Cabinessence
| "Cabinessence" | ||||
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| Song by The Beach Boys from the album 20/20 | ||||
| Released | February 10, 1969 | |||
| Recorded | October 3, October 11, December 6, & December 27, 1966 November 20, 1968 |
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| Genre | Psychedelic rock, progressive rock, baroque pop | |||
| Length | 3:34 | |||
| Label | Capitol | |||
| Composer | Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks | |||
| Producer | Brian Wilson | |||
| 20/20 track listing | ||||
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| "Cabin Essence" | ||||||||||||
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| Single by The Beach Boys | ||||||||||||
| from the album The Smile Sessions | ||||||||||||
| B-side | "Wonderful" | |||||||||||
| Released | June 2011 | |||||||||||
| Format | Vinyl | |||||||||||
| Recorded | October 3, October 11, December 6, & December 27, 1966 | |||||||||||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock, progressive rock, baroque pop | |||||||||||
| Length | 3:34 | |||||||||||
| Label | Capitol | |||||||||||
| Producer | Brian Wilson | |||||||||||
| The Beach Boys singles chronology | ||||||||||||
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"Cabinessence" (alternately spelled "Cabin Essence") is a song written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks for the American rock band the Beach Boys originally released on their 1969 album 20/20. It was originally conceived for release on the abandoned follow up to Pet Sounds, Smile.
The song features the repeated line, "Who ran the Iron Horse?" over harmonies. The song is noted for the use of the banjo and harmonica as well as percussion in the chorus designed to emulate the sound of workers assembling train tracks.
Composition
Brian Wilson stated that he and Van Dyke Parks wrote the song along with "Heroes and Villains" "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up" in a giant sandbox with a piano in it that Wilson had built in his living room. Of his intent, he would say "The song was about railroads…and I wondered what the perspective was of the spike. Those Chinese laborers working on the railroads, like they’d be hitting the thing…but looking away too, and noticing, say, a crow flying overhead…the Oriental mind going off on a different track."[1]
The song is in the form of ABABC. All three sections are officially referred to as "Home on the Range", "Who Ran The Iron Horse", "The Grand Coulee Dam," respectively,
Cabin Essence is noted for being one of a number of Smile tracks which contained lyrics that the other band members did not approve of,[2][3] being infamously oblique and replete with wordplay. The seemingly-surreal couplet of the closing "Grand Coulee Dam" section are as follows,
Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield
Over and over the thresher and hovers the wheatfield...
If the listener rearranges the last half of each line, they get
Over and over the crow cries and hovers the wheatfield
Over and over the thresher uncovers the cornfield...
Which makes them much clearer.
Van Dyke Parks also penned more lyrics for Cabin Essence not heard on any official release, nor bootlegged. They are unknown to have ever been recorded during tracking sessions:
Reconnected telephone direct
dialing
Different color cords to your
Extension
Don’t forget to mention
This is a recording.
Even though the echoes through
my mind
Have filtered through the pines,
I came and found my peace,
And this is not a recording.
Doobie doo,
Doobie doo,
Or not doobie![4]
Recording
A recording session for the "The Grand Coulee Dam" vocal overdubs on 6 December 1966 reportedly saw tensions within the band boil over when Love questioned lyricist Parks on the meaning of the coda line "Over and over, the crow cries, uncover the cornfield. Over and over, the thresher and plover, the wheatfield". Love claimed the lyrics had no substance and were mere "acid alliteration".[this quote needs a citation] Consequently, Parks left the session and would eventually leave the project in the spring of 1967, which some consider to have doomed the album, already months overdue, though close to completion.[2]
The track (titled "Cabin Essence" on the session tapes) was largely mixed and completed in December 1966, though lacked a lead vocal. Although the final Smile version would have most likely been released in mono (in accordance with Wilson's usual mixing technique), the track was eventually released in stereo as "Cabinessence" on their 1969 album 20/20, with a lead vocal overdub by Carl Wilson recorded on November 20, 1968.[3] It was met with interest and praise upon its release in 1969 (along with "Our Prayer") due to its roots in the much publicised Smile project three years earlier.
Legacy
An instrumental version can be found on the Beach Boys' 1993 Good Vibrations box set. The song was re-recorded by Brian Wilson's band and released on his 2004 version of Smile. A new mono mix of the Beach Boys version of the song was prepared in 2011 for The Smile Sessions.
Indie rock band Cabinessence from Portland, Oregon named themselves after the song.
Personnel
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References
- ^ “The Beach Boys” by Byron Preiss. 1979
- ^ a b http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-beach-boys-a-california-saga-19711028 Rolling Stone no. 94, The Beach Boys: A California Saga by Tom Nolan, October, 28, 1971
- ^ a b The Smile Sessions, 2011 liner notes and session tracks.
- ^ Frank Holmes (Endless Summer Quarterly, March 1997)
External links
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