The Thread to Ruminate About Mike Love's Rape Van

[Dr. Medulla]

http://avxhome.in/ebooks/B01K3II1KE.html

Narrated. By. Mike. Love.

[Flex]

http://avxhome.in/ebooks/B01K3II1KE.html

Narrated. By. Mike. Love.

o m f g

[Wolter]

http://avxhome.in/ebooks/B01K3II1KE.html

Narrated. By. Mike. Love.

o m f g

Holy hell.

Re: Kokomo. I didn't realize how little he actually did to write it. Mostly he changed tenses.

I think the main reason he champions it is that it's literally the only Beach Boys hit made with zero input from Brian.

[Dr. Medulla]

I just started another audiobook, but believe me, that's going to the top of queue once I have it dl'd.

[Dr. Medulla]

When we recorded “Be True to Your School” for the album, Brian had the title and instrumental tracks but not the lyrics. So I wrote them on the fly—a breezy ode to our high school days, with references to a letterman’s sweater, Friday-night football games, and cheerleaders. I took great care in every word. The first line, for example, was:
When some loud braggart tries to put me down

“Braggart,” to my ears, is more formal than “bragger,” so I thought our more erudite fans would appreciate the subtlety.

Deep.

[Silent Majority]

When we recorded “Be True to Your School” for the album, Brian had the title and instrumental tracks but not the lyrics. So I wrote them on the fly—a breezy ode to our high school days, with references to a letterman’s sweater, Friday-night football games, and cheerleaders. I took great care in every word. The first line, for example, was:
When some loud braggart tries to put me down

“Braggart,” to my ears, is more formal than “bragger,” so I thought our more erudite fans would appreciate the subtlety.

Deep.

I kept telling Brian to rename the song Delightful Vibrations for the erudite fans, but would he listen? Shit, you've read this far, what do you think?

[Dr. Medulla]

More from his book:

Even before our designation as “America’s Band,” we had corporate sponsorships. Companies assumed that we weren’t going to embarrass them onstage with profanity or stupidity, and the sponsorships gave us another revenue stream. But I wanted to go beyond the typical relationship, in which a company wires you a check and then slaps its logo on the stage. I thought a sponsorship could work both ways—the company gets exposure, but so does the band. So in 1978, we had an agreement with Sunkist Orange Soda, in which the company paid us $1.5 million to use “Good Vibrations” in its commercials and to put the phrase on its packaging and in-store displays. While I loved the campaign, I didn’t necessarily love the product. After our last concert in which we were promoting Sunkist, we had a reception, and a company executive approached me.

“Well, Mike,” he said. “I have to know. Do you drink Sunkist?”

I’m not one to filter my thoughts. “If I was driving my Range Rover through the Mojave Desert and it broke down, I would first drain my radiator fluid and drink that before I had a Sunkist.”

That pretty much ended the conversation, but the company had no complaints. The “Good Vibrations” campaign helped launch the brand, and it became America’s No. 1 orange soda in 1980.

When I heard this, my first reaction was to think he was a dick for taking the money and trading on the band's rep while not having any respect for the product, but then, whatever, it's all commodification and I tend not to get holier-than-thou when rock n roll was born commodified. And thinking further, I decided I liked ML's response. The corporate exec wants love and devotion and what he got was, "This was just business, dude, and the transaction is complete."

[Flex]

It takes corporate executives to make Mike Love seem like the good guy in an interaction.

[Rat Patrol]

It takes corporate executives to make Mike Love seem like the good guy in an interaction.

It's true, you know. ⁶

[Dr. Medulla]

It takes corporate executives to make Mike Love seem like the good guy in an interaction.

It's true, you know. ⁶

Mike appears to be sporting a very limited edition Pills, Thrills, & Bellyaches collared tour shirt, Never would have pegged him as a Mondays fan.

[Dr. Medulla]

I'm in the middle of my workout, still listening to the book, but he just went on this extended discussion of "Kokomo"—more than any other song in the book—and had to come up and relate this passage:

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.

He also invokes "Good Vibrations" and Smile several times as positive comparisons to "Kokomo." It's like McCartney zeroing on "Wonderful Christmas Time" or Chuck Berry with "My Ding-a-ling" as the song that demands the greatest critical appreciation, dammit!

[JennyB]

I'm in the middle of my workout, still listening to the book, but he just went on this extended discussion of "Kokomo"—more than any other song in the book—and had to come up and relate this passage:

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.

He also invokes "Good Vibrations" and Smile several times as positive comparisons to "Kokomo." It's like McCartney zeroing on "Wonderful Christmas Time" or Chuck Berry with "My Ding-a-ling" as the song that demands the greatest critical appreciation, dammit!

Mike Love should really do us all a favor and kill himself.

[Flex]

Also, lol at the idea that the song is better off not being about lamenting misspent youth. Holy crap, could Kokomo have actually been a lyrically decent song at one point?

[Dr. Medulla]

Finished the book on my walk to school. So much to say about it …

- it's basically score settling. Lots of getting back at the Wilsons and asserting his value to the brand (and he would call it a brand). Lots of tangents about stuff that are only about getting in his shots at those who have wronged him, but that he then takes the high road in forgiveness
- his way of assessing success and failure always comes back to sales figures and chart position
- I do think his love for Brian is genuine and that drives a lot of frustration that it isn't reciprocated to his satisfaction. So there's a constant theme of why does Brian treat him so poorly?
- holy crap, way too much about meditation and butterflies
- the production of the audiobook is extremely amateurish. You can hear paper shuffling at times and he chuckles clumsily at semi-jokes that make me think it was written down as a stage direction. Lots of off pauses and inflections that I suspect were when a page wasn't turned over in time. He also chokes up at times in ways that aren't entirely convincing at their sincerity.
- his narrative of the Beach Boys history makes them sound like a really boring group to be around. He treats it like a business in real life, which is fine, but there's no life in this narrative
- Stamos is thanked for being a true friend, so good for that

Edit: Flex's mention of telling ML that "Kokomo" changed his life sort of comes up in the book. That is, he gets choked up about all the fans who have told him how the Beach Boys changed their lives, made them a better person, etc. So, yeah, he's the kind of guy who would believe "Kokomo" has the power to change the cosmos.

[BostonBeaneater]

http://pagesix.com/2016/12/22/beach-boy ... uguration/

Perfect.