The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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revbob
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by revbob »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 8:28am
revbob wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 11:38pm
Wolter wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 10:59pm
revbob wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 10:45pm
Flex wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 10:31pm


Technically, I don't think you have any way of knowing this.
The victims of the violence it has inspired would argue differently.
Careful. This thread is admissible as evidence.
My attorney will mount whst will be known as the Kokomo defense.
You were seduced by the writings of a paedophile?
No its a rage inducing song.

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by Dr. Medulla »

revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 9:36am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 8:28am
revbob wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 11:38pm
Wolter wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 10:59pm
revbob wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 10:45pm


The victims of the violence it has inspired would argue differently.
Careful. This thread is admissible as evidence.
My attorney will mount whst will be known as the Kokomo defense.
You were seduced by the writings of a paedophile?
No its a rage inducing song.
Yes, but written partly by a paedophile. No jury would ever convict.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by WestwayKid »

Flex wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 7:35pm
revbob wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 2:14pm
No I don't recall that one
FROM THIS VERY THREAD!


Flex wrote:
26 Sep 2016, 10:50am
Okay, breakdown of the day:

I actually met Mike Love at a coffee shop by the bookstore prior to the signing. He was ordering some coffee and food with his family. Jon sagely suggested that I go up to him and tell him Kokomo changed my life. So I did. Mike seemed quite pleased by that, and said he was glad to hear it and don't forget, The Beach Boys are playing some December dates in Colorado! Magnificent salesmanship. He was actually quite gracious. I didn't want to interact too much further, since he was obviously spending some times with friends and family.

Th Q&A for the book signing was reasonably interesting. Mike is pretty much as much of an ungracious ass as you'd hope: he spent some time putting down studio recording as unpleasant and secondary to live performance; when asked about the beatles he said "I was never threatened by them, Brian was threatened by them because of his own insecurity or whatever." He spent some time complaining about how Dennis was roommates with Charles Manson, and told some weird, passive-aggressive stories about his mother (she made him play music, which he didn't enjoy. Which, LOL). He claimed the reason the Beach Boys aren't reunited is because Brian isn't "allowed" by his handlers to play with Mike Love.

When asked about his top 3 favorite Beach Boys songs, he listed Good Vibrations and gave a reasonable but dickishly put answer about how that was the best fusion of broad commercial appeal and experimentation (he went off on a tangent about how musical experimentation has no value of it doesn't sell records), then of course Kokomo where he got into some painful detail about who wrote which lines of the song, and then The Warmth of the Sun, and he gave a fairly poignant retelling of the bit about how he and Brian wrote it and then learned about the JFK assassination. So, him taking a reasonable stance but as dickishly as possible, him being a self-aggrandizing narcissist, and then an actual moving anecdote about a classic moment of American culture. That's sort of the Mike Love Experience in a nutshell.

Then, of course, the book signing and the magnificent photo that I already shared.
I'm curious to know which lines were written by Michael Edward Love? I hope he contributed "Port au Prince, I want to catch a glimpse"! :mrgreen:
"They don't think it be like it is, but it do." - Oscar Gamble

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by revbob »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 10:49am
revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 9:36am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 8:28am
revbob wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 11:38pm
Wolter wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 10:59pm

Careful. This thread is admissible as evidence.
My attorney will mount whst will be known as the Kokomo defense.
You were seduced by the writings of a paedophile?
No its a rage inducing song.
Yes, but written partly by a paedophile. No jury would ever convict.
John Stamos is pedo?

