The Zombies - Call of The Night

 

The Zombies - Call of The Night

(soniclovenoize “1966 Album” reimagination) 

Side A:

1.  Indication

2.  I’ll Call You Mine

3.  Out of The Day

4.  Is This The Dream?

5.  Goin’ Out of My Head

6.  A Love That Never Was

Side B:

7.  She Does Everything For Me

8.  Call of The Night

9.  How We Were Before

10.  This Old Heart of Mine

11.  Gotta Get A Hold of Myself

12.  I Don’t Want To Worry

This is the second entry in my reimagining of The Zombies discography, which attempts to reorganize the band’s output into five separate albums.  This album attempts to collect The Zombies’ material from 1966, as a stopgap between my previous reconstruction Remember You (which collected their 1965 singles) and their legendary psychedelic masterpiece Odessey and Oracle (1968).  Using the band’s Spring 1966 single sessions as the base of the album, this represents what I believe is a very specific micro-era of The Zombies: the transition from their early pop singles into a more psychedelic album-oriented direction.  I’ve also made some unique edits to some of the tracks in order for this collection to sound more like a unified and cohesive album.  

After the double-punch of back-to-back hits with “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No”, pop-rock darlings The Zombies spent the majority of 1965 attempting to replicate their success.  Despite a great number of original songs penned by bassist Chris White and keyboardist Rod Argent, nothing seemed to stick, and the band focused on touring.  One final attempt at a single was recorded in November 1965 and showed a slight change in musical direction: “Is This The Dream”.  A great pop single with a decidedly beefy, Motown flavor, the song did not make a dent in the charts as it was hoped.  

By the time the band regrouped to try to create another hit, rock music was already changing.  In May 1966, entered the studio to record the more colorful and uptempo “Indication” and “She Does Everything For Me”, the piano jaunt “I’ll Call You Mine” and the moody “Gotta Geld a Hold of Myself.”  “Indication” failed to chart when released the following month, despite being up to snuff and showing the band developing musically, akin to the Rolling Stones’ Between The Buttons and The Beatles Revolver.  Returning to the studio that fall, the band shifted gears completely and recorded the Dianne Warwick cover “Goin Out Of My Head”, with a decidedly lounge atmosphere, complete with vibes and horns.  For good measure, the band also recorded studio demos of several new compositions, such as Argent’s ballad, “A Love That Never Was”, White’s garage rocker “Out of the Day”, White’s dirge “Call of the Night” (which was later rewritten into "Girl Help Me” for the RIP sessions).  Additionally, the band produced group home demos without drummer Hugh Grundy, such as Colin Blunstone’s scant original “I Don’t Want To Worry”.  

Seeing the ending was near, The Zombies decided to go out on a high note, and self-produce one final album they could be proud of.  After relentless rehearsals throughout 1967, the band entered into EMI Studios in June–directly after The Beatles, who had just finished Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band–and quickly tracked the perfect psychedelic pop album, on their own terms.  The resulting album Oddessey and Oracle, although a masterpiece, was completely overlooked and its lead single “Care of Cell 44” did not chart.  Going their separate ways, Argent and White continued their musical partnership into the progressive rock band Argent, with Blunstone, Grundy and guitarist Paul Atkinson all resorting to day jobs.  It wasn’t until legendary American keyboardist Al Kooper rediscovered the album and gave “Time of The Season” a push as a single, that the album got its due: becoming a hit in 1969, a year after the band had broken up!  

The purpose of this series of Zombies album re-imaginings is to reconstextualize their discography away from singles and into albums for appreciation, and the goal of Call of The Night is to represent this specific transitional era of the band that typically gets glossed over.  Being a fan of “Indication” and its associated 1966-era tracks, I’ve always felt it unfortunate that there was not a full album’s worth of material from this era to collect together as its own thing (the songs are usually clumped together with The Zombies’ 1965 singles, which I feel is its own era in itself).  But are we actually able to construct a 1966 album?  We actually can!  

The basis of Call of The Night are the five studio tracks recorded in 1966: “Indication”, “I’ll Call You Mine” (the original, ‘undubbed’ version), “Goin Out of My Head", "She Does Everything for Me” and “Gotta Get A Hold of Myself”.  Additionally, we will use the three studio demo tracks recorded around this time that seem to work well as singular songs: “Call of The Night”, “Out of The Day”, “A Love That Never Was”, as well as the home demo “I Don’t Want To Worry” (I have added reverb to the last one to smooth it out and make it sound less demo-y).  Struggling to fit more material, we will use the live BBC session of “This Old Heart of Mine” from November 1966, in which I have re-edited to omit the audience and announcer to make it seem like a standard studio recording.  With only ten of the necessary twelve songs for an album, we’ll have to look backwards into 1965 for two ‘filler tracks’ that were previously unused in my 1965 Album reimagining Remember You: “Is This The Dream”, a late 1965 single that to this ear sounds more at home on this 1966 album than with the 1965 singles; and Blunstone’s quaint ballad “How We Were Before”--which in itself wasn’t actually released until 1966 as the b-side to “Indication”, as the band held it over too!  

