of any sort (except for maybe a bit of noise reduction or phase correction). Soon I came across the December 1966 comp reel and some supposed original acetate mixes. The only thing I hadn't tackled yet was the "Fire Music Tape". You couldn't find any upload of it, though there are of course numerous discussions about its backstory and tracklist. To make a long-ass story short, the "Fire Music Tape" led me to the original 1980s Brother Records bootlegs. I got lucky one day at a record shop when I found both additions in near perfect condition. By this point, we're at the summer of 2019. Over that summer I was working at a camp and made some good money so I decided to treat myself to any release/bootleg of SMiLE that came up on eBay. Now we're here in 2020 and I have made quite a collection. I managed to get my hands on Unsurpassed Masters Vol.13-17, as well as numerous SMiLE bootlegs on both CD and vinyl. What's my mission now? Oddly enough, I'm really interested in hearing all the SMiLE cassettes that are always talked about; most notably, David Prokopy's tape set and Mark Linett's 1988 tape.
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Post by Mikie on Jul 7, 2020 21:37:20 GMT -5
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Post by dumdangel (Lee) on Jul 8, 2020 12:31:47 GMT -5
The first time I heard Smile was around 1978 or 1979. There was a cassette tape circulating amongst a few collectors, and I received my copy from a guy who traded with Peter Reum. The tape included the Miles Davis "Here Come De Honey Man" track, which I found out years later was Peter's clever tracking device to find out who had copies of the tape. Until then, many of us thought it was a legit Smile track! The original sources for this tape were: Diane Rovell -> Byron Preiss -> Jeff Deutch -> Brad Elliott -> Peter Reum. And of course it went on from there: endlessharmony.boards.net/thread/19/beach-boys-bootlegs-smile?page=1I've read that Mike Love gave Byron that initial tape - not sure if that's true. Mike reportedly also played Byron the "long" version of "Heroes And Villains". Maybe the latter's true but not the former? How can I get in touch with Byron Preiss? Is he still alive? I would much like to interview him on what he heard, if it's true.
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Post by Mikie on Jul 8, 2020 14:11:49 GMT -5
Byron Preiss passed away on July 9, 2005.
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Post by Chuck's rewind on Jul 8, 2020 15:55:29 GMT -5
Wow.. so many super fans passed.. B.H. L.C. B.P. .. yet the man that gave them and us so much is still around! God bless Brian Wilson, hoping he enjoys his retirement years that so many never got to appreciate eh?
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Post by George Faulkner on Jul 8, 2020 16:07:04 GMT -5
The first full-length sequenced bootleg was 1983, right? I think that boot had a huge run pressed. It didn't sound great, but it was revelatory. Sequenced. Convincing.
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Post by Mikie on Jul 8, 2020 16:48:00 GMT -5
Wow.. so many super fans passed.. B.H. L.C. B.P. .. yet the man that gave them and us so much is still around! God bless Don't forget my friend D.B.! And there's another guy. G.L. Made a few Beach Boys shirts, one of them Heroes & Villains. Big collector, attended the Carl Walks and went over to Boyd's house, use to call me up late at night and play unreleased stuff.
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Post by Cam Mott on Jul 8, 2020 18:00:58 GMT -5
G.L. and J.D.
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Post by AGD on Jul 11, 2020 16:43:46 GMT -5
Byron Preiss passed away on July 9, 2005. Car crash, if I recall correctly.
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Post by AGD on Jul 11, 2020 16:44:40 GMT -5
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Post by dumdangel (Lee) on Jul 12, 2020 15:34:58 GMT -5
God bless Brian Wilson, hoping he enjoys his retirement years that so many never got to appreciate eh? Yeah, the best thing about Covid is that it keeps him from going out on the road. He's at home where he belongs.
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Post by David Prokopy on Mar 14, 2024 11:47:11 GMT -5
Is David still around? Maybe even here under another name...? Hey there! I'm still alive and kicking. I haven't really been involved in the Beach Boys online community in quite some time, but I just happened to stumble across a "Smile" video on YouTube, and out of curiosity I googled my own name to see if my "Smile" tape notes were still up on the interwebs (they are), and happened to stumble across this thread. I still get people who contact me out of the blue and thank me for those tapes, so I'm glad people still remember them fondly. I'm also glad that, in the intervening years, they've largely been rendered moot by the box set(s) and that the public at large get to listen to this amazing stuff. Anyway, yes, I'm still here. (And for what it's worth, this is and always has been my real name!)
