The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 4:05pm
I agree with your invocation of NY here, tho I'm clearly more in the camp that the burning out should have happened around the same time the Beatles packed it in. Lauding the 1970s stuff—and I'm far from as well versed as y'all—seems too much like squinting for me.
I think 70s Beach Boys is kinda like Sandinista. It's the sound of a band just past its beak but still willing to bring their talents to try out all sorts of stuff, to sometimes varied but overall compelling success. With the clash, S! is both at times exhilarating and a fun adventure and also obviously when the rot starts to set in. I'd say that's the case with the BBs too. But I love S!. Trying to stretch the analogy, maybe S! is early to mid 70s BBs and Combat Rock is late 70s beach boys. Gems and turds in equal measure by the second half of the decade. Then it's two decades of cutting the crap.

Addendum: Just to show the limits of analogies, I guess, you could also make the case that the experimentation from the beach boys post-pet sounds through the rest of the 60s is a lot more like Sandinista, although editorially I think those beach boys albums are probably uniformly stronger than S! (although all made so differently I find it hard to fault S! on that)
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Flex wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 4:22pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 4:05pm
I agree with your invocation of NY here, tho I'm clearly more in the camp that the burning out should have happened around the same time the Beatles packed it in. Lauding the 1970s stuff—and I'm far from as well versed as y'all—seems too much like squinting for me.
I think 70s Beach Boys is kinda like Sandinista. It's the sound of a band just past its beak but still willing to bring their talents to try out all sorts of stuff, to sometimes varied but overall compelling success. With the clash, S! is both at times exhilarating and a fun adventure and also obviously when the rot starts to set in. I'd say that's the case with the BBs too. But I love S!. Trying to stretch the analogy, maybe S! is early to mid 70s BBs and Combat Rock is late 70s beach boys. Gems and turds in equal measure by the second half of the decade. Then it's two decades of cutting the crap.

Addendum: Just to show the limits of analogies, I guess, you could also make the case that the experimentation from the beach boys post-pet sounds through the rest of the 60s is a lot more like Sandinista, although editorially I think those beach boys albums are probably uniformly stronger than S! (although all made so differently I find it hard to fault S! on that)
As always, it's a case that iffen you like that stuff, you like that stuff. And in the same way, generally speaking, that only serious Clash fans dig S! Non-fans see it as just a mess.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 4:56pm
As always, it's a case that iffen you like that stuff, you like that stuff. And in the same way, generally speaking, that only serious Clash fans dig S! Non-fans see it as just a mess.
There's something of a category issue here in that, in the year 2023, anyone who even contemplates music in album form to begin with is likely to be something of a "fan" and music anorak beyond what the average music listener does these days. Albums? All the best songs are on a band's spotify most played list! I think the idea of discussing albums at all is something left to the dedicated fan, so having any opinion - good or bad - puts you in something of a minority position. So I'm not sure I agree that non-fans see S! (or Holland or whatever else) as a mess because no one sees those albums at all anymore. But that's a bit further afield than the discussion, I guess. I just think if we're comparing any of this to what non-fans think we're way out to lunch before we even get to whether any of these records are good or not.

My real point, I suppose, is just that we started from a bar of "being a beach boys fan is like trying to find the good in cut the crap" and we've worked it up to "until the end of the 70s its no worse than liking Sandinista" so I think that's a substantial improvement for Brian & co. (and the people who like their stuff).
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Flex wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 5:17pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 4:56pm
As always, it's a case that iffen you like that stuff, you like that stuff. And in the same way, generally speaking, that only serious Clash fans dig S! Non-fans see it as just a mess.
There's something of a category issue here in that, in the year 2023, anyone who even contemplates music in album form to begin with is likely to be something of a "fan" and music anorak beyond what the average music listener does these days. Albums? All the best songs are on a band's spotify most played list! I think the idea of discussing albums at all is something left to the dedicated fan, so having any opinion - good or bad - puts you in something of a minority position. So I'm not sure I agree that non-fans see S! (or Holland or whatever else) as a mess because no one sees those albums at all anymore. But that's a bit further afield than the discussion, I guess. I just think if we're comparing any of this to what non-fans think we're way out to lunch before we even get to whether any of these records are good or not.

My real point, I suppose, is just that we started from a bar of "being a beach boys fan is like trying to find the good in cut the crap" and we've worked it up to "until the end of the 70s its no worse than liking Sandinista" so I think that's a substantial improvement for Brian & co. (and the people who like their stuff).
Have I been checkmated? :lol:

But your point is taken about the obsolescence of the album. We are, perhaps, in a version of pre-60s albums, which are just collections of songs rather than something purposeful in its own right. The difference is that we create the album rather than a record company. Maybe those of us who still think in terms of albums are dinosaurs who haven't realized the comet hit.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Their 1967-1973 output is criminally underestimated. It's hard to find much after that, however. Love You gets a lot of love, but it's not great. I think the only thing halfway decent is That's Why God Made the Radio, which is nothing out of this world, but it's respectable and on occasion quite moving.

