I Found My Smile Again Bass Sheet
For years, information technology has been assumed that The Embankment Boys cobbled together the version of the vocal released on 20/xx from several fragments Brian had recorded, including 'Home On The Range', 'Who Ran The Iron Horse', and 'The Grand Coulee Dam'. What is now obvious, from a written report of the session sheets and hearing "working" versions of "Cabin-Essence" from October and December 1966, is that the arrangement of the diverse fragments in the released version IS AS BRIAN CONCEIVED It!
(From Brad Elliott's 1988 THE FACTS Most SMILE essay, reprinted in Wait! Heed! Vibrate! Smile!)
(This continues from hither, and was intended to exist the fifth post, not the 21st)
This was the record that started my Smiling obsession. Had I heard Smiley Grinning, or even Surf's Up, before finding xx/twenty, I'm certain I wouldn't now be counting downwards the days, in anticipation of the forthcoming Grin Sessions box :
20/20 album fucking inverse my life.
OK! No more than 'bad vibrations', no more sneering at The Beach Boys (for now), no more berating their collective creative ignorance, their parlous lack of any understanding (or support) for what Brian Wilson was trying to create with Grinning. It volition, of course, become clear what Smile was meant to be, in one case the entire music world'southward Amazon preorders are fulfilled. I suspect their staff to be busy (current Amazon.com Best Sellers Rank: #43 in Music. And it'south $140/117 quid).
This is not to say that, anywhere inside The Smile Sessions box set, sits, waiting, a 1967 Smiling album – because whatever that might have been is at present long lost, gone, unknown, and has been for a long long fourth dimension…and information technology probably disappeared, for always, some fourth dimension in the mid-70s. Prior to whatever happened then (and I don't know, I wasn't there), it could accept been completed. But, while Brian might still dream of it, later 1976, I believe it was over.
Simply we will become the pieces to play with, and the ultimate fan mix…
The first time I heard Cabinessence, as the last track on The Embankment Boys' 20/20 album, I had no thought what I was listening to – and was aghast: "this is the fucking Beach Boys?!?' I've been playing it always since, and information technology hasn't lost any of its mystery; the more I listen to it, the more than I call back virtually it, the more mysterious it becomes. Last place 1 might discover this kind of atypical ART would be hidden amongst the back catalogue of 1 of pop music'south Nifty Anachronisms.
In a search for 'interesting' music, and with a reasonable grip on the 'lost psych classic', why hadn't everyone mentioned Cabinessence?
You encounter, it's a fucking masterpiece. In its limerick, instrumentation and product; its vocal organisation and song operation; especially its lyrics – and the track'southward overall conceit.
If it were the only piece of the Grin jigsaw – if, in 1969, later its (belated) release, Brian Wilson had then died, or disappeared, or was spirited away (through a rift in infinite-time, past beings from a more enlightened universe, transported to their continuum as an extraplanetary 'composer in residence') – academics and historians, musicologists and 'music snobs' (in this globe Brian left behind) would nevertheless be dissecting Cabinessence 200 years from at present. This is my belief.
Stuck on the arse end of 20/20, however, a pretty dire hotch-potch of scrag ends from a band well past their use-by date (I said all this hither, weeks ago), and with The Beach Boys' comparably erratic career e'er since, anyone could be excused for missing it.
If y'all don't know Cabinessence, don't rush abroad just yet to hear it (and youtube audio links at cease) – a recommendation on a blog (and who the hell am I?) is only a recommendation on a blog. Bear with me. Imagine you've never heard Cabinessence; let me try and justify these preposterous claims.
And then. Being neither a musician, a music journalist or a musicologist – and, as someone with no fucking idea at all almost how music works – hither goes.
Brad Elliott continues :
The finished version of "Cabinessence" is structured equally follows :
Dwelling On The Range
Who Ran The Fe Horse
Habitation On The Range (second verse)
Who Ran The Iron Equus caballus
Grand Coulee Dam
"over and over the crow flies" chorus.
You lot tin suspension downward Cabinessence into its ane-ii-1-two-3-4 sequencing, and then the three layers of its overall arrangement (rails, backing vocals, atomic number 82 vocal). Abode On The Range is used twice (and is the aforementioned take, repeated), and likewise Who Ran The Iron Horse – I cannot find the quote that says that Brian Wilson was 'using digital sequencing before there was digital sequencing', but Brian's compositional method, at its all-time, has always been 'modular' – and Cabinessence's bankroll rails illustrates this much more systematically than, say, Good Vibrations.
And, as a momentary aside, each section can be subdivided further – for instance, Home On The Range is 4 ten second segments, and each tin be looped seaminglessly in a digital editor – and can then be broken downwards even so further, into gorgeous little 5 second chunks, playable on an countless repeat:
(Home On The Range)
Lesser pop-music composers would be satisfied with any snippet of Home On The Range, and, should you lot wish, you could sample one of these v 2d loops and make a whole track…you know, stick some fucking beats on it or some such bollocks.