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Post by Mikie on Mar 14, 2024 15:32:21 GMT -5
Hi Dave, and welcome to the Forum! We're glad you logged on here. I think I still still have your two or three set Smile cassette tapes around here somewhere. I think you made them available in 1995 or '96, right? Anyway, would you mind introducing yourself here for those who don't know who you are? Thanks. endlessharmony.boards.net/board/26/new-member-introductions
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Post by Cam Mott on Mar 14, 2024 18:26:01 GMT -5
Welcome Dave, I haven't been a member for a long time but remember your posts on PSML.
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danlega
Grommet
Posts: 13
Likes: 32
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Post by danlega on Mar 17, 2024 3:09:53 GMT -5
Some of you guys have great memories! I tried to remember my story as I read yours, but a subsequent post would keep mentioning something that would make me have to re-think my story! So here it is as I remember it now, but it's subject to change if anyone else brings up something different that I had forgotten. I got into the Beach Boys in my high school years, the early 70's, when my brother borrowed a couple of Beach Boy records from a friend. We loved them, ("Surf's Up" and "Best of Beach Boys Vol. 3.") So there were two songs on them that really stuck with me, "Surf's Up" and "Heroes & Villains." As my brother collected more albums we heard more songs Brian wrote with this Van Dyke Parks guy, who, as far as I could tell, Brian worked with, like, once a year or so. I'm thinking, they should do more songs together! So the earliest date mentioned in this thread where I may have first heard of SMiLE is that 6-part radio show on The Beach Boys. The poster mentioned that was 1976, I think. So if they talked about SMiLE on that, then that may be the first time that I ever heard tell tale of SMiLE! (Or maybe it was David Leaf's newspaper-fanzine? Did he mention SMiLE in that? Did that come out before the radio show?) Anyway... so... NOW I know all the Van Dyke co-written songs were done back in '66 for SMiLE! And there were more?! As soon as I first heard about it, at that singular point in time, I was caught HARD by the SMiLE bug! But living in Louisville, Ky., not having a car, not even knowing there were things such as tape traders, or even the concept of bootlegs, I had no chance of hearing or buying any unreleased stuff. I probably next heard more about SMiLE from David Leaf's book, and Byron Preiss' book. So that's the late 70's. Would I ever get to hear the long lost SMiLE tapes? Were they burned? Did they exist? Would the Beach Boys ever release them? I still had a long wait ahead of me. Jump to 1987 and I move to New York City. There I start to peruse little hole-in-the-wall record stores and discover bootlegs. I believe the first bootleg I bought was a CD of "Landlocked!" At some point not long afterward I stumble upon a SMiLE bootleg CD! Holy Guacamole! (Of course, I'm thinking that's the first time a bootleg of SMiLE has ever been released!) From there I find some Beach Boy fanzines for sale -- mostly a number of copies of Beach Boys Australia; but also Stomp and the early ESQ fanzines. Over the next couple of years a few more SMiLE CD's come out and I'm through the moon! (I regret not buying the first SMiLE LP I came across {it had a brownish color}, nor the 2CD SMiLE bootleg -- they were just too expensive for me at the time! Probably $40 as opposed to the $20 or $25 I paid the single CD's.) Anyway, even with what I had I was deep in the rabbit hole, and I put together my own SMiLE mix and simultaneously wrote a 27 page treatise on my thought process -- which I submit to and gets published in McParland's afore-mentioned Beach Boys Australia fanzine! I join a second iteration of an early World Wide Web internet Beach Boy site. Maybe I write to David Leaf? (Or Peter Reum?) I think one of them gets me in touch with Bob Hanes! WOW! I'm in the LOOP! I'm in heaven! Of course then I buy all the original Sea of Tunes bootlegs! Of course, I still want more! Finally. FINALLY!!! 2004! FUCKING 2004! BRIAN'S GOING TO PREMIERE SMiLE LIVE! IN CONCERT! I get the courage to travel by myself to England! (Though I ended up hanging out with a fellow traveler, Peter Byers, for an unbelievable trip! Unfortunately I missed the note that we were all supposed to stay at a certain hotel, and thereby unfortunately missed out on all the late night shenanigans and camaraderie there!) Finally, then, the box set of 2011!!! And by golly, I STILL WANT MORE! I want to hear every single tape like Mr. Slowinski! I want to listen to every separate track on every single 4-track and 8-track tape! I want to own copies of them all! I want Brian's 2004 vocals-only tracks! So I can place them on top of 1966/67 tracks! So I can finally create my own SMiLE again! I've still got the bug! Thanks to everyone for their reminiscences! Love and merci, Dan Lega
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Post by AGD on Mar 17, 2024 3:28:48 GMT -5