 

 

Sources used:

• The Zombies - Zombie Heaven (1997 CD release) 

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The Beach Boys - SMiLE (1967 MONO Mix)

 The Beach Boys - SMiLE

(soniclovenoize “1967” MONO MiX)

Side A:

1.  Our Prayer / Heroes and Villains

2.  Vege-Tables

3.  Do You like Worms

4.  Child is Father of The Man

5.  The Old Master Painter

6.  Cabin Essence

Side B:

7.  Good Vibrations

8.  Wonderful

9.  I’m In Great Shape

10.  Wind Chimes

11.  The Elements

12.  Surf’s Up

In honor of the passing of the legendary Brian Wilson, I decided to make a highly-requested reconstruction: a specific MONO MIX of my most recent “1967” SMiLE reconstruction from March 2024, which I only released in stereo.  While I personally prefer and wanted to hear a true, all-stereo SMiLE, I do recognize that Brian had intended the album to be mono–and that a great many of you agreed!  And in making this, well, I can see your point; there is something about this material that simply sounds great in mono.  So this is a dedicated mono mix of my specific previous SMiLE edit, which is (currently) my favorite.

As always, the premise of my 1967 Mix is “What would SMiLE have actually sounded like in 1967?”  Over the course of the last 50 years or so, many historical revisions and inaccurate assumptions have sort of twisted what I believe the original intent of the album actually was; this is absolutely fine, as it has been observed that SMiLE unintentionally became the world’s first listener-interactive album, in that it is up to you to finish it, using various mixes and sources.  Even the eventual Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (BWPS) is more of Darian Sahanaja’s mix with the benefit of Brian Wilson actually fronting it!  But being the intentionalist I am, we will try to go to the source: what would this monster of an album sound like in its original incarnation?  

Well, the fact is that we will never know; SMiLE was never completed, and its author simply could not decide how it should be put together at the time of its creation.  We can, however, look at the probability of what it would have sounded like, based upon testimony of principal participants, Brian Wilson’s own rough mixes and studio documentation.  I have previously and exhaustively covered these specifics, so I am only going to very quickly gloss over them here.  But generally speaking:

1) This “authentic” SMiLE will exist “simply” as a standard twelve-song album.  The twelve individual songs (excluding “Our Prayer”, functioning as the album’s introduction) are not crossfaded or presented as a medley.  However, we are generally losing the two-second leader time between tracks, much as how Sgt Pepper was presented.  

2) The twelves specific songs are as listed on the January 1967 letter to Capitol Records from the band's own hand, although not necessarily in that specific order (see label for correct playing order).  The song order itself creates two 20-minute sides each, sandwiched by the hit singles beginning the sides and the epic songs closing the sides.  There is no overarching concept, as originally suggested by Dominic Priore in the 1980s.  

3) The construction of those twelve songs is generally dictated by Brain Wilson’s own blueprint, as heard in his own 1966/1967 rough mix assemblages.  If a rough mix assemblage does not exist for a song, we will construct it in a similar fashion as the others to create a cohesive whole, or postulate what it would sound like based upon information available.  

One new revision from my previous 1967 Mix is my intentional exclusion of post-1967-recorded material.  With a cue taken by my previous Hitsville Mix, we will use recordings dating from just after the conclusion of the SMiLE sessions (“Whispering Winds”, “Water Chant”, etc) in order to present a more complete SMiLE (particularly “The Elements”).  We will NOT, however, use any audio dating past the 1971 Surf’s Up sessions, especially NOT anything “flown” in from 2004 Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE.  Also, we will NOT be using AI-created Brian Wilson-emulated vocals to complete unsung verses; while I appreciate the technology and am not specifically against it, I chose to leave these recordings as complete as they were by 1967 (with vocal overdubs from 1968 for “Cabin Essence” and 1971 for “Surf’s Up”, obviously), for better or for worse.  This exercise is meant to see how complete a SMiLE could be using only vintage Beach Boys recordings.  

Side A begins with “Our Prayer” to introduce the album, primarily taken from The SMiLE Sessions but with the final vocal part from the Good Vibrations box set to salvage the reverb tail that was otherwise cut from TSS.  Following is the legendary Cantina Mix of “Heroes and Villains” which I believe would have been the actual version to appear on a completed SMiLE album, using here the more dynamic source from the Made In California box set.  The following version of “Vege-Tables” is an elaborate edit of a number of mono sections: Brian’s original, unreleased 1967 mixes of the verses and first chorus, taken from Unsurpassed Masters 17; the Barbershop Interlude taken from Brian’s 1967 mix on Smiley Smile; and the Vocal Insert, Row Row Chorus and Fade from Mark Linnet’s 1993 mix from the Good Vibrations boxset.  Note this construction closely follows Ryan Guidry’s construction from 2000, which was the very first SMiLE mix I’d ever heard, which sent me down this crazy path!  A special thanks to him, if he’s out there!   

Next is “Do You Like Worms”, which is a dedicated mono mix from my “recreated stems” of the song, using sound sources from the tracking sessions on TSS and isolated vocals from both the Smile Vocal Montage and Unsurpassed Masters 17.  Similarly, a dedicated mono mix of “Child is Father of The Man” follows, sourced from the stereo tracking sessions on TSS  and the vocal acetates from Disc 1, all edited to follow Brian’s 3-minute 1966 test edit.  Following is “The Old Master Painter”, the mono vocal mix from TSS (with the first notes taken from the tracking sessions to avoid the reverb tail of “Barnyard”), crossfaded into the “Heroes and Villains Fade Remake” from TSS, as a replacement from the “Barnshine Fade” that was used previously in “Heroes and Villains”.  Side B concludes with a dedicated mono mix from my “recreated stems” of the song, sourced from the TSS tracking sessions and Vocal Montage, as well as the extracted lead vocals from the original stereo 20/20 mix.  

