The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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

Post by Flex »

matedog wrote:
09 Dec 2022, 5:46pm
I'm going to do a recap, but I agree with you, 84-91 KISS>85-95 Beach Boys. Sorry Flex, Hes wins.
He can feel free to collect his winnings. :yuck:\

Addendum: Just to add, if I have one note about these writeups it's that you are, overall, far, far too generous in your gradings of these songs.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

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

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Christ, I started this in July. Beach Boys 85-95 Recap:
Songs:
A- What else? King Kokomo
B+ Wipeout
B It's Getting Late
B- Getcha Back
B- Rock n Roll to the Rescue
C+ Summer of Love
C California Dreamin'
C Crocodile Rock
C- Problem Child
C- Summer in Paradise
D+ Still Cruisin'
D Hot Fun in the Summertime
D Forever
D- Somewhere Near Japan
F Happy Endings

Videos:

B+ California Dreamin'
B+ Wipeout
B It's Getting Late
B- Getcha Back
B- Rock n Roll to the Rescue
B- Problem Child
C+ Summer of Love
C Kokomo
C Crocodile Rock
C- Still Cruisin'
C- Hot Fun in the Summertime
C- Summer in Paradise
D+ Somewhere Near Japan
D Forever
F Happy Endings
Last edited by matedog on 09 Dec 2022, 6:06pm, edited 1 time in total.
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.

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

Post by matedog »

Flex wrote:
09 Dec 2022, 5:49pm
According to Wikipedia, they only ever played this song once in the 90s. Lol.
I actually looked this up and the only "live" performance at least per setlist.fm is from the Baywatch filming: https://www.setlist.fm/stats/songs/the- ... id=3dd19e3

Naturally I wanted to see if the live version was elevated like most of their early 90s material.
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.

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

Post by Flex »

matedog wrote:
09 Dec 2022, 5:55pm
Christ, I started this in July. Beach Boys 85-95 Recap:
Songs:
A- What else? King Kokomo
B+ Wipeout
B It's Getting Late
B- Getcha Back
B- Rock n Roll to the Rescue
C+ Summer of Love
C California Dreamin'
C Crocodile Rock
C- Problem Child
C- Summer in Paradise
D+ Still Cruisin'
D Hot Fun in the Summertime
D Forever
D- Somewhere Near Japan
F Happy Endings

Videos:

B+ California Dreamin'
B+ Wipeout
B It's Getting Late
B- Getcha Back
B- Rock n Roll to the Rescue
B- Problem Child
C+ Summer of Love
C Kokomo
C Crocodile Rock
C- Still Cruisin'
C- Hot Fun in the Summertime
C- Summer in Paradise
D+ Somewhere Near Japan
D Forever
F Happy Endings
My snap reaction is Getcha Back and California Dreamin' (on the song side) are correctly graded (maybe I'd give california dreamin' a c+/b- for McGuinn's guitar work) but everything else should be graded below those two and really only kokomo and maybe it's getting late or something should grade out higher than an F. Awful, awful music all around.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

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

Post by matedog »

KISS vs. Beach Boys
Using A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, etc. the GPAs are as follows:
Songs:
KISS 2.4 (revisiting some of my scores, I was WAAAAY too generous)
Beach Boys 1.96

Videos:
KISS 2.4
Beach Boys 2.1

So yeah, KISS Rules! :cool:
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.

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

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Flex wrote:
09 Dec 2022, 6:11pm
matedog wrote:
09 Dec 2022, 5:55pm
Christ, I started this in July. Beach Boys 85-95 Recap:
Songs:
A- What else? King Kokomo
B+ Wipeout
B It's Getting Late
B- Getcha Back
B- Rock n Roll to the Rescue
C+ Summer of Love
C California Dreamin'
C Crocodile Rock
C- Problem Child
C- Summer in Paradise
D+ Still Cruisin'
D Hot Fun in the Summertime
D Forever
D- Somewhere Near Japan
F Happy Endings

Videos:

B+ California Dreamin'
B+ Wipeout
B It's Getting Late
B- Getcha Back
B- Rock n Roll to the Rescue
B- Problem Child
C+ Summer of Love
C Kokomo
C Crocodile Rock
C- Still Cruisin'
C- Hot Fun in the Summertime
C- Summer in Paradise
D+ Somewhere Near Japan
D Forever
F Happy Endings
My snap reaction is Getcha Back and California Dreamin' (on the song side) are correctly graded (maybe I'd give california dreamin' a c+/b- for McGuinn's guitar work) but everything else should be graded below those two and really only kokomo and maybe it's getting late or something should grade out higher than an F. Awful, awful music all around.
Kokomo is a god damn behemoth and is graded appropriately.
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 WestwayKid »

Flex wrote:
09 Dec 2022, 5:49pm
It really was a Love Thing.

Another incredible write-up of some of the most wretched music ever made by a real band. Just a pathetic nadir. Of course, it's not like Mike stopped making music like this. He just puts it out as solo material now.

According to Wikipedia, they only ever played this song once in the 90s. Lol.
Which makes That's Why God Made the Radio even more of a blessing. It's obviously not Pet Sounds, but it's also not an embarrassment and it gave the band a decent coda to their recorded career.
"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 WestwayKid »



Looking at the post Summer in Paradise career of the band, here's the great what could have been: the aborted 1995 sessions with Andy Paley and Don Was. Brian had written a boatload of music with Paley and there was an attempt to create a Beach Boys LP from that material. They completed (or nearly completed) the track Soul Searchin' (which has a pretty great Carl lead vocal), but didn't get much further than that before Carl bailed on the sessions. He claimed the material wasn't commercial enough or at least that's the story that has gotten out. Not commercial enough? Not sure what Carl was after considering Summer in Paradise was one of the biggest commercial failures of all time. I like Soul Searchin' and I like You're Still a Mystery, which has that slightly odd (but awesome) Brian feel to it AND a great late period Brian lead vocal.