The full bankroll track uses the sparest of non-rock instrumentation: banjo, pianoforte, bass flute, and harmonicas ( Home On The Range x2); cello and chimes ( Who Ran The Fe Horse x2) ; piano and xylophone ( Thousand Coulee Dam ); and finally a combination and a culmination of all these ("over and over"). The entire sequence is underpinned throughout by the lowest of low low electric bass, doubled basses and fuzz bass. No drums, no guitar, and no room for solos. Every bit an instrumental lonely it'south a masterpiece of emotional minimalism.
Now add together the vocals…
Home On The Range'south background song line is a serial of 'doings' (like 'boings', as in Gerald McBoing Boing), an ascending and descending 'doing-doing-doing-doing-doing-doing-doing-doing/doing-doing-doing-doing-doing-doing-doing-doing'. As an accompaniment to the instrumental track's staccato piano and banjo phrases, and fifty-fifty without the lead vocal (a 'working version' has been bootlegged), it'southward perchance ane of the nearly perfect fragments of music I've ever heard. For whatever that is worth. And it's just 42 seconds, and occurs merely twice, as the first and third parts of Cabinesssence.
Carl Wilson's solo song on Abode On The Range is only gorgeous. While he may (or may not) take been the original Grin atomic number 82 vocalizer, and while the 20/20 version was lashed together every bit filler, I cannot hear its pb sung any other way. It has all the intimacy necessary for 'our home/on the range'.
Who Ran The Iron Equus caballus is a thirty second segment, a chugging driving machine of a riff, and in full contrast (and in a different fourth dimension signature) to the Cowboy campfire calm of what precedes it. A rising and falling cello and punchy fuzz bass is punctuated past a metal percussive ding-dong-ding-dong counterpoint. The group'southward wordless vocal rises and falls along with the cello, ending on an extended 'ahhhhhhhhh'.
Nevertheless, when all of this is repeated, equally Function 4, in that location is an boosted counterpointed solo vocal throughout; mostly inaudible beneath the density of the mix, odd words and one-half-understood phrases tin can exist discerned. Its full sense could simply be apparent with a lyric sheet (which wasn't supplied with xx/20, and at that place was likewise no lyric canvas planned for Smile, despite the proposed booklet). You get a sense of move, but no real discernible meaning.
The Grand Coulee Dam is ten seconds of piano and xylophone (the sometime distant and reverbed, the latter a busier and lighter expansion of the previous section's ding-dong)
have you lot seen the thou coolie
take you seen the k coolie
have y'all seen the grand coolie
working on the railroad?
A brief cello theme bridges this segment into the repeated
over and over the crow cries
uncover the cornfield
as information technology alternates with its companion line
over and over the thresher
and hover the wheat field
and as all the earlier musical motifs and instrumental sound-images coalesce, and as a Indian instrument's glissando 'answers' the picked banjo, the fuzz bass and bass flute reappear, as the runway slowly fades
on a freeze-frame of the Union Pacific Railroad – the guys turn around to have their motion picture taken…
Van Dyke Parks says (in Steven Gaines' Heroes and Villains) that 'we were trying to write a song that would end' on this 'freeze-frame', and while no specific title is mentioned, I always believed that Van Dyke was talking nigh Cabin Essence.
The lyrics, as reprinted in the Brian Wilson Presents Grin booklet are :
lite the lamp and burn down mellow cabin essence;
timely hello welcomes the time for a alter.
lost and found, you still remain at that place.
you'll discover a meadow filled with rain there.
i'll give you lot a home on the range
who ran the fe horse? who ran the iron horse?
i want to lookout yous, windblown, facing waves of wheat for your embracing.
folks sing a song of the grange.
nestle in a osculation below at that place, the constellations ebb and menses there and witness our abode on the range.
who ran the iron equus caballus? who ran the fe horse?
have you seen the grand coulie workin' on the railroad?
over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield.
over and over, The thresher and hover the wheat field.
It scans as it is printed, but not as sung, and, the Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE booklet excludes Dennis' solo background song in the second Who Ran The Fe Horse.
Domenic Priore published a transcription of the latter in Expect! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!, as
truck driving human
practice what you can
high-tail your load
off the route, out of nighttime life, information technology's a gas homo
i don't believe
i gotta grieve
in and out of luck
with a buck and a booth
catchin' on to the truth
in the vast past, the final gasp
in the land, in the grit, trust that you must
grab as catch tin
and I've fixed the lines as they sound to be paced throughout the verse.
But – and maybe it's just me – I defy anyone to pick up all (or even much) of the above, on a first, or fifty-fifty a fiftieth listen. Without the words in impress in front of you, it's but a pour of vocal cadences, implying some sort of movement alongside, or in and out of, or beyond the 'iron equus caballus' , as it churns through the residual of the verse. It'south more than distinct in the Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE re-recording, but there is nevertheless too much happening to continue rails of it.