Side B opens with none other than “Good Vibrations”, here sourced from the more dynamic master from Made in California, but with the Fade from TSS as I always felt the song prematurely faded out too quickly; an album mix would have theoretically had a longer fade, no?  Following is “Wonderful”, taken directly from TSS.  A mono mix of my own edit of “I’m in Great Shape” follows, which includes the tracking session synced to a time-corrected version of the vocals from the Humble Harve demo; it is hard edited into the stereo backing track of “I Wanna Be Around/Workshop” with the Workshop effects synced in, mixed to mono.  

“Wind Chimes” breezes in, a dedicated mono mix from my “reconstructed stems” of the song, using the stereo tracking sessions and Vocal Montage from TSS, with vocals extracted from Unsurpassed Masters 16; the structure follows Brian’s 1966 test edit (which was also replicated by Mark Linnet in 1993).  Following is a mono mix of my elaborate “The Elements” construction, which presumes that Earth is “Barnyard” (with the backing track synced to the time-corrected Humble Harve demo, both from TSS, and isolated backing vocals from Unsurpassed Masters 17); Wind is “Whispering Winds” (taken from Sunshine Tomorrow); Fire is “Mrs O’Leary’s Cow” (taken from TSS with the fire sound effects synced at the end); and Water is “Water Chant” (also taken from Sunshine Tomorrow).  The album closes the only way it could: the mono mix from Disc 1 of TSS.  

As a bonus, I have included an exclusive mono mix of my edit of a theoretical “Heroes and Villains Part II”, which would have been a theoretical non-LP B-side to the “Heroes and Villains” single; the stereo version of this was previously featured on my Hitsville Mix from November 2022. Using the Gee and Part 2 iterations as a base combined with excerpts from the Brian Wilson led psychedelic sounds, mock interviews and experimental raps, we are able to create a faux Vaudeville variety act!  What I am intending is that the listener can imagine The Beach Boys as a psychedelic barbershop quartet who are literally framing a series of comedy sketches, all onstage and concluding with a laughing audience and Prelude To Fade as the closing credits.  

Sources used:

• Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys (1993 CD box set)
• Made in California (2013 CD box set)
• The SMiLE Sessions (2011 CD box set)
• Smiley Smile (2012 CD remix/remaster)
• Sunshine Tomorrow (2017 CD)
• Unsurpassed Masters Vol 16 (1999 bootleg CD)
• Unsurpassed Masters Vol 17 (2000 bootleg CD)

 

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The Zombies - Remember You

 The Zombies - Remember You

(soniclovenoize “1965 Album” reimagining)

 

Side A:

1.  She’s Coming Home

2.  I Want You Back Again

3.  I Must Move

4.  If It Don’t Work Out

5.  Don’t Go Away

6.  I Know She Will

 

Side B:

7.  Just Out Of Reach

8.  Whenever You’re Ready

9.  I’ll Keep Trying

10.  I Love You

11.  Don’t Cry For Me

12.  Remember You

 

At long last, we are revisiting The Zombies!  This is the first in a series of album reimaginings which recontextualizes The Zombies’ discography as a series of albums, rather than the scattered releases that have existed in numerous forms throughout the last 50 years.  Remember You collects the singles sessions recorded throughout the spring and summer of 1965 into a cohesive album, meant to be the proper follow-up to their debut album Begin Here.  The best sources were used, additional mastering performed on the demo tracks to match the mixes of the single releases, and presented as the band originally intended– all in mono!  

Following the surprise double-punch hits of 1964’s “She’s Not There” and 1965’s “Tell Her No”, The Zombies seemed to be a formidable adversary of another British pop group.  Although sharing three-part harmonies, original intricately-written pop songs and a modern rock ‘n’ roll backbeat, these “Fab Five” seemed a bit more posh and cultured than their Liverpool contemporaries.  Their two hits were collected into their debut album Begin Here in April 1965 (or alternatively, released as The Zombies in the US in January 1965) and the band embarked on endless gigs throughout the European college circuit, displaying their songwriting prowess as well as their penchant for American R&B covers.  

While The Beatles were asking for Help and The Rolling Stones were Going Out of Their Heads, The Zombies’ patrons Decca Records chose to instead make them a “singles band”, and to forgo recording another proper LP like their contemporaries.  On March 2nd, the quintet entered the studio to record a slew of new, original compositions, in the hopes that one (or more) would be a hit: keyboardist Rod Argent’s “She’s Coming Home” and “I Want You Back Again”, and bassist Chris White’s “I Must Move” and “Remember You”.  Also tracked was a song penned by lead singer Colin Blunstone, “Just Out Of Reach” (and its variant “Come On Time”) meant for the film Bunny Lake Is Missing, which actually featured the band on-screen!  An additional session was held on March 31st for two more songs meant for the film’s soundtrack: “Nothing’s Changed” and an alternate version of “Remember You.”  “She’s Coming Home” b/w “I Must Move” was released in April, but did not hit the Top 40.  “I Want You Back Again” b/w the Begin Here deep-cut “I Remember When I Loved Her” was released in June but barely scraped the Top 100.  Strike one and strike two...  

After returning from their first US tour, the band re-entered the studio on June 24th in a second attempt to record a hit single, this time with Argent’s uptempo rockers “Whenever You’re Ready” and “I’ll Keep Trying”, and White’s ballad “Don’t Go Away”.  A second session a few weeks later on July 8th spawned even more excellent quality songs: White’s “I Love You”, “Don’t Cry for Me” and “I Know She Will”, Blunstone’s “How We Were Before” and Argent’s “If It Don’t Work Out”.  While the later became a demo presented to Dusty Springfield for her Ev’rything’s Coming Up Dusty album, “Whenever You’re Ready” b/w “I Love You” was released as a single in August in the US (September in the UK) and while it gained critical praise, refused to chart.  Three strikes and The Zombies were out.  