Stuff got really cloudy by 1996. They released that awful Stars and Stripes LP (with Brian's participation). There is a further attempt to get a proper reunion LP together, this time with input from The High Llama's Sean O'Hagan, but O'Hagan backed out because he didn't like the MOR sound that producer Joe Thomas was pushing on Brian. There was a real push by people like Thomas and Brian's wife Melinda to break him into the adult contemporary market at the time, leading to the way-too-slick Thomas produced Imagination LP. By that time Carl was dead, Al was on the outs, and the "band" truly had become the Mike (with Bruce) nostalgia show.

It all keeps coming back around to the question of how much is Brian being controlled? It seems like he was really high on the stuff he did with Paley, but was pushed in the opposite direction.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

Post by matedog »

WestwayKid wrote:
12 Dec 2022, 12:31pm


Looking at the post Summer in Paradise career of the band, here's the great what could have been: the aborted 1995 sessions with Andy Paley and Don Was. Brian had written a boatload of music with Paley and there was an attempt to create a Beach Boys LP from that material. They completed (or nearly completed) the track Soul Searchin' (which has a pretty great Carl lead vocal), but didn't get much further than that before Carl bailed on the sessions. He claimed the material wasn't commercial enough or at least that's the story that has gotten out. Not commercial enough? Not sure what Carl was after considering Summer in Paradise was one of the biggest commercial failures of all time. I like Soul Searchin' and I like You're Still a Mystery, which has that slightly odd (but awesome) Brian feel to it AND a great late period Brian lead vocal.

Stuff got really cloudy by 1996. They released that awful Stars and Stripes LP (with Brian's participation). There is a further attempt to get a proper reunion LP together, this time with input from The High Llama's Sean O'Hagan, but O'Hagan backed out because he didn't like the MOR sound that producer Joe Thomas was pushing on Brian. There was a real push by people like Thomas and Brian's wife Melinda to break him into the adult contemporary market at the time, leading to the way-too-slick Thomas produced Imagination LP. By that time Carl was dead, Al was on the outs, and the "band" truly had become the Mike (with Bruce) nostalgia show.

It all keeps coming back around to the question of how much is Brian being controlled? It seems like he was really high on the stuff he did with Paley, but was pushed in the opposite direction.
I do enjoy Soul Searchin' and that's definitely a better note for Carl to go out on.


I'm guessing this was filmed 95-97ish. Maybe 96 as a 30th anniversary of Pet Sounds as they are discussing Sloop John B. What I love is that Carl throws out a few technical terms (inversion, ostinato) that Brian seems completely oblivious to.
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

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So apparently "Here Comes the Night" isn't the only disco dabbling the group members did. Apparently Mike churned out three albums with a side project called "Celebration" in the late 70s. The last one is a disco album though it doesn't appear to have any Mike vocals on it:
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 Flex »

matedog wrote:
01 Feb 2023, 12:15pm
So apparently "Here Comes the Night" isn't the only disco dabbling the group members did. Apparently Mike churned out three albums with a side project called "Celebration" in the late 70s. The last one is a disco album though it doesn't appear to have any Mike vocals on it:
youtube.com/watch?v=QRhSHo4hMVg
Congrats, Hoy. You've officially gone deeper down the Mike Love well than I have. I have never bothered digging into Celebration.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

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

Post by matedog »

Flex wrote:
01 Feb 2023, 12:23pm
matedog wrote:
01 Feb 2023, 12:15pm
So apparently "Here Comes the Night" isn't the only disco dabbling the group members did. Apparently Mike churned out three albums with a side project called "Celebration" in the late 70s. The last one is a disco album though it doesn't appear to have any Mike vocals on it:
youtube.com/watch?v=QRhSHo4hMVg
Congrats, Hoy. You've officially gone deeper down the Mike Love well than I have. I have never bothered digging into Celebration.
I'm waiting for WWK to make me feel less bad about myself by doing an in depth post about the Celebration albums.
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:
01 Feb 2023, 1:00pm
Flex wrote:
01 Feb 2023, 12:23pm
matedog wrote:
01 Feb 2023, 12:15pm
So apparently "Here Comes the Night" isn't the only disco dabbling the group members did. Apparently Mike churned out three albums with a side project called "Celebration" in the late 70s. The last one is a disco album though it doesn't appear to have any Mike vocals on it:
youtube.com/watch?v=QRhSHo4hMVg
Congrats, Hoy. You've officially gone deeper down the Mike Love well than I have. I have never bothered digging into Celebration.
I'm waiting for WWK to make me feel less bad about myself by doing an in depth post about the Celebration albums.
I could try and do the opposite.

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

Post by matedog »

Why is this a separate project?


Could have easily made any of the late 70s albums they made. Also lol:
"Michael Love is one of the most talented human beings I know and standing next to him is Brian Wilson." - Dick Clark.
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 Dr. Medulla »

matedog wrote:
01 Feb 2023, 1:23pm
"Michael Love is one of the most talented human beings I know and standing next to him is Brian Wilson." - Dick Clark.
Given that Dick Clark always looked at music in terms of chart position and sales, yeah, I think the affection was genuine.
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