The album cover and liner art were based on drawings made by artist Frank Holmes. The cover is an image of a storefront stocked to the brim with little clear containers with grins imbedded in them. Plexiglass, to be sure. The store is manned by a man and woman standing and staring out the window. They are grinning at the inspecting eye. These two must either be the owners or work on comission, because no manager would ever allow clerks to slack off in such a manner while on the clock, trust me on this one. Above the image is usually "Smile The Beach Boys" in really odd shades of red and blue, and "Good Vibrations Good Vibrations Good Vibrations" under it in yellow, green, and dark green, respectably. The whole cover, in some manner, tells part of the story. It is so vague and surreal, yet familiar and out-of-place, much like the music. Befitting the elaborate production, and probably made possible by the success of the "Good Vibrations" single and huge anticipation of the album, Smile was to be complete with a booklet with similar artwork. These pictures accompanied several of the songs and were very abstractly related. I really don't even think I can describe them at this point and time.
The track listing is my own, based on several sources I found online. I also wanted to include as much of the material that I could that was probably recorded for Smile, and was also based on my own loving, yet sometimes shoddy, research. Caveat auditor. Take it or leave it.
1. Our Prayer- This song is an a capella wordless chant and is a beautiful, almost spiritual group vocal. I think it was supposed to start off the album in the same way that a overture starts an opera; an introduction to set the tone and mood. I took it from the Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of the Beach Boys, which I will refer to as the "box set" from here on in (or out).
2. Heroes and Villains, Part 1- This is the "Cantina" version that comes from the box set, which is probably the one of the oddest pieces of music to come out of the 60's. It took ideas that basically have no place being together (clip-clopping harmonica solos, fun whistles, honking noises, strange flanging effects) and somehow pieced it together and made it work. In this way it is similar to "Good Vibrations", but it is also very different. It also introduces several musical notions that are to be repeated throughout the album. Vocally, it sounds good, but must have been a major pain to sing and record. It was later condensed and toned down into the 45 version, which is almost as wonderfully strange.
3. Heroes and Villains, Part 2- This starts off with "dit ditty dit dit, how I love my girl", which was borrowed from "Gee" by an old vocal group, the Crows. It then progresses into a "dit dit dit Heroes and Villains" chant that is repeated over and over in different incarnations, and a passage of laughter and white noise. I can't say for sure that this is the way that it was intended to appear, probably not. This is mostly from the "Heroes and Villains Sessions" track from the box set. Once again some strange stuff.
4. Barnyard- It starts off with an orchestral passage of the Heroes and Villains, or "Bicycle Rider" melodic theme and goes into a very weird instrumental number that features animal noises that amazingly resemble the "worm" sound effects from Tony Burrello's *ahem* classic "There's A New Sound". There is also a version with lyrics about a farmyard, but it just doesn't fit as well as I would like. It is around this time that you realize that something is up. This comes from bootlegs.
5. Do You Like Worms?- Why this was called this I will never know. That is another strange part of the Smile story. Songs were basically recorded, rerecorded when convenient, shelved and retitled, resulting in a strange mess of names and tracks. It has nothing to do with worms in any sense. This may have originally had something to do with worms, or maybe this was a title just tossed on a session sheet. (Editor's Note: Now that I think about it, the worm-like effects from Barnyard and this song title are a strange coincidence. This may not mean much until you hear "It's A New Sound", as the similarity really is eerie. I would know that sound anywhere.) At any rate, I have read an interpretation somewhere that this is the story of westward colonization of the New World and interaction with Native Americans. Starting with Plymouth Rock, leading into a war-like chant (perhaps symbolizing the Plains Indians) and ending up with a Hawaiian-style hula kinda thing. It also incorporates the Bicycle Rider theme, which really starts to play on a person's brain after a while (in a good way). This comes from the box set.