Although music history would later trumpet the band’s 1968 last-ditch effort Odessy and Oracle as a forgotten cult classic, the sixteen original songs recorded by The Zombies during the spring and summer of 1965 remained as either failed singles or outtakes in the vaults, heard only as bonus tracks on various reissues.  Four of these recordings (“I’ll Keep Trying”, “If It Don’t Work Out”, “Don’t Cry for Me” and “I Know She Will”) would later be embellished and overdubbed in the studio by Argent & White in December 1968, for inclusion on a proposed posthumous Zombies album R.I.P., which was ultimately scrapped, leaving these revised versions also unreleased.  Luckily, the entire Zombies discography was collected and released on the boxset Zombies Heaven in 1997.  

But should this really be the fate of the only band that this author believes could hold a candle to The Beatles?  Are two albums and a smattering of random songs the best way to appreciate The Zombies through the modern lens?  I propose that it is not, and we are able to make an additional two albums as a stopgap between Begin Here and Odessey and Oracle, as well as a restructured R.I.P. as a fifth and final album.  

The first entry into this reimagined Zombies discography is Remember You, which specifically culls the best twelve songs from the sixteen recorded between March-July 1965, for a theoretical August 1965 release.  I believe this specific set of songs could have been quite a strong album in itself, far superior to Begin Here.  I have used Zombie Heaven as the source material, as it features all the original mono masters of the songs; I will be using the original 1965 “undubbed” versions of the four R.I.P. tracks, for which I have used Ozone Izotope Master Rebalance to match the mix of the other songs.  

 

Sources used:

• The Zombies - Zombie Heaven (1997 CD release) 

   

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Oasis - Be Here Now (The Mustique Sequence)

Oasis - Be Here Now

(“The Mustique Sequence” by soniclovenoize)

1.  D’You Know What I Mean?

2.  My Big Mouth

3.  My Sister Lover

4.  Stand By Me

5.  I Hope, I Think, I Know

6.  The Girl In The Dirty Shirt

7.  Don’t Go Away

8.  Be Here Now

9.  Fade In-Out

10.  Stay Young

11.  All Around The World

12.  It’s Getting Better (Man!!)

This is a re-imaging of the infamous 1997 Oasis album Be Here Now, intended to more closely follow Noel Gallagher’s original demos for the album.  Initially demo’d in its entirety on holiday in Mustique, Gallagher and producer Owen Morris have since maintained that the final album should have been closer to its more modest demo counterpart, after the album sessions proper had succumbed to rock star vanity and massive amounts of cocaine and booze.  Additionally, I have edited the runtime of nine of the twelve songs to a more reasonable length, preventing the album from becoming unnecessarily long and meandering, intending to reduce the songs to the 4-5 minute mark..  In a sense, this is an unofficial upgrade to my “Be Here Now - Concise Edit” I had made around 15 years ago–although this is slightly different as the tracklist now follows the Mustique demos.  

By 1996, Oasis had quickly become the biggest rock band in the world.  Arising as an indie rock band from the Manchester scene, their embrace of Beatle-esque melodies, anthemic choruses, soaring guitars and a sloppy, ‘you-get-what-you-get’ rhythm section was a refreshing alternative to the contrived pop music at the time.  Their two-punch attack of 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s (What’s The Story) Morning Glory proved the band as a cultural phenomenon and posterboys for the Britpop movement.  The hype for their eventual third album was elevated during what was considered the apex of their stardom: performing to a quarter of a million fans at Knebworth in August of 1996, deputing a pair of new songs “My Big Mouth” and “It’s Getting Better (Man!!)”.  Ultimately, fans would need to wait an additional full year to hear the finished studio recordings of these songs.  

But the truth was that the entirety of the band’s third album–which would eventually be titled Be Here Now–was already mapped out and demo’d by lead guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher, along with long-time producer Owen Morris, two months prior!  While vacationing at Mick Jagger’s villa in Mustique at St. Vincent and the Grenadines from May-June 1996 (along with actor Johnny Depp and his then-partner model Kate Moss), Gallagher brought along a digital 8-track recorder and some instruments to record working demos of how he saw Oasis’s third album.  With Morris programming beats on a drum machine, the pair spent the month tracking virtual “full band” demos of fifteen songs– ten of which would appear on the eventual album in 1997.  Each song featured fully fleshed out drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitars, as well as occasional keyboards; one of the songs “Fade In-Out” even featured Depp on a lead slide guitar!  Half of the songs were newly written, with the other half originating from Noel’s original songbook that also contained the first two Oasis albums and many of their b-sides.  

Despite being essentially ready to go, Oasis chose to wait until October to actually record the album at Abbey Road.  Famously, these sessions were unproductive and chaotic, led by five or six young lads who were more interested in the stereotype rock-star lifestyle than focusing on the craft of making a great-sounding album.  Cocaine, alcohol, brotherly rows and days upon days of literally just trying to reproduce the precise drumsound of The Beatles’ “Rain” guaranteed a weak start to an album that should have secured the band’s longevity as the greatest rock band in the world.  But lead singer Liam Gallagher’s apparent ambivalence, Noel’s desire to create a massive, muddy wall of guitar overdubs on every song, the ineffectiveness of bassist Guigsy and drummer Whitey and the lack of the entire project management from producer Morris drug the sessions into early 1997.  