I'm a BB to the core, but the talent doesn't run deep within this group. With the exception of Brian, nobody else was brilliant. He was the X factor that allowed a bunch of average (and even below average) talents to succeed.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 5:23pm
Have I been checkmated? :lol:
Image
But your point is taken about the obsolescence of the album. We are, perhaps, in a version of pre-60s albums, which are just collections of songs rather than something purposeful in its own right. The difference is that we create the album rather than a record company. Maybe those of us who still think in terms of albums are dinosaurs who haven't realized the comet hit.
Yeah, it's something that was on my mind the other day when I was reading a review for (of all things) the new Miley Cyrus album. Like, we have this whole music apparatus still devoted to selling albums, reviewing albums, touring the new album, etc. But who actually consumes music that way? Practically no one (relatively speaking, of course). I mean, how many Miley Cyrus fans are comparing the merits of her albums against each other? it's all in the single track play. The difference, I suppose, is that with streaming every song is a potential single (although I notice that the most popular tracks are still the ones that get the heaviest marketing, videos, etc. so I wouldn't say that it's made folks much more likely to elevate a secretly great track that the record label overlooked).

To bring it to the beach boys (or the clash, for that matter) I actually think, if anything, the streaming era rehabilitates patchy stuff like Sandinista or *gestures at the beach boys entire output in the 70s* by just pulling those hit singles that everyone plays and putting them at the top of the spotify band page. If all you hear of Sandinista is mag seven and police on my back you probably don't think of it as a particularly adventurous or unfocused time for the band. If all you hear from the beach boys in the 70s is forever, sail on sailor and (god help me) rock and roll music you probably think it was business as usual.

This trick was actually played on me not with streaming but that Bowie 3-disc best of that put everything in reverse chronological order - sort of like the top tracks function committed to disc. The 80s/90s stuff from Bowie was so tastefully selected I was sure I was misremembering how dull-to-bad most of his output then was. Checking back on some of those albums confirmed that my initial recollections were correct. Nice it of historical revisionism tho.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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WestwayKid wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 5:28pm
Their 1967-1973 output is criminally underestimated. It's hard to find much after that, however. Love You gets a lot of love, but it's not great. I think the only thing halfway decent is That's Why God Made the Radio, which is nothing out of this world, but it's respectable and on occasion quite moving.

I'm a BB to the core, but the talent doesn't run deep within this group. With the exception of Brian, nobody else was brilliant. He was the X factor that allowed a bunch of average (and even below average) talents to succeed.
Love You is great because it's like a weird indie rock album before there was indie rock. But that's pretty much a massive accident of history.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Flex wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 5:35pm
Yeah, it's something that was on my mind the other day when I was reading a review for (of all things) the new Miley Cyrus album. Like, we have this whole music apparatus still devoted to selling albums, reviewing albums, touring the new album, etc. But who actually consumes music that way? Practically no one (relatively speaking, of course). I mean, how many Miley Cyrus fans are comparing the merits of her albums against each other? it's all in the single track play. The difference, I suppose, is that with streaming every song is a potential single (although I notice that the most popular tracks are still the ones that get the heaviest marketing, videos, etc. so I wouldn't say that it's made folks much more likely to elevate a secretly great track that the record label overlooked).

To bring it to the beach boys (or the clash, for that matter) I actually think, if anything, the streaming era rehabilitates patchy stuff like Sandinista or *gestures at the beach boys entire output in the 70s* by just pulling those hit singles that everyone plays and putting them at the top of the spotify band page. If all you hear of Sandinista is mag seven and police on my back you probably don't think of it as a particularly adventurous or unfocused time for the band. If all you hear from the beach boys in the 70s is forever, sail on sailor and (god help me) rock and roll music you probably think it was business as usual.

