PopMatters on the reunion

[hypehat]

It's not garbage. I felt very much the same about the reunion in the first instance - another 'Brian's Back' debacle - and if we decide to judge every article on whether they play along with our very finely tuned POV of the band, well, nothing's going to work.

A journalist is not a hardcore Beach Boys fan. How hard is that to understand?

If she is not, then she shouldn't write like she is one. She came off like she was a big fan, but really only sees things one-sided. Shoot, I can just come here and get that line.

Well, exactly! If that's the way she's come to view things through her love of the music, who are we to slag her off? I mean, how many think-pieces on this tour explicitly quote Stephen Love?

[Rocky Raccoon]

Also, it's not like it's really easy to find definitve information about the group.  They try so hard to hold on to the whole Beach Boys myth, even the Endless Harmony and Beautiful Dreamer docs are so ridiculously and obviously sugarcoated, you can't blame people for looking for answers and not getting the right ones when it comes to the Beach Boys.  The Beach Boys need to realize that there's nothing wrong with going more into detail about drugs, Manson, Landy, legal issues, and all of the countless things that they constantly choose to gloss over.  They need to tell their story straight the way the Beatles did with the Anthology.

[drbeachboy]

It's not garbage. I felt very much the same about the reunion in the first instance - another 'Brian's Back' debacle - and if we decide to judge every article on whether they play along with our very finely tuned POV of the band, well, nothing's going to work.

A journalist is not a hardcore Beach Boys fan. How hard is that to understand?

If she is not, then she shouldn't write like she is one. She came off like she was a big fan, but really only sees things one-sided. Shoot, I can just come here and get that line.

Well, exactly! If that's the way she's come to view things through her love of the music, who are we to slag her off? I mean, how many think-pieces on this tour explicitly quote Stephen Love?

I keep forgeting that this is the age of the Internet and people can write stuff as fact without doing any fact checking. Writing truth is secondary these days.

[KittyKat]

Also, it's not like it's really easy to find definitve information about the group.  They try so hard to hold on to the whole Beach Boys myth, even the Endless Harmony and Beautiful Dreamer docs are so ridiculously and obviously sugarcoated, you can't blame people for looking for answers and not getting the right ones when it comes to the Beach Boys.  The Beach Boys need to realize that there's nothing wrong with going more into detail about drugs, Manson, Landy, legal issues, and all of the countless things that they constantly choose to gloss over.  They need to tell their story straight the way the Beatles did with the Anthology.

Did the Beatles talk about John Lennon's drug use, or Paul's pot habits and miserliness, or Ringo's blow habit, or George's mania about Hare Krishna and his sleeping with Ringo's wife in Anthology? Or how they resolved all the many multi-year lawsuits they had against each other and what all the issues of those were?   I haven't watched it in many a moon and don't recall how they handled controversial topics or whether they touched on many of them at all in their own film.  That film and the Beach Boys docs mentioned mostly exist for people to hear the music and see clips. 

[Rocky Raccoon]

I'm not talking about the film series, I'm talking about the book that came out a few years later.

[KittyKat]

I'm not talking about the film series, I'm talking about the book that came out a few years later.

The other poster mentioned two film docs by the Beach Boys so the Anthology film was brought to mind.  To be honest, I've never read the book Anthology, just seen the DVD.  I used to own the multi-DVD set with outtakes.  I enjoyed the music clips on it.  I don't remember the interview segments too well so I'm not sure what they went into.  Having not read the book, I don't know what's in it or who was involved in writing it.