When the album was finally finished in April 1997, the resultant 72-minute album was filled with rock star access, with songs almost arbitrary reaching six minutes in length, refusing to end; the mix was cluttered, filled with superfluous guitar and orchestral overdubs; every song had been designed to be a stadium anthem, whether it was justified or not; and a number of critics felt the songwriting was just simply unimpressive.  What was worse–Oasis themselves didn’t seem to care!  Although the band’s persona was to be cocky rockstars who didn’t give a fuck about critics, many saw the album as simply going too far with this ethos and that Be Here Now was the beginning of the end of Britpop as a phenomenon.  Both Morris and Noel Gallagher would later regret how the album came out and ruminated that Be Here Now should have sounded more like the Mustique Demos.  Could that be possible?

Approximately 15 years ago, I picked up the gauntlet to trim Be Here Now into a more concise length, using a not-as-hot vinyl rip of the album as a source.  This “Concise Version” was never an official reconstruction for my blog and has since been under the radar beyond Oasis fandom trading circles.  Feeling it was time to revisit the project, I thought to take it one step further: could I also redesign the album to follow the alternate tracklist as presented on The Mustique Demos?  Aside from the slightly re-sequenced second half of the album, the core differences are the addition of the superb b-side “Stay Young”, and that “Magic Pie” was swapped out for the b-side “My Sister Lover.”  Interestingly, these little swaps make the album a bit less faux-epic and more intended to be wall-to-wall bangers as Definitely Maybe–especially when the song lengths have been reduced to keep the album moving.  Although we can’t specifically “de-produce” the album, I have reduced the headroom and used Izotope Ozone 10 to gently make the drum track more focused, which in effect gives the illusion of more headroom.  

My cut of The Mustique Sequence begins with a quick edit of the intro from NG’s 2016 remix of “D’You Know What I Mean” that removes the elongated intro to the album itself.  Crossfad into the original CD mix of the song, I have reduced the length of the choruses by repeating the refrain only twice, rather than three times.  Additionally, I have trimmed the outro down by approximately half.  Those five edits actually cut the song down to 6:32 from its original 7:42.  This is followed by “My Big Mouth”, which features no additional editing.  Next, as heard in Noel’s Mustique Demos, is “My Sister Lover”, using the noise outro from “I Got The Fever” as the crossfade between the two.  As in the first track, I have reduced each chorus to two refrains to keep the song moving along, as well as cutting the outro to half of what it was, slicing the song down to 4:54 from its original 5:59.  Although I admit this is not the strongest song of the batch, its placement here as track three gives the album a forward propulsion that was completely lost with “Magic Pie”.  Now we are actually interested to keep listening.  

Next is “Stand By Me” that also features edited choruses to include only two refrains of the lyric, effectively reducing the song to 5:25 from its original 5:55.  “I Hope, I Think, I Know” follows, untouched from the original CD mix.  Although “The Girl In The Dirty Shirt” is a personal favorite of mine, it seems like the song never ends; I have edited the outro from seven to two measures long, reducing the runtime to 4:51 from its original 5:49.  The same applies to “Don’t Go Away”, reducing the outro from three to one measure long, clocking in at 4:22 from its original 4:49.  

For the title track, one singular bar was edited out of the intro to make it an even four and the never-ending outro was reduced from eight to four measures, taking the runtime down to 4:34 from its original 5:13, making it a mid-album bop rather than a never-ending jam sesh.  Likewise, “Fade In-Out” received lots of edits in the outro, enough to reduce the runtime from 6:51 to 6:15– keeping it epic while not overstaying its welcome.  This is followed by the new highlight of the album, “Stay Young”, which is untouched from the original mix.  Although “The Fame” and “Angel Baby” were next in the Mustique Demos, we are excluding them here to limit this album to twelve solid songs.  Thus, “Stay Young” now crossfades perfectly into “All Around The World” but what may very well be a disappointment to many Oasis fans, the song’s notorious length is reduced from 9:20 to 7:48!  Although it is no longer the longest song in Oasis canon, it does remain the longest song on this album, at least.  The album closes with another personal favorite, “It’s Getting Better (Man!!), reducing the never-ending-outro from eight to four measures, and thus editing the runtime from 7:03 down to 5:48!  Like the demo version of the album, “All Around The World (Reprise)” is absent and thus “It’s Getting Better (Man!!)” is the album’s big finish.  

Sources:

• Be Here Now (original 1997 CD master)

• Be Here Now (2017 remaster)

• Stand By Me (1997 CD single)

• D’You Know What I Mean? (1997 CD single)

   

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The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Early Version)

 

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

(Early Version reconstruction by soniclovenoize)

1.  Do You Realize???

2.  Are You A Hypnotist?

3.  Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pt 1

4.  Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pt 2

5.  Funeral In My Head

6.  Up Above The Daily Hum

7.  Fight Test 

8.  One More Robot

9.  Sympathy 3000-21

10.  Ego Tripping At The Gates of Hell

11.  In The Morning of The Magicians

12.  It’s Summertime

13.  All We Have is Now

14.  Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)

This is a very special Album That Never Was– unlike most of my reconstructions, there is little to no information available on it, and admittedly, much of this reconstruction is based on my own personal memory of it.  Often, it seems I was the only one who actually remembers the brief existence of this, a sole historian to tout its significance!  So in a belated honor of the 20th anniversary of The Flaming Lips’ mainstream breakthrough album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, this is a reconstruction of the pre-mastered, fourteen-track “early version” of the album that was leaked several months before its release, which featured a completely different tracklist, among other subtle mixing differences.  