Some of you guys have great memories! I tried to remember my story as I read yours, but a subsequent post would keep mentioning something that would make me have to re-think my story! So here it is as I remember it now, but it's subject to change if anyone else brings up something different that I had forgotten. I got into the Beach Boys in my high school years, the early 70's, when my brother borrowed a couple of Beach Boy records from a friend. We loved them, ("Surf's Up" and "Best of Beach Boys Vol. 3.") So there were two songs on them that really stuck with me, "Surf's Up" and "Heroes & Villains." As my brother collected more albums we heard more songs Brian wrote with this Van Dyke Parks guy, who, as far as I could tell, Brian worked with, like, once a year or so. I'm thinking, they should do more songs together! So the earliest date mentioned in this thread where I may have first heard of SMiLE is that 6-part radio show on The Beach Boys. The poster mentioned that was 1976, I think. So if they talked about SMiLE on that, then that may be the first time that I ever heard tell tale of SMiLE! (Or maybe it was David Leaf's newspaper-fanzine? Did he mention SMiLE in that? Did that come out before the radio show?) Anyway... so... NOW I know all the Van Dyke co-written songs were done back in '66 for SMiLE! And there were more?! As soon as I first heard about it, at that singular point in time, I was caught HARD by the SMiLE bug! But living in Louisville, Ky., not having a car, not even knowing there were things such as tape traders, or even the concept of bootlegs, I had no chance of hearing or buying any unreleased stuff. I probably next heard more about SMiLE from David Leaf's book, and Byron Preiss' book. So that's the late 70's. Would I ever get to hear the long lost SMiLE tapes? Were they burned? Did they exist? Would the Beach Boys ever release them? I still had a long wait ahead of me. Jump to 1987 and I move to New York City. There I start to peruse little hole-in-the-wall record stores and discover bootlegs. I believe the first bootleg I bought was a CD of "Landlocked!" At some point not long afterward I stumble upon a SMiLE bootleg CD! Holy Guacamole! (Of course, I'm thinking that's the first time a bootleg of SMiLE has ever been released!) From there I find some Beach Boy fanzines for sale -- mostly a number of copies of Beach Boys Australia; but also Stomp and the early ESQ fanzines. Over the next couple of years a few more SMiLE CD's come out and I'm through the moon! (I regret not buying the first SMiLE LP I came across {it had a brownish color}, nor the 2CD SMiLE bootleg -- they were just too expensive for me at the time! Probably $40 as opposed to the $20 or $25 I paid the single CD's.) Anyway, even with what I had I was deep in the rabbit hole, and I put together my own SMiLE mix and simultaneously wrote a 27 page treatise on my thought process -- which I submit to and gets published in McParland's afore-mentioned Beach Boys Australia fanzine! I join a second iteration of an early World Wide Web internet Beach Boy site. Maybe I write to David Leaf? (Or Peter Reum?) I think one of them gets me in touch with Bob Hanes! WOW! I'm in the LOOP! I'm in heaven! Of course then I buy all the original Sea of Tunes bootlegs! Of course, I still want more! Finally. FINALLY!!! 2004! FUCKING 2004! BRIAN'S GOING TO PREMIERE SMiLE LIVE! IN CONCERT! I get the courage to travel by myself to England! (Though I ended up hanging out with a fellow traveler, Peter Byers, for an unbelievable trip! Unfortunately I missed the note that we were all supposed to stay at a certain hotel, and thereby unfortunately missed out on all the late night shenanigans and camaraderie there!) Finally, then, the box set of 2011!!! And by golly, I STILL WANT MORE! I want to hear every single tape like Mr. Slowinski! I want to listen to every separate track on every single 4-track and 8-track tape! I want to own copies of them all! I want Brian's 2004 vocals-only tracks! So I can place them on top of 1966/67 tracks! So I can finally create my own SMiLE again! I've still got the bug! Thanks to everyone for their reminiscences! Love and merci, Dan Lega It's over 20 years ago now and my memory's not what it was (I think... can't remember), but there was no pre-planning in this regard, just a continuation of what started in 2002 with the London Pet Sounds gigs. Why there? Because it was literally a ten minute walk from the RFH.
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rjm
Kahuna
Posts: 212
Likes: 217
Member is Online
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Post by rjm on Mar 17, 2024 12:52:04 GMT -5
Probably 1990 seeing an American Band on TV with the short clip of Mrs O’Leary’s Cow. Because of the odd sequencing, I thought that I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times was a SMiLE track until a week after I saw the doc when I bought my first copy of Pet Sounds (oops!). When I joined the BB Fan Club and BB Stomp in about ‘92, I started writing to a couple of pen pals through the BBFC and one of them gave me my first SMiLE tape (this predated the GV box by a few months). My first impression was that it was both so different from what came previously, but it also could not have come from anyone else. Do You Like Worms was so different from I Get Around, but the Beatles couldn’t have done Worms either.