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by Dr. Medulla »

revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 11:43am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 10:49am
revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 9:36am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 8:28am
revbob wrote:
26 Nov 2018, 11:38pm


My attorney will mount whst will be known as the Kokomo defense.
You were seduced by the writings of a paedophile?
No its a rage inducing song.
Yes, but written partly by a paedophile. No jury would ever convict.
John Stamos is pedo?
John Phillips.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by Flex »

WestwayKid wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 11:32am
I'm curious to know which lines were written by Michael Edward Love? I hope he contributed "Port au Prince, I want to catch a glimpse"! :mrgreen:
I honestly can't remember.
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Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Here's the full passage from his book:
Several months after the Hall of Fame dinner, Terry Melcher asked me to come to his studio in Santa Monica and help him on a song that would be used for a movie. I always thought Terry was one of the industry’s better producers, and at the studio, he played me a verse that had been written by John Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas, and Scott McKenzie, who wrote “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” I thought the verse had a nice melody but lacked a groove. Terry told me the movie was about a bartender who quits his job in New York and moves to Jamaica, where he meets his love interest. It didn’t sound like Gone with the Wind, but there was enough story for a good pop song.

I wrote the lyrics at the studio. To complement the breezy melody, I thought the chorus needed a good hook and the same R&B feel that was in “Smokey Joe’s Café,” and Jamaica allowed me to use the same travelogue approach that I employed for “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ USA,” and “California Girls.”

Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya.
Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama.
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go, Jamaica


Al Jardine hated “pretty mama,” but lyrics work best, in my view, when they resonate with the largest number of people, and that was more likely when the words had several meanings. “Come on, pretty mama,” could be a child tugging at his mom or an old geezer with his wife getting into their Winnebago for the winter. I liked the first verse by Phillips and McKenzie, but one of their lines was:

Off the Florida Keys, there’s a place called Kokomo.
That’s where you used to go, to get away from it all.


I thought the past tense (used to go) sounded like a guy lamenting his misspent youth, so I changed it to:

That’s where ya want to go.

The second verse was Chuck Berry–esque in its rhyme and alliteration.

We’ll put out to sea, and we’ll perfect our chemistry.
And by and by we’ll defy a little bit of gravity.
Afternoon delight, cocktails and moonlit nights.
That dreamy look in your eye, give me a tropical contact high.
Way down in Kokomo.


“Contact high” was slang that described someone who inhaled marijuana smoke passively, but it could also mean making contact romantically—another double entendre. When the Muppets covered the song in 1993, Kermit sang “tropical island sky,” puppet frogs being averse to suggestive lyrics.

Some days after I wrote the words, I got a message that Terry needed to speak with me, so I called him from a pay phone. He was recording the demo, but he didn’t have the paper on which I wrote the lyrics. So there on the phone, with cars passing by, I started singing, “Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya …”

For the actual recording, Van Dyke Parks, the lyricist from the Smile era, played the accordion, and Carl’s voice—Ooh, I wanna take you down to Kokomo!—evoked the lush tone he used in “Good Vibrations.” I never had a booming voice, but in recent years, it had become thinner, noticeable toward the end of long concerts. But in “Kokomo,” Terry used a wide-open mic and an ambient reverb to give my voice a breathy effect that fit the romantic mood of the track.

We did a video, performed outside the Grand Floridian Resort at Walt Disney World in Florida, with John Stamos on congas and me “playing” the saxophone. (It was actually my friend Joel Peskin who played the part, nailing it in one or two takes.) The song was written for the movie Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue, and when the director, Roger Donaldson, first heard “Kokomo,” he told us, “This is your best song since ‘Good Vibrations.’”

Really?

“Kokomo” would be on the album Cocktail, an eclectic group of numbers that included Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and Little Richard’s “Tutti-Frutti.” But Elektra Records released “Kokomo” two weeks before the album. The label didn’t do much to promote it, so we hired our own promoters and tried to get it airplay, first on adult contemporary stations and then contemporary hit radio. And it caught on. It was just one of those catchy songs that when people heard it, they wanted to hear it again, and it got exposure from some unlikely places. Some of our fans recall that we performed it on Full House, at the halftime in a college football game at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Less well remembered, but still raising the song’s visibility, was a performance on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live, in which we played “Kokomo” as part of a story line about a high school reunion. Then there was the movie Cocktail, which became an unexpected hit.