By the early 2000s, The Flaming Lips had already done it all: a decade as a thriving weirdo indie band; one-hit-wonders with 1994’s “She Don’t Use Jelly”; experimental boundary-pushers with 1997’s four-disc album Zaireeka (meant to be played simultaneously!) and 1998’s Boombox Experiments (which employed fifty audience member-helmed boomboxes as a chaotic symphony literally conducted by the band members themselves); and finally the genius arteurs of 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, the album dubbed “The Pet Sounds of The 90s”.  Treading uncertain ground, the trio went from ‘nothing left to lose’, to being the face of cutting edge music in the 21st Century.  What next?

It was evident that the band themselves were not quite sure how to follow-up the masterpiece of The Soft Bulletin, as seen by their decision to showcase entirely new material in their 1999 BBC sessions in April and June.  Including the ominous Can-influenced “The Switch That Turned Off The Universe”, the acoustic ballad “We Can’t Predict The Future”, and two tunes that seemed cut from the Soft Bulletin cloth, “Up Above The Daily Hum” and the meandering instrumental “It Remained Unrealisable”, the songs only hinted at a path forward, and certainly did not have a unified sound or concept.  Unsure of the quality of the new material, the band shifted gears and started separate “side quests” which would inform their upcoming tenth studio album, creating the sound that would finally break the band through to the mainstream– Yoshimi Battle The Pink Robots.  

The Lips’ first stop to battling the pink robots was their old home of Oklahoma City– or at least the backwoods of it.  Director and long-time friend of the band Bradley Beasly tasked the band to craft the soundtrack to his upcoming documentary Okie Noodling, a short film about a unique style of handfishing in rural Oklahoma.  Returning to their homemade studio and practice space, the band crafted several folk-influenced tracks that sounded less like the triumphant and majestic pop of The Soft Bulletin, and more like a cartoonish Zeppelin III.  While the material was never meant for a widespread release (only a promo single was released, featuring the only vocal-based recording of the batch, “The Southern Oklahoma Cosmic Trigger Contest”), the laidback acoustics felt refreshing to the band after the multilayered complexities of the studio-created The Soft Bulletin.  

Next, Flaming Lips figurehead Wayne Coyne decided he wanted to make a movie– and it was going to be about the first Chrstmas on Mars!  Never a stranger to self-made media, including directing their own music videos and on-stage video content, Coyne sought to write and direct the band’s own foray into film using household objects and junkyard acquisitions to create the interior of a space station orbiting Mars.  With the clout of their own absurdity and sheer DIY optimism–as well as friends in high-ish places such as actor Elijah Wood and former Blues Clues host Steve Burns–The Flaming Lips slowly started to assemble their own indie B movie flick.  Naturally, one of the first steps in the film's creation was the soundtrack itself, and unlike the very human-sounding Okie Noodling soundtrack, the Christmas on Mars soundtrack became very electronic and lonely.  

Although the film itself wouldn’t be completed and released until 2008, these early electronic-driven sound experiments set a new series of sonic explorations in motion: the intentional merging of the contrasting sounds of the acoustic Okie Noodling soundtrack and the electronic Christmas on Mars soundtrack.  By spring 2001, The band convened at long-time producer Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Studios to record the album proper, tracking “It’s Summertime”, “Are You a Hypnotist”, “Utopia Planitia” and “Sytris Major”, all featuring a very distinct sound from the DIY symphonic pop majesty of The Soft Bulletin, that incorporated the aesthetics of both Okie Noodling and Christmas on Mars soundtracks.  

Additional studio bouts throughout the summer of 2001 yielded even more material such as “All We Have is Now”, “Do You Realize?”, “Ego Tripping at The Gates of Hell”, “Funeral in My Head”, “In The Mourning of The Magicians”, a new, more polished version of “Up Above The Daily Hum” and a cryptically titled “The Pink Robots”.  It was this final track that seemed to tie everything together, coupled with more material recorded later that year: “Fight Test” and “One More Robot”; although not initially intended as a concept album, the series of songs could be loosely connected into a storyline that would unify and define the album.  

Released in July 2002 to instant critical acclaim but a slow burn to commercial success, it wasn’t the singles “Do You Realize” or “Fight Test” that secured a well-earned mainstream popularity.  Instead, the band toured relentlessly with less of a live rock show, but more of a surreal multimedia extravaganza, which seemed to translate particularly well to the burgeoning “jam band” festival crowd.  Also, a fabricated feud with notoriously eccentric alt-folk rocker Beck couldn’t hurt!  

Although Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots became a long-shot 2000s classic, the album was very nearly a very different album.  Although a number of fans have debated if The Flaming Lips had intended the album to be a loose concept album or not, the original sequence of the album that had leaked several months before it’s street date showed a much more esoteric album, with the “conceptual” songs peppered throughout rather than setting the album’s stage in the top-half, revealing Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots as more of another collection of late-era Flaming Lips songs that contemplated love and death, sentience and madness, than a story about a Japanese warrior battling pink robots!  

Strangely enough, this alternate fourteen-track version of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots has been completely lost to time.  Originally leaking on Napster and other file-sharing programs in the spring of 2002, this listener promptly burned it to a CD-R and spent his final spring in college playing out this clearly unmastered cut from his favorite band, a secret only I knew.  It was much to my surprise when the album was properly released a few months later, hearing a number of subtle mixing differences, the literal lack of two complete tracks (one of them my favorite of the album!) and the album opening with “Fight Test” instead of the obvious “Do You Realize”.  Even more surprising, I have found very few Flaming Lips fans who even remember this leak, let alone the specifics of it.  In this sense, this Album That Never Was is very different from the rest, which usually tries to rely on confirmable data and primary sources; here, you’ll just have to take my word for it!  