This trick was actually played on me not with streaming but that Bowie 3-disc best of that put everything in reverse chronological order - sort of like the top tracks function committed to disc. The 80s/90s stuff from Bowie was so tastefully selected I was sure I was misremembering how dull-to-bad most of his output then was. Checking back on some of those albums confirmed that my initial recollections were correct. Nice it of historical revisionism tho.
Not to blow my own horn here, but when Apple's iTunes Store began, and people now had the option of buying selected songs rather than the whole album, I thought it would fundamentally alter our approach to music, returning it to its pre-60s (rather, mid-60s) form of being collections of songs rather than works than need to be appreciated as a whole. Streaming, tho, is probably the more affecting medium as it doesn't involve payment in the same way. It takes away a lot of power from the artist and the record company. Roger Waters can say that you need to hear The Wall in its totality, but far more now than ever the listener can say, "Nah, I'm good with 'Brick in the Wall,' you old bigot." And while it seems a good thing on the surface to say the audience has gained power—that's a pretty populist sentiment—the flip side is whether the audience can use that power responsibly. If audiences are undemanding—gimme only the hits that I know—that narrows the parameters of artistic expression. Increasingly, I find myself leaning to the side of taking away choice and control from the audience for the sake of the larger stakes (this is all in part of my wariness towards hedonism and belief that older conservatives had a point).
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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WestwayKid wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 5:28pm
I'm a BB to the core, but the talent doesn't run deep within this group. With the exception of Brian, nobody else was brilliant. He was the X factor that allowed a bunch of average (and even below average) talents to succeed.
I'll be honest: I've never seen a BB fan—that is, someone invested in the non-hits—say that the talent beyond Brian was pretty limited. That's always been my perspective, but I also know that I am mostly a hits person with regards to the band, so I know I'm in a poor position to argue the case. I love reading what you guys have to say in this thread (and the proper BB one) because it's so outta my area and taste.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Yeah, none of the rest of them could really do more than write a solid song (at best). Which isn't terrible, you can make a career of it (tho maybe not a long one), but it's not the rarified air that Brian brought. There's a reason that even after Brian mentally checked out that so much of what they built around was whatever stuff of his was still remaining. And the well got drier every time. As much as anything, there's the dynamic that explains the band's trajectory right there.

Sunflower, by the lore of the band and in fairness by critical assessment, is really the only time that the "full band input" produced a classic result. One album out of now 60+ years.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 5:54pm
WestwayKid wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 5:28pm
I'm a BB to the core, but the talent doesn't run deep within this group. With the exception of Brian, nobody else was brilliant. He was the X factor that allowed a bunch of average (and even below average) talents to succeed.
I'll be honest: I've never seen a BB fan—that is, someone invested in the non-hits—say that the talent beyond Brian was pretty limited. That's always been my perspective, but I also know that I am mostly a hits person with regards to the band, so I know I'm in a poor position to argue the case. I love reading what you guys have to say in this thread (and the proper BB one) because it's so outta my area and taste.
I wouldn't call any of them hacks, but without Brian they never would have gotten out of the garage in Hawthorn.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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WestwayKid wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 6:09pm
I wouldn't call any of them hacks, but without Brian they never would have gotten out of the garage in Hawthorn.
I'm sure I've said this a number of times, and it's no major deviation from conventional wisdom, but it's yet another fairly ironic and tragic twist in the beach boys saga that Dennis - the most primitive and unseasoned musician when they started out - was shaping up to be the band's second-best songwriter by the end of his life. I do wonder if he'd lived whether he'd have been able to augment the band's pretty thin songwriting and kept the band's 80s/90s output if not great, at least a little more respectable. But maybe he'd have just preferred working on more solo albums if he was actually writing consistently good material.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Flex wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 6:00pm
Yeah, none of the rest of them could really do more than write a solid song (at best). Which isn't terrible, you can make a career of it (tho maybe not a long one), but it's not the rarified air that Brian brought. There's a reason that even after Brian mentally checked out that so much of what they built around was whatever stuff of his was still remaining. And the well got drier every time. As much as anything, there's the dynamic that explains the band's trajectory right there.

Sunflower, by the lore of the band and in fairness by critical assessment, is really the only time that the "full band input" produced a classic result. One album out of now 60+ years.
Well said. I agree 100%.

I think in regards to talent, next rung down from Brian was Dennis, though he never had Brian's focus.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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Flex wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 6:13pm
WestwayKid wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 6:09pm
I wouldn't call any of them hacks, but without Brian they never would have gotten out of the garage in Hawthorn.
I'm sure I've said this a number of times, and it's no major deviation from conventional wisdom, but it's yet another fairly ironic and tragic twist in the beach boys saga that Dennis - the most primitive and unseasoned musician when they started out - was shaping up to be the band's second-best songwriter by the end of his life. I do wonder if he'd lived whether he'd have been able to augment the band's pretty thin songwriting and kept the band's 80s/90s output if not great, at least a little more respectable. But maybe he'd have just preferred working on more solo albums if he was actually writing consistently good material.
Possibly. If we factor out the alcoholism, I think he continues to develop as a songwriter.
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Re: The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

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This observation belongs in the rape van:

I am very on the record for hating be true to your school, dorky ass shit when it was released and truly vile that they keep performing it as fuckin' crypt keeper old 90 year olds or whatever, but i'm listening to Spirit of America right now (killer comp) and for some reason When I Grow Up (To Be A Man) induced a gag reflex that it hadn't before, particularly when considering this is another song the band won't retire just because it's insanely, insanely age inappropriate:
Will I look for the same things in a woman that I dig in a girl?
(Fourteen, fifteen)
Will I settle down fast or will I first wanna travel the world?
(Sixteen, seventeen)
:yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck:
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
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Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
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