We thought Brian would be joining us on the vocals, but when Terry made the request through Landy, Landy said that Brian would come down to the studio only if he, Landy, were an executive producer on the song. Terry said no. Landy was supposed to be Brian’s therapist, not his producer; and the last thing Terry needed was some cloying musical wannabe coproducing our song. Landy later told Brian that the Beach Boys had maneuvered to keep him off the song. Brian believed this fabrication for years and said, in a 1998 deposition, how badly “hurt” he was by our snub.

We hadn’t snubbed anyone—Brian was victimized by his own therapist turned producer—but I’m sure that part of his “hurt” stemmed from what happened with the song.

“Kokomo” climbed the charts to No. 1, twenty-two years after “Good Vibrations,” the longest interim between two No. 1 songs by the same group. “Kokomo” became the most successful song in the history of the Beach Boys, selling a remarkable 7 million records at a time when 45s had already begun their slide into oblivion. The “Kokomo” video was also No. 1 on VH1. But it was the other stuff that got to me. We started receiving bags of mail from schoolchildren and teachers describing how the song spurred their interest in geography, with some students even poring over maps in search of this enchanted island.

Far be it from me to tell them it didn’t exist. I was invited to Newark to speak to the Boys and Girls Club, and the kids sang an absolutely beautiful version of the song.

If they believed in a place called Kokomo, then so did I.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by Silent Majority »

Wow. I wanna read Starship talk in the same holy tone about writing We Built This City.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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I like the part where Roger Donaldson ranks it as their best song since "Good Vibrations." I mean, wow, a film director said that? But I'm not sure. I first want the opinions of William "Refrigerator" Perry, Robert Stack, and Ralph Nader before I consider the comparison.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by WestwayKid »

Silent Majority wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 12:18pm
Wow. I wanna read Starship talk in the same holy tone about writing We Built This City.
That song would have been sort of listenable if they would have let Mike Love play his sax on it.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 12:25pm
I like the part where Roger Donaldson ranks it as their best song since "Good Vibrations." I mean, wow, a film director said that? But I'm not sure. I first want the opinions of William "Refrigerator" Perry, Robert Stack, and Ralph Nader before I consider the comparison.
I don't know how anyone could not hate Kokomo.

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by Dr. Medulla »

revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 1:01pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 12:25pm
I like the part where Roger Donaldson ranks it as their best song since "Good Vibrations." I mean, wow, a film director said that? But I'm not sure. I first want the opinions of William "Refrigerator" Perry, Robert Stack, and Ralph Nader before I consider the comparison.
I don't know how anyone could not hate Kokomo.
Hoyston.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by matedog »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 1:34pm
revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 1:01pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 12:25pm
I like the part where Roger Donaldson ranks it as their best song since "Good Vibrations." I mean, wow, a film director said that? But I'm not sure. I first want the opinions of William "Refrigerator" Perry, Robert Stack, and Ralph Nader before I consider the comparison.
I don't know how anyone could not hate Kokomo.
Hoyston.
Great chorus and Carl vocal. Verses are incidental.
Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by revbob »

matedog wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 7:16pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 1:34pm
revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 1:01pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 12:25pm
I like the part where Roger Donaldson ranks it as their best song since "Good Vibrations." I mean, wow, a film director said that? But I'm not sure. I first want the opinions of William "Refrigerator" Perry, Robert Stack, and Ralph Nader before I consider the comparison.
I don't know how anyone could not hate Kokomo.
Hoyston.
Great chorus and Carl vocal. Verses are incidental.
We have a partial confirmation.

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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by Dr. Medulla »

revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 7:39pm
matedog wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 7:16pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 1:34pm
revbob wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 1:01pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
27 Nov 2018, 12:25pm
I like the part where Roger Donaldson ranks it as their best song since "Good Vibrations." I mean, wow, a film director said that? But I'm not sure. I first want the opinions of William "Refrigerator" Perry, Robert Stack, and Ralph Nader before I consider the comparison.
I don't know how anyone could not hate Kokomo.
Hoyston.
Great chorus and Carl vocal. Verses are incidental.
We have a partial confirmation.
The other half is searching for a "superior," Phil Collins version of "God Only Knows."
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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