In reconstructing this original version of Yoshimi, we will generally use the final album mixes, since they are the most refined; my memory states that it was not the final mixes I originally heard in the Spring of 2002, although those specific mix differences I no longer are able to recall.  Here I am crossfading the songs as I recall hearing them.  We will also be using some selections from the stealthly-released One More Robot promo CD, which was former-drummer Kliph Scurlock’s compilation of alternate and early mixes of the Yoshimi album (which partly replicates this early version I have reconstructed!).  It is of note that an idisyncracity of the original leaked pre-master was that 1) the synth intro to “One More Robot” was presented as its own, short track and 2) the ending of “One More Robot” (the “Sympathy 3000-21” segment) was cut-off abruptly.  I have always thought this was a double-mastering error, and here I present my own “fix”, what I believe was originally intended: “One More Robot” and its outro “Sympathy 3000-21” are simply presented as their own separate tracks. 

The album begins with “Do You Realize”, truly one of the greatest pop songs of the 2000s, here as a slightly different mastering found on the One More Robot CD.  This is then followed by “Are You a Hypnotist” from the original album master, which was actually the second track of the album before being unfairly pushed forward to the last third of the proper release; this is a much better place for it!  Following are both parts of “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” from the original album, that directly crossfades into the audience introduction to “Funeral In My Head” (taken from the One More Robot promo CD), one of the songs dropped from the album entirely and released as a b-side to the “Do You Realize” single.  This is followed by “Up Above The Daily Hum”, another song dropped from the album and relinquished to b-side territory, taken from the Do You Realize CD single.  

“Fight Test” begins the second half of the album (rather than the first on the proper release), segueing into “One More Robot”, both taken from the original album.  As aforementioned, “Sympathy 3000-21” is made into its own track, although we are using the full version, rather than the leak which cuts out early.  Next is “Ego Tripping at The Gates of Hell”, mostly occupying the middle-album as the final version of the album, here an alternate master taken from One More Robot.  Following is the epic “In The Mourning of The Magicians”, here placed much later in the album (before moved up to take the space vacated by “Funeral In My Head”); since the original version had the cold synth intro without the audience noise from “Yoshimi Part 2”, here we use the version from One More Robot with a clean intro!  This is followed by the extended version of “It’s Summertime”, also taken from One More Robot.  Closing out both iterations of the album are “All We Have is Now” and “Approaching Pavis Mons by Balloon”, both taken from the original Yoshimi master.  

How does this version compare with what was finally released?  First off, this version of the album is LONG.  Up until that point, most Flaming Lips albums spanned 12 songs over 45 minutes or so; this is a fourteen track album spanning nearly an hour!  Although I rued the decision to cut the album down to a more standard length, I understood why it was done, and even agreed about the songs cut.  Also, the sequence of the first half of the album creates a more meandering yet epic feel to the album; it’s final release seems more direct, and makes more sense if it was to be considered a concept record (which I never believed it was in the first place!).  Either way, here is a new and interesting way to listen to Yoshimi, unheard for twenty years!  

Sources used:

• Do You Realize (2002 CD single)
• Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (original 2002 CD master)
• One More Robot (2012 promo CD)

 

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The Beach Boys - SMiLE (UPGRADE)

The Beach Boys - SMiLE

(soniclovenoize Stereo 1967 / BWPS Mix)

MARCH 2024 UPGRADE

Disc 1 – 1967 Stereo Mix

Side A:

1.  Our Prayer / Heroes and Villains

2.  Vege-Tables

3.  Do You Like Worms?

4.  Child is Father of The Man

5.  The Old Master Painter

6.  Cabin Essence

Side B:

7.  Good Vibrations

8.  Wonderful

9.  I’m in Great Shape

10.  Wind Chimes

11.  The Elements

12.  Surf’s Up

Disc 2 – BWPS Stereo Mix

Movement 1:

1.  Our Prayer / Gee

2.  Heroes and Villains

3.  Roll Plymouth Rock

4.  Barnyard

5.  The Old Master Painter / You Were My Sunshine

6.  Cabin Essence

Movement 2:

7.  Wonderful

8.  Song For Children

9.  Child is Father of The Man

10.  Surf’s Up

Movement 3:

11.  I’m in Great Shape / I Wanna Be Around / Workshop

12.  Vege-Tables

13.  On a Holiday

14.  Wind Chimes

15.  Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow

16.  In Blue Hawaii

17.  Good Vibrations

Happy Easter!  And what did the Easter Bunny bring you?  How about an upgrade to my stereo SMiLE mixes!  While my personal SMiLE interest was re-piqued in 2022 with my divisive Hitsville Mix, the common response was “Um, great… but what about an upgrade to your 1967 Mix, or your BWPS Mix?  I liked those…”  Well, I guess you were right, as the novelty wore off and I eventually circled back to my personal favorite– my original 1967 Mix… with some very minor changes influenced by the Hitsville Mix.  

As always, the premise of my 1967 Mix is “What would SMiLE have actually sounded like in 1967?”  Over the course of the last 50 years or so, many historical revisions and inaccurate assumptions have sort of twisted what I believe the original intent of the album actually was; this is absolutely fine, as it has been observed that SMiLE unintentionally became the world’s first listener-interactive album, in that it is up to you to finish it, using various mixes and sources.  Even the eventual Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (BWPS) is more of Darian Sahanaja’s mix with the benefit of Brian Wilson actually fronting it!  But being the intentionalist I am, we will try to go to the source: what would this monster of an album sound like in its original incarnation?  