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Post by celticsurfer on Mar 17, 2024 13:09:38 GMT -5
Back in 1969 I loved to listen every sunday late afternoon to BBC 2 top 30. They even played Cabinessence from the new BBs LP 20/20! Having bought the album, I discovered it was written one more time by Brian and VDP....like Heroes and Villains! I really found the sound of this stuff interesting and adventurous. Cabinessence still is my favorite Smile number.
After that I put my hands on the Fusion article and realise that Smile differed a lot from Smiley Smile.
Listening to Smile bits in the 80's on a cassette was really exciting (I promised at the time not to tell about it).
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Post by jk on Mar 17, 2024 17:35:06 GMT -5
Back in 1969 I loved to listen every sunday late afternoon to BBC 2 top 30. They even played Cabinessence from the new BBs LP 20/20! Having bought the album, I discovered it was written one more time by Brian and VDP....like Heroes and Villains! I really found the sound of this stuff interesting and adventurous. Cabinessence still is my favorite Smile number.
After that I put my hands on the Fusion article and realise that Smile differed a lot from Smiley Smile.
Listening to Smile bits in the 80's on a cassette was really exciting (I promised at the time not to tell about it).
I recall listening avidly to John Peel and Pete Drummond's shows on Radio One in the late '60s but to the best of my knowledge I never heard anything from SMiLE. A village lad who was a BB fan bought 20/20 and I remember being floored by the vocal gymnastics on "Cabinessence". After grappling with and ultimately loving Smiley Smile in 1967/68, my next brush with the Smile project was when a kind poster at the now long defunct BB Capitol MB included some bootleg Smile sessions on one of the many CDs they sent my way. But it was the tracks on the GV30 box set that made the biggest impression on me...
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Post by celticsurfer on Mar 18, 2024 14:36:09 GMT -5
Listening to the first cassette, I liked overall My only sunshine (My ultimate fade for Heroes) and Do you dig worms (indeed a nice built number).
And those rocking cellos on Cabinessence chorus track !!!!
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Post by gerry on Mar 19, 2024 11:20:43 GMT -5
I believe it was 1981, a cassette tape from Sacramento Beach Boy legend John Pickens. Both Les Chan and I got it from John. We all shared a lot of stuff but John had the big score with Smile. I was pretty blown away by it especially Rock Plymouth Roll etc.. It really did, for me live up to it's legend. John was a great guy. As far as being given something by a source and promising not to share: we all had a friend that we trusted who was a fan that we shared with and then they had a friend that they trusted and of course that's how it gets out. I didn't want to be the a-hole who said you can look but you can't touch. There were two kinds of people back then that I didn't trust: people who didn't drink and people who didn't share their Beach Boy bootlegs. Rest in peace John and Les.
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Post by tcruise on Mar 19, 2024 13:09:30 GMT -5
I watched a doc that was on BBC I think 10 years ago, I must have been in my early 20s. But it featured interviews and clips about people in the music industry, and someone said (paraphrasing) that Brian had gone to bed and went back touring after 30 years.
I thought that’s impossible, as I was aware of the BB music and thought they were like the Beatles for Americans (legend status group). I looked up the Smile album was developed in the 60s and officially released in the mid 2000s.
I remember the day I first listened to the album, I had hung out with my friends we had edible Mac and cheese, then I went home smoked a joint (I was in my stoner era then lol), I hit shuffle and the first song I listened to from the album was Cabin Essence. I remember feeling so in awe of the music, trying to understand the lyrics, and figure out the instruments.
I would say now some of my favourite songs from the group are from the smile album, but my favourite album in it’s entirety is Pet Sounds.
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Post by Mikie on Mar 19, 2024 13:41:07 GMT -5
I believe it was 1981, a cassette tape from Sacramento Beach Boy legend John Pickens. Both Les Chan and I got it from John. We all shared a lot of stuff but John had the big score with Smile. I remember both of them well. Went over to John's house in Sacramento a couple of times when I lived in Folsom and copied a few of his VHS tapes and talked for hours. He was a real gracious guy. He named his daughter "Ahnalee". In addition to John, the older fans all knew Les Chan and Derek Bill too. Those guys left the Earth way too soon. John Pickens & Les Chan - Hardcore Beach Boys fans and collectors: Wish I had a photo of Derek, but I have this instead. Derek went with me to meet Brian in 1976: peternreum.blogspot.com/2013/03/remembering-derek-bill-by-peter-reum.html
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