Wait! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! also reprints a Cabinessence studio 'lead canvass' ('with permission' – oh, um…); its copyright IDs (No. European union 90887/Catalogue No. 222) must hateful that it is genuine (and is dated 1968, and thus for 20/twenty rather than Smile). After a good few years of endlessly replaying this song, seeing these words in print was a real surprise, differing from those I idea I was hearing...'folks sing a song' was 'folksinger-vocal'; the 'meadow filled with rain at that place' was actually 'filled with greyness mare' (ie. horses) (and has 'grain' on the '68 lead sheet – which makes the most sense)…
Van Dyke Parks, in an (undated) interview with Earcandy Mag, says nearly the lyrics of his 1968 Song Cycle anthology
I'thou sorry I was such a James Joyce fanatic. I thought there was a future in complimentary-relating prose. Perhaps that was compounded by my beloved of crush poetry, I dunno. But I have no doubt that the inaccessibility of the lyrics made [Vocal Cycle] impossible to popularize…
When asked asked whether 'the overall 'theme' of Vocal Cycle' was 'a continuation of Grinning's concept of an "American Gothic Trip", he replies that
There was no conscious attempt to relate Song Bicycle's "concept" to Smile. If anything, I'd say it was an endeavor to detach myself from the aborted Grin project.
Though Smile and Song Cycle's 'concepts' may differ, the lyrical methodology seems the same:
Writing of lyrics is an out of the body experience. There'southward nothing premeditated about it, and information technology's largely an unconscious or meditative process.
Van Dyke 'shows off way' in '76, discussing his lyrics for The Beach Boys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?5=tB6JwCmTIEw
One tin only imagine what Brian originally had in mind with Cabinessence in 1966 (and particularly when you notice there are unused lyrics – where would they fit?). The 2011 Smile Sessions seems to have the 20/twenty version, at to the lowest degree on Mojo'south pre-release 7″
although Brad Elliott does believe that
"Motel Essence" was undeniably ninety% finished and may very well have been completely finished by early 1967, according to the session worksheets…"
Possibly…
I'thou not going to attempt an 'explanation' of Cabinessence wordplay – only I believe that the words are meant to be 'felt' as they were written, as an 'out of the body experience'. And I also believe that their audio and their interplay is meant to be cryptic, and non-linear, but also to contain and retain many different meanings, and consciously (and maybe unconsciously) complementary, rather than contradictory. In Cabinessence all the lines roll together, and so the 'rain there' is 'also grain there' (and even 'gray mare'), and all at the same time. The 'truck-driving man' and his passage across the path of the 'iron horse' isn't designed to be followed, just felt.
I'yard also wary of whatsoever speculation most their 'pregnant', if discrete from the entire composition, instrumentation, product and performance. On the page, they're simply words ("I don't know what these lyrics are nearly, but throw 'em abroad. And then they did.'). They're written to be heard (and perchance misheard), non to read in isolation from their setting.
And an incidental observation on the words, from user cubist, posted Tue Nov 02, 2004, at 2:56 pm (in the I know what "over and over the crow…" means thread on The Smile Shop Board, and archived on Project Grinning):
I recollect VDP is being quite honest when he says he doesn't know what it ways considering I think he just played around with mixing up the final 2 lines of the song to produce a nice surreal footling couplet:
"Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield/ Over and over the thresher and hovers the wheatfield"
Accept the first half of each line and swop them round – yous go
"Over and over the crow cries and hovers the wheatfield/ Over and over the thresher uncovers the cornfield"
Which makes it a lot clearer!
If Van Dyke's lyrics were 'largely an unconscious or meditative procedure', and had The Beach Boys™ actually applied their own TM as a 'meditative process' to understand Brian Wilson'south music (rather than as a tool to reach whatsoever hellish nirvana Mike Dear haunts)…if Mike Love had realised this reversal, one significant Smiling tale might never have been. He would take had a 'meaning'. And, whatsoever his other issues with Van Dyke Parks' words were in 1966, he performed the offending song part seemingly without complaint in 1968. However, his displeasure about another Grinning track exists as more than just anecdote…
Strange, surprising and lovely as information technology was when I first heard information technology, and equally fallacious as it still is a quarter century later on – what is it that Cabin Essence does? How does it practice it? And why? And, if 'undeniably 90% finished', and 'equally Brian conceived information technology' (and thus the only unadulterated Grin runway ever released past The Beach Boys), what might it say about Smile itself?
Usefully, I can call upon smarter people than me to aid with Part two, cos I'g already way out of my depth here.
Wish I'd not started this at present.
twenty/20 Cabinessence (1968) here
Brian Wilson Presents Grinning Cabin Essence (2004) here
truck drivin man song (isolated with sonic trickery) here
(best youtube annotate: ARE YOU A Sorcerer)
Good Vibrations Disc 5 backing track seems to have disappeared from youtube. Damn.
next post, previous Cabinessence mail service, or a summary so far
Source: https://arkhonia.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/%E2%80%98smile%E2%80%99-%E2%80%93-my-first-25-years-cabin-essence-lost-and-found/
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