Well, the fact is that we will never know; SMiLE was never completed, and its author simply could not decide how it should be put together at the time of its creation.  We can, however, look at the probability of what it would have sounded like, based upon testimony of principal participants, Brian Wilson’s own rough mixes and studio documentation.  I have previously and exhaustively covered these specifics, so I am only going to very quickly gloss over them here.  But generally speaking:

1. This “authentic” SMiLE will exist “simply” as a standard twelve-song album.  The twelve individual songs (excluding “Our Prayer”, functioning as the album’s introduction) are not crossfaded or presented as a medley.  However, we are generally losing the two-second leader time between tracks, much as how Sgt Pepper was presented.  

2. The twelves specific songs are as listed on the January 1967 letter to Capitol Records from the band's own hand, although not necessarily in that specific order (see label for correct playing order).  The song order itself creates two 20-minute sides each,   sandwiched by the hit singles beginning the sides and the epic songs closing the sides.  There is no overarching concept, as originally suggested by Dominic Priore in the 1980s.  

3. The construction of those twelve songs is generally dictated by Brain Wilson’s own blueprint, as heard in his own 1966/1967 rough mix assemblages.  If a rough mix assemblage does not exist for a song, we will construct it in a similar fashion as the others to create a cohesive whole, or postulate what it would sound like based upon information available.  

One new revision from my previous 1967 Mix is my intentional exclusion of post-1967-recorded material.  With a cue taken by my previous Hitsville Mix, we will use recordings dating from just after the conclusion of the SMiLE sessions (“Whispering Winds”, “Water chant”, etc) in order to present a more complete SMiLE.  We will NOT, however, use any audio dating past the 1971 Surf’s Up sessions, especially NOT anything “flown” in from 2004 Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE.  Also, we will NOT be using AI-created Brian Wilson-emulated vocals to complete unsung verses; while I appreciate the technology and am not specifically against it, I chose to leave these recordings as complete as they were by 1971, for better or for worse.  This exercise is meant to see how complete a SMiLE could be using only vintage Beach Boys recordings.  

One final note: If this was released in 1967, yes, it would have been in mono only.  But I have always thought SMiLE was especially adaptable in the stereo format, as one is able to more easily appreciate its sonic treasures.  So since it is now possible to make a completely stereo SMiLE, well, we will!  

Side A begins with the stereo mix of “Our Prayer” found on Made In California, as an unlisted opening to the album.  This is followed by my complete stereo mix of the February 1967 “Heroes and Villains” (aka The Cantina Version), as blueprinted by the man himself, before he lost the SMiLE plot.  This is followed by “Vege-Tables”, which is the same mix as from my Hitsville Mix–a completely stereo version of Mark Linnet’s 1993 mix.  Next is “Do You Like Worms”, similar to my previous Hitsville Mix but with the Bicycle Rider theme panned from right to left, representing Western Expansionism.  A slightly improved mix of “Child is Father of The Man” is next, which follows Brian’s three-minute rough mix structure.  My Histville stereo mix of “The Old Master Painter” follows, but using the remade “Heroes and Villains” Fade, as the Barnshine Fade was already used in “Heroes and Villains” proper.  The side closes with my Hitsville stereo mix of “Cabin Essence”, but with a longer fade-out.  

Side B starts with “Good Vibrations”, using the fantastic 2022 stereo mix from Sounds of Summer as a base, but with the slightly longer fade.  Next is a new and improved stereo mix of “Wonderful”, with the lead vocal and bass centered, harpsichord panned left and backing vocals panned right!  Following is a new stereo mix of “I’m In Great Shape” with a better sync of the vocal and backing track, and my Hitsville stereo mix of “Wind Chimes” which follows Brian’s 1966 rough assemblages.  

“The Elements” has always been the most divisive track on SMiLE, but here I used the same construction as featured on my HItsville Mix, which ended up being the closest to what I imagined a vintage “The Elements” to actually sound like: each element is represented by one simple, repeated musical motif–here “Barnyard”, “Whispering Winds”, “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” and “Water Chant”--not already heard on the album.  Although I regret that the four segments do not follow their natural order, this is the most logical order in a musical and dynamic sense.  Note that this is a new stereo mix of “Barnyard” which features centered vocals and bass, backing vocals panned to the right and the rest of the backing track panned left.  Concluding is a new stereo mix of “Surf’s Up” featuring the lead vocal by Brian.  

While I personally do not enjoy the BWPS construction of this material, I recognize that many do, and feel it is THE version of SMiLE.  That is completely fine, so I am including an all-stereo reconstruction of the BWPS sequence as the second disc of this set.  I put great care into trying, to the best of my capabilities and materials at hand, to replicate that specific sequence as heard on Brian Wilson’s solo 2004 album–measure to measure!  All tracks are crossfaded and hard edited into each other, making three continuous Movements, as per BWPS.  Note that there were several interstitial orchestral pieces arranged by Darian Sahanaja that simply do not exist as a Beach Boys equivalent, and in those cases I had to substitute different or similar vintage recording.  Also, like the 1967 Mix, I am not using any modern fly-ins or AI-sung completions.  

Sources used:

Feel Flows (2021 CD box set)

Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys (1993 CD box set)

Made in California (2013 CD box set)

The SMiLE Sessions (2011 CD box set)

Smiley Smile (2012 CD remix/remaster)

Sounds of Summer (2022 deluxe edition)

Sunshine Tomorrow (2017 CD)

Unsurpassed Masters Vol 16 (1999 bootleg CD)

Unsurpassed Masters Vol 17 (2000 bootleg CD)

